Extending the exploitation of symmetries in planning

Fox, M. and Long, D. (2002) Extending the exploitation of symmetries in planning. In: Proceedings of Sixth International Conference on AI Planning and Scheduling, 2002-04-23 - 2002-04-27.

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Abstract

Highly symmetric problems result in redundant search effort which can render apparently simple problems intractable. Whilst the potential benefits of symmetry-breaking have been explored in the broader search community there has been relatively little interest in the exploitation of this potential in planning. An initial exploration of the benefits of symmetry-breaking in a Graphplan framework, by Fox and Long in 1999 (Fox and Long 1999) yielded promising results but failed to take into account the importance of identifying and exploiting new symmetries that arise during the search process. In this paper we extend the symmetry exploitation ideas described in (Fox and Long 1999) to handle new symmetries and report results obtained from a range of planning problems.