Formalisation of Action with Durations in Answer Set Programming

TL;DR

This paper explores how to formalize actions with durations in Answer Set Programming, focusing on representations, performance implications, and applications to multi-agent pathfinding.

Contribution

It introduces novel approaches to represent and reason about action durations in ASP, a topic not extensively studied before.

Findings

Different encodings impact performance and knowledge representation.

Initial comparisons of simple MAPF encodings reveal design decision effects.

Exploration of duration representations aims to improve problem-solving effectiveness.

Abstract

In this paper, I will discuss the work I am currently doing as a Ph.D. student at the University of Potsdam, under the tutoring of T. Schaub. I'm currently looking into action description in ASP. More precisely, my goal is to explore how to represent actions with durations in ASP, in different contexts. Right now, I'm focused on Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF), looking at how to represent speeds for different agents and contexts. Before tackling duration, I wanted to explore and compare different representations of action taking in ASP. For this, I started comparing different simple encodings tackling the MAPF problem. Even in simple code, choices and assumptions have been made in their creations. The objective of my work is to present the consequences of those design decisions in terms of performance and knowledge representation. As far as I know, there is no current research on this topic. Besides that, I'm also exploring different ways to represent duration and to solve related problems. I planed to compare them the same way I described before. I also want this to help me find innovative and effective ways to solve problems with duration.