Temporal Planning in Domains with Linear Processes

We consider the problem of planning in domains with continuous linear numeric change. Such change cannot always be adequately modelled by discretisation and is a key facet of many interesting problems. We show how a forward-chaining temporal planner can be extended to reason with actions with continuous linear effects. We extend a temporal planner to handle numeric values using linear programming. We show how linear continuous change can be integrated into the same linear program and we discuss how a temporal-numeric heuristic can be used to provide the search guidance necessary to underpin continuous planning. We present results to show that the approach can effectively handle duration-dependent change and numeric variables subject to continuous linear change.