S-MEP: a planner for numeric goals

Planning for numeric goals is an important problem. Only one of the many participants from the 2002 international planning competition (Metric-FF) can effectively handle problems containing numeric goal expressions. We report on planner S-MEP (sequential more expressive planner) in this paper. S-MEP handles non-linear as well as linear expressions in preconditions, effects and goal. Metric-FF handles only linear expressions. Metric-FF ignores decrease effects of actions while computing the heuristic information. S-MEP considers decrease effects of actions while computing heuristic information. We report on empirical evaluation of S-MEP and its comparison with two versions of Metric-FF on 400 problems from linear Jugs domain, 120 problems from linear short-move-Karel domain and 120 problems from linear long-move-Karel domain. Karel domains are robotic transportation domains and Jugs domain is a fluid transfer domain. S-MEP solves many problems that neither version of metric-FF can solve.