Artificial Intelligence Planning Problems in a Petri Net Framework

Artificial Intelligence planning systems determine a sequence of actions to be taken to solve a problem. This is accomplished by generating and evaluating alternative courses of action. A special type of Petri net is first defined and then used to model a class of Artificial Intelligence planning problems. A planning strategy is developed using results from the theory of heuristic search. In particular, the A* algorithm is utilized. From the Petri net framework it is shown how to develop an admissible and consistent A* algorithm. As an illustration of the results three Artificial Intelligence planning problems are modelled and solved.