Planning by merging totally ordered object plans

摘要

The article describes the design and behavior of PLANRIK, a domain independent hierarchical nonlinear planner that solves for interactive conjunctive goals in a simple, different and more efficient manner than other planners. PLANRIK is a polynomial algorithm that efficiently solves for conjunctive goals by obtaining totally ordered object plans for each object of the problem domain (i.e. a block in the blocks world, a ring in the towers of Hanoi, etc.), and by merging these partial plans into a partially ordered global plan that will become the solution to the problem. Each object plan is generated by ignoring all other objects, and by using a network of required object states resulting from previous planning activities within the solution process.