A concept of sequential planning is presented as extension and generalization of “pure” sequential procedures. According to it, observations are collected in groups of variable sizes. The article discusses optimality of sequential plans in terms of a suitable risk function that balances an observation cost and a group cost. It is shown that only non-randomized sequential plans based on a suffic...

Macros have a long-standing role in planning as a tool for representing repeating subsequences of operators. Macros are useful both for guiding search towards a solution and for representing plans compactly. In this paper we introduce automata plans which consist of hierarchies of finite state automata. Automata plans can be viewed as an extension of macros that enables parametrization and bran...

Macros have long been used in planning to represent subsequences of operators. Macros can be used in place of individual operators during search, sometimes reducing the effort required to find a plan to the goal. Another use of macros is to compactly represent long plans. In this paper we introduce a novel solution concept called automaton plans in which plans are represented using hierarchies ...

This paper proposes a novel method to generate strategic team AI pathfinding plans for computer games and simulations using probabilistic pathfinding. This method is inspired by genetic algorithms (Russell and Norvig, 2002), in that, a fitness function is used to test the quality of the path plans. The method generates high-quality path plans by eliminating the low-quality ones. The path plans ...

In this paper we show how CR-Prolog, a recent extension of A-Prolog, was used in the successor of USA-Advisor (USA-Smart) in order to improve the quality of the plans returned. The general problem that we address is that of improving the quality of plans by taking in consideration statements that describe “most desirable” plans. We believe that USA-Smart proves that CR-Prolog provides a simple,...

The idea of including a flexible management of time in a temporal planner is the aim of this work. We propose an extension of a previous work of the authors [4] based on the use of fuzzy temporal intervals by defining a possibility measure over the continuous time line. This gives the planner some very interesting features like obtaining valid plans when the knowledge is ill defined, obtaining ...

Nowadays, one of the main techniques used in heuristic planning is the generation of a relaxed planning graph, based on a Graphplan-like expansion. Planners like FF or MIPS use this type of graphs in order to compute distance-based heuristics during the planning process. This paper presents a new approach to extend the functionality of these graphs in order to manage numeric optimization criter...

When data sources are integrated into a single global system, inconsistencies wrt global integrity constraints are likely to occur. In this paper, the notion of consistent answer to a global query in the context of the local-as-view approach to data integration is characterized. Furthermore, a methodology for generating query plans for retrieving consistent answer to global queries is introduce...

The need for clinical guidelines to be implemented at different sites, to adapt to rapidly changing environments, and to be carried out by distributed clinical teams, implies a degree of flexibility beyond that of current guideline languages. We propose an extension to the PROforma language allowing hierarchical goal-based plans. Sub-plans to achieve goals are proposed at runtime so that changi...