Planning with Temporal Uncertainty, Resources and Non-Linear Control Parameters

Abstract

We consider a general and industrially motivated class of planning problems involving a combination of requirements that can be essential to autonomous robotic systems planning to act in the real world: Support for temporal uncertainty where nature determines the eventual duration of an action, resource consumption with a non-linear relationship to durations, and the need to select appropriate values for control parameters that affect time requirements and resource usage. To this end, an existing planner is extended with support for Simple Temporal Networks with Uncertainty, Timed Initial Literals, and temporal coverage goals. Control parameters are lifted from the main combinatorial planning problem into a constraint satisfaction problem that connects them to resource usage. Constraint processing is then integrated and interleaved with verification of temporal feasibility, using projections for partial temporal awareness in the constraint solver.