Temporal planning with a non-temporal planner

This extended abstract looks at the work that I am currently undertaking in the field of temporal planning. Temporal planning is the same problem as classical planning but, whereas in classical planning all actions are considered to be instantaneous, in temporal planning time is also modelled. One possible way to achieve this is to introduce actions with duration. These durations can rely on the parameters of the action (e.g. a plane takes longer to fly the further the distance between its departure and arrival cities). Relaxing this one assumption complicates the problem, since now a new metric is introduced to judge plans by; it is no longer the plan with the fewest actions which could be seen as best, but that with the shortest total duration. Concurrency can now be exploited within the plan, where two or more actions can overlap and be executed simultaneously. This replies on the capabilities of the executive and, as described later, the expressiveness of the descrip