Abstract

P. Haslum, A. Botea, M. Helmert, B. Bonet and S. Koenig. Domain-Independent Construction of Pattern Database Heuristics for Cost-Optimal Planning. In AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), pages 1007-1012, 2007.

Abstract: Heuristic search is a leading approach to domain-independent planning. For cost-optimal planning, however, existing admissible heuristics are generally too weak to effectively guide the search. Pattern database heuristics (PDBs), which are based on abstractions of the search space, are currently one of the most promising approaches to developing better admissible heuristics. The informedness of PDB heuristics depends crucially on the selection of appropriate abstractions (patterns). Although PDBs have been applied to many search problems, including planning, there are not many insights into how to select good patterns, even manually. What constitutes a good pattern depends on the problem domain, making the task even more difficult for domain-independent planning, where the process needs to be completely automatic and general. We present a novel way of constructing good patterns automatically from the specification of planning problem instances. We demonstrate that this allows a domain-independent planner to solve planning problems optimally in some very challenging domains, including a STRIPS formulation of the Sokoban puzzle.

Download the paper in pdf.

Many publishers do not want authors to make their papers available electronically after the papers have been published. Please use the electronic versions provided here only if hardcopies are not yet available. If you have comments on any of these papers, please send me an email! Also, please send me your papers if we have common interests.


This page was automatically created by a bibliography maintenance system that was developed as part of an undergraduate research project, advised by Sven Koenig.