Issues addressed in Planning

Plan Representation

Linear and NonLinear

Abstraction

Modelling a changing world.

Decomposition and Independence.

ASSUMPTIONS OF THE "STANDARD" AI PLANNING PARADIGM

• There is a single causal agent and this agent is the planner;
• The planner is given a well-defined goal which remains fixed over the course of planning;
• The planner is assumed to have functionally complete and accurate knowledge of the starting situation;
• The planner is assumed to possess the knowledge required to accurately on the world;
• The planner is assumed to possess the resources (time and memory) required to use this model to reason about the possible worlds associated with different courses of action that might be pursued.
  

REACTIVE PLANNING

A Planning Method that Monitors Execution and EXPECTS to be required to Revise its plan based on information provided by the execution monitoring.

• Reactive Planning with completed plans
• Reactive Planning with incompleted plans

STRATEGIC PLANNING

A Planning Method that must await the OPPORTUNITY to achieve its major how to plan its activities while awaiting the opportunity.

Some Heuristics for such Planning Methods

• Create Plans with SubProblems that are Compositionally and Path Independent
• Plan and Execute Dependent SubProblems as soon as possible
• Identify Critical SubProblems and Plan and Execute such SubProblems as soon as possible
• Develop a Situationally Appropriate Contingency Plan for Critical SubProblems (for Strategic Planning only)