Conclusion

• There are other mechanisms for planning, though the symbolic remains in favour for many domains.
• Take Home Points
  1. The strips symbolic mechanism, with action, preconditions, facts and effects, can be quite efective.
  2. You can chain forward or backward through this state space.
  3. For larger tasks, you need to either combine chaining mechanisms, use hierarchical planning or both.
  4. Heuristics can often be effective.
• Reading: For this is Russell and Norvig 373-386 (the Planning Chapter sections 1 and 2).
• Reading: for next week is practical advice for analysis of large complex data sets . You might also want to look at MAD Skills: New Analysis Practices for Big Data by Cohen, Dolan, Dunlap, Hellerstein and Welton.