International Planning Competition for Numeric Track - Informal Call of Interest

[Francesco Percassi]

Dear colleagues,

We are writing to you because we are organising the numeric planning track of the International Planning Competition, which will take place next year. This will be the second edition of the numeric track, and therefore, we will include the same fragments used in the previous one. Specifically, we target two fragments of PDDL2.1 level 1, which are referred to as Simple and Linear Numeric Planning (SNP and LNP). As you may be well aware, SNP allows linear expressions in preconditions and goals and restricts actions’ effects to increase or decrease variables by a constant, while LNP also allows linear expressions in the right-hand side of actions’ effects. To widen the capabilities of numeric planners, we are considering introducing conditional effects, that is, effects that are conditionally applied depending on the value of the current state. Moreover, actions will have an associated state-independent non-negative cost, so optimal plans are those where the sum of action costs is minimal.

We are about to open the call for domains, in which we will ask for domains with a pronounced numeric structure. We will evaluate the suitability of a domain on a case-by-case basis. In addition, we will issue an official call for interest. Before this, we would like to check with you first to understand whether you would be interested in participating in the competition. We aim at having at least an optimal and a satisficing track, similar to the competition for classical planning. More details will come up soon, and of course, any kind of feedback is welcome.

For any queries or if you are interested in participating, feel free to contact us at the following contacts:

Luigi Bonassi (luigib...@robots.ox.ac.uk)

Francesco Percassi (f.per...@hud.ac.uk)

Joan Espasa Arxer  (je...@st-andrews.ac.uk)

Enrico Scala (enrico...@unibs.it)