Planning with continuous change
J. Scott Penberthy · 1993
This thesis presents scZENO, a computer program that generates plans of action for achieving goals in a continuously changing world. The program searches a space whose nodes are partially completed plans and whose arcs are the modifications that separate one plan from the next. Actions and goals in the world are described in a language combining first-order logic with piecewise linear constraints. Actions occur over extended intervals of time and can update the world at any time during their execution. These properties enable the program to reason about continuous change, metric preconditions, metric effects, deadline goals, and simultaneous action. The planning algorithms are developed, proven sound and complete, then demonstrated through an empirical study of the computer program as it solves simple problems.