Automated Planning and Acting

by Malik Ghallab, Dana Nau, Paolo Traverso

Overview

Autonomous AI systems need complex computational techniques for planning and performing actions. Planning and acting require significant deliberation because an intelligent system must coordinate and integrate these activities in order to act effectively in the real world. This book presents a comprehensive paradigm of planning and acting using the most recent and advanced automated-planning techniques. It explains the computational deliberation capabilities that allow an actor, whether physical or virtual, to reason about its actions, choose them, organize them purposefully, and act deliberately to achieve an objective. Useful for students, practitioners, and researchers, this book covers state-of-the-art planning techniques, acting techniques, and their integration which will allow readers to design intelligent systems that are able to act effectively in the real world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107037274
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/09/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 10.24(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Malik Ghallab is a Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris. For most of his career he has been with LAAS-CNRS, University of Toulouse. His research activity is mainly focused on planning, acting and learning in robotics and AI. He has co-authored several books and more than two hundred scientific publications. He has been head of a French research program in Robotics, director of LAAS-CNRS and CEO for Research and Technology of INRIA. He is a Fellow of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence.

Dana Nau is a Professor at the University of Maryland, in the Department of Computer Science and the Institute for Systems Research. He has more than 300 refereed technical publications. Some of his best-known research contributions include the discovery of pathological game trees, the strategic planning algorithm that Bridge Baron used to win the 1997 world championship of computer bridge, applications of AI in automated manufacturing, automated planning systems such as SHOP, SHOP2, and Pyhop, and evolutionary game-theoretic studies of cultural evolution. He is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Fellow and the Association for Computer Machinery.

Paolo Traverso is the Director of FBK ICT-IRST, the Center for Information and Communication Technology at Fondazione Bruno Kessler, part of the European Institution of Innovation and Technology, whose goal is to foster innovation and impact on market and society. Paolo has worked in the advanced technology groups of management information consulting companies in Chicago, London, and Milan, leading projects in safety critical systems, data and knowledge management, and service oriented applications. He has published more than one hundred papers in artificial intelligence, automated planning and service oriented computing. He is a Fellow of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. Deliberation with deterministic models; 3. Deliberation with refinement methods; 4. Deliberation with temporal models; 5. Deliberation with nondeterministic models; 6. Deliberation with probabilistic models; 7. Other deliberation functions; 8. Concluding remarks.

Editorial Reviews

"Automated Planning and Acting will be the text I require my students to read when they first start, and the go-to book on my shelf for my own reference. As a timely source of motivation for game-changing research on the integration of planning and acting, it will also help shape the field for the next decade."
Sylvie Thiébaux, Australian National University, Canberra, from the Foreword

"This book is currently the most comprehensive introduction [to] computational principles of deliberative action that I know of. Whoever thinks about bringing planning and reasoning to bear on robots or other agents embedded in the real world should study it carefully - and share it with their students too."
Joachim Hertzberg, Osnabrück University

"This book by Ghallab, Nau and Traverso is the best to date on automated artificial intelligence planning. It is very comprehensive, covering topics both in the core of AI planning and acting and other related AI topics such as robotic execution, automation and learning. Numerous features make it ideal for students to learn about AI planning, including historical notes and many illustrative examples. The book will serve as a trove of resources for researchers and practitioners in AI planning and other AI fields."
Qiang Yang, Chair Professor and Head of the Computer Science and Engineering Department, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

From the Publisher