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Sergio Jiménez

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8 papers

1 author row

AIJ Journal 2024 Journal Article

Generalized planning as heuristic search: A new planning search-space that leverages pointers over objects

Javier Segovia-Aguas
Sergio Jiménez
Anders Jonsson

Planning as heuristic search is one of the most successful approaches to classical planning but unfortunately, it does not trivially extend to Generalized Planning (GP); GP aims to compute algorithmic solutions that are valid for a set of classical planning instances from a given domain, even if these instances differ in their number of objects, the initial and goal configuration of these objects and hence, in the number (and possible values) of the state variables. State-space search, as it is implemented by heuristic planners, becomes then impractical for GP. In this paper we adapt the planning as heuristic search paradigm to the generalization requirements of GP, and present the first native heuristic search approach to GP. First, the paper introduces a new pointer-based solution space for GP that is independent of the number of classical planning instances in a GP problem and the size of those instances (i. e. the number of objects, state variables and their domain sizes). Second, the paper defines an upgraded version of our GP algorithm, called Best-First Generalized Planning (BFGP), that implements a best-first search in our pointer-based solution space for GP. Lastly, the paper defines a set of evaluation and heuristic functions for BFGP that assess the structural complexity of the candidate GP solutions, as well as their fitness to a given input set of classical planning instances. The computation of these evaluation and heuristic functions does not require grounding states or actions in advance. Therefore our GP as heuristic search approach can handle large sets of state variables with large numerical domains, e. g. integers.

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JAIR Journal 2022 Journal Article

A Comprehensive Framework for Learning Declarative Action Models

Diego Aineto
Sergio Jiménez
Eva Onaindia

A declarative action model is a compact representation of the state transitions of dynamic systems that generalizes over world objects. The specification of declarative action models is often a complex hand-crafted task. In this paper we formulate declarative action models via state constraints, and present the learning of such models as a combinatorial search. The comprehensive framework presented here allows us to connect the learning of declarative action models to well-known problem solving tasks. In addition, our framework allows us to characterize the existing work in the literature according to four dimensions: (1) the target action models, in terms of the state transitions they define; (2) the available learning examples; (3) the functions used to guide the learning process, and to evaluate the quality of the learned action models; (4) the learning algorithm. Last, the paper lists relevant successful applications of the learning of declarative actions models and discusses some open challenges with the aim of encouraging future research work.

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AAAI Conference 2020 Conference Paper

Generalized Planning with Positive and Negative Examples

Javier Segovia-Aguas
Sergio Jiménez
Anders Jonsson

Generalized planning aims at computing an algorithm-like structure (generalized plan) that solves a set of multiple planning instances. In this paper we deﬁne negative examples for generalized planning as planning instances that must not be solved by a generalized plan. With this regard the paper extends the notion of validation of a generalized plan as the problem of verifying that a given generalized plan solves the set of input positives instances while it fails to solve a given input set of negative examples. This notion of plan validation allows us to deﬁne quantitative metrics to asses the generalization capacity of generalized plans. The paper also shows how to incorporate this new notion of plan validation into a compilation for plan synthesis that takes both positive and negative instances as input. Experiments show that incorporating negative examples can accelerate plan synthesis in several domains and leverage quantitative metrics to evaluate the generalization capacity of the synthesized plans.

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KER Journal 2019 Journal Article

A review of generalized planning

Sergio Jiménez
Javier Segovia-Aguas
Anders Jonsson

Abstract Generalized planning studies the representation, computation and evaluation of solutions that are valid for multiple planning instances. These are topics studied since the early days of AI. However, in recent years, we are experiencing the appearance of novel formalisms to compactly represent generalized planning tasks, the solutions to these tasks (called generalized plans ) and efficient algorithms to compute generalized plans. The paper reviews recent advances in generalized planning and relates them to existing planning formalisms, such as planning with domain control knowledge and approaches for planning under uncertainty, that also aim at generality.

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AIJ Journal 2019 Journal Article

Computing programs for generalized planning using a classical planner

Javier Segovia-Aguas
Sergio Jiménez
Anders Jonsson

Generalized planning is the task of generating a single solution (a generalized plan) that is valid for multiple planning instances. In this paper we introduce a novel formalism for representing generalized plans that borrows two mechanisms from structured programming: control flow and procedure calls. On one hand, control flow structures allow to compactly represent generalized plans. On the other hand, procedure calls allow to represent hierarchical and recursive solutions as well as to reuse existing generalized plans. The paper also presents a compilation from generalized planning into classical planning which allows us to compute generalized plans with off-the-shelf planners. The compilation can incorporate prior knowledge in the form of auxiliary procedures which expands the applicability of the approach to more challenging tasks. Experiments show that a classical planner using our compilation can compute generalized plans that solve a wide range of generalized planning tasks, including sorting lists of variable size or DFS traversing variable-size binary trees. Additionally the paper presents an extension of the compilation for computing generalized plans when generalization requires a high-level state representation that is not provided a priori. This extension brings a new landscape of benchmarks to classical planning since classification tasks can naturally be modeled as generalized planning tasks, and hence, as classical planning tasks. Finally the paper shows that the compilation can be extended to compute control knowledge for off-the-shelf planners and solve planning instances that are difficult to solve without such additional knowledge.

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JAIR Journal 2018 Journal Article

Computing Hierarchical Finite State Controllers With Classical Planning

Javier Segovia-Aguas
Sergio Jiménez
Anders Jonsson

Finite State Controllers (FSCs) are an effective way to compactly represent sequential plans. By imposing appropriate conditions on transitions, FSCs can also represent generalized plans (plans that solve a range of planning problems from a given domain). In this paper we introduce the concept of hierarchical FSCs for planning by allowing controllers to call other controllers. This call mechanism allows hierarchical FSCs to represent generalized plans more compactly than individual FSCs, to compute controllers in a modular fashion or even more, to compute recursive controllers. The paper introduces a classical planning compilation for computing hierarchical FSCs that solve challenging generalized planning tasks. The compilation takes as input a finite set of classical planning problems from a given domain. The output of the compilation is a single classical planning problem whose solution induces: (1) a hierarchical FSC and (2), the corresponding validation of that controller on the input classical planning problems.

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IJCAI Conference 2017 Conference Paper

Generating Context-Free Grammars using Classical Planning

Javier Segovia-Aguas
Sergio Jiménez
Anders Jonsson

This paper presents a novel approach for generating Context-Free Grammars (CFGs) from small sets of input strings (a single input string in some cases). Our approach is to compile this task into a classical planning problem whose solutions are sequences of actions that build and validate a CFG compliant with the input strings. In addition, we show that our compilation is suitable for implementing the two canonical tasks for CFGs, string production and string recognition.

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KER Journal 2012 Journal Article

A review of machine learning for automated planning

Sergio Jiménez
Tomás de la Rosa
Susana Fernández
Fernando Fernández
Daniel Borrajo

Abstract Recent discoveries in automated planning are broadening the scope of planners, from toy problems to real applications. However, applying automated planners to real-world problems is far from simple. On the one hand, the definition of accurate action models for planning is still a bottleneck. On the other hand, off-the-shelf planners fail to scale-up and to provide good solutions in many domains. In these problematic domains, planners can exploit domain-specific control knowledge to improve their performance in terms of both speed and quality of the solutions. However, manual definition of control knowledge is quite difficult. This paper reviews recent techniques in machine learning for the automatic definition of planning knowledge. It has been organized according to the target of the learning process: automatic definition of planning action models and automatic definition of planning control knowledge. In addition, the paper reviews the advances in the related field of reinforcement learning.

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