Constraint-Based Temporal Planning

This paper deals with the application of notions from "planning" and the "representation of temporal information" in an animation system to simulate human task performance. Specifically, a model was developed in which the representation and manipulation of temporal information forms the basis of a planning system. This model has been implemented as part of an animation system in which the goal was to enable a natural, clear language for the specification of relevant temporal constraints along with a planner that would manipulate these constraints, ultimately resulting in exact timing parameters to be passed to the low-level animation routines. The first part of the paper describes the essential role of temporal planning in an animation system that models human task performance. The second part of the paper goes on to explain how a wide variety of temporal constraints can be "compiled" into a set of low-level "simple constraints" through the use of "dummy intervals" and "fuzzy constraints." The third part of the paper describes how a definite "plan" of events can be generated based on an analogical "spring system." Comments University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report No. MSCIS-88-55. This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_reports/677 CONSTRAINT-BASED TEMPORAL PLANNING N. Badler, S. Kushnier and J. Kalita MS-CIS-88-55 GRAPHICS LAB 24 Department of Computer and Information Science School of Engineering and Applied Science University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 191 04