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The FF planning system: fast plan generation through heuristic search

Published: 01 May 2001 Publication History

Abstract

We describe and evaluate the algorithmic techniques that are used in the FF planning system. Like the HSP system, FF relies on forward state space search, using a heuristic that estimates goal distances by ignoring delete lists. Unlike HSP's heuristic, our method does not assume facts to be independent. We introduce a novel search strategy that combines hill-climbing with systematic search, and we show how other powerful heuristic information can be extracted and used to prune the search space. FF was the most successful automatic planner at the recent AIPS-2000 planning competition. We review the results of the competition, give data for other benchmark domains, and investigate the reasons for the runtime performance of FF compared to HSP.

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      cover image Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research
      Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research  Volume 14, Issue 1
      January 2001
      385 pages

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      AI Access Foundation

      El Segundo, CA, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 01 May 2001
      Received: 01 February 2001
      Published in JAIR Volume 14, Issue 1

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