The influence of k-dependence on the complexity of planning

Omer Giménez, Anders Jonsson
2012 Artificial Intelligence  
A planning problem is k-dependent if each action has at most k pre-conditions on variables unaffected by the action. This concept is well-founded since k is a constant for all but a few of the standard planning domains, and is known to have implications for tractability. In this paper, we present several new complexity results for P(k), the class of kdependent planning problems with binary variables and polytree causal graphs. The problem of plan generation for P(k) is equivalent to determining
more » ... how many times each variable can change. Using this fact, we present a polytime plan generation algorithm for P(2) and P(3). For constant k > 3, we introduce and use the notion of a cover to find conditions under which plan generation for P(k) is polynomial.
doi:10.1016/j.artint.2011.12.002 fatcat:enu4oqygfveqrbxkeisi6f7euy