High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL) is an attempt to standardize Artificial Intelligence (AI) planning languages. It was first developed by Drew McDermott and his colleagues in 1998 (inspired by STRIPS and ADL among others) mainly to make the 1998/2000 International Planning Competition (IPC) possible, and then evolved with each competition. "The adoption of a common formalism for describing planning domains fosters far greater reuse of research and allows more direct comparison of systems and approaches, and therefore supports faster progress in the field. A common formalism is a compromise between expressive power (in which development is strongly driven by potential applications) and the progress of basic research (which encourages development from well-understood foundations). The role of a common formalism as a communication medium for exchange demands that it is provided with a clear semantics."