Decomposition and causality in partial-order planning

Abstract

We describe DPOCL, a partial-order causal link planner that includes action decomposition. DPOCL builds directly on the SNLP algorithm [?], and hence is clear and simple, and can readily be integrated with other SNLP extensions. In addition, DPOCL is specifically designed to handle partially specified action decompositions. Plan generation in DPOCL exploits the planner's ability to fill in the missing pieces of a partially specified subplan in a way that uses the existing context of the larger plan being constructed.