Integrating Logic and Constraint Reasoning in a Timeline-Based Planner

This paper introduces the ongoing work for a novel domain-independent planning system which takes inspiration from both Constraint Programming (CP) and Logic Programming (LP), flavouring it all with Object Oriented features. We will see a specific customization of our environment to the particular kind of automated planning referred to as timeline-based. By allowing for the interesting ability of solving both planning and scheduling problems in a uniform schema, the resulting system is particularly suitable for complex domains arising from real dynamic scenarios. The paper proposes a resolution algorithm and enhances it with some (static and dynamic) heuristics to help the solving process. The system is tested on different benchmark problems from classical planning domains like the Blocks World to more challenging temporally expressive problems like the Temporal Machine Shop and the Cooking Carbonara problems demonstrating how the new planner, named iLoC, compares with respect to other state-of-the-art planners.