Student research opportunities
Projects in Automated Planning
Project Code: CECS_41
This project is available at the following levels:
Honours, Summer Scholar, Masters, PhD
Supervisor:
Dr Patrik HaslumOutline:
Planning is a branch of AI concerned with automating the reasoning that goes on in formulating plans, in the sense of a series of steps to be taken, each of which has some effect on the state of (a highly abstract model of) the world, so as to bring about some desired end state. As a prototypical example, one may take single-player games ("puzzles") such as the Freecell card game or the old Rubik's Cube. Possible applications of automated planning methods (aside from solving puzzles) are many and diverse: examples include airport ground traffic control, computing genome edit distances, testing protocols for logical flaws, or controlling a printer.
The aim of research in planning, as in many other branches of AI, is to construct domain-independent ("universal") solutions for this kind of problem. That is, rather than solving each application problem individually, a general AI planning system should be able to solve any one of them, provided a formal specification of the problem as input. Several approaches to achieving this have been tried, such as different variations of search, or recasting the problem as another kind of general reasoning (e.g., a CSP, or logical deduction). Yet, efficient general automated planning remains a challenge.
Within the area of AI planning, a wide variety of projects are possible, ranging from highly theoretical to practical, implementation-oriented, and anywhere in between.
Goals of this project
Depends on the specific project. To find a list of some of my current ideas, follow the link below.
