ABSTRACT
Automated planning has been an active area of research in theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence (AI) for over 45 years. Planning is the study of general purpose algorithms that accept as input an initial state, a set of desired goal states, and a planning domain model that describes how actions can transform the state. The problem is to find a sequence of actions that transforms the initial state into one of the goal states. Automated planning is widely applicable to diverse domains, including spacecraft control [1], planetary rover operations [2], automated nursing aides [3], image processing [4], business process generation [5], computer security [6,7], and automated manufacturing [8,9]. Planning is also the subject of continued and lively ongoing research.
