We describe some new preprocessing techniques that enable faster domain-independent planning. The first set of techniques is aimed at inferring state constraints from the structure of planning operators and the initial state. Our methods consist of generating hypothetical state constraints by inspection of operator effects and preconditions, and checking each hypothesis against all operators an...

Event-based process algebraic specification languages support an elegant specification technique by which system behaviours are described as compositions of constraints on event occurrences and event parameters. This paper investigates the possibility to export this specification paradigm to a state-based formalism, and discusses some deriving advantages in terms of verification.

This paper introduces a general planning approach with state trajectory constraints, a language extension that has recently been introduced to PDDL for running the Fifth International Planning Competition in 2006. In our approach PDDL inputs with state trajectory constraints are translated into ordinary (fully instantiated) PDDL. It exploits the automata-based interpretation of the constraints,...

This report describes the calculation of the reach sets and tubes with hard bounds on the controls and state space variables, with an emphasis on linear nonautonomous systems. The topic is important in the verification of hybrid systems and navigation problems, in set-membership estimation, robust control synthesis and related fields. The suggested scheme for linear systems relies on external a...

A new concept of partially defined system on a singular set is introduced. The setting is based on sheaf theory, and on a concept of locally integrable vector field on a differentiable space, introduced by K.Spallek. Short introductions to both areas are provided. The results consist of accessibility and observability criteria. They extend classical theorems as well as local observability crite...

The paper presents a scheme to calculate approximations of reach sets and tubes for linear control systems with time-varying coefficients, bounds on the controls, and constraints on the state. The scheme provides tight external approximations by ellipsoidal-valued tubes. These tubes touch the reach tubes from the outside at each point of their boundary so that the surface of the reach tube is t...

The paper deals with solutions of a differential inclusion ẋ ∈ F (x) constrained to a compact convex set Ω. Here F is a compact, possibly non-convex valued, Lipschitz continuous multifunction, whose convex closure coF satisfies a strict inward pointing condition at every boundary point x ∈ ∂Ω. Given a reference trajectory x∗(·) taking values in an ε-neighborhood of Ω, we prove the existence of ...

The interrelationship between control and communication theory is becoming of fundamental importance in many distributed control systems. Particular examples are systems comprised of multiple agents. When it comes to coordinately control a group of autonomous mobile agents in order to achieve a common task, communication constraints impose limits on the achievable control performance. In this p...

For linear dynamic systems with white process and measurement noise, the Kalman filter is known to be an optimal estimator. In the application of Kalman filters there is often known model or signal information that is either ignored or dealt with heuristically [1]. This work presents a way to generalize the Kalman filter in such a way that known relations among the state variables (i.e., state ...

We establish a Pontryagin maximum principle for discrete time optimal control problems under the following three types of constraints: a) constraints on the states pointwise in time, b) constraints on the control actions pointwise in time, and c) constraints on the frequency spectrum of the optimal control trajectories. While the first two types of constraints are already included in the existi...