Synthesis of timeline-based planning strategies avoiding determinization

arXiv:2507.17988v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Qualitative timeline-based planning models domains as sets of independent, but
interacting, components whose behaviors over time, the timelines, are governed
by sets of qualitative temporal constraints (ordering relations), called
synchronization rules.
Its plan-existence problem has been shown to be PSPACE-complete; in
particular, PSPACE-membership has been proved via reduction to the
nonemptiness problem for nondeterministic finite automata.
However, nondeterministic automata cannot be directly used to synthesize
planning strategies as a costly determinization step is needed.
In this paper, we identify a fragment of qualitative timeline-based planning
whose plan-existence problem can be directly mapped into the nonemptiness
problem of deterministic finite automata, which can then
synthesize strategies.
In addition, we identify a maximal subset of Allen’s relations that fits into
such a deterministic fragment.