# What Makes a Good Symbol for Hybrid Discrete-Continuous Planning?

- Source: arXiv cs.RO
- Published: 2026-10-19T04:00:00.000Z
- RoboHot: https://robohot.news/en/items/oa3qs3arrc8vm0aewi205qvcg
- Original: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.23010

## Summary

The paper proposes defining symbol usefulness from the perspective of the solving algorithm: a good symbol should expose the discrete decisions that simplify solving the original planning problem. The authors first introduce the concept of solver-sufficient symbolization for finite-horizon piecewise-affine systems and design a counterexample-guided symbol invention algorithm, then extend it to optimization objectives whose energy functions are general neural networks. Experiments on simulated and real-robot tasks show that the resulting symbols reduce solving cost while maintaining solution quality, and improve interpretability and controllability.