On-the-Fly Knowledge Acquisition for Automated Planning Applications: Challenges and Lessons Learnt

Automated planning is a prominent AI challenge, and it is now exploited in a range of real-world applications. There are three crucial aspects of automated planning: the planning engine, the domain model, and the problem instance. While the planning engine and the domain model can be engineered and optimised offline, in many applications there is the need to generate problem instances on the fly. In this paper we focus on the challenges of on-the-fly knowledge acquisition for complex and variegated problem instances. We consider as a case study the application of planning to urban traffic control and we describe the designed and developed knowledge acquisition process. This allows us to discuss a range of lessons learned from the experience, and to point to important lines of research to support the knowledge acquisition process for automated planning applications.