The 2014 International Planning Competition: Progress and Trends

IPC-2014 was held in three separate parts to assess the state of the art in three prominent areas of planning research: the deterministic (classical) part (IPCD), the learning part (IPCL), and the probabilistic part (IPPC). Each part evaluated planning systems in ways that pushed the edge of existing planner performance by introducing new challenges, novel tasks, or both. The competition surpassed again the number of competitors that participated in its predecessor, highlighting the competition's central role in shaping the landscape of ongoing developments in evaluating planning systems. Actions are usually expressed in terms of preconditions and effects. Preconditions indicate the requirements that must hold to apply the action, while effects are the consequence (including the cost) of applying the action to the state of the world.