Total-Order and Partial-Order Planning: A Comparative Analysis

TL;DR

This paper provides a detailed comparison of partial-order and total-order planning, revealing that the perceived advantages of partial-order planning depend on specific search strategies and search space structures.

Contribution

It offers a rigorous analysis highlighting the assumptions behind partial-order planning's efficiency, challenging common intuitions.

Findings

Superiority of partial-order planning depends on search strategy.

Search space structure critically influences planning efficiency.

Understanding underlying assumptions is essential for designing better planners.

Abstract

For many years, the intuitions underlying partial-order planning were largely taken for granted. Only in the past few years has there been renewed interest in the fundamental principles underlying this paradigm. In this paper, we present a rigorous comparative analysis of partial-order and total-order planning by focusing on two specific planners that can be directly compared. We show that there are some subtle assumptions that underly the wide-spread intuitions regarding the supposed efficiency of partial-order planning. For instance, the superiority of partial-order planning can depend critically upon the search strategy and the structure of the search space. Understanding the underlying assumptions is crucial for constructing efficient planners.