Domain-general simulation and planning with physical schemas

Physical schemas are representations of simple physically grounded relationships and interactions such as “move”, “push”, and “contain”. We believe they are the conceptual primitives an agent employs to understand its environment. Physical schemas can be used at varying levels of abstraction across a variety of domains. We have designed a domain-general agent simulation and control testbed based on physical schemas. If a domain can be described in physical terms as agents moving and applying force, it can be simulated in this testbed. Furthermore, we show that physical schemas can be viewed as the basis for abstract plans and a domain-general planner, GRASP. Our simulation and planning system is currently being evaluated in a continuous, dynamic, and adversarial domain based on the game of Capture the Flag. The paper concludes with an example of how GRASP was applied to the problem of Course of Action generation and evaluation