Many real-world application domains that demand planning and scheduling support do not allow for a clear separation of these capabilities. Typically, an adequate mixture of both methodologies is required, since some aspects of the underlying planning problem imply consequences on the scheduling part and vice versa. Several integration efforts have been undertaken to couple planning and scheduli...

As a sustainability property, energy efficiency is of an extreme importance, especially in environments that are heavy energy consumers, such as homes and buildings. Nowadays, homes and buildings are equipped with many devices that could be exploited in order to make them smart and energy-efficient. Our vision is to bring convergence of smart environments, energy efficiency and automated planni...

Key Points • Palpation of functional cranial tibial thrust instability during weight-bearing is used to assess knee stability preand post-operatively. • Variation in radiographic landmarks to determine stifle flexion angle (SFA) leads to variable TTA cage size recommendations. Use of the Long Axes Method leads to larger advancement recommendations than Kinematic or Eminence Methods. • Variation...

 EFL learners may advocate the desire to have a fulfilling experience while doing tasks rather than focus solely on finishing them. However, learners' perspectives have been virtually ignored in the classroom task implementation. Thus, the current study attempted to explore the perceptions of Iranian EFL learners towards listening pre-tasks in motivational and cognitive strategies instruction a...

Traditionally motor studies have assumed that motor tasks are executed according to a single plan characterized by regular patterns, which corresponds to the minimum of a cost function in extrinsic or intrinsic coordinates. However, the novel via-point task examined in this paper shows distinct planning and execution stages in motion production and demonstrates that subjects randomly select fro...

The adoption of wireless sensor network systems is becoming widespread in critical large-scale monitoring applications. These include but are not limited to pipeline infrastructures for oil and water, border areas, roads and railway systems. In such scenarios, airborne robotic platforms like unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can provide valuable services for data collection, communication relayin...

In this paper, we describe an integrated strategy for planning, perception, state-estimation and action in complex mobile manipulation domains. The strategy is based on planning in the belief space of probability distribution over states. Our planning approach is based on hierarchical goal regression (pre-image back-chaining). We develop a vocabulary of fluents that describe sets of belief stat...

In this paper we address the problem of generating preferred plans by combining the procedural control knowledge specified by Hierarchical Task Networks (HTNs) with rich user preferences. To this end, we extend the popular Planning Domain Definition Language, PDDL3, to support specification of simple and temporally extended preferences over HTN constructs. To compute preferred HTN plans, we pro...

niques is now the world champion computer program in the game of Contract Bridge. As reported in The New York Times and The Washington Post, this program—a new version of Great Game Products’ BRIDGE BARON program—won the Baron Barclay World Bridge Computer Challenge, an international competition hosted in July 1997 by the American Contract Bridge League. It is well known that the game tree sear...

Despite the recent advances in planning for classical domains, the question of how to use domain knowledge in planning is yet to be completely and clearly answered. Some of the existing planners use domain-independent search heuristics, and some others depend on intensively-engineered domainspecific knowledge to guide the planning process. In this paper, we describe an approach to combine ideas...