Yarin Benyamin, Argaman Mordoch, Shahaf S. Shperberg, W. Piotrowski, Roni Stern
{"title":"Crafting a Pogo Stick in Minecraft with Heuristic Search (Extended Abstract)","authors":"Yarin Benyamin, Argaman Mordoch, Shahaf S. Shperberg, W. Piotrowski, Roni Stern","doi":"10.1609/socs.v17i1.31571","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1609/socs.v17i1.31571","url":null,"abstract":"Minecraft is a widely popular video game renowned for its intricate environment. The game's open-ended design allows the creation of unique tasks and challenges for the agents, providing a broad spectrum for researchers to experiment with different AI techniques and applications. Indeed, various Minecraft tasks have been posed as an AI challenge. Most AI research on Minecraft focused on either applying Reinforcement Learning (RL) to solve the problem, learning an action model for planning, or modeling the problem for a domain-independent planner. In this work, we focus on the combinatorial search aspect of solving the Craft Wooden Pogo task within the Polycraft World AI Lab (PAL) Minecraft environment. PAL is an interface to Minecraft that provides an API for AI agents to interact with Minecraft's environment and send commands to the main character. PAL supports symbolic observations of the current state, making it ideal for planning algorithms, which require a symbolic model of the environment for problem-solving. Other Minecraft research frameworks such as MineRL, provide a visual, pixel-based representation of the game.","PeriodicalId":425645,"journal":{"name":"Symposium on Combinatorial Search","volume":"40 1","pages":"261-262"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141277658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Francesco Percassi, Enrico Scala, Alfonso Gerevini
{"title":"Optimised Variants of Polynomial Compilation for Conditional Effects in Classical Planning","authors":"Francesco Percassi, Enrico Scala, Alfonso Gerevini","doi":"10.1609/socs.v17i1.31547","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1609/socs.v17i1.31547","url":null,"abstract":"Conditional effects are a key feature in classical planning, enabling the description of actions whose outcomes are state-dependent. It is well known that the polynomial removal of conditional effects necessarily increases the size of a valid plan by a polynomial factor while preserving exactly the plan size requires an exponential encoding of the problem.\u0000\u0000The paper proposes and empirically evaluates optimisations for existing polynomial compilations. These optimisations aim to make the resulting compilations more suitable for planners while limiting the increase in plan size, which is inevitable if we want to keep the compilation polynomial. Specifically, the paper introduces a polynomial compilation technique that expands conditional effects when their number is below a certain threshold and sequentialises them otherwise. Additionally, the paper demonstrates that even straightforward optimisations can have a notable impact.","PeriodicalId":425645,"journal":{"name":"Symposium on Combinatorial Search","volume":"46 13","pages":"100-108"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141280537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sumedh Pendurkar, Levi H.S. Lelis, Nathan R Sturtevant, Guni Sharon
{"title":"Curriculum Generation for Learning Guiding Functions in State-Space Search Algorithms","authors":"Sumedh Pendurkar, Levi H.S. Lelis, Nathan R Sturtevant, Guni Sharon","doi":"10.1609/socs.v17i1.31546","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1609/socs.v17i1.31546","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates methods for training parameterized functions for guiding state-space search algorithms. Existing work commonly generates data for training such guiding functions by solving problem instances while leveraging the current version of the guiding function. As a result, as training progresses, the guided search algorithm can solve more difficult instances that are, in turn, used to further train the guiding function. These methods assume that a set of problem instances of varied difficulty is provided. Since previous work was not designed to distinguish the instances that the search algorithm can solve from those that cannot be solved with the current guiding function, the algorithm commonly wastes time attempting and failing to solve many of these instances. In this paper, we improve upon these training methods by generating a curriculum for learning the guiding function that directly addresses this issue. Namely, we propose and evaluate a Teacher-Student Curriculum (TSC) approach where the teacher is an evolutionary strategy that attempts to generate problem instances of ``correct difficulty'' and the student is a guided search algorithm utilizing the current guiding function. The student attempts to solve the problem instances generated by the teacher. We conclude with experiments demonstrating that TSC outperforms the current state-of-the-art Bootstrap Learning method in three representative benchmark domains and three guided search algorithms, with respect to the time required to solve all instances of the test set.","PeriodicalId":425645,"journal":{"name":"Symposium on Combinatorial Search","volume":"6 1","pages":"91-99"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141278208","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pipe-Routing and Pathfinding in 3D (Student Abstract)","authors":"Thomas K. Nobes","doi":"10.1609/socs.v16i1.27310","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1609/socs.v16i1.27310","url":null,"abstract":"Pipe-routing in 3D is a common problem in the design of industrial plant layouts. Here, we aim to minimise the structural cost of the plant (which can have multi-billion dollar budgets), while maintaining safety and engineering constraints. We tackle this problem by developing efficient methods for optimal 3D search. We contribute an adaption of Jump Point Search, a well-known symmetry-breaking technique for 2D grids, into 3D: in contrast to related work, our algorithm preserves path feasibility. In combination with a novel method for limiting over-scanning, we report search time speedups of up to an order of magnitude on benchmarks in the literature. We further develop three new and varied voxel benchmark data sets sourced from 3D applications in the literature in order to provide better opportunities for differentiating competing techniques. Towards pipe-routing, this work also identifies several remaining issues for translating the size of industrial domains and their associated constraints into 3D search.","PeriodicalId":425645,"journal":{"name":"Symposium on Combinatorial Search","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117000839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Domain-Independent Dynamic Programming (Student Abstract)","authors":"Ryo Kuroiwa","doi":"10.1609/socs.v16i1.27309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1609/socs.v16i1.27309","url":null,"abstract":"In my dissertation, I will propose Domain-Independent Dynamic Programming (DIDP), a novel model-based paradigm for combinatorial optimization (CO) based on dynamic programming (DP). In DIDP, a problem is first formulated as a declarative DP model and then solved by a general-purpose solver. The goal of my dissertation is to develop an algorithm-independent modeling formalism to define a DP model and general-purpose solvers for it and demonstrate that DIDP is promising for CO in practice. In particular, I will propose a modeling formalism based on a state transition system and heuristic search solvers for it.","PeriodicalId":425645,"journal":{"name":"Symposium on Combinatorial Search","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121186931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Uncertainty and Dynamicity in Real-World Vehicle Routing (Student Abstract)","authors":"Václav Sobotka","doi":"10.1609/socs.v16i1.27314","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1609/socs.v16i1.27314","url":null,"abstract":"Interest in vehicle routing problems (VRP) with stochastic and dynamic elements has grown in the past decade. Despite numerous contributions in this area, the handling of uncertainties and dynamic changes in complex VRPs received little attention. Based on our experience from industrial practice, we discuss why accounting for uncertainties and dynamic changes is crucial for the applicability of the produced routing plans. Then, we first identify and justify the best-suited direction to address dynamicity and uncertainties in real-world VRPs. Second, we outline the key concepts and ideas of our approach to finally demonstrate that it is realistic to implement them efficiently.","PeriodicalId":425645,"journal":{"name":"Symposium on Combinatorial Search","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121345329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Novelty and Lifted Helpful Actions in Generalized Planning","authors":"C. Lei, N. Lipovetzky, Krista A. Ehinger","doi":"10.48550/arXiv.2307.00735","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2307.00735","url":null,"abstract":"It has been shown recently that successful techniques in classical planning, such as goal-oriented heuristics and landmarks, can improve the ability to compute planning programs for generalized planning (GP) problems. In this work, we introduce the notion of action novelty rank, which computes novelty with respect to a planning program, and propose novelty-based generalized planning solvers, which prune a newly generated planning program if its most frequent action repetition is greater than a given bound v, implemented by novelty-based best-first search BFS(v) and its progressive variant PGP(v). Besides, we introduce lifted helpful actions in GP derived from action schemes, and propose new evaluation functions and structural program restrictions to scale up the search. Our experiments show that the new algorithms BFS(v) and PGP(v) outperform the state-of-the-art in GP over the standard generalized planning benchmarks. Practical findings on the above-mentioned methods in generalized planning are briefly discussed.","PeriodicalId":425645,"journal":{"name":"Symposium on Combinatorial Search","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127929858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Shawn Skyler, Shahaf S. Shperberg, Dor Atzmon, Ariel Felner, Oren Salzman, Shao-Hung Chan, Han Zhang, Sven Koenig, W. Yeoh, Carlos Hernández Ulloa
{"title":"Must-Expand Nodes in Multi-Objective Search [Extended Abstract]","authors":"Shawn Skyler, Shahaf S. Shperberg, Dor Atzmon, Ariel Felner, Oren Salzman, Shao-Hung Chan, Han Zhang, Sven Koenig, W. Yeoh, Carlos Hernández Ulloa","doi":"10.1609/socs.v16i1.27305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1609/socs.v16i1.27305","url":null,"abstract":"This extended abstract presents a theoretical analysis of node expansions in Multi-Objective Search. We define three categories of nodes, Must-Expand Nodes, Maybe-Expand Nodes, and Never-Expand Nodes. Our analysis establishes that regardless of the Ordering Function or Multi-Objective Search algorithm used, any Multi-Objective Search algorithm must expand all Must-Expand Nodes, some or none of Maybe-Expand Nodes, and none of Never-Expand Nodes. In addition, we conduct experimental evaluations of various Ordering Functions, revealing that they all expand the same number of nodes and compare their efficiency at finding solutions at various stages of the search.","PeriodicalId":425645,"journal":{"name":"Symposium on Combinatorial Search","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114385629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tracking Progress in Multi-Agent Path Finding (Student Abstract)","authors":"Bojie Shen","doi":"10.1609/socs.v16i1.27313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1609/socs.v16i1.27313","url":null,"abstract":"In this work, we introduce a set of methodological and visualisation tools to track progress and state-of-the-art performance in the area of Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF). Our objectives are to lower the barriers of entry for new researchers and to further promote the study of MAPF.","PeriodicalId":425645,"journal":{"name":"Symposium on Combinatorial Search","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124490866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Multi-Agent Open Framework: Developing a Holistic System to Solve MAPF (Student Abstract)","authors":"Enrico Saccon","doi":"10.1609/socs.v16i1.27312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1609/socs.v16i1.27312","url":null,"abstract":"Automation in industries is becoming an ever-increasing necessity, especially in the sector of logistics. In many cases, this means having many different automated guided vehicles (AGVs) moving at the same time, hence needing coordination to avoid conflicts between different agents. The problem of organizing a fleet of autonomous robots is known as the Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) problem in the literature for which several optimal and sub-optimal algorithms have been proposed. When faced with real-life scenarios, these algorithms must provide the best feasible solution in the shortest time possible, therefore they must scale for large scenarios and be efficient. In this work, we briefly describe our open-source framework we are working on and we lay down the research paths we are going to focus on. The goal is to develop a holistic system that allows to control different aspects of the MAPF problem, from graph topology to goal scheduling.","PeriodicalId":425645,"journal":{"name":"Symposium on Combinatorial Search","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129932268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}