Grounding planning operators by affordances

This paper introduces a view on planning that is based on interpreting objects not by their identity but by their functionality. Ecological psychologist J.J. Gibson’s concept of affordances provides the underlying theory for developing a system that does not distinguish between objects of functional equivalence. It will be argued that the plans resulting from this approach are both less complex and still more flexible and robust in their application while proposing solutions to symbol grounding of objects in the environment and planning operators in execution behaviors. The system will be presented by example.