OAP: An Object-oriented Approach for Planning modeling

This article describes a planning approach based on the object representation. A planning domain in OAP (Object-oriented Approach for Planning) consists of a dynamic set of objects. OAP provides a language for planning problems modeling and implementation. This approach can evolve a domain model from a literal (predicative) representation to an object based representation, as well as enhancing the development of planning problems. The goal of OAP is to offer the possibility to design and develop planning problems as any other software engineering problem, and to allow the application of planning to a larger class of domains by using methods (functions) that can be implemented within the world objects. Planning systems using OAP as language can be integrated into any existing object-oriented software with a slight additional effort to transform the system to a planning domain model, which allows the use of planning to solve generic tasks in existing software applications (Business, web,...). Therefore planning in real world systems will be easier to model and to implement using all the software engineering facilities offered by the object-oriented tools.