Hierarchical Planning

Group No. 3

Abhishek Mallik (113050019)

Avishek Dan (113050011)
Subhasish Saha (113050048)
 Overview

 Introduction
 Motivation
 Properties
 ABSTRIPS
 Observations
 Hierarchical Task Network (HTN)
 Application : Multi-agent Plan synergy
 Way Forward : Using ontology
 Conclusion
 References
 Planning

 Sequence of actions worked out

beforehand
 In order to accomplish a task
 Example : One level planner

 Planning for ”Going to Goa this Cristmas”

 Switch on computer
 Start web browser
 Open Indian Railways website
 Select date
 Select class
 Select train
 ... so on

 Practical problems are too complex to be solved

at one level
 How Complex ?

 A captain of a cricket team plans the order of 5

bowlers in 2 days of a test match(180 overs).
 Number of possibilities : 5180 = 2590
 Much greater than 1087 (approx. number of particles
in the universe)
 Hierarchy in Planning

 Hierarchy of actions
 In terms of major action or minor action

 Lower level activities would detail more precise steps

for accomplishing the higher level tasks.

Ref : [1,2]
 Example

 Planning for ”Going to Goa this Cristmas”

 Major Steps :
 Hotel Booking
 Ticket Booking
 Reaching Goa
 Staying and enjoying there
 Coming Back
 Minor Steps :
 Take a taxi to reach station / airport
 Have candle light dinner on beach
 Take photos
 Motivation

 Reduces the size of search space

Instead of having to try out a large number
of possible plan ordering, plan hierarchies
limit the ways in which an agent can select
and order its primitive operators

Ref : [4]
 Example

 180 overs : 15 spells (12 overs each)

 5 bowlers : 3 categories (2 pacer/2 spinner/1 pacer&1 spinner)

 Top level possibilities : 315

 Total possibilities < 3*315 (much less than 5180)
 Motivation contd...

 If entire plan has to be synthesized at the level

of most detailed actions, it would be
impossibly long.

 Natural to 'intelligent' agent

Ref : [1]
 General Property

 Postpone attempts to solve mere details, until

major steps are in place.

 Higher level plan may run into difficulties at a

lower level, causing the need to return to higher
level again to produce appropriately ordered
sequence.

Ref : [1,2]
 Planner

 Identify a hierarchy of conditions

 Construct a plan in levels, postponing details
to the next level
 Patch higher levels as details become visible
 Demonstrated using ABSTRIPS

Ref : [1,2]
 ABSTRIPS

 Abstraction-Based STRIPS
 Modified version of STRIPS that incorporates
hierarchical planning

Ref : [1,2]
 Hierarchy in ABSTRIPS

 Hierarchy of conditions reflect the intrinsic

difficulty of achieving various conditions.
 Indicated by criticality value.

Ref : [2]
 Criticality

 A operation having minimum criticality can be

trivially achievable, i.e., the operations having
very less or no precondition.
 Example : Opening makemytrip.com

 Similarly operation having many preconditions

to satisfy will have higher criticality.
 Patching in ABSTRIPS

 Each level starts with the goal stack that

includes the plan obtained in the higher levels.

 The last item in the goal stack being the main

goal.

Ref : [2]
Ref : [1]
 Example

 Actions required for “Travelling to Goa”:

 Opening makemytrip.com (1)
 Finding flight (2)
 Buy Ticket (3)
 Get taxi(2)
 Reach airport(3)
 Pay-driver(1)
 Check in(1)
 Boarding plane(2)
 Reach Goa(3)
 Example

 1st level Plan :

 Buy Ticket (3), Reach airport(3), Reach Goa(3)
 2nd level Plan :
 Finding flight (2), Buy Ticket (3), Get taxi(2),
Reach airport(3), Boarding plane(2), Reach
Goa(3)
 3rd level Plan (final) :
 Opening makemytrip.com (1), Finding flight (2),
Buy Ticket (3), Get taxi(2), Reach airport(3),
Pay-driver(1), Check in(1), Boarding plane(2),
Reach Goa(3)
 Observation

 As the number of operator

increases, performance of
hierarchical planning comes
out to be much better than one
level planning

Ref : [1]
 Observation contd…

 Search trees for

STRIPS and
ABSTRIPS for a
sample problem

 Shows reduction
in nodes explored

Ref : [1]
Hierarchical Task Network (HTN)

 STRIPS style planning drawbacks:

 Compound Goal
 Ex. Round trip : Mumbai-Goa-Mumbai
 Intermediate Constraints
 Ex. Before(reach station, boarding train)

 Most practical AI planners use HTN

 NOAH(1990), NONLIN(1990), SIPE(1988),
DEVISER(1983), SOAP(2001), SOAP-2(2003)

Ref : [3,4]
 Task Network

 Collection of task and constraints on those

tasks
 ((n1, α1) ,…, ((nm, αm) ,ϕ), where α1 is task
labeled with n1 ,and boolean formula expressing
constraints.
 Truth constraint : (n, p, n’) means p will be true
immediately after n and immediately before n’.
 Temporal ordering constraint : n ≺ n’ means task n
precedes n’.
 Variable binding constraint : ᴧ,ᴠ, =, ∼ etc.
Ref : [3]
 Hierarchical Task Network

 Hierarchy abstraction achieved through

methods.
 A method is a pair (α, d) , where
 α is the non-primitive task, and
 d is the task network to achieve the task α

Ref : [3]
 HTN examples

Task: travel(powai, calangute)

Method: taxi-travel(powai, calangute)

Method: air-travel(powai, calangute)
get-taxi ride(p,c) pay-driver get-ticket(S.C, Dabolim)
fly(S.C, Dabolim)) travel(D, c)
travel(p, S.C)

 ((n1:get-taxi), (n2:ride(x, y)), .., (n4:get-ticket),

(n5:travel(x, a(x)), (n6:fly(a(x),a(y)) … ,
((n1≺n2)..)ᴠ((n4 ≺ n6)ᴧ(n5 ≺ n6)…)
Application: Synergy between Agents

 Discovering the synergy between the plans of

multiple agents
 In order to achieve the goal in reduced effort

Ref : [4]
 Summary Information

 Summary information encodes the hierarchy in

planning.
 We define a hierarchical plan step p as a tuple
 (pre, in, post, type, order, subplan, cost, duration)
 pre, in and post are conditions
 Type has one of the three values: primitive, or, and.
 Order is a set of temporal ordering constraints
 Primitive plans has no subplan
 But initially these explicit condition information for non-
primitive actions are not known.
 This information is propagated from the primitive plan
steps to the abstract plan step through a summary info.
Ref : [4]
 Summary Information

 So, all the conditions, ordering constraints and cost for

a non-primitive plan can be obtained from its those of
its subplan.
 Introduction of ‘may’ and ‘must’ existential

Ref : [4]
 May and Must existential

 ‘May’ and ‘Must’ are existential introduced due

to hierarchical non-primitive representation of
task.
 May : ‘OR’ ing of tasks to non-primitive task
introduces ‘may’
 Must : ‘AND’ ing of tasks to non-primitive task
introduces ‘must’

 These existential is different from the concept of

criticality
 Plan merging

 If ‘must’ post-condition of one plan includes

‘must’ post-condition of other plan, then they
can be merged.
 Since ‘may’ is at higher level of abstraction, its
hierarchy has to be decomposed to the point of
‘must’ .
 Inter-agent temporal constraints has to be
established.
Ref : [4]
 Top-down synergy

 Plans at higher level of hierarchy achieves more

effects than at a lower level.
 A part of the plan can be pruned if its post-
conditions do not overlap with any other plan’s
post-condition.

Ref : [4]
 Example

‘Visit E,F’ of Scout2 is included in ‘Visit D,E,F’ of Scout1

Ref : [4]
 Ontology and Hierarchical Planning

 Hierarchical planning in real world requires

modeling an efficient, semantic, and flexible
knowledge representation for both planning and
domain knowledge.

 Ontology helps to conceptualize the hierarchy of

operators and domain.

Ref : [5]
 Example

 To perform operation ‘Buy ticket’ agent has to

understand concept of ‘Buy’ and ‘ticket’
 Buy is an action, between seller and customer,
involves finding a seller, customer should have
money to buy etc.
 Ticket is an object, which has some price, has
particular owner, has some validity etc.
 This conceptualizations are extremely important
for planning in that domain.
Ref : [5]
 Conclusion

 For complex problems hierarchical planning is

much more efficient than single level planning.
 Improves performance as number of operator in the
problem increases.
 HTN planning gives more expressivity
 Merging opens door to accomplish a complete plan
from incomplete individual plans
 Integration with ontology opens door for automatic
planning
 Reduces man machine gap.
 References

1) E.D. Sacerdoti, Planning in a hierarchy of abstraction spaces, in: Proc. of the

3rd International Joint conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1973
2) Nils J. Nilsson: Principles of Artificial Intelligence, Springer 1982.
3) K. Erol, J. Hendler, and D. S. Nau. HTN planning: Complexity and
expressivity. in: National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 1994
4) Jeffrey S. Cox and Edmund H. Durfee, ‘Discovering and Exploiting Synergy
Between Hierarchical Planning Agents’, in: Second International Joint
Conference On Autonomous Agents and
Multiagent Systems, 2003
5) Choi H J Kang D, ‘Hierarchical planning through operator and world
abstraction using ontology for home service robots’ ,in: Advanced
Communication Technology, 2009. ICACT 2009. 11th International
Conference on, 2009
QUESTIONS
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