Abstract
Work on generative planning systems has focused on two diverse approaches to plan construction. Hierarchical task network (HTN) planners build plans by successively refining high-level goals into lower-level activities. Operator-based planners employ means-end analysis to formulate plans consisting of low-level activities. While many have argued the universal dominance of a single approach, we present an alternative view: that in different situations either may be most appropriate. To support this view, we describe a number of advantages and disadvantages of these approaches in light of our experiences in developing two real-world, fielded planning systems.
This paper describes work performed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Carbonell, J.G.; Blythe, J.; Etzioni, O.; Gil, Y.; Joseph, R.; Kahn, D.; Knoblock, C.; Minton, S.; Pérez, M. A.; Reilly, S.; Veloso, M.; and Wang, X. 1992. PRODIGY 4.0: The Manual and Tutorial. Technical report, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.
D. Chapman, “Planning for Conjunctive Goals”, 1987, Artificial Intelligence 32, 3.
S. A. Chien and H. B. Mortensen, “Automating Image Processing for Scientific Data Analysis of a Large Image Database,” IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 18 (8): pp. 854–859, August 1996.
S. Chien, A. Govindjee, T. Estlin, X. Wang, A. Griesel, R. Hill Jr., Automated Generation of Tracking Plans for a Network of Communications Antennas, Proc. 1997 IEEE Aerospace Conference, Aspen, CO, February, 1997.
S. A. Chien, R. W. Hill Jr., X. Wang, T. Estlin, K. V. Fayyad, and H. B. Mortensen, “Why Real-world Planning is Difficult: A Tale of Two Applications,” Proceedings of the Third European Workshop on Planning (EWSP95), Assisi, Italy, September 1995.
K. Erol, J. Hendler, and D. Nau, “UMCP: A Sound and Complete Procedure for Hierarchical Task Network Planning,” Proc. AIPS94, Chicago, IL, June 1994, pp. 249–254.
J. Firby, “Modularity Issues in Reactive Planning,” Proc. AIPS96, Edinburgh, UK, May 1996, pp. 78–85.
AI Planning Systems in the Real World, IEEE Expert, December 1996, pp. 4–12.
Kambhampati, S., A Comparative Analysis of partial order planning and task reduction planning, SIGART Bulletin, Special Issue on Evaluating Plans, Planners, and Planning, Vol 6, No. 1, January 1995.
Minton S., J. Bresina, and M. Drummond, “Commitment Strategies in Planning: A Comparative Analysis,” Proceedings AAAI-91.
J. S. Penberthy and D. S. Weld, “UCPOP: A Sound Complete, Partial Order Planner for ADL,” Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, October 1992.
G. Collins and L. Pryor, “Achieving the functionality of filter conditions in a partial order planner,” Proceedings AAAI92, pp. 375–380.
Tate, A., B. Drabble, and R. Kirby, “O-Plan2: An Open Architecture for Command Planning and Control,” in Intelligent Scheduling (Eds. M. Fox and M. Zweben), Morgan Kaufmann, 1994.
D. Wilkins. Practical Planning. Extending the Classical AI Planning Paradigm. Morgan Kaufmann, 1988.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Estlin, T.A., Chien, S.A., Wang, X. (1997). An argument for a hybrid HTN/operator-based approach to planning. In: Steel, S., Alami, R. (eds) Recent Advances in AI Planning. ECP 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1348. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63912-8_85
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63912-8_85
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-63912-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69665-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive