[mod.ai] Seminar - Situation Calculus Planning

LANSKY@SRI-AI.ARPA (03/06/86)

      SITUATION CALCULUS PLANNING IN BLOCKS AND RELATED WORLDS

			John McCarthy   (JMC@SU-AI)
		     Stanford University

	 	    11:00 AM, MONDAY, March 10
       SRI International, Building E, Room EJ228 (new conference room)

This talk will present mainly ideas rather than completed work.
Situation calculus is based on the equation  s' = result(e,s),
where  s  and  s'  are situations and  e  is an event.  Provided
one can control the deduction adequately, this is a more powerful
formalism than STRIPS.  Planning a sequence of actions, or more
generally, a strategy of actions to achieve a situation with
specified properties, admits a variety of heuristics which
whittle away at the problem.  In many practical situations, these
heuristics, which don't guarantee a full solution but leave a
reduced problem, are sufficient.  Humans appear to use many of them
and so should computer programs.  The talk therefore will concern both
epistemological and heuristic aspects of planning problems.


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