Physical schemas for planning domain analysis

Analysis of a planning domain has been shown to produce information that can greatly reduce the space of plans a controller must search through. Domain analysis is generally based on the logical inferences one can make given a set of planning operators and sometimes information about goals. An alternative heuristic approach is possible as well. We have developed a small set of physical schemas for classifying operators in planning domains. We show how they perform on some commonly available domains and describe how this information can help to explain the structure of a plan in physical, task-oriented terms.