Planning and reasoning: projects

Students may propose their own projects, but they are subject to the professor's approval. Projects already started without this approval may still be rejected.

Suggested projects:

  1. planning a sequence of software package installations, based on their dependencies
  2. syntax checker for PDDL: currently, Fast-Downward just terminates printing a backtrace when the input is syntactically incorrect; the aim of this project is to build a system to check the validity of a PDDL file; optionally, this module is so that it it could be integrated into Fast-Downward; the system could also make some preliminary simplifications such as merging actions, removing unexecutable actions, etc.
  3. analysis of the selection mechanisms in portfolio-based planning systems; this project requires studying the literature on portfolio-based planning systems and writing an essay on the methods these systems use for selecting the planning algorithm
  4. library of examples of PDDL, showing in increasing order of complexity the features of the language; also supply a graphical representation of the domains
  5. deontic logic
  6. progress meter for DPLL
  7. privacy preserving planning
  8. every path from a point to another must cross a line (or a broken line) in the plane; this is a sort of landmark, like in domain-independent heuristics; investigate previous explotiations of this idea, or propose how it could be exploited
  9. use of a domain-dependent heuristics in fast-downward
  10. unsharp turns in a given path in the plane: check literature, propose ideas
  11. goal recognition: tecniques, applications
  12. extensions of LRTA*
  13. guarded logic
  14. multi-agent path planning
  15. soft constraints on plan trajectories: formulation in PDDL and solving algorithms
  16. path planning with dynamic obstacles
  17. backtracking with local search: implement backtracking using local search to determine the next branching literal (for example, the variable that gives the two simplified problems with as few satisfiable clauses as possible)
  18. compressed path databases for path planning
  19. μ-calculus: definition, applications and algorithms
  20. recent algorithms for propositional model counting
  21. beam search and its applications to planning
  22. logistics planning
  23. hyper-heuristics

Instructions about projects based on the available literature:

  1. this is not an English course; I do not care about grammar mistakes as long as the prose is comprehenisble;
  2. do not copy text from web sites or articles;
  3. the aim of the project is that the student gets a basic understanding of the given topic;
  4. the aim of the report is to show that the student has obtained that understanding;
  5. the project is evaluated from the report;
  6. therefore, the report must a. be original (no copied text); b. show that the student has a grasp of the general picture; c. show that the student's understanding of the technical details is sufficient for giving a sense to the general picture;
  7. as an example, a beautifully formatted report that is a patchwork of random formulae and grammatically perfect sentences copied from articles does not pass
  8. as an example, a report that provides a novel way of explaining the topic, with technical details provided exactly when needed, will get an high grade even if poorly formatted and full of grammar mistakes