Automatic Derivation of Memoryless Policies and Finite-State Controllers Using Classical Planners

Finite-state and memoryless controllers are simple action selection mechanisms widely used in domains such as videogames and mobile robotics. Memoryless controllers stand for functions that map observations into actions, while finitestate controllers generalize memoryless ones with a finite amount of memory. In contrast to the policies obtained from MDPs and POMDPs, finite-state controllers have two advantages: they are often extremely compact, involving a small number of controller states or none at all, and they are general, applying to many problems and not just one. A limitation of finite-state controllers is that they must be written by hand. In this work, we address this limitation, and develop a method for deriving finite-state controllers automatically from models. These models represent a class of contingent problems where actions are deterministic and some fluents are observable. The problem of deriving a controller from such models is converted into a conformant planning pr...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: AIPS
• Authors: Blai Bonet, Héctor Palacios, Hector Geffner
• Keywords: AIPS 2009, Artificial Intelligence, Finite-state Controllers, Finitestate Controllers, Memoryless Controllers