Felipe Meneguzzi
Publications
Online Goal Recognition using Path Signature and Dynamic Time Warping
Online goal recognition in continuous domains poses two central challenges: efficiently encoding large trajectories and effectively comparing them. Recent work addresses these challenges by using custom state-space representations and metrics to compare observations against hypotheses. However, these approaches often overlook well-established encoding techniques used in other domains that offer substantial advantages. This paper introduces a novel method for online goal recognition that leverages path signatures, a compact, expressive representation of rough path theory that efficiently captures key semantic features of trajectories, enabling more meaningful comparisons between them. Experiments show that our method consistently outperforms the state of the art in predictive accuracy and online planning efficiency, while remaining competitive offline.
Hierarchical Task Network Planning with LLM-Generated Heuristics
HTN planning is a variation of classical planning where, instead of searching for a linear sequence of actions, an algorithm decomposes higher-level tasks using a method library until only executable actions remain. On one hand, this allows one to introduce domain knowledge that can speed up the search for a solution through the method library. On the other hand, it creates challenges that go beyond those of classical state-space search. While recent research produced a number of heuristics and novel algorithms that speed up HTN planning, these heuristics are not yet as informative as those available in classical planning algorithms. We investigate whether large language models (LLMs) can generate effective search heuristics for HTN planning, extending the methodology of CorrĂȘa, Pereira, and Seipp (2025) from classical to hierarchical planning. Using the Pytrich planner on six standard total-order HTN benchmark domains, we evaluate heuristics generated by nine LLMs under domain-specific prompting and compare them against the TDG and LMCount domain-independent baselines and the PANDA planner. Our results show that LLM-generated heuristics nearly match the coverage of the best available HTN planner, while substantially reducing search effort on 83% of shared problems.
Beyond Mimicry: Toward Lifelong Adaptability in Imitation Learning
Imitation learning stands at a crossroads: despite decades of progress, current imitation learning agents remain sophisticated memorisation machines, excelling at replay but failing when contexts shift or goals evolve. This paper argues that this failure is not technical but foundational: imitation learning has been optimised for the wrong objective. We propose a research agenda that redefines success from perfect replay to compositional adaptability. Such adaptability hinges on learning behavioural primitives once and recombining them through novel contexts without retraining. We establish metrics for compositional generalisation, propose hybrid architectures, and outline interdisciplinary research directions drawing on cognitive science and cultural evolution. Agents that embed adaptability at the core of imitation learning thus have an essential capability for operating in an open-ended world.
GRAIL: Goal Recognition Alignment through Imitation Learning
Understanding an agent's goals from its behavior is fundamental to aligning AI systems with human intentions. Existing goal recognition methods typically rely on an optimal goal-oriented policy representation, which may differ from the actor's true behavior and hinder the accurate recognition of their goal. To address this gap, this paper introduces Goal Recognition Alignment through Imitation Learning (GRAIL), which leverages imitation learning and inverse reinforcement learning to learn one goal-directed policy for each candidate goal directly from (potentially suboptimal) demonstration trajectories. By scoring an observed partial trajectory with each learned goal-directed policy in a single forward pass, GRAIL retains the one-shot inference capability of classical goal recognition while leveraging learned policies that can capture suboptimal and systematically biased behavior. Across the evaluated domains, GRAIL increases the F1-score by more than 0.5 under systematically biased optimal behavior, achieves gains of approximately 0.1-0.3 under suboptimal behavior, and yields improvements of up to 0.4 under noisy optimal trajectories, while remaining competitive in fully optimal settings. This work contributes toward scalable and robust models for interpreting agent goals in uncertain environments.