|
|
News Journal onPlanning and Scheduling |
| Vol.1, No.3 | Editor: Susanne Biundo | October 7, 1997 |
Editorial |
The discussion of the first paper submitted to the ETAI area Planning and Scheduling by Austin Tate got started. You can see the paper and watch the discussion process via the review section and you are invited to send your contributions.
In the ETAI Area Reasoning about Actions and Change, a discussion with Wolfgang Bibel on topics of his invited IJCAI-97 paper, entitled Let's plan it deductively, is going on. You are invited to participate in this discussion and to subscribe to the respective discussion mailinglist.
The Electronic Colloquium provides a new bibliographic service, namely access to the Planning and Scheduling bibliography of the UK Planning and Scheduling SIG. This bibliography - built and maintained by James Soutter - lists more than 3000 publications in planning and scheduling and some related areas. It does not only allow to search for publications, but provides a comfortable interface for users to add new articles online.
ECP-97, the Fourth European Conference on Planning, held from September 24th to 26th in Toulouse, was a really good conference. Sam Steel, the program chair, had made a comprehensive and high-quality scientific programme. 90 papers were submitted, 35 of them accepted. The list of the ECP-97 conference papers can be found in the bibliography of the Electronic Colloquium. The final proceedings will be published in the LNAI series of Springer Verlag and will be soon available.
Your announcements and contributions to this News Journal and the Electronic Colloquium are always welcome and if you consider to submit a paper, don't hesitate! You'll find the call here.
Susanne Biundo
Austin Tate
Abstract:
This paper presents an approach to representing and manipulating plans based on a model of plans as a set of constraints. The < I-N-OVA > ( Issues - Nodes - Orderings/Variables/Auxiliary) model is used to characterise the plan representation used within O-Plan and to relate this work to emerging formal analyses of plans and planning. This synergy of practical and formal approaches can stretch the formal methods to cover realistic plan representations, as needed for real problem solving, and can improve the analysis that is possible for production planning systems.
Remarks:
Date of Submission: August 21, 1997
The planning and scheduling papers of IJCAI-97, AAAI-97, and ECAI-96, and the papers of AIPS-96 have already been included into this library.
Many thanks to James Soutter and Christoph Endres!!
Rachid Alami was the responsible for the perfect organisation of this conference and the excellent local arrangements, which all participants very much enjoyed. Finally, the lovely late summer and the charm of this beautiful city in the South of France had also part in the special atmosphere of this all around successful ECP.
The series of these conferences will of course be continued: ECP-99 will be held in Durham, United Kingdom, in September 1999.
(area editor)
Review Section: Articles and Debates
Received Research Articles on Planning and Scheduling
More information about submission, discussion, and reviewing can be found here.
Representing Plans as a Set of Constraints -
The < I-N-OVA > Model
< I-N-OVA > is intended to act as a bridge to improve dialogue between a number of communities working on formal planning theories, practical planning systems and systems engineering process management methodologies. It is intended to support new work on automatic manipulation of plans, human communication about plans, principled and reliable acquisition of plan information, and formal reasoning about plans.
This paper was previously a conference paper at AIPS-96.
There are detailed models and suggestions for the usage of < I-N-OVA > on the Web available via this page.
Accepted Research Articles on Planning and Scheduling
The following articles, which have previously been received, have been accepted by the ETAI after confidential review, thereby achieving proof of high journal quality.
Please click here for a list of all accepted articles.
Debates About Received Articles |
Austin Tate
Representing Plans as a Set of Constraints - The < I-N-OVA > Model
Challenges |
Can we Bridge Refinement-based and SAT-based Planning Techniques?
This challenge problem is described in a paper by Rao Kambhampati, which has been presented as a "challenge paper" at this year's IJCAI. An introduction into the problem and its discussion can be found on Rao's page.
Adaptive Web Sites: An AI Challenge by Perkowitz and Etzioni.
The RoboCup Synthetic Agents Challenge 97 by Kitano et al.
Events |
KR-98: Sixth International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning.
The conference will be held from June 2nd to 5th in Trento, Italy.
Deadlines:
electronic abstracts due: November 26, 1997 ·
extended abstracts due: December 1, 1997.
AIPS-98: Fourth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Planning Systems.
The conference will be held from June 7th to 10th at Carnegy Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA.
Deadlines:
workshop proposals due: October 14, 1997 ·
conference papers due: December 9, 1997.
AAAI-98: Fifteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
The conference will be held from July 26th to 30th in Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
Deadlines:
electronic title page due: January 20, 1998 ·
papers due: January 22, 1998.
ECAI-98: Thirteenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
The conference will be held from August 23th to 28th in Brighton, UK.
Deadlines:
workshop and tutorial proposals due: November 1, 1997 ·
technical papers due: January 23, 1998.
Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space, organised by Steve Chien, to be held from October 28th to 30th in Oxnard, CA, USA.
Industrial Constraint-Directed Scheduling, organised by Andrew Davenport and Chris Beck, to be held in conjunction with the Third International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP-97) on November 1st at Schloss Hagenberg, Austria.
Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation, and Approximation (SARA-98), organised by Tom Ellman, to be held from May 9th to 12th in Pacific Grove, California, USA.
Deadline for the submission of research summaries and extended abstracts is January 20, 1998.
Jobs |
This section provides current offers as well as access to sites where relevant jobs are regularly announced. It invites your submissions.
ShivaSoft Inc., a scheduling-software developer in Edmonton, Canada, is currently looking for candidates to fill a research position. They are particularly interested in acquiring more expertise in constraint programming. More about this offer ...
Many job offers in planning, scheduling, and constraint reasoning can be found on this page.
Job openings at the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (AIAI) at the University of Edinburgh are always announced on this page. They include occasional positions and studentships in the Knowledge-Based Planning Group at AIAI.
ShivaSoft Inc.
Research Position - Intelligent Scheduling
ShivaSoft Inc. is a leading developer of advanced planning and scheduling
systems for manufacturing companies. The Shiva(tm) system has been
successfully installed in numerous large companies in the automotive,
metals, repetitive manufacturing, and process industries.
To maintain our technical leadership in a very competitive marketplace we
require a highly motivated researcher to join our Edmonton based development
team. The position offers an excellent opportunity for those interested in
applying academic training to complex manufacturing scheduling models.
Demonstrated expertise in the following areas is essential:
- Constraint logic programming
A Ph.D. in a related area of study is preferred.
The position also requires:
ShivaSoft's reputation for technical excellence and innovative yet
practical solutions is a result of its dedicated personnel and informal,
creative atmosphere.
Send your resume marked "Research" to: HR Manager.
e-mail: resume@shivasoft.com,
fax: (403) 423 0414
ShivaSoft Inc.
- Genetic algorithms
- Mathematical techniques for optimization
- Hybrid approaches to real scheduling problems
- Experience in software development and working with software developers
- Good verbal and written communication skills
Competitive salary and benefits are offered. This is a permanent position,
and opportunities exist for career development in research and other
functional areas. ShivaSoft Inc. is an equal opportunity employer.
Please direct inquires regarding this position to either vasu@shivasoft.com
or john@shivasoft.com.
#455 Phipps McKinnon Building
10020 101A Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 3G2
URL: http://www.shivasoft.com
New Papers
J. Christopher Beck, Andrew J. Davenport, Mark S. Fox
Five Pitfalls of Empirical Scheduling Research”, in:
Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Constraint Programming (CP-97), 1997.
J. Christopher Beck, Andrew J. Davenport, Edward M. Sitarski, Mark S. Fox
Texture-Based Heuristics for Scheduling Revisited., in:
Proceedings of the Fourteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-97), 1997.
J. Christopher Beck, Andrew J. Davenport, Edward M. Sitarski, Mark S. Fox
Beyond Contention: Extending Texture-Based Scheduling Heuristics., in:
Proceedings of the Fourteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-97), 1997.
The planning and scheduling papers of IJCAI-97, AAAI-97, and ECAI-96, and the papers of ECP-97 and AIPS-96 are listed in the bibliography of the Electronic Colloquium.