Planning for real world problems with explicit temporal constraints is a challenging problem. Among several approaches, the use of flexible timelines in Planning and Scheduling (P&S) has demonstrated to be successful in a number of concrete applications, such as, for instance, autonomous space systems. A flexible timeline describes an envelope of possible solutions which can be exploited by an executive system for robust on-line execution. A remarkable research effort has been dedicated to design, build and deploy software environments, like EUROPA, ASPEN, and APSI-TRF, for the synthesis of timeline-based P&S applications. Several attempts have also been made to characterize the concept of timelines. Nevertheless, a formal characterization of flexible timelines and plans is still missing. This paper presents a formal account of flexible timelines aiming at providing a general semantics for related planning concepts such as domains, goals, problems, constraints and flexible plans. Some basic properties of the defined concepts are also stated and proved. A simple running example inspired by a real world planning domain is exploited to illustrate the proposed formal notions. Finally, a planning tool, called Extensible Planning and Scheduling Library (EPSL), is briefly presented, which is able to generate flexible plans that are compliant with the given semantics.

Cialdea, M., Orlandini, A., Umbrico, A. (2014). A Formal Account of Planning with Flexible Timelines. In 21st International Symposium onTemporal Representation and Reasoning (TIME 2014) (pp.37-46). IEEE [10.1109/TIME.2014.27].

A Formal Account of Planning with Flexible Timelines

CIALDEA, Marta;ORLANDINI, Andrea;UMBRICO, ALESSANDRO
2014-01-01

Abstract

Planning for real world problems with explicit temporal constraints is a challenging problem. Among several approaches, the use of flexible timelines in Planning and Scheduling (P&S) has demonstrated to be successful in a number of concrete applications, such as, for instance, autonomous space systems. A flexible timeline describes an envelope of possible solutions which can be exploited by an executive system for robust on-line execution. A remarkable research effort has been dedicated to design, build and deploy software environments, like EUROPA, ASPEN, and APSI-TRF, for the synthesis of timeline-based P&S applications. Several attempts have also been made to characterize the concept of timelines. Nevertheless, a formal characterization of flexible timelines and plans is still missing. This paper presents a formal account of flexible timelines aiming at providing a general semantics for related planning concepts such as domains, goals, problems, constraints and flexible plans. Some basic properties of the defined concepts are also stated and proved. A simple running example inspired by a real world planning domain is exploited to illustrate the proposed formal notions. Finally, a planning tool, called Extensible Planning and Scheduling Library (EPSL), is briefly presented, which is able to generate flexible plans that are compliant with the given semantics.
2014
978-1-4799-4228-2
Cialdea, M., Orlandini, A., Umbrico, A. (2014). A Formal Account of Planning with Flexible Timelines. In 21st International Symposium onTemporal Representation and Reasoning (TIME 2014) (pp.37-46). IEEE [10.1109/TIME.2014.27].
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11590/184425
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