Automated Planning: Theory & Practice (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Artificial Intelligence)

"In recent years, comprehensive texts have been written for several of the other major areas of Artificial Intelligence, including machine learning, natural-language processing, and constraint-satisfaction processing, but until now, the field of planning has been devoid of such a resource, despite the considerable number of advances in and the significant maturation of planning research in the past decade. With Automated Planning: Theory and Practice, Malik Ghallab, Dana Nau, and Paolo Traverso have filled that void, and have done so with a remarkably clear and well-written book." -From the Foreword by Martha E. Pollack, University of Michigan Automated planning technology now plays a significant role in a variety of demanding applications, ranging from controlling space vehicles and robots to playing the game of bridge. These real-world applications create new opportunities for synergy between theory and practice: observing what works well in practice leads to better theories of planning, and better theories lead to better performance of practical applications. Automated Planning mirrors this dialogue by offering a comprehensive, up-to-date resource on both the theory and practice of automated planning. The book goes well beyond classical planning, to include temporal planning, resource scheduling, planning under uncertainty, and modern techniques for plan generation, such as task decomposition, propositional satisfiability, constraint satisfaction, and model checking. The authors combine over 30 years experience in planning research and development to offer an invaluable text to researchers, professionals, and graduate students. *Comprehensively explains paradigms for automated planning. *Provides a thorough understanding of theory and planning practice, and how they relate to each other. *Presents case studies of applications in space, robotics, CAD/CAM, process control, emergency operations, and games.Dana Nau is the author of 'Automated Planning: Theory & Practice (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Artificial Intelligence)', published 2004 under ISBN 9781558608566 and ISBN 1558608567.