---
title: "On Weak Stubborn Sets in Classical Planning"
authors:
  - "Silvan Sievers"
  - "Martin Wehrle"
doi: "10.24963/ijcai.2021/573"
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2021/573"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2021/0573.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Thirtieth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 2021
pages: "4167-4174"
track: "Main Track"
keywords:
  - "Planning and Scheduling: Theoretical Foundations of Planning"
  - "Planning and Scheduling: Planning Algorithms"
  - "Planning and Scheduling: Search in Planning and Scheduling"
---

# On Weak Stubborn Sets in Classical Planning

Silvan Sievers, Martin Wehrle

*Proceedings of the Thirtieth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 4167-4174. DOI: [10.24963/ijcai.2021/573](https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2021/573)

## Abstract

Stubborn sets are a pruning technique for state-space search which is well established in optimal classical planning. In this paper, we show that weak stubborn sets introduced in recent work in planning are actually not weak stubborn sets in Valmari's original sense. Based on this finding, we introduce weak stubborn sets in the original sense for planning by providing a generalized definition analogously to generalized strong stubborn sets in previous work. We discuss the relationship of strong, weak and the previously called weak stubborn sets, thus providing a further step in getting an overall picture of the stubborn set approach in planning.