MPhil Thesis Defence


"Some pre-processing and post-processing strategies for improving
the performance of Planner R"

By

Mr. Chi-Wai Chan


Abstract

Planning is a process to construct a sequence of actions in order to
achieve a desired goal from an initial state. In most of the planning
problems, the number of possible plans is exponential. This leads
researchers come to different planning paradigms to tackle the planning
problems.

Planner R is a regression based linear planner which works on conjunction
of simple goals. While planner R can generate plans for planning problems
quickly, the resulting plans still have rooms for improvement. We propose
some plan post-processing strategies to improve the quality of plans by
eliminating cycles and re-ordering the actions sequence within the plan. A
mapping between the Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL) and
situation calculus is also proposed, which facilitates the conversion
between standard planning domain descriptions and formalism used in
planner R.


Date:                   Friday, 11 May 2001

Time:                   2:00p.m.-4:00p.m.

Venue:                  Room 1402
                        Lifts 25-26

Chairman:               Dr. Andrew Horner

Committee Members:      Dr. Fangzhen Lin (Supervisor)
                        Dr. Nevin Zhang
                        Dr. Benjamin Yen (IEEM)


**** ALL are Welcome ****