[mod.ai] Seminar - Possible Worlds Planning

LANSKY@SRI-WARBUCKS.ARPA (Amy Lansky) (06/11/86)

		         POSSIBLE WORLDS PLANNING
			
           	         Matt Ginsberg (SJG@SAIL)
                           Stanford University

   	 	        11:00 AM, MONDAY, June 16
         SRI International, Building E, Room EJ228 (new conference room)


The size of the search space is perhaps the most intractable of all of
the problems facing a general-purpose planner.  Some planning methods
(means-ends analysis being typical) address this problem by
encouraging the system designer to give the planner domain-specific
information (perhaps in the form of a difference table) to help govern
this search.

This paper presents a domain-independent approach to this problem
based on the examination of possible worlds in which the planning goal
has been achieved.  Although a weak method, the ideas presented lead
to considerable savings in many examples; in addition, the natural
implementation of this approach has the attractive property that
incremental efforts in controlling the search provide incremental
improvements in performance.  This is in contrast to many other
approaches to the control of search or inference, which may require
large expenditures of effort before any benefits are realized.


VISITORS:  Please arrive 5 minutes early so that you can be escorted up
from the E-building receptionist's desk.  Thanks!