A Multi-Path Compilation Approach to Contingent Planning

Abstract

We describe a new sound and complete method for compiling contingent planning problems with sensing actions into classical planning. Our method encodes conditional plans within a linear, classical plan. This allows our planner, MPSR, to reason about multiple future outcomes of sensing actions, and makes it less susceptible to dead-ends. MPRS, however, generates very large classical planning problems. To overcome this, we use an incomplete variant of the method, based on state sampling, within an online replanner. On most current domains, MPSR finds plans faster, although its plans are often longer. But on a new challenging variant of Wumpus with dead-ends, it finds smaller plans, faster, and scales better.