Planning with Incomplete Information as Heuristic Search in Belief Space

The [ornntlation of planning as heuristk: search with heuristics derived from problem representations ]nas turned out to be a fruitful approach for cla..,...ical planning. In this paper, we, pur.,,ue a sinnilar idea in Ihe context pLa.nning with incomplete inh)rmation. Planning with incomphit.e iTnforntalion can be formulatvd as a pmbh’nt of search in &.liqf space, where b(l&f stat~ can be ell her .~ t.~ oS stutrs or more generally probability distribution or,er statcs. %Vlnile the form.httion {as the formulation of clas.qeal plannitlg as heurisli<search) is not particalarly novel, the contribution of this paper is It) rlta.ke! if explicit, to lest it ow,r a mlmber of domains, and to extend it to ta.,~ks like planning with sensing where the standard search algorithms do not apply. "[’he resulting planner appears to be Colnpetitive with the nLO.-,I, recent conformant and conlingent pla.nners (e.g., CGF’, SGF’, anti (’MIll’) while at the same time is ntore getteral as it can h~tndh’ prol)abilistic :wI.ions an(I sensing. (liffer(-’nt action costs, anti ,:piMenti(: goal~.