Synthesis of timeline-based planning strategies avoiding determinization

Qualitative timeline-based planning models domains as sets of independent, butinteracting, components whose behaviors over time, the timelines, are governedby sets of qualitative temporal constraints (ordering relations), calledsynchronization rules.Its plan-existence problem has been shown to be PSPACE-complete; inparticular, PSPACE-membership has been proved via reduction to thenonemptiness problem for nondeterministic finite automata.However, nondeterministic automata cannot be directly used to synthesizeplanning strategies as a costly determinization step is needed.In this paper, we identify a fragment of qualitative timeline-based planningwhose plan-existence problem can be directly mapped into the nonemptinessproblem of deterministic finite automata, which can thensynthesize strategies.In addition, we identify a maximal subset of Allen's relations that fits intosuch a deterministic fragment.