A Novel Constraint Model for Parallel Planning

A parallel plan is a sequence of sets of actions such that any ordering of actions in the sets gives a traditional sequential plan. Parallel planning was popularized by the Graphplan algorithm and it is one of the key components of successful SAT-based planers. SAT-based planners have recently begun to exploit multi-valued state variables – an area which seems traditionally more suited for constraint-based planners – and they improved their performance further. In this paper we propose a novel view of constraint-based planning that uses parallel plans and multi-valued state variables. Rather than starting with the planning graph structure like other parallel planners, this novel approach is based on the idea of timelines and their synchronization.