Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planners generate plans using a decomposition process with extra domain knowledge to guide search towards a planning task. Domain experts develop such domain knowledge through recipes of how to decompose higher level tasks, specifying which tasks can be decomposed and under what conditions. In most realistic domains, such recipes contain recursions, i.e., tasks that can be decomposed into other tasks that contain the original task. Such domains require that either the domain expert tailor such domain knowledge to the specific HTN planning algorithm, or an algorithm that can search efficiently using such domain knowledge. By leveraging a three-stage compiler design we can easily support more language descriptions and preprocessing optimizations that when chained can greatly improve runtime efficiency in such domains. In this paper we evaluate such optimizations with the HyperTensioN HTN planner, winner of the HTN IPC 2020 total-order track.

Abstract Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planners generate plans using a decomposition process with extra domain knowledge to guide search towards a planning task. Domain experts develop such domain knowledge through recipes of how to decompose higher level tasks, specifying which tasks can be decomposed and under what conditions. In most realistic domains, such recipes contain recursions, i.e., tasks that can be decomposed into other tasks that contain the original task. Such domains require that either the domain expert tailor such domain knowledge to the specific HTN planning algorithm, or an algorithm that can search efficiently using such domain knowledge. By leveraging a three-stage compiler design we can easily support more language descriptions and preprocessing optimizations that when chained can greatly improve runtime efficiency in such domains. In this paper we evaluate such optimizations with the HyperTensioN HTN planner, winner of the HTN IPC 2020 total-order track.

Orthodontic treatment planning often involves de-ciding whether to extract teeth, a critical and irreversible decision. Integrating machine learning (ML) can enhance decision-making. This study proposes using Intraoral Scans (IOS) 3D models to predict extraction/non-extraction binary decisions with ML models. We leverage a multiview approach, using images taken from multiple points of view of the 3D model. The methodology involved a dataset composed of preprocessed IOS from 181 subjects and an experimental procedure that evaluated multiple ML models in their ability to classify subjects using either grayscale pixel intensities or radiomic features. The results indicated that a logistic model applied to the radiomic features from the back and frontal views of the 3D models was one of the best model candidates, achieving a test accuracy of 70 % and F1 score of. 73 and. 65 for non-extraction and extraction cases, respectively. Overall, these findings indicate that a multiview approach to IOS 3D models can be used to predict extraction/non-extraction decisions. In addition, the results suggest that radiomic features provide useful information in the analysis of IOS data.

Hierarchical Task Networks (HTN) planning uses a decomposition process guided by domain knowledge to guide search towards a planning task. While many HTN planners allow calls to external processes (e.g. to a simulator interface) during the decomposition process, this is a computationally expensive process, so planner implementations often use such calls in an ad-hoc way using very specialized domain knowledge to limit the number of calls. Conversely, the classical planners that are capable of using external calls (often called semantic attachments) during planning are limited to generating a fixed number of ground operators at problem grounding time. We formalize Semantic Attachments for HTN planning using semi coroutines, allowing such procedurally defined predicates to link the planning process to custom unifications outside of the planner, such as numerical results from a robotics simulator. The resulting planner then uses such coroutines as part of its backtracking mechanism to search through parallel dimensions of the state-space (e.g. through numeric variables). We show empirically that our planner outperforms the state-of-the-art numeric planners in a number of domains using minimal extra domain knowledge.

Recent approaches to goal recognition have progressively relaxed the requirements about the amount of domain knowledge and available observations, yielding accurate and efficient algorithms. These approaches, however, assume that there is a domain expert capable of building complete and correct domain knowledge to successfully recognize an agent's goal. This is too strong for most real-world applications. We overcome these limitations by combining goal recognition techniques from automated planning, and deep autoencoders to carry out unsupervised learning to generate domain theories from data streams and use the resulting domain theories to deal with incomplete and noisy observations. We show the effectiveness of the technique in a number of domains and compare the recognition effectiveness of the autoencoded against hand-coded versions of these domains.

This article addresses the challenge of planning coordinated activities for a set of autonomous agents, who coordinate according to social commitments among themselves. We develop a multi-agent plan in the form of a commitment protocol that allows the agents to coordinate in a flexible manner, retaining their autonomy in terms of the goals they adopt so long as their actions adhere to the commitments they have made. We consider an expressive first-order setting with probabilistic uncertainty over action outcomes. We contribute the first practical means to derive protocol enactments which maximise expected utility from the point of view of one agent. Our work makes two main contributions. First, we show how Hierarchical Task Network planning can be used to enact a previous semantics for commitment and goal alignment, and we extend that semantics in order to enact first-order commitment protocols. Second, supposing a cooperative setting, we introduce uncertainty in order to capture the reality that an agent does not know for certain that its partners will successfully act on their part of the commitment protocol. Altogether, we employ hierarchical planning techniques to check whether a commitment protocol can be enacted efficiently, and generate protocol enactments under a variety of conditions. The resulting protocol enactments can be optimised either for the expected reward or the probability of a successful execution of the protocol. We illustrate our approach on a real-world healthcare scenario.