State-set search is state space search when the states being manipulated by the search algorithm are sets of states from some underlying state space. State-set search arises commonly in planning and abstraction systems, but this paper provides the first formal, general analysis of state-set search. We show that the state-set distance computed by planning systems is different than that computed ...

State-of-the-art methods for solving SSPs often work by limiting planning to restricted regions of the state space. The resulting problems can then be solved quickly, and the process is repeated during execution when states outside the restricted region are encountered. Typically, these approaches focus on states that are within some distance measure of the start state (e.g., number of actions ...

The partial update problem for parallel abstract state machines has manifested itself in the cases of counters, sets and maps. We propose a solution of the problem that lends itself to an eÆcient implementation and covers the three cases mentioned above. There are other cases of the problem that require a more general framework.

This paper discusses a planner of the semantics of utterances, whose essential design is an epistemic theorem prover. The planner was designed for the purpose of planning communicative actions, whose effects are famously unknowable and unobservable by the doer/speaker, and depend on the beliefs of and inferences made by the recipient/hearer. The fully implemented model can achieve goals that do...

This paper proposes a domain independent heuristic for state space planning, which is based on action evaluation. The heuristic obtains estimates for the cost of applying each action of the domain by performing a forward search in a relaxed version of the initial problem. The estimates for the actions are then utilized in a backward search on the original problem. The heuristic, which has been ...

Planning graphs have been shown to be a rich source of heuristic information for many kinds of planners. In many cases, planners must compute a planning graph for each element of a set of states, and the naive technique enumerates the graphs individually. This is equivalent to solving an all-pairs shortest path problem by iterating a single-source algorithm over each source. We introduce a stru...

This paper proposes a fast alternative to POMDP planning for domains with deterministic state-changing actions but probabilistic observation-making actions and partial observability of the initial state. This class of planning problems, which we call quasi-deterministic problems, includes important realworld domains such as planning for Mars rovers. The approach we take is to reformulate the qu...