MAPlan

Download

The repository of MAPlan is currently hosted on gitlab:

  $ git clone https://gitlab.com/danfis/maplan.git

Compilation

MAPlan has some dependencies on other libraries and the compilation may require some configuration. Use

  $ make help

and you should see how all Makefile variables are set in the current configuration. The Makefiles are organized so that Makefile.include contains detection of dependencies and it sets up all variables and Makefile (that includes Makefile.include) contains all the rules. Additionally you can create Makefile.local (which is not tracked by git) that is always included before Makefile.include so you can override (almost) all settings that from Makefile.include by setting the right variables in Makefile.local.

Configuration

Besides overriding configurations of dependencies, Makefile.local must be used to configure dependency on LP solver, if you wish to use modules depending on it (like potential or flow heuristics). The planner will, however, compile without them and if you try to use them, it will write an error message and exit.

To set up depndency on an LP solver, you need to set the corresponding variables in Makefile.local. MAPlan can currently use lpsolve (open-source) or CPLEX solvers and we would recommend using CPLEX.

So if you install CPLEX you need to set up CPLEX_CFLAGS to use CPLEX's include directory (-I/path/to/include/dir) and CPLEX_LDFLAGS to link to CPLEX's library (-L/path/to/lib/dir -lcplex). Look into Makefile.local.tpl for the example Makefile.local file.

Dependecies

MAPlan depends on some other libraries, but all of them are listed in third-party/ directory (either directly or as git's submodule) so you should not need to install any. But one of the dependencies is google's protobuffers that is almost impossible to use if you have already system-wide installation.

So if you don't have installed protobuffers on your computer you should be able to compile all dependencies by:

  $ cd third-party
  $ make boruvka opts protobuf nanomsg translate

If you have protobuffers already installed on your computer, you have to skip compiling protobuffers from third-party/ directory:

  $ cd third-party
  $ make boruvka opts nanomsg translate

Now make help should show all *_CFLAGS and *_LDFLAGS variables properly set up.

Compilation of MAPlan

Once you have compiled and set up all dependencies, you can compile MAPlan by using make from the top directory:

  $ make
  $ make -C bin

Now in bin/ directory should be search binary that when called without parameters (or with -h or --help) should print list of options that can be used. Currently, the planner needs pre-processed problems in protobuf format that is produced by modified Fast Downward's translate program located in third-party/translate/ directory.

Running MAPlan

MAPlan can run in several modes, as a sequential planner and as a multi-agent planner running either in threads using a shared memory for communication, or in separate processes using TPC/IP communication channels. Currently, for all of these cases the Fast-Downward's translator located in third-party/translate is needed to preprocess PDDL files.

In all cases, running the planner (bin/search) with -h option shows all options available. The most notable are:

• -p defines path to the preprocessed input problem
• -s defines search algorithm
• -H defines heuristic function

Sequential Planner

First, preprocess the input PDDL files using third-party/translate/translate.py with --proto option:

  $ ./third-party/translate/translate.py --proto --output problem.proto path/to/domain.pddl path/to/problem.pddl

This generates the input problem in protobuf format and writes it into problem.proto file.

Now you can run the planner, for example with lm-cut heuristic and A* search algorithm:

  $ ./bin/search -p problem.proto -H lm-cut -s astar -o plan.out

Multi-agent Planner in Threads

Preprocessing factored MA-PDDL files can be done with third-party/translate/translate-factored.sh script. Run this script from the directory with factored MA-PDDL files corresponding to the problem you want to solve, for example using the CoDMAP depot/pfile1 problem:

  $ cd path/to/factored/depot/pfile1
  $ /path/to/third-party/translate/translate-factored.sh

This generates a set of .proto files in the same directory, each corresponding to one agent.

Now, you can run planner with --ma-factor-dir option, for example:

  $ ./bin/search --ma-factor-dir -p path/to/factored/depot/pfile1 -H lm-cut -s astar

Multi-agent Planner in Processes

The preprocessing is the same as in the previous case (use third-party/translate/translate-factored.sh).

The option --ma-factor switches to multi-agent solver using TCP/IP communication channels.

The configuration of TCP/IP channels is done using --tcp and --tcp-id options. Each agent runs in its own process, so you'll need to run as many ./bin/search planners as you have agents in your problem. The --tcp option defines ip-address:port TCP address, so you need to define as many --tcp options as you have agents and each planner needs to have defined the same --tcp options in the same order. Lastly, --tcp-id defines ID of the current agent, counting from 0 to the number of agents minus 1.

So for example to run the multi-agent multi-process planner on driverlog/pfile1 problem from CoDMAP, you need to

1. Run third-party/translate/translate-factored.sh in the directory with the problem, which will generate two files (for each agent) driver1.proto and driver2.proto.
2. Then you need to choose some available ports and determine the IP address. Let's say we will run both agents on the same machine with ports 10000 and 10001.
3. Run one planner per agent:

  $ ./bin/search --ma-factor --tcp 127.0.0.1:10000 --tcp 127.0.0.1:10001 --tcp-id 0 -p path/to/driver1.proto -o plan0.out -H lm-cut -s astar &
  $ ./bin/search --ma-factor --tcp 127.0.0.1:10000 --tcp 127.0.0.1:10001 --tcp-id 1 -p path/to/driver2.proto -o plan1.out -H lm-cut -s astar &