D-VAL: An automatic functional equivalence validation tool for planning domain models

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce an approach to validate the functional equivalence of planning domain models. Validating the functional equivalence of planning domain models is the problem of formally confirming that two planning domain models can be used to solve the same set of problems. The need for techniques to validate the functional equivalence of planning domain models has been highlighted in previous research and has applications in model learning, development and extension. We prove the soundness and completeness of our method. We also develop D-VAL, an automatic functional equivalence validation tool for planning domain models. Empirical evaluation shows that D-VAL validates the functional equivalence of most examined domains in less than five minutes. Additionally, we provide a benchmark to evaluate the feasibility and scalability of this and future related work.