Planning in constraint space: Automated design of functional structures

On the path to full autonomy, robotic agents have to learn how to manipulate their environments for their benefit. In particular, the ability to design structures that are functional in overcoming challenges is imperative. The problem of automated design of functional structures (ADFS) addresses the question of whether the objects in the environment can be placed in a useful configuration. In this work, we first make the observation that the ADFS problem represents a class of problems in high dimensional, continuous spaces that can be broken down into simpler subproblems with semantically meaningful actions. Next, we propose a framework where discrete actions that induce constraints can partition the solution space effectively. Subsequently, we solve the original class of problems by searching over the available actions, where the evaluation criteria for the search is the feasibility test of the accumulated constraints. We prove that with a sound feasibility test, our algorithm is complete. Additionally, we argue that a convexity requirement on the constraints leads to significant efficiency gains. Finally, we present successful results to the ADFS problem.