## Interfacing with O-Plan

A new process may be automatically synthesized by communicating with the AI planning system, O-Plan. As part of the framework, a new module was written for O-Plan to enrich the plan output format so that it also includes information about plan resources, effects and dependencies.

## Running O-Plan

O-Plan is a domain independent AI planner. Currently, it runs on a UNIX platform, but there is ongoing work to make it accessible over the web as well. See here for web demonstrations. Once O-Plan has been installed, it can be launched from the control panel or executed from a command prompt in the installed directory: "./oplan". The domain exported from the CDE can be input to the planner. One of the top level tasks may then be selected and the planner will synthesize a new process based on the domain knowledge and the task. This process may then be exported to a file in the O-Plan plan output format (see figure 1).
Figure 1 - Saving a new process in O-Plan

## Requirements

The O-Plan system is available for download at: http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~oplan/release/. The CPF currently uses version 3.1 on a Sun Ultra 5. This version has a very limited output format which omits useful knowledge, such as activity effects, dependencies, and resource usage. The following instructions illustrate how a new module can be loaded to enrich this output.

- Loading a new O-Plan plan output format

After launching the CPF, click on the "Intervene as User" button in the O-Plan Control Panel. Select "Break in" from the popup menu. You will then be presented with an OPLAN>> prompt. Enter (load "{target dir}/source/text-viewer.lsp"). You should then see a "t" response. Entering :r and selecting Quit from the popup menu allows O-Plan to resume. Plan as usual.

## Source Code

text-viewer.lsp

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Last updated 7 October 1998
by Steve Polyak