The Common Prototyping Environment: A Framework for Technology Integration, Evaluation and Transition

Advanced Planning Technology: Technological Achievements of the ARPA/Rome Laboratory Planning Initiative

Volume

Book One

Contents

Abstract The ARPA/Rome Laboratory Planning and Scheduling Initiative was organized, in part, around a Common Prototyping Environment (CPE), established to promote experiments involving the integration of planning-related software systems. It included a repository containing contributed software available for sharing and reuse, domain information and sample problems, knowledge representation tools, user-interface tools, distributed knowledge-based communications tools, and tools for metering experiments to evaluate system performance. Following a series of preliminary Technology Integration Experiments (TIEs), the CPE Testbed was developed. It is a platform on which to experimentally integrate planning and scheduling systems, in preparation for their transition to operational prototypes. It supports experiments in which compatible planning tools can communicate across the Internet in a shared knowledge representation "interlingua" (KRSL). It facilitates the collection and evaluation of metrics on individual and combined system behaviors.