AI Planning

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

CSCE476/876, Spring 2009:

www.cse.unl.edu/~choueiry/S09-476-876/
Send questions to cse476@cse.unl.edu

Berthe Y. Choueiry (Shu-we-ri)

Avery Hall, Room 360
choueiry@cse.unl.edu
Tel: +1(402)472-5444

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 1

Reading
• Required reading
– Sections 11.1—11.4
• Recommended reading
– AIMA Section 10.3: Actions, Situations, and Events
– Chapter 11 entirely

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 2

Outline
• Background
– Situation Calculus
– Frame, qualification, & ramification problems
• Representation language
• Algorithms

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 3

Background
• Focus
– The focus here is deterministic planning
• Environment is fully observable
• Results of actions is deterministic
– Relaxing the above requires dealing with uncertainty
• Problem types: sensorless, contingency, exploration
• Planning ‘communities’ in AI
– Logic-based: Reasoning About Actions & Change
– Less formal representations: Classical AI Planning
– Uncertainty (UAI): Graphical Models such as
• Markov Decision Processes (MDP), Partially Observable MDPs, etc.

• AI Planning is not MRP (Material Requirements Planning)

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

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Actions, events, and change
• Planning requires a representation of time
– to express & reason about sequences of actions
– to express the effects of actions on the world
• Propositional Logic
– does not offer a representation for time
– Each action description needs to be repeated for each step
• Situation Calculus (AIMA Section 10.3)
– Is based on FOL
– Each time step is a ‘situation’
– Allows to represent plans and reason about actions & change

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

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Situation Calculus: Ontology
• Situations AIMA Section 10.3
• Fluents
• Atemporal (or eternal)
predicates & functions

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 6

Situation Calculus: Ontology
• Situations
– Initial state: S0
– A function Result(a.s) gives the situation resulting from
applying action a in situation s
• Fluents
– Functions & predicates whose truth values can change
from one situation to the other
– Example: Holding(G1,S0)
• Atemporal (or eternal) predicates and functions
– Example: Gold(G1), LeftLegOf(Wumpus)
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 7

Situation Calculus
• Sequence of actions
– Result([],s)=s
– Result([a|seq],s)=Result(seq,Result(a,s))
• Projection task
– Deducing the outcome of a sequence of actions
• Planning task
– Find a sequence of actions that achieves a
desired effect

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Example: Wumpus World
• Fluents
– At(o,p,s), Holding(o,s)
• Agent is in [1,1], gold is in [1,2]
– At(Agent,[1,1],S0)  At(G1,[1,2],S0)
• In S0, we also need to have:
– At(o,x,S0)  [(o=Agent)  x=[1,1]]  [(o=G1)  x=[1,2]]
 Holding(o,S0)
– Gold(G1)  Adjacent([1,1],[1,2])  Adjacent([1,2],[1,1])
• The query is:
  seq At(G1,[1,1],Result(seq,S0))
• The answer is
– At(G1,[1,1],Result(Go([1,1],[1,2]),Grab(G1),Go([1,2],[1,1]),S0))

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 9

Importance of Situation Calculus
• Historical note
– Situation Calculus was the first attempt to formalizing planning in
FOL
– Other formalisms include Event Calculus
– The area of using logic for planning is informally called in the
literature “Reasoning About Action & Change”
• Highlighted three important problems
1. Frame problem
2. Qualification problem
3. Ramification problem

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 10

‘Famous’ Problems
• Frame problem
– Representing all things that stay the same from one situation to
the next
– Inferential and representational
• Qualification problem
– Defining the circumstances under which an action is guaranteed
to work
– Example: what if the gold is slippery or nailed down, etc.
• Ramification problem
– Proliferation of implicit consequences of actions as actions may
have secondary consequences
– Examples: How about the dust on the gold?

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 11

Outline
• Background
– Situation Calculus
– Frame, qualification, & ramification problems
• Representation language
• Algorithms

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 12

Planning Languages
• Languages must represent..
– States
– Goals
– Actions
• Languages must be
– Expressive for ease of representation
– Flexible for manipulation by algorithms

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

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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

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 14

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

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 15

Action Representation
• Action Schema At(WHI,LNK),Plane(WHI),
Airport(LNK), Airport(OHA)
– Action name
– Preconditions Fly(WHI,LNK,OHA)

– Effects 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
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 16

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)

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 17

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

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

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Example: Air Cargo
• See Figure 11.2
• Initial state
• Goal State
• Actions: Load, Unload, Fly

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 19

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

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 20

Example: Blocks World
• See Fig 11.4
• Initial state
• Goal
• Actions:
– Move(b,x,y)
– MoveToTable(b,x)

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 21

Outline
• Background
– Situation Calculus
– Frame, qualification, & ramification problems
• Representation language
• Planning Algorithms
– State-Space Search
– Partial-Order Planning (POP)
– Planning Graphs (GRAPHPLAN)
– SAT Planners

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 22

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

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

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State-Space Search (2)

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

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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

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 25

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

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 26

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

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 27

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

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 28

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

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 29

Heuristic to Speed up Search
• We can use A*, but we need an admissible
heuristic
1. Divide-and-conquer: sub-goal independence
assumption
– Problem relaxation by removing
2. … all preconditions
3. … all preconditions and negative effects
4. … 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

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 33

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

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 34

Outline
• Background
– Situation Calculus
– Frame, qualification, & ramification problems
• Representation language
• Planning Algorithms
– State-Space Search
– Partial-Order Planning (POP)
– Planning Graphs (GRAPHPLAN)
– SAT Planners

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

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Partial Order Planning (POP)
• State-space search
– Yields totally ordered plans (linear plans)
• POP
– Works on subproblems independently, then combines subplans
– Example
• Goal(RightShoeOn  LeftShoeOn)
• Init()
• Action(RightShoe, PRECOND: RightSockOn, EFFECT:
RightShoeOn)
• Action(RightSock, EFFECT: RightSockOn)
• Action(LeftShoe, PRECOND: LeftSockOn, EFFECT: LeftShoeOn)
• Action(LeftSock, EFFECT: LeftSockOn)

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

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POP Example & its linearization

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Components of a Plan
1. A set of actions
2. A set of ordering constraints
– A B reads “A before B” but not necessarily immediately before B
– Alert: caution to cycles A B and B A
3. A set of causal links (protection intervals) between actions
p
– A B reads “A achieves p for B” and p must remain true from
the time A is applied to the time B is applied
RightSockOn
– Example “RightSock RightShoe
4. A set of open preconditions
– Planners work to reduce the set of open preconditions to the empty
set w/o introducing contradictions

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

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Consistent Plan (POP)
• Consistent plan is a plan that has
– No cycle in the ordering constraints
– No conflicts with the causal links
• Solution
– Is a consistent plan with no open preconditions
p
• To solve a conflict between a causal link A B and an
action C (that clobbers, threatens the causal link), we
force C to occur outside the “protection interval” by
adding
– the constraint C A (demoting C) or
– the constraint B C (promoting C)

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 39

Setting up the PoP
Start
• Add dummy states Literala, Literalb, …
– Start
• Has no preconditions Literal1, Literal2, …
• Its effects are the literals of the initial state
Finish
– Finish
• Its preconditions are the literals of the goal state
• Has no effects

• Initial Plan: Start

– Actions: {Start, Finish}
– Ordering constraints: {Start Finish} LeftShoeOn, RightShoeOn

Finish
– Causal links: {}
– Open Preconditions: {LeftShoeOn,RightShoeOn}

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 40

POP as a Search Problem
• The successor function arbitrarily picks one open
precondition p on an action B
• For every possible consistent action A that achieves p
p
– It generates a successor plan adding the causal link A B
and the ordering constraint A B
– If A was not in the plan, it adds Start A and A Finish
– It resolves all conflicts between
• the new causal link and all existing actions
• between A and all existing causal links
– Then it adds the successor states for combination of resolved
conflicts
• It repeats until no open precondition exists
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Example of POP: Flat tire problem
• See problem description in Fig 11.7 page 391

Start
At(Spare,Trunk), At(Flat,Axle)
• Only one open precondition
• Only 1 applicable action
At(Spare,Ground), At(Flat,Axle)
PutOn(Spare,Axle)

• Pick up At(Spare,Ground)
• Choose only applicable action At(Spare,Axle)
Remove(Spare,Trunk)
Finish
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 Add causal link between
Remove(Spare,Trunk) and
PutOn(Spare,Axle)

• Pick up At(Flat,Axle)
• There are 2 applicable actions: LeaveOvernight and Remove(Flat,Axle)
• Choose LeaveOvernight • LeaveOvernight has effect
At(Spare,Ground), which conflicts
with the causal link

• We remove the conflict by

forcing LeaveOvernight to occur
before Remove(Spare,Trunk)
• Conflicts with effects of Remove(Spare,Trunk)
• The only way to resolve the conflict is to undo LeaveOvernightuse the action
Remove(Flat,Axle)
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• This time, we choose Remove(Flat,Axle)
• Pick up At(Spare,Trunk) and choose Start to achieve it
• Pick up At(Flat,Axle) and choose Start to achieve it.
• We now have a complete consistent partially ordered plan

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POP Algorithm (1)
• Backtrack when fails to resolve a threat or find an
operator
• Causal links
– Recognize when to abandon a doomed plan without wasting
time expanding irrelevant part of the plan
– allow early pruning of inconsistent combination of actions
• When actions include variables, we need to find
appropriate substitutions
– Typically we try to delay commitments to instantiating a variable
until we have no other choice (least commitment)
• POP is sound, complete, and systematic (no repetition)

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April 10, 2009 Planning 45

POP Algorithm (2)
• Decomposes the problem (advantage)
• But does not represent states explicitly: it is hard to
design heuristic to estimate distance from goal
– Example: Number of open preconditions – those that match the
effects of the start node. Not perfect (same problems as before)
• A heuristic can be used to choose which plan to refine
(which precondition to pick-up):
– Choose the most-constrained precondition, the one satisfied by
the least number of actions. Like in CSPs!
– When no action satisfies a precondition, backtrack!
– When only one action satisfies a precondition, pick up the
precondiction.

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April 10, 2009 Planning 46

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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April 10, 2009 Planning 47

Planning Graph
• Is special data structure used for
1. Deriving better heuristic estimates
2. Extract a solution to the planning problem: GRAPHPLAN algorithm
• Is a sequence S0,A0,S1,A1,…,Si of levels
– Alternating state levels & action levels
– Levels correspond to time stamps
– Starting at initial state
– State level is a set of (propositional) literals
• All those literals that could be true at that level
– Action level is a set of (propositionalized) actions
• All those actions whose preconditions appear in the state level (ignoring all negative interactions, etc.)
• Propositionalization may yield combinatorial explosition in the presence of a large number of objects

 

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Focus
• Building the Planning Graph
• Using it for Heuristic Estimation
• Using it for generating the plan

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 Example of a Planning Graph (1)
Init(Have(Cake)) Action(Eat(Cake)
Goal(Have(Cake)Eaten(Cake)) Precond: Have(Cake)
Effect: Have(Cake)Eaten(Cake))
Propositions true Action(Bake(Cake)
at the initial state Precond: Have(Cake)
Persistence Actions (noop) Effect: Have(Cake))

Action is connected to its

preconds & effects
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Example of a Planning Graph (2)
• At each state level, list all literals that may hold at that level
• At each action level, list all noops & all actions whose preconditions may
hold at previous levels
• Repeat until plan ‘levels off,’ no new literals appears (Si=Si+1)
• Building the Planning Graph is a polynomial process
• Add (binary) mutual exclusion (mutex) links between conflicting actions and
between conflicting literals

Mutual exclusion links S1 represents multiple states

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Mutex Links between Actions
1. Inconsistent effects: one action negates an effect of another
– Eat(Cake) & noop of Have(Cake) disagree on effect Have(Cake)
2. Interference: An action effect negates the precondition of another
– Eat(Cake) negates precondition of the noop of Have(Cake):
3. Competing needs: A precondition on an action is mutex with the
precondition of another
– Bake(Cake) & Eat(Cake): compete on Have(Cake) precondition

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Mutex Links between Literals
1. Two literals are negation of each other
2. Inconsistent support: Each pair of actions that can
achieve the two literals is mutex. Examples:
– In S1, Have(Cake) & Eaten(Cake) are mutex
– In S2, they are not because Bake(Cake) & the noop of
Eaten(Cake) are not mutex

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Focus
• Building the Planning Graph
• Using it for Heuristic Estimation
– Planning graph as a relaxation of original problem
– Easy to build (compute)
• Using it for generating the plan

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Planning Graph for Heuristic Estimation
• A literal that does not appear in the final level cannot be achieved by
any plan
– State-space search: Any state containing an unachievable literal has
cost h(n)=
– POP: Any plan with an unachievable open condition has cost h(n)=
• The estimate cost of any goal literal is the first level at which it
appears
– Estimate is admissible for individual literals
– Estimate can be improved by serializing the graph (serial planning
graph: one action per level) by adding mutex between all actions in a
given level
• The estimate of a conjunction of goal literals
– Three heuristics: max level, level sum, set level

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Estimate of Conjunction of Goal Literals
• Max-level
– The largest level of a literal in the conjunction
– Admissible, not very accurate
• Level sum
– Under subgoal independence assumption, sums the level costs
of the literals
– Inadmissible, works well for largely decomposable problems
• Set level
– Finds the level at which all literals appear w/o any pair of them
being mutex
– Dominates max-level, works extremely well on problems where
there is a great deal of interaction among subplans
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April 10, 2009 Planning 56

Focus
• Building the Planning Graph
• Using it for Heuristic Estimation
• Using it for generating the plan
– GraphPlan algorithm [Blum & Furst, 95]

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April 10, 2009 Planning 57

GRAPHPLAN algorithm
GRAPHPLAN(problem) returns solution or failure
graph  INITIALPLANNINGGRAPH(problem)
goals  GOALS[problem]
loop do
if goals all non-mutex in last level of graph then do
solution  EXTRACTSOLUTION(graph,goals,LENGTH(graph))
if solution  failure then return solution
else if NOSOLUTIONPOSSIBLE(graph) then return failure
graph  EXPANDGRAPH (graph,problem)

• Two main stages

1. Extract solution
2. Expand the graph

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Example of GRAPHPLAN Execution
(1)
• At(Spare,Axle) is not in S0
• No need to extract solution
• Expand the plan

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Example of GRAPHPLAN Execution
(2)
• Three actions are
applicable
• 3 actions and 5
noops are added
• Mutex links are
added
• At(Spare,Axle)
still not in S1
• Plan is expanded

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Example of GRAPHPLAN Execution
(3)
• Illustrates well mutex links: inconsistent effects,
interference, competing needs, inconsistent support

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Solution Extraction (Backward)
1. Solve a Boolean CSP: Variables are actions, domains
are {0=out of plan, 1=in plan), constraints are mutex
2. Search problem from last level backward

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Backtrack Search for Solution Extraction

• Starting at the highest fact level

– Each goal is put in a goal list for the current fact layer
– Search iterates thru each fact in the goal list trying to find an action to
support it which is not mutex with any other chosen action
– When an action is chosen, its preconditions are added to the goal list of
the lower level
– When all facts in the goal list of the current level have a consistent
assignment of actions, the search moves to the next level
• Search backtracks to the previous level when it fails to assign an
action to each fact in the goal list at a given level
• Search succeeds when the first level is reached.

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Termination of GRAPHPLAN
• GRAPHPLAN is guaranteed to terminate
– Literal increase monotonically
– Actions increase monotonically
– Mutexes decrease monotinically
• A solution is guaranteed not to exist when
– The graph levels off with all goals present &
non-mutex, and
– EXTRACTSOLUTION fails to find solution
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Optimality of GRAPHPLAN
• The plans generated by GRAPHPLAN
– Are optimal in the number of steps needed to
execute the plan
– Not necessarily optimal in the number of
actions in the plan (GRAPHPLAN produces
partially ordered plans)

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April 10, 2009 Planning 65

Outline
• Background
– Situation Calculus
– Frame, qualification, & ramification problems
• Representation language
• Planning Algorithms
– State-Space Search
– Partial-Order Planning (POP)
– Planning Graphs (GRAPHPLAN)
– SAT Planners

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

April 10, 2009 Planning 66