Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
Planning systems have been an active research topic within Artificial Intelligence for over two decades. There have been a number of techniques developed during that period which still form an essential part of many of today's planners. This paper introduces the techniques, attempts to classify some of the important research themes in AI planning and describes their historical development.
Where names of planning systems and other AI softwares are described in the paper, the bibliography is annotated with the name of the system in brackets.
A good and reasonably up-to-date account of AI planning techniques and systems is given in Charniak and McDermott's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence textbook (114). In particular, chapter 9 and sections of chapters 5 and 7 are relevant.
Somewhat earlier material is provided in Elaine Rich's Artificial Intelligence textbook (116). Nilsson's book on the Principles of Artificial Intelligence (115) provides a uniform treatment of planning techniques available up to the time it was published. There are several useful summaries of early AI planning work in the Handbook of Artificial Intelligence (113) Volume I section II.D and Volume III sections XI.B, XI.Cf and XV.