Fully Observable Nondeterministic HTN Planning -- Formalisation and Complexity Results

HTN Planning FOND Planning Planning under Uncertainty Plan Existence Problem Computational Complexity PaperID: 44
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Much progress has been made in advancing the state of the art of HTN planning theory in recent years. However, scarce studies have been made with regards to the complexity of HTN problems on nondeterministic domains. In this paper we renew and extend existing HTN planning formalisations to fully observable nondeterministic HTN planning. We propose and study different solution criteria which differ in when nondeterministic action outcomes are considered: at plan generation or at plan execution. We integrate our solution criteria with notions of weak and strong plans canonical in nondeterministic planning and identify intriguing similarities and differences with plans in other fields of AI planning. We also provide completeness results for a majority of HTN problem subclasses and show the significant result that problems are not made any harder under nondeterminism for certain solution criteria by using compilation techniques to deterministic HTN planning. This supports and justifies the practicality and scalability of extending HTN problems over nondeterministic domains to deal with real world scenarios.