Stochastic Planning and Lifted Inference

The paper argues that (1) stochastic planning should be used as a core problem domain for relational probabilistic models providing problems of interest that are challenging for current approaches and significant scope for extending their capabilities, (2) that symbolic dynamic programming solving such problems can be seen as a prime example of lifted inference in relational probabilistic problems, (3) that first order decision diagrams provide a useful tool to drive such lifted computations, and (4) that the resulting lifted inference is qualitatively different from what other approaches are providing. As a result, this relationship can be studied to the benefit of developing foundations for relational probabilistic models and to the benefit of stochastic planning.