Temporal planning with continuous change

Abstract

We present ZENO, a least commitment planner that handles actions occurring over extended intervals of time. Deadline goals, metric preconditions, metric effects, and continuous change are supported. Simultaneous actions are allowed when their effects do not interfere. Unlike most planners that deal with complex languages, the ZENO planning algorithm is sound and complete. The running code is a complete implementation of the formal algorithm, capable of solving simple problems (i.e., those involving less than a dozen steps).