scholarly journals Implicit Abstraction Heuristics

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 51-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Katz ◽  
C. Domshlak
Keyword(s):  
Heuristic Search ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Empirical Evaluation ◽  
The State ◽  
Optimal Planning ◽  
Heuristic Function ◽  
Admissible Heuristics ◽  
State Space Search ◽  
Abstract Spaces ◽  
Exponential Size

State-space search with explicit abstraction heuristics is at the state of the art of cost-optimal planning. These heuristics are inherently limited, nonetheless, because the size of the abstract space must be bounded by some, even if a very large, constant. Targeting this shortcoming, we introduce the notion of (additive) implicit abstractions, in which the planning task is abstracted by instances of tractable fragments of optimal planning. We then introduce a concrete setting of this framework, called fork-decomposition, that is based on two novel fragments of tractable cost-optimal planning. The induced admissible heuristics are then studied formally and empirically. This study testifies for the accuracy of the fork decomposition heuristics, yet our empirical evaluation also stresses the tradeoff between their accuracy and the runtime complexity of computing them. Indeed, some of the power of the explicit abstraction heuristics comes from precomputing the heuristic function offline and then determining h(s) for each evaluated state s by a very fast lookup in a ``database.'' By contrast, while fork-decomposition heuristics can be calculated in polynomial time, computing them is far from being fast. To address this problem, we show that the time-per-node complexity bottleneck of the fork-decomposition heuristics can be successfully overcome. We demonstrate that an equivalent of the explicit abstraction notion of a ``database'' exists for the fork-decomposition abstractions as well, despite their exponential-size abstract spaces. We then verify empirically that heuristic search with the ``databased" fork-decomposition heuristics favorably competes with the state of the art of cost-optimal planning.

scholarly journals Solving Delete Free Planning with Relaxed Decision Diagram Based Heuristics

2020 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 607-651
Author(s):  
Margarita Paz Castro ◽  
Chiara Piacentini ◽  
Andre Augusto Cire ◽  
J. Christopher Beck
Keyword(s):  
Linear Programming ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Decision Diagrams ◽  
Binary Decision ◽  
Admissible Heuristics ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Construction Algorithms ◽  
Diagram Representation

We investigate the use of relaxed decision diagrams (DDs) for computing admissible heuristics for the cost-optimal delete-free planning (DFP) problem. Our main contributions are the introduction of two novel DD encodings for a DFP task: a multivalued decision diagram that includes the sequencing aspect of the problem and a binary decision diagram representation of its sequential relaxation. We present construction algorithms for each DD that leverage these different perspectives of the DFP task and provide theoretical and empirical analyses of the associated heuristics. We further show that relaxed DDs can be used beyond heuristic computation to extract delete-free plans, find action landmarks, and identify redundant actions. Our empirical analysis shows that while DD-based heuristics trail the state of the art, even small relaxed DDs are competitive with the linear programming heuristic for the DFP task, thus, revealing novel ways of designing admissible heuristics.

scholarly journals On the Completeness of Pruning Techniques for Planning with Conditional Effects

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Dunbo Cai ◽  
Sheng Xu ◽  
Tongzhou Zhao ◽  
Yanduo Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Heuristic Search ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Search Procedure ◽  
Conditional Effects ◽  
Relevance Analysis ◽  
Pruning Strategy ◽  
Pruning Techniques

Pruning techniques and heuristics are two keys to the heuristic search-based planning. Thehelpful actionspruning (HAP) strategy andrelaxed-plan-based heuristicsare two representatives among those methods and are still popular in the state-of-the-art planners. Here, we present new analyses on the properties of HAP. Specifically, we show new reasons for which HAP can cause incompleteness of a search procedure. We prove that, in general, HAP is incomplete for planning with conditional effects if factored expansions of actions are used. To preserve completeness, we propose a pruning strategy that is based onrelevance analysisandconfrontation. We will show that bothrelevance analysisandconfrontationare necessary. We call it theconfrontation and goal relevant actionspruning (CGRAP) strategy. However, CGRAP is computationally hard to be exactly computed. Therefore, we suggest practical approximations from the literature.

Textual Deblurring using Convolutional Neural Network

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Shahroz Nadeem ◽  
Sibt Hussain ◽  
Fatih Kurugollu
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Convolutional Neural Network ◽  
Loss Function ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Empirical Evaluation ◽  
The State

This paper solves the textual deblurring problem, In this paper we propose a new loss function, we provide empirical evaluation of the design choices based on which a memory friendly CNN model is proposed, that performs better then the state of the art CNN method.

scholarly journals AsymDPOP: Complete Inference for Asymmetric Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanchen Deng ◽  
Ziyu Chen ◽  
Dingding Chen ◽  
Wenxin Zhang ◽  
Xingqiong Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Optimization Problems ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Empirical Evaluation ◽  
The State ◽  
Constraint Optimization ◽  
Memory Consumption ◽  
Distributed Constraint Optimization ◽  
Constraint Optimization Problems

Asymmetric distributed constraint optimization problems (ADCOPs) are an emerging model for coordinating agents with personal preferences. However, the existing inference-based complete algorithms which use local eliminations cannot be applied to ADCOPs, as the parent agents are required to transfer their private functions to their children. Rather than disclosing private functions explicitly to facilitate local eliminations, we solve the problem by enforcing delayed eliminations and propose AsymDPOP, the first inference-based complete algorithm for ADCOPs. To solve the severe scalability problems incurred by delayed eliminations, we propose to reduce the memory consumption by propagating a set of smaller utility tables instead of a joint utility table, and to reduce the computation efforts by sequential optimizations instead of joint optimizations. The empirical evaluation indicates that AsymDPOP significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art, as well as the vanilla DPOP with PEAV formulation.

scholarly journals Analyzing Tie-Breaking Strategies for the A* Algorithm

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Augusto B. Corrêa ◽  
André G. Pereira ◽  
Marcus Ritt
Keyword(s):  
State Space ◽  
Standard Method ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Heuristic Function ◽  
A Algorithm ◽  
Minimum Number ◽  
Previous State

For a given state space and admissible heuristic function h there is always a tie-breaking strategy for which A* expands the minimum number of states [Dechter and Pearl, 1985]. We say that these strategies have optimal expansion. Although such a strategy always exists it may depend on the instance, and we currently do not know a tie-breaker that always guarantees optimal expansion. In this paper, we study tie-breaking strategies for A*. We analyze common strategies from the literature and prove that they do not have optimal expansion. We propose a novel tie-breaking strategy using cost adaptation that has always optimal expansion. We experimentally analyze the performance of A* using several tie-breaking strategies on domains from the IPC and zero-cost domains. Our best strategy solves significantly more instances than the standard method in the literature and more than the previous state-of-the-art strategy. Our analysis improves the understanding of how to develop effective tie-breaking strategies and our results also improve the state-of-the-art of tie-breaking strategies for A*.

scholarly journals Efficient Temporal Planning Using Metastates

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 7554-7561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Coles ◽  
Andrew Coles ◽  
J. Christopher Beck
Keyword(s):  
State Space ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Temporal Constraints ◽  
State Space Explosion ◽  
Temporal Planning ◽  
State Space Search ◽  
Temporal Inconsistency

When performing temporal planning as forward state-space search, effective state memoisation is challenging. Whereas in classical planning, two states are equal if they have the same facts and variable values, in temporal planning this is not the case: as the plans that led to the two states are subject to temporal constraints, one might be extendable into at temporally valid plan, while the other might not. In this paper, we present an approach for reducing the state space explosion that arises due to having to keep many copies of the same ‘classically’ equal state – states that are classically equal are aggregated into metastates, and these are separated lazily only in the case of temporal inconsistency. Our evaluation shows that this approach, implemented in OPTIC and compared to existing state-of-the-art memoisation techniques, improves performance across a range of temporal domains.

scholarly journals Online Speedup Learning for Optimal Planning

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 709-755 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Domshlak ◽  
E. Karpas ◽  
S. Markovitch
Keyword(s):  
Decision Rule ◽  
Search Space ◽  
Optimal Planning ◽  
Goal State ◽  
World State ◽  
Admissible Heuristics ◽  
State Space Search ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
Planning Task ◽  
The Cost

Domain-independent planning is one of the foundational areas in the field of Artificial Intelligence. A description of a planning task consists of an initial world state, a goal, and a set of actions for modifying the world state. The objective is to find a sequence of actions, that is, a plan, that transforms the initial world state into a goal state. In optimal planning, we are interested in finding not just a plan, but one of the cheapest plans. A prominent approach to optimal planning these days is heuristic state-space search, guided by admissible heuristic functions. Numerous admissible heuristics have been developed, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, and it is well known that there is no single "best'' heuristic for optimal planning in general. Thus, which heuristic to choose for a given planning task is a difficult question. This difficulty can be avoided by combining several heuristics, but that requires computing numerous heuristic estimates at each state, and the tradeoff between the time spent doing so and the time saved by the combined advantages of the different heuristics might be high. We present a novel method that reduces the cost of combining admissible heuristics for optimal planning, while maintaining its benefits. Using an idealized search space model, we formulate a decision rule for choosing the best heuristic to compute at each state. We then present an active online learning approach for learning a classifier with that decision rule as the target concept, and employ the learned classifier to decide which heuristic to compute at each state. We evaluate this technique empirically, and show that it substantially outperforms the standard method for combining several heuristics via their pointwise maximum.

scholarly journals Comparative Evaluation of Link-Based Approaches for Candidate Ranking in Link-to-Wikipedia Systems

2014 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 733-773 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Fernandez Garcia ◽  
J. Arias Fisteus ◽  
L. Sanchez Fernandez
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Evaluation ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Empirical Evaluation ◽  
The State ◽  
Context Information ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
Link Information

In recent years, the task of automatically linking pieces of text (anchors) mentioned in a document to Wikipedia articles that represent the meaning of these anchors has received extensive research attention. Typically, link-to-Wikipedia systems try to find a set of Wikipedia articles that are candidates to represent the meaning of the anchor and, later, rank these candidates to select the most appropriate one. In this ranking process the systems rely on context information obtained from the document where the anchor is mentioned and/or from Wikipedia. In this paper we center our attention in the use of Wikipedia links as context information. In particular, we offer a review of several candidate ranking approaches in the state-of-the-art that rely on Wikipedia link information. In addition, we provide a comparative empirical evaluation of the different approaches on five different corpora: the TAC 2010 corpus and four corpora built from actual Wikipedia articles and news items.

scholarly journals On Guiding Search in HTN Planning with Classical Planning Heuristics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Höller ◽  
Pascal Bercher ◽  
Gregor Behnke ◽  
Susanne Biundo
Keyword(s):  
Heuristic Search ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Hierarchical Planning ◽  
Htn Planning ◽  
Domain Independent

Planning is the task of finding a sequence of actions that achieves the goal(s) of an agent. It is solved based on a model describing the environment and how to change it. There are several approaches to solve planning tasks, two of the most popular are classical planning and hierarchical planning. Solvers are often based on heuristic search, but especially regarding domain-independent heuristics, techniques in classical planning are more sophisticated. However, due to the different problem classes, it is difficult to use them in hierarchical planning. In this paper we describe how to use arbitrary classical heuristics in hierarchical planning and show that the resulting system outperforms the state of the art in hierarchical planning.

scholarly journals Goal Probability Analysis in Probabilistic Planning: Exploring and Enhancing the State of the Art

2016 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 229-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Steinmetz ◽  
Jörg Hoffmann ◽  
Olivier Buffet
Keyword(s):  
Heuristic Search ◽  
Resource Constraints ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Search Algorithm ◽  
Search Algorithms ◽  
The State ◽  
Probabilistic Planning ◽  
Large Space ◽  
Heuristic Search Algorithms ◽  
Wide Range

Unavoidable dead-ends are common in many probabilistic planning problems, e.g. when actions may fail or when operating under resource constraints. An important objective in such settings is MaxProb, determining the maximal probability with which the goal can be reached, and a policy achieving that probability. Yet algorithms for MaxProb probabilistic planning are severely underexplored, to the extent that there is scant evidence of what the empirical state of the art actually is. We close this gap with a comprehensive empirical analysis. We design and explore a large space of heuristic search algorithms, systematizing known algorithms and contributing several new algorithm variants. We consider MaxProb, as well as weaker objectives that we baptize AtLeastProb (requiring to achieve a given goal probabilty threshold) and ApproxProb (requiring to compute the maximum goal probability up to a given accuracy). We explore both the general case where there may be 0-reward cycles, and the practically relevant special case of acyclic planning, such as planning with a limited action-cost budget. We design suitable termination criteria, search algorithm variants, dead-end pruning methods using classical planning heuristics, and node selection strategies. We design a benchmark suite comprising more than 1000 instances adapted from the IPPC, resource-constrained planning, and simulated penetration testing. Our evaluation clarifies the state of the art, characterizes the behavior of a wide range of heuristic search algorithms, and demonstrates significant benefits of our new algorithm variants.

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