The development of domain-independent planners within the AI Planning community is leading to "off the shelf" technology that can be used in a wide range of applications. Moreover, it allows a modular approach – in which planners and domain knowledge are modules of larger software applications – that facilitates substitutions or improvements of individual modules without changing the rest of the system. This approach also supports the use of reformulation and configuration techniques, which transform how a model is represented in order to improve the efficiency of plan generation. In this paper, we investigate how the performance of planners is affected by domain model configuration. We introduce a fully automated method for this configuration task, and show in an extensive experimental analysis with six planners and seven domains that this process (which can, in principle, be combined with other forms of reformulation and configuration) can have a remarkable impact on performance across planners. Furthermore, studying the obtained domain model configurations can provide useful information to effectively engineer planning domain models.

The development of domain-independent planners within the AI Planning community is leading to "off-the-shelf" technology that can be used in a wide range of applications. Moreover, it allows a modular approach --in which planners and domain knowledge are modules of larger software applications-- that facilitates substitutions or improvements of individual modules without changing the rest of the system. This approach also supports the use of reformulation and configuration techniques, which transform how a model is represented in order to improve the efficiency of plan generation. In this article, we investigate how the performance of domain-independent planners is affected by domain model configuration, i.e., the order in which elements are ordered in the model, particularly in the light of planner comparisons. We then introduce techniques for the online and offline configuration of domain models, and we analyse the impact of domain model configuration on other reformulation approaches, such as macros.

The separation of planner logic from domain knowledge supports the use of reformulation and configuration techniques, such as macro-actions and entanglements, which transform the model representation in order to improve a planner's performance. One drawback of such an approach is that it may require a potentially expensive training phase. In this paper, we introduce heuristic approaches for the online configuration of planning domain models. The proposed heuristics consider different aspects of PDDL-encoded operators for reordering such operators in the domain model, relying on the assumption that the way in which operators are encoded carries useful information about their expected use.

The development of domain-independent planners This modular approach also supports the use of reformulation within the AI Planning community is leading to and configuration techniques which can automatically "off the shelf" technology that can be used in a reformulate, re-represent or tune the domain model and/or wide range of applications. Moreover, it allows a problem description in order to increase the efficiency of modular approach - in which planners and domain a planner and increase the scope of problems solved. The knowledge are modules of larger software applications idea is to make these techniques to some degree independent - that facilitates substitutions or improvements of domain and planner (that is, applicable to a range of individual modules without changing the of domains and planning engine technologies), and use them rest of the system. This approach also supports the to form a wrapper around a planner, improving its overall use of reformulation and configuration techniques, performance for the domain to which it is applied. Types which transform how a model is represented in order of reformulation include macro-learning [Botea et al., 2005; to improve the efficiency of plan generation. Newton et al., 2007], action schema splitting [Areces et al., In this paper, we investigate how the performance 2014] and entanglements [Chrpa and McCluskey, 2012]: here of planners is affected by domain model configuration.