Real-World Planning with PDDL+ and Beyond

TL;DR

This paper introduces Nyx, a flexible and adaptable PDDL+ planner designed to facilitate the application of AI Planning to complex real-world hybrid systems, addressing current software limitations.

Contribution

The paper presents Nyx, a novel, customizable PDDL+ planner that is lightweight, simple, and capable of extending beyond traditional PDDL+ features for broader real-world use.

Findings

Nyx is highly adaptable to various real-world planning problems.

Nyx demonstrates ease of customization and extension.

The planner aims to increase adoption of AI Planning in practical applications.

Abstract

Real-world applications of AI Planning often require a highly expressive modeling language to accurately capture important intricacies of target systems. Hybrid systems are ubiquitous in the real-world, and PDDL+ is the standardized modeling language for capturing such systems as planning domains. PDDL+ enables accurate encoding of mixed discrete-continuous system dynamics, exogenous activity, and many other interesting features exhibited in realistic scenarios. However, the uptake in usage of PDDL+ has been slow and apprehensive, largely due to a general shortage of PDDL+ planning software, and rigid limitations of the few existing planners. To overcome this chasm, we present Nyx, a novel PDDL+ planner built to emphasize lightness, simplicity, and, most importantly, adaptability. The planner is designed to be effortlessly customizable to expand its capabilities well beyond the scope of PDDL+. As a result, Nyx can be tailored to virtually any potential real-world application requiring some form of AI Planning, paving the way for wider adoption of planning methods for solving real-world problems.