Planning in RALPH-MEA

Planning is the process of projecting forward from the current state to predict possible outcomes. In simple domains, planning is unnecssary, because the maximum expected utility can be calculated directly. In more complex domains, in order to determine the utility of the current action, we must consider possible subsequent sequences of actions:

The Decision-Theoretic and Goal-Based execution architectures are capable of doing this explicitly
The Action-Utility and Condition-Action architectures must do this indirectly

Decision-theoretic planning is concerned with determining what sequence of action has the highest expected utility, then executing the first action of that sequence. Evaluating sequences of actions is exponentially more expensive than evaluating one action, so successful planning must involve additional control; RALPH-MEA uses replanning control: if, while planning, the utility of replanning is greater than the utility of planning, replanning will be selected instead of continued planning.

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