Planning & Scheduling
Learning to Solve Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problems with Duration Uncertainty using Graph Neural Networks
Infantes, Guillaume, Roussel, Stéphanie, Jacquet, Antoine, Benazera, Emmanuel
The Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP) is a classical scheduling problem that has received significant attention due to of its numerous applications in industry. However, in practice, task durations are subject to uncertainty that must be considered in order to propose resilient scheduling. In this paper, we address the RCPSP variant with uncertain tasks duration (modeled using known probabilities) and aim to minimize the overall expected project duration. Our objective is to produce a baseline schedule that can be reused multiple times in an industrial setting regardless of the actual duration scenario. We leverage Graph Neural Networks in conjunction with Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) to develop an effective policy for task scheduling. This policy operates similarly to a priority dispatch rule and is paired with a Serial Schedule Generation Scheme to produce a schedule. Our empirical evaluation on standard benchmarks demonstrates the approach's superiority in terms of performance and its ability to generalize. The developed framework, Wheatley, is made publicly available online to facilitate further research and reproducibility.
Unidirectional-Road-Network-Based Global Path Planning for Cleaning Robots in Semi-Structured Environments
Practical global path planning is critical for commercializing cleaning robots working in semi-structured environments. In the literature, global path planning methods for free space usually focus on path length and neglect the traffic rule constraints of the environments, which leads to high-frequency re-planning and increases collision risks. In contrast, those for structured environments are developed mainly by strictly complying with the road network representing the traffic rule constraints, which may result in an overlong path that hinders the overall navigation efficiency. This article proposes a general and systematic approach to improve global path planning performance in semi-structured environments. A unidirectional road network is built to represent the traffic constraints in semi-structured environments and a hybrid strategy is proposed to achieve a guaranteed planning result.Cutting across the road at the starting and the goal points are allowed to achieve a shorter path. Especially, a two-layer potential map is proposed to achieve a guaranteed performance when the starting and the goal points are in complex intersections. Comparative experiments are carried out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Quantitative experimental results show that, compared with the state-of-art, the proposed method guarantees a much better balance between path length and the consistency with the road network.
CoS: Towards Optimal Event Scheduling via Chain-of-Scheduling
Zhao, Yiming, Tang, Jiwei, Di, Shimin, Zheng, Libin, Yu, Jianxing, Yin, Jian
Recommending event schedules is a key issue in Event-based Social Networks (EBSNs) in order to maintain user activity. An effective recommendation is required to maximize the user's preference, subjecting to both time and geographical constraints. Existing methods face an inherent trade-off among efficiency, effectiveness, and generalization, due to the NP-hard nature of the problem. This paper proposes the Chain-of-Scheduling (CoS) framework, which activates the event scheduling capability of Large Language Models (LLMs) through a guided, efficient scheduling process. CoS enhances LLM by formulating the schedule task into three atomic stages, i.e., exploration, verification and integration. Then we enable the LLMs to generate CoS autonomously via Knowledge Distillation (KD). Experimental results show that CoS achieves near-theoretical optimal effectiveness with high efficiency on three real-world datasets in a interpretable manner. Moreover, it demonstrates strong zero-shot learning ability on out-of-domain data.
Online Learning of HTN Methods for integrated LLM-HTN Planning
Xu, Yuesheng, Munoz-Avila, Hector
We present online learning of Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) methods in the context of integrated HTN planning and LLM-based chatbots. Methods indicate when and how to decompose tasks into subtasks. Our method learner is built on top of the ChatHTN planner. ChatHTN queries ChatGPT to generate a decomposition of a task into primitive tasks when no applicable method for the task is available. In this work, we extend ChatHTN. Namely, when ChatGPT generates a task decomposition, ChatHTN learns from it, akin to memoization. However, unlike memoization, it learns a generalized method that applies not only to the specific instance encountered, but to other instances of the same task.. We conduct experiments on two domains and demonstrate that our online learning procedure reduces the number of calls to ChatGPT while solving at least as many problems, and in some cases, even more.
Dynamic Tree Databases in Automated Planning
Joergensen, Oliver, Drexler, Dominik, Seipp, Jendrik
A central challenge in scaling up explicit state-space search for large tasks is compactly representing the set of generated states. Tree databases, a data structure from model checking, require constant space per generated state in the best case, but they need a large preallocation of memory. We propose a novel dynamic variant of tree databases for compressing state sets over propositional and numeric variables and prove that it maintains the desirable properties of the static counterpart. Our empirical evaluation of state compression techniques for grounded and lifted planning on classical and numeric planning tasks reveals compression ratios of several orders of magnitude, often with negligible runtime overhead.
EcoFlight: Finding Low-Energy Paths Through Obstacles for Autonomous Sensing Drones
Leyva, Jordan, Vera, Nahim J. Moran, Xu, Yihan, Durasno, Adrien, Romero, Christopher U., Chimuka, Tendai, Ramirez, Gabriel O. Huezo, Dong, Ziqian, Rojas-Cessa, Roberto
Obstacle avoidance path planning for uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, is rarely addressed in most flight path planning schemes, despite obstacles being a realistic condition. Obstacle avoidance can also be energy-intensive, making it a critical factor in efficient point-to-point drone flights. To address these gaps, we propose EcoFlight, an energy-efficient pathfinding algorithm that determines the lowest-energy route in 3D space with obstacles. The algorithm models energy consumption based on the drone propulsion system and flight dynamics. We conduct extensive evaluations, comparing EcoFlight with direct-flight and shortest-distance schemes. The simulation results across various obstacle densities show that EcoFlight consistently finds paths with lower energy consumption than comparable algorithms, particularly in high-density environments. We also demonstrate that a suitable flying speed can further enhance energy savings.
SBAMP: Sampling Based Adaptive Motion Planning
Pham, Anh-Quan, Puri, Kabir Ram, Raorane, Shreyas
Autonomous robotic systems must navigate complex, dynamic environments in real time, often facing unpredictable obstacles and rapidly changing conditions. Traditional sampling-based methods, such as RRT*, excel at generating collision-free paths but struggle to adapt to sudden changes without extensive replanning. Conversely, learning-based dynamical systems, such as the Stable Estimator of Dynamical Systems (SEDS), offer smooth, adaptive trajectory tracking but typically rely on pre-collected demonstration data, limiting their generalization to novel scenarios. This paper introduces Sampling-Based Adaptive Motion Planning (SBAMP), a novel framework that overcomes these limitations by integrating RRT* for global path planning with a SEDS-based local controller for continuous, adaptive trajectory adjustment. Our approach requires no pre-trained datasets and ensures smooth transitions between planned waypoints, maintaining stability through Lyapunov-based guarantees. We validate SBAMP in both simulated environments and real hardware using the RoboRacer platform, demonstrating superior performance in dynamic obstacle scenarios, rapid recovery from perturbations, and robust handling of sharp turns. Experimental results highlight SBAMP's ability to adapt in real time without sacrificing global path optimality, providing a scalable solution for dynamic, unstructured environments.
Bootstrapped LLM Semantics for Context-Aware Path Planning
Amani, Mani, Beheshti, Behrad, Akhavian, Reza
Abstract-- Prompting robots with natural language (NL) has largely been studied as what task to execute (goal selection, skill sequencing) rather than how to execute that task safely and efficiently in semantically rich, human-centric spaces. We address this gap with a framework that turns a large language model (LLM) into a stochastic semantic sensor whose outputs modulate a classical planner . Given a prompt and a semantic map, we draw multiple LLM "danger" judgments and apply a Bayesian bootstrap to approximate a posterior over per-class risk. Using statistics from the posterior, we create a potential cost to formulate a path planning problem. Across simulated environments and a BIM-backed digital twin, our method adapts how the robot moves in response to explicit prompts and implicit contextual information.
VIR-Bench: Evaluating Geospatial and Temporal Understanding of MLLMs via Travel Video Itinerary Reconstruction
Wang, Hao, Murata, Eiki, Zhang, Lingfang, Sato, Ayako, Fukuda, So, Yin, Ziqi, Hu, Wentao, Nakao, Keisuke, Nakamura, Yusuke, Zwirner, Sebastian, Chen, Yi-Chia, Otomo, Hiroyuki, Ouchi, Hiroki, Kawahara, Daisuke
Recent advances in multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have significantly enhanced video understanding capabilities, opening new possibilities for practical applications. Yet current video benchmarks focus largely on indoor scenes or short-range outdoor activities, leaving the challenges associated with long-distance travel largely unexplored. Mastering extended geospatial-temporal trajectories is critical for next-generation MLLMs, underpinning real-world tasks such as embodied-AI planning and navigation. To bridge this gap, we present VIR-Bench, a novel benchmark consisting of 200 travel videos that frames itinerary reconstruction as a challenging task designed to evaluate and push forward MLLMs' geospatial-temporal intelligence. Experimental results reveal that state-of-the-art MLLMs, including proprietary ones, struggle to achieve high scores, underscoring the difficulty of handling videos that span extended spatial and temporal scales. Moreover, we conduct an in-depth case study in which we develop a prototype travel-planning agent that leverages the insights gained from VIR-Bench. The agent's markedly improved itinerary recommendations verify that our evaluation protocol not only benchmarks models effectively but also translates into concrete performance gains in user-facing applications.
Mixture-of-Schedulers: An Adaptive Scheduling Agent as a Learned Router for Expert Policies
Wang, Xinbo, Jia, Shian, Huang, Ziyang, Cao, Jing, Song, Mingli
Modern operating system schedulers employ a single, static policy, which struggles to deliver optimal performance across the diverse and dynamic workloads of contemporary systems. This "one-policy-fits-all" approach leads to significant compromises in fairness, throughput, and latency, particularly with the rise of heterogeneous hardware and varied application architectures. This paper proposes a new paradigm: dynamically selecting the optimal policy from a portfolio of specialized schedulers rather than designing a single, monolithic one. We present the Adaptive Scheduling Agent (ASA), a lightweight framework that intelligently matches workloads to the most suitable "expert" scheduling policy at runtime. ASA's core is a novel, low-overhead offline/online approach. First, an offline process trains a universal, hardware-agnostic machine learning model to recognize abstract workload patterns from system behaviors. Second, at runtime, ASA continually processes the model's predictions using a time-weighted probability voting algorithm to identify the workload, then makes a scheduling decision by consulting a pre-configured, machine-specific mapping table to switch to the optimal scheduler via Linux's sched_ext framework. This decoupled architecture allows ASA to adapt to new hardware platforms rapidly without expensive retraining of the core recognition model. Our evaluation, based on a novel benchmark focused on user-experience metrics, demonstrates that ASA consistently outperforms the default Linux scheduler (EEVDF), achieving superior results in 86.4% of test scenarios. Furthermore, ASA's selections are near-optimal, ranking among the top three schedulers in 78.6% of all scenarios. This validates our approach as a practical path toward more intelligent, adaptive, and responsive operating system schedulers.