Nonmonotonic planning temporal constraints

Section III introduces the concept of nonmonotonic planning and outlines its basic features. It is shown that the tractability of nonmonotonic planning is directly related to the form of the operators employed simple propositional operators lead to polynomial-time algorithms, whereas conditional and functional operators lead to NP-hard formulations. In addition, three specific subsections establish the theoretical foundation for the conversion of operational constraints on the plans into temporal orderings of primitive operations. The three classes of constraints considered are (1) temporal ordering of abstract operations, (2) avoidable mixtures of chemical species, and (3) quantitative bounding constraints on the state of processing systems. 

In this section we will present a formalized methodology that allows the transformation of quantitative bounding constraints into constraints on the temporal ordering of operators within the spirit of nonmonotonic planning. 

In this section we will offer several illustrations of the various aspects of nonmonotonic operations planning (discussed in earlier sections) including the following (1) development of hierarchical models for the process and its operations, (2) conversion of constraints to temporal orderings of primitive operations, and (3) synthesis of complete plans. 

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