ALGORITHMS FOR

PLANNING
AS STATE-SPACE SEARCH
Forward state space search(Progression)

Consider the task of buying a book with 10 ISBN

numbers.
The ISBN 0f AI has 10 digits-so there are 10 to the power
10 actions from initial state(Uninformed search).
The planning problems have large state space.
Forward search is prone to exploring irrelevant actions.
Without an accurate heuristic even a small planning
problem is hopeless in forward search.
Backward(regression)relevant states search
• We start with the goal and apply the actions backward until we find a
sequence of steps that reaches the initial state.
Start with goal-conjunction of literals
For example my goal is a conjunction of fluents like
¬poor(john)^Famous(John),then it describes the goal state where poor
is false and famous is true.
Suppose if there are n ground fluents in a domain,thene there are 2^n
ground states,3^n descriptions of set of goal states.(true,false or not
mentioned).
Backward regression contd..
• The PDDL was designed to move backwards easily
• a ground goal description g and a ground action a, the regression
from g over a gives us a state description g’ defined by
• g’ =( g − ADD(a))∪Precond(a) .
• the effects that were added by the actions were not true in previous
state and the preconditions for the goal were true in the previous
state.
• The goal is to deliver a specific piece of cargo to SFO:
• consider the goal Own(0136042597),
• given an initial state with 10 billion ISBNs,
• and the single action A =
Action(Buy(i),PRECOND:ISBN(i),EFFECT:Own(i)).

• forward search without a heuristic would have to start enumerating

the 10 billion ground Buy actions.
• But with backward search, we would unify the goal
Own(0136042597) with the (standardized) effect Own(x), yielding the
substitution θ = {x/0136042597}.
• Then we would regress over the action Subst(θ,A’) to yield the
predecessor state description ISBN(0136042597)
Graph planning-mutex links
What is a Frame Problem
• Environment for an agent is not static
• Identifying which things remain static in changing word
• Use of information in Knowledge Base and agent’s conclusion based
on that knowledge
• Discarding negative inferences

Devina Desai Frame Problem