{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"The Nonlinear Nature of Plans","authors":[{"name":"Earl D. Sacerdoti","slug":"earl-d-sacerdoti","given":"Earl D.","family":"Sacerdoti","affiliation":""}],"abstract":"We usually think of plans as linear sequences of actions. This is because plans are usually executed one step at a time. But plans themselves are not constrained by limitations of linearity. This paper describes a new information structure, called the procedural net, that represents a plan as a partial ordering of actions with respect to time. By avoiding premature commitments to a particular order for achieving subgoals, a problemsolving system using this representation can deal easily and directly with problems that are otherwise very difficult to solve.","doi":null,"url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1975/31","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1975/0031.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1975/31.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1975/bibtex/31","volume":{"slug":"1975","title":"Proceedings of the Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 1975","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1975/","year":1975,"location":"Tbilisi, Georgia, USSR","dates":"","editors":"Patrick Winston and Carl Hewitt","isbn":"","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence","doi_prefix":""},"section":"Planning and Problem Solving","track":"Planning and Problem Solving","number":31,"pages":{"first":206,"last":213},"keywords":[],"videos":[],"references":[],"license_note":"Copyright International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence."}