There are these things generically called "Planners". They allow your computer to, well, make plans, out think you while playing chess, and crush your forces on the battle field (ok maybe not this last one yet.)
If you know what I'm talking about then you can ignore this.
Otherwise, a good starting place is with the > STRIPS < planner.
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Sweet Overview:
Automated planning and scheduling is a branch of artificial intelligence that concerns the realization of strategies or action sequences, typically for execution by intelligent agents, autonomous robots and unmanned vehicles.
Unlike classical control and classification problems, the solutions are complex and must be discovered and optimized in >multidimensional space<.
In known environments with available models, planning can be done offline. >Solutions< can be found and evaluated prior to execution. In dynamically unknown environments, the strategy often needs to be revised online. Models and policies must be adapted.
Solutions usually resort to iterative trial and error processes commonly seen in artificial intelligence. These include >dynamic programming<, >reinforcement learning< and >combinatorial optimization<.