Keynote Address, Proceedings 1993 Italian Planning Workshop, Rome, September, 1993:
Integrating Planning and Scheduling:
Towards Effective Coordination in Complex, Resource-Constrained Domains
Stephen F. Smith
The Robotics Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
Abstract
In this note, we summarize current research at CMU aimed at extending
constraint-based scheduling frameworks and heuristics to enable effective
integration of resource allocation and plan synthesis processes. Similar to
prior work in opportunistic scheduling, our approach assumes the use of
dynamic analysis of problem space structure as a basis for heuristic
focusing of problem solving search. This methodology, however, is grounded
in representational assumptions more akin to those adopted in recent
temporal planning research, and in a problem solving framework which
similarly emphasizes constraint posting in an explicitly maintained solution
constraint network. We summarize recent experimental results that indicate
that such problem formulation assumptions can in fact lead to better
heuristic solutions than have been obtained with more-classical assignment
problem formulations on benchmark problems previously studied within both
the Artificial Intelligence and Operations Research communities. We
conclude with a brief discussion of some important open research questions
in this area.
Full paper in Postscript