Symbolic Planning

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Overview

Symbolic planning represents goals, states, and actions explicitly so a system can search for action sequences that achieve a goal. Common approaches use STRIPS or PDDL models with heuristic search, SAT or SMT solving, and hierarchical task planning; other work learns action models and search heuristics. Neuro-symbolic systems connect language and vision models to symbolic planners for robotics, using verification, execution feedback, and replanning to handle real-world tasks. A central challenge is balancing scalable, generalizable planning with reliable grounding and execution when models or observations are incomplete, as evaluations range from IPC benchmarks and puzzles to household robotics.

Latest papers

CardsList

89 papers11 papers in the last four weeks, up 10% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. An Undecidability Proof for the Plan Existence Problem

    Apr 24, 2026Antonis AchilleosSymbolic PlanningDynamic Epistemic Logic

    Department of Computer Science, Reykjavik University, Iceland

  2. SYMBOLIZER: Symbolic Model-free Task Planning with VLMs

    Apr 20, 2026Sami Azirar, Zlatan Ajanovic, Hermann BlumSymbolic PlanningRobot Task Planning

    RWTH Aachen · Robot Perception and Learning Lab, University of Bonn · Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

  3. Recurrent Reasoning on Symbolic Puzzles with Sequence Models

    Apr 19, 2026Gowrav Mannem, Chowdhury Marzia Mahjabin, Jason Chen +2Symbolic PlanningSymbolic Reasoning

    Algoverse AI Research · Cornell University

  4. Model Space Reasoning as Search in Feedback Space for Planning Domain Generation

    Apr 9, 2026James Oswald, Daniel Obolensky, Volodymyr Varha +5Symbolic PlanningLLM Planning

    Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA · IBM Research, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA

  5. Build on Priors: Vision--Language--Guided Neuro-Symbolic Imitation Learning for Data-Efficient Real-World Robot Manipulation

    Apr 4, 2026Pierrick Lorang, Johannes Huemer, Timothy Duggan +3Robot Imitation LearningRobotic Manipulation

    Department of Computer Science, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA · Complex Dynamical Systems, Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH (AIT), Vienna, Austria

  6. Analysis of Optimality of Large Language Models on Planning Problems

    Apr 3, 2026Bernd Bohnet, Michael C. Mozer, Kevin Swersky +4LLM PlanningSymbolic Planning

    Google DeepMind

  7. DUPLEX: Agentic Dual-System Planning via LLM-Driven Information Extraction

    Mar 25, 2026Keru Hua, Ding Wang, Yaoying Gu +1Robot Task PlanningLLM Agent Planning

    Midea Corporate Research Center, Midea Group, Foshan, China · Robot Science and Engineering Department, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China

  8. On the Ability of Transformers to Verify Plans

    Mar 20, 2026Yash Sarrof, Yupei Du, Katharina Stein +3TransformerSymbolic Planning

    Saarland University · Australian National University · University of Toulouse / LAAS-CNRS

  9. When both Grounding and not Grounding are Bad -- A Partially Grounded Encoding of Planning into SAT (Extended Version)

    Mar 19, 2026João Filipe, Gregor BehnkeSymbolic Planning

    University of Amsterdam, Institute for Logic Language and Computation, The Netherlands

  10. RPMS: Enhancing LLM-Based Embodied Planning through Rule-Augmented Memory Synergy

    Mar 18, 2026Zhenhang Yuan, Shenghai Yuan, Lihua XieLarge Language Model-Based Robot PlanningLLM Agent Memory

    School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

  11. Edit-As-Act: Goal-Regressive Planning for Open-Vocabulary 3D Indoor Scene Editing

    Mar 18, 2026Seongrae Noh, SeungWon Seo, Gyeong-Moon Park +13D Scene EditingText-Guided 3D Scene Editing

    Korea University

  12. Planning as Goal Recognition: Deriving Heuristics from Intention Models -- Extended Version

    Mar 16, 2026Giacomo Rosa, Jean Honorio, Nir Lipovetzky +1Symbolic PlanningAutomated Heuristic Design

    The University of Melbourne · RMIT University

  13. Contextual Graph Representations for Task-Driven 3D Perception and Planning

    Mar 12, 2026Christopher AgiaRobot Task PlanningGraph-Based Planning

  14. Novelty Adaptation Through Hybrid Large Language Model (LLM)-Symbolic Planning and LLM-guided Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 11, 2026Hong Lu, Pierrick Lorang, Timothy R. Duggan +2RoboticsNeuro-Symbolic Reasoning

    Department of Computer Science, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA · Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Vienna, Austria

  15. GenePlan: Evolving Better Generalized PDDL Plans using Large Language Models

    Mar 10, 2026Andrew Murray, Danial Dervovic, Alberto Pozanco +1Symbolic PlanningLLM-Based Program Synthesis

    J.P. Morgan AI Research

  16. Scale-Plan: Scalable Language-Enabled Task Planning for Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Teams

    Mar 9, 2026Piyush Gupta, Sangjae Bae, Jiachen Li +1Large Language Model-Based Robot PlanningSymbolic Planning

    Honda Research Institute, San Jose, CA 95134, USA. · Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.

  17. Bilevel Planning with Learned Symbolic Abstractions from Interaction Data

    Mar 9, 2026Fatih Dogangun, Burcu Kilic, Serdar Bahar +1Hierarchical PlanningSymbolic Planning

    Department of Computer Engineering, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Türkiye. · Department of Computer Engineering, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Türkiye.

  18. Agentic LLM Planning via Step-Wise PDDL Simulation: An Empirical Characterisation

    Mar 6, 2026Kai Göbel, Pierrick Lorang, Patrik Zips +1LLM PlanningLLM Agent Planning

    AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Vienna, Austria

  19. BioProAgent: Neuro-Symbolic Grounding for Constrained Scientific Planning

    Mar 1, 2026Yuyang Liu, Jingya Wang, Liuzhenghao Lv +1Autonomous ExperimentationNeuro-Symbolic Planning

    School of AI for Science, Peking University · School of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Peking University · School of Computer Science, Peking University

  20. Semantic Partial Grounding via LLMs

    Feb 25, 2026Giuseppe Canonaco, Alberto Pozanco, Daniel BorrajoSymbolic Planning

    JPMorgan Chase & Co. AI Research

  21. CoReLIN: Constraint-based Reasoning for Zero-shot Lifelong Interactive Navigation

    Feb 23, 2026Apoorva Vashisth, Manav Kulshrestha, Pranav Bakshi +3Long-Horizon Robotic ManipulationLarge Language Model-Based Robot Planning

    Purdue University · IIT Kharagpur · DEVCOM Army Research Lab +1

  22. The Price Is Not Right: Neuro-Symbolic Methods Outperform VLAs on Structured Long-Horizon Manipulation Tasks with Significantly Lower Energy Consumption

    Feb 22, 2026Timothy Duggan, Pierrick Lorang, Hong Lu +1Long-Horizon Robotic ManipulationRobot Learning

    Human-Robot Interaction Lab, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA. · AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Center for Vision, Automation & Control, Vienna, Austria.

  23. Differentiable Symbolic Planning: A Neural Architecture for Constraint Reasoning with Learned Feasibility

    Feb 19, 2026Venkatakrishna Reddy OrugantiNeuro-Symbolic PlanningNeuro-Symbolic Reasoning

    Sithara Inc., Plano, Texas, USA

  24. TGPO: Trace-Guided Policy Optimization for Robot Task Planning via Verifiable Subgoal Generation

    Feb 12, 2026Zhihong Liu, Yang Li, Renming Huang +3Robot Task PlanningLarge Language Model-Based Robot Planning

    Shanghai Innovation Institute · Xi’an Jiao Tong University · Nankai University +1

  25. From Perception to Symbolic Task Planning: Vision-Language Guided Human-Robot Collaborative Structured Assembly

    Jan 2, 2026Yanyi Chen, Min DengHuman-Robot CollaborationRobotic Assembly

    Department of Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA

  26. Symmetry-Aware Transformer Training for Automated Planning

    Aug 11, 2025Markus Fritzsche, Elliot Gestrin, Jendrik SeippContrastive LearningTransformer

    Linköping University, Sweden

  27. How Far Are LLMs from Symbolic Planners? An NLP-Based Perspective

    Aug 2, 2025Ma'ayan Armony, Albert Meroño-Peñuela, Gerard CanalLLM PlanningLLM Evaluation

    Department of Informatics, King’s College London

  28. ViPlan: A Benchmark for Visual Planning with Symbolic Predicates and Vision-Language Models

    May 19, 2025Matteo Merler, Nicola Dainese, Minttu Alakuijala +5Large Language Model-Based Robot PlanningSymbolic Planning

    Fondazione Bruno Kessler · Department of Computer Science, Aalto University · Department of Mathematics, Università degli Studi di Padova

  29. Decidable Reasoning About Time in Finite-Domain Situation Calculus Theories

    Feb 5, 2024Till Hofmann, Stefan Schupp, Gerhard LakemeyerLogical ReasoningReachability Analysis

    RWTH Aachen University, Germany · University of Oxford, United Kingdom · TU Wien, Austria