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PLANNING
Anifuddin Azis
Artificial Intelligence
A Modern Approach
The subtitle of this book is "A Modern Approach." The intended meaning of
this rather empty phrase is that we have tried to synthesize what is now
known into a common framework, rather than trying to explain each
subfield of AI in its own historical context. We apologize to those whose
subfields are, as a result, less recognizable than they might otherwiise have
been.
The main unifying theme is the idea of an intelligent agent. We define AI as
the study of agents that receive percepts from the environment and perform
actions. Each such agent implements a function that maps percept sequences
to actions, and we cover different ways to represent these func- tions, such
as production systems, reactive agents, real-time cortditional planners,
neural networks, and decision-theoretic systems. We explain the role of
learning as extending the reach of
the designer into unknown
environments, and we show how that role constrains agent design,
favoring explicit knowledge representation and reasoning. We treat
robotics and vision not as independently defined problems, but as occurring
in the service of achieving goals. We stress the importance of the task
environment in determining the appropriate agent design.
Overview of the book
The book is divided into eight parts.
Part I, Artificial Intelligence, offers a view of the AI enterprise
based around the idea of intelligent agents-systems that can
decide what to do and then do it.
Part II Problem Solving, concentrates on methods for deciding
what to do when one needs to think ahead several steps-for
example in navigating across a country or playing chess.
Part III, Knowledge and Reasoning, discusses ways to
represent knowledge about the world-how it works, what
it is currently like, and what one's actions inight do-and
how to reason logically with that knowledge.

Part IV, Planning, then discusses how to use these reasoning methods to
decide what to do, particularly by constructing plans.

Part V, Uncertain Knowledge and Reasoning, is analogous to Parts III and
IV, but it concentrates on reasoning and decision making in the presence of
uncertainty about the world, as might be faced, for example, by a system
for medical diagnosis and treatment.

Together, Parts II-V describe that part of the intelligent agent responsible
for reaching decisions.

Part VI, Learning, describes methods for generating the knowledge
required by these decision-making components. Part VII, Communicating,
Perceiving, and Acting, describes ways in which an intelligent agent can
perceive its environment so as to know what is going on, whether by
vision, touch, hearing, or understanding language, and ways in which it can
turn its plans into real actions, either as robot motion or as natural
language utterances. Finally, Part VIII, Conclusions, analyzes the past and
future of AI and the philosophical and ethical implications of artificial
intelligence.
Areas of AI and their interdependencies
Search
Logic
Machine
Learning
NLP
Vision
Knowledge
Representation
Planning
Robotics
Expert
Systems
Introduction to Planning
 The purpose of planning is to find a sequence of actions
that achieves a given goal when performed starting in a
given state
 What is a plan? A sequence of operator instances,
such that "executing" them in the initial state will change
the world to a state satisfying the goal state description.
Goals are usually specified as a conjunction of goals to be
achieved
 problem-solving agents are able to plan ahead - to
consider the consequences of sequences of actions - before
acting
 knowledge-based agents can select actions based on
explicit, logical representations of the current state and the
effects of actions
 Problem Solving Agents + Knowledge-based Agents
= Planning Agents
Algorithm of a simple planning agent:
1. Generate a goal to achieve
2. Construct a plan to achieve goal from current state
3. Execute plan until finished
4. Begin again with new goal
Planning
 The task of coming up with a sequence of actions that
will achieve a goal is called planning.
 We studied how to take actions in the world (search)
 We studied how to represent objects, relations, etc.
(logic)
 Now we will combine the two!
Planning Problem
 Any problem that needs sequential decision
 For a single decision, you should look for Machine
Learning
 Classification
 Given a picture “is this a cat or a dog?”
 Any Examples?
 FreeCell
 Sokoban
 Micro-mouse
 Bridge Game
 Football
Space Exploration
 Autonomous planning, scheduling, control
 NASA: JPL and Ames
 Remote Agent
Experiment (RAX)
 Deep Space 1
 Mars Exploration
Rover (MER)
Manufacturing
 Sheet-metal bending machines - Amada Corporation
 Software to plan the sequence of bends
[Gupta and Bourne, J. Manufacturing Sci. and Engr., 1999]
Games
 Bridge Baron - Great Game Products
 1997 world champion of computer bridge
[Smith, Nau, and Throop, AI Magazine, 1998]
 2004: 2nd place
Us:East declarer, West dummy
Finesse(P1; S)
LeadLow(P1; S)
PlayCard(P1; S, R1)
Opponents:defenders, South & North
Contract:East – 3NT
On lead:West at trick 3 East:KJ74
West: A2
Out: QT98653
FinesseTwo(P ; S)
2
EasyFinesse(P2; S)
West— 2
StandardFinesse(P2; S)
…
…
(North— Q)
StandardFinesseTwo(P2; S)
PlayCard(P2; S, R2)
North— 3
BustedFinesse(P2; S)
(North— 3)
StandardFinesseThree(P3; S)
FinesseFour(P4; S)
PlayCard(P3; S, R3)
PlayCard(P4; S, R4)
PlayCard(P4; S, R4’)
East— J
South— 5
South— Q
Planning Languages
 Languages must represent..
 States
 Goals
 Actions
 Languages must be
 Expressive for ease of representation
 Flexible for manipulation by algorithms
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State Representation
 A state is represented with a conjunction of positive
literals
 Using
 Logical Propositions: Poor  Unknown
 FOL literals: At(Plane1,OMA)  At(Plan2,JFK)
 FOL literals must be ground & function-free
 Not allowed: At(x,y) or At(Father(Fred),Sydney)
 Closed World Assumption
 What is not stated are assumed false
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Goal Representation
 Goal is a partially specified state
 A proposition satisfies a goal if it contains all the atoms of the
goal and possibly others..
 Example: Rich  Famous  Miserable satisfies the goal Rich 
Famous
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Action Representation
 Action Schema
 Action name
 Preconditions
 Effects
At(WHI,LNK),Plane(WHI),
Airport(LNK), Airport(OHA)
Fly(WHI,LNK,OHA)
At(WHI,OHA),  At(WHI,LNK)
 Example
Action(Fly(p,from,to),
PRECOND: At(p,from)  Plane(p)  Airport(from)  Airport(to)
EFFECT: At(p,from)  At(p,to))
 Sometimes, Effects are split into ADD list and DELETE list
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Applying an Action
 Find a substitution list  for the variables
 of all the precondition literals
 with (a subset of) the literals in the current state description
 Apply the substitution to the propositions in the effect list
 Add the result to the current state description to generate the new
state
 Example:
 Current state: At(P1,JFK)  At(P2,SFO)  Plane(P1)  Plane(P2)  Airport(JFK) 
Airport(SFO)
 It satisfies the precondition with ={p/P1,from/JFK, to/SFO)
 Thus the action Fly(P1,JFK,SFO) is applicable
 The new current state is: At(P1,SFO)  At(P2,SFO)  Plane(P1)  Plane(P2)  Airport(JFK)
 Airport(SFO)
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Example: Air Cargo
 See Figure 11.2
 Initial state
 Goal State
 Actions: Load, Unload, Fly
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Languages for Planning Problems
 STRIPS
 Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver
 Historically important
 ADL
 Action Description Languages
 See Table 11.1 for STRIPS versus ADL
 PDDL
 Planning Domain Definition Language
 Revised & enhanced for the needs of the International Planning Competition
 Currently version 3.1
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Example: Spare Tire Problem
 See Figure 11.3
 Initial State
 Goal State
 Actions:
 Remove(Spare,Trunk), Remove(Flat, Axle)
 PutOn(Spare,Axle)
 LeaveOvernight
 Note
 the negated precondition At(Flat,Axle) not allowed in STRIPS.
 Could be easily replaced with Clear(Axle), adding one more predicate to the
language
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Example: Blocks World
 See Fig 11.4
 Initial state
 Goal
 Actions:
 Move(b,x,y)
 MoveToTable(b,x)
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Outline
 Background
 Situation Calculus
 Frame, qualification, & ramification problems
 Representation language
 Planning Algorithms
 State-Space Search
 Partial-Order Planning (POP)
 Planning Graphs (GRAPHPLAN)
 SAT Planners
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State-Space Search (1)
 Search the space of states (first chapters)
 Initial state, goal test, step cost, etc.
 Actions are the transitions between state
 Actions are invertible (why?)
 Move forward from the initial state: Forward State-Space Search
or Progression Planning
 Move backward from goal state: Backward State-Space Search
or Regression Planning
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State-Space Search (2)
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State-Space Search (3)
 Remember that the language has no functions symbols
 Thus number of states is finite
 And we can use any complete search algorithm (e.g., A*)
 We need an admissible heuristic
 The solution is a path, a sequence of actions: total-order planning
 Problem: Space and time complexity
 STRIPS-style planning is PSPACE-complete unless actions have
 only positive preconditions and
 only one literal effect
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SRIPS in State-Space Search
 STRIPS representation makes it easy to focus on ‘relevant’
propositions and
 Work backward from goal (using EFFECTS)
 Work forward from initial state (using PRECONDITIONS)
 Facilitating bidirectional search
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Relevant Action
 An action is relevant
 In Progression planning when its preconditions match a subset
of the current state
 In Regression planning, when its effects match a subset of the
current goal state
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Consistent Action
 The purpose of applying an action is to ‘achieves a
desired literal’
 We should be careful that the action does not undo a
desired literal (as a side effect)
 A consistent action is an action that does not undo a
desired literal
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Backward State-Space Search
 Given
 A goal G description
 An action A that is relevant and consistent
 Generate a predecessor state where
 Positive effects (literals) of A in G are deleted
 Precondition literals of A are added unless they already appear
 Substituting any variables in A’s effects to match literals in G
 Substituting any variables in A’s preconditions to match substitutions in A’s
effects
 Repeat until predecessor description matches initial state
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Heuristic to Speed up Search

We can use A*, but we need an admissible heuristic
1.

2.
3.
4.
Divide-and-conquer: sub-goal independence assumption
Problem relaxation by removing
… all preconditions
… all preconditions and negative effects
… negative effects only: Empty-Delete-List
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1. Subgoal Independence Assumption
 The cost of solving a conjunction of subgoals is the sum of the
costs of solving each subgoal independently
 Optimistic
 Where subplans interact negatively
 Example: one action in a subplan delete goal achieved by an action in another
subplan
 Pessimistic (not admissible)
 Redundant actions in subplans can be replaced by a single action in merged
plan
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2. Problem Relaxation: Removing Preconditions
 Remove preconditions from action descriptions
 All actions are applicable
 Every literal in the goal is achievable in one step
 Number of steps to achieve the conjunction of literals in
the goal is equal to the number of unsatisfied literals
 Alert
 Some actions may achieve several literals
 Some action may remove the effect of another action
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3. Remove Preconditions & Negative Effects
 Considers only positive interactions among actions to
achieve multiple subgoals
 The minimum number of actions required is the sum of
the union of the actions’ positive effects that satisfy the
goal
 The problem is reduced to a set cover problem, which is
NP-hard
 Approximation by a greedy algorithm cannot guarantee an
admissible heuristic
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4. Removing Negative Effects (Only)
 Remove all negative effects of actions (no action may




destroy the effects of another)
Known as the Empty-Delete-List heuristic
Requires running a simple planning algorithm
Quick & effective
Usable in progression or regression planning
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Discussion
1. The monkey-and-bananas problem is faced by a monkey in a
laboratory with some bananas hanging out of reach from the
ceiling. A box is available that will enable the monkey to reach the
bananas if he climbs on it. Initially, the monkey is at A, the bananas
at B, and the box at C. The monkey and box have height Low, but
if the monkey climbs onto the box he will have height High, the
same as the bananas. The actions available to the monkey include
Go from one place to another, Push an object from one place to
another, Climb Up onto or ClimbDown from an object, and
Grasp or Ungrasp an object. Grasping results in holding the object
if the monkey and object are in the same place at the same height.
a.Write down the initial state description.
b.Write down STRIPS-style definitions of the six actions.
2.You are given two jugs, a 4-litre one and a 3-litre one.
Neither has any measuring markers on it. There is a
pump that can be used to fill the jugs with water. How
can you get exactly 2 litres of water into 4-litre jug.”
Write a description of this problem in STRIPS notation.