A case study on mergeability of cases with a partial-order planner

Abstract

Retrieving multiple cases is supposed to be an adequate retrieval strategy for guiding partial-order planners because of the recognized flexibility of these planners to interleave steps in the plans. Cases are combined by merging them. In this paper, we will examine two different kinds of merging cases in the context of partial-order planning. We will see that merging cases can be very difficult if the cases are merged eagerly. On the other hand, if cases are merged by avoiding redundant steps, the guidance of the additional cases tends to decrease with the number of covered goals and retrieved cases in domains having a certain kind of interactions. Thus, to retrieve a single case covering many of the goals of the problem or to retrieve fewer cases covering many of the goals is at least equally effective as to retrieve several cases covering all goals in these domains.