News Journal on Planning and Scheduling

The reviewing process of the first article submitted to the ETAI Planning and Scheduling area has been completed. The discussion about this paper still continues and can be accessed at the paper's discussion page. You are invited to participate.

Two of this year's big AI conferences have already completed their refereeing procedures. The papers accepted for AIPS-98 and those related to planning and scheduling and accepted for KR-98 are listed in the bibliography of the "Planning and Scheduling" Electronic Colloquium.

The final proceedings of ECP-97 are now available: Sam Steel, Rachid Alami (eds.), Recent Advances in AI Planning, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, LNAI 1348, Springer Verlag, 1997.
The full bibliographic information of papers published in this volume will soon be available in the UK SIG Planning and Scheduling Bibliography.

Please note that many planning and scheduling related workshops are going to take place this year, the deadlines of which are now approaching. Announcements (and deadlines) are listed in the event section of this issue.

Susanne Biundo
(area editor)

Michael Beetz and Henrik Grosskreutz
Causal Models of Mobile Service Robot Behavior

Abstract: Temporal projection, the process of predicting what will happen when a robot executes its plan, is essential for autonomous service robots to successfully plan their missions. This paper describes a causal model of the behavior exhibited by the mobile robot RHINO when running concurrent reactive plans for performing office delivery jobs. The model represents aspects of robot behavior that cannot be represented by most action models used in AI planning: it represents the temporal structure of continuous control processes, several modes of their interferences, and various kinds of uncertainty. This enhanced expressiveness enables XFRM (McD92; BM94), a robot planning system, to predict, and therefore forestall, various kinds of behavior flaws including missed deadlines whilst exploiting incidental opportunities. The proposed causal model is experimentally validated using the robot and its simulator.

Date of Submission:   December 23, 1997

Austin Tate
Representing Plans as a Set of Constraints -
The < I-N-OVA > Model

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.
< 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.

Remarks:
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.

Date of Submission:   August 21, 1997

Michael Beetz and Henrik Grosskreutz
Causal Models of Mobile Service Robot Behavior

The following articles, which have previously been received, have been accepted by the ETAI after confidential review, thereby achieving proof of high journal quality.

This section lists three current challenges related to planning and scheduling. They were introduced by so-called "challenge papers" at IJCAI-97. More information about the general concept of IJCAI challenge papers is available here.

Submissions of new challenge problems are of course invited for this section.

Can we Bridge Refinement-based and SAT-based Planning Techniques? by Rao Kambhampati. An introduction into the problem and its discussion can be found on Rao's page.

Adaptive Web Sites: An AI Challenge by Mike Perkowitz and Oren Etzioni. The paper is accessible from Oren Etzioni's home page.

The RoboCup Synthetic Agents Challenge 97 by Hiroaki Kitano et al. The paper is available here. More information about RoboCup, the Robot World Cup Soccer Games and Conferences, can be found on this page.

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.
A list of planning related papers accepted for the conference is available here, in the bibliography of the ETAI "Planning and Scheduling" Electronic Colloquium.

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.
The list of accepted papers is available here, in the bibliography of the ETAI "Planning and Scheduling" Electronic Colloquium.   Early Registration Deadline: May 8, 1998.

AAAI-98:   Fifteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
The conference will be held from July 26th to 30th in Madison, Wisconsin, USA.

ECAI-98:   Thirteenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
The conference will be held from August 23th to 28th in Brighton, UK.
Deadlines: paper summaries due: January 20, 1998 · papers due: January 23, 1998.
Notification: April 15, 1998.

UAI-98:   Fourteenth Annual Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence.
The conference will be held from July 24th to 26th in Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
Deadlines: abstracts and paper submission data due: February 23, 1998 · postscript files of papers due: February 26, 1998.
Notification: April 10, 1998.

ISIC/CIRA/ISAS '98:   International Symposia on Intelligent Control and Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation. The symposia will be held from September 14th to 17th at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA.
Paper submission deadline: February 27, 1998.
Notification: May 8, 1998.

AIMSA-98:   Eighth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence: Methodology, Systems, Applications. The conference will be held from September 18th to 20th in Sozopol, Bulgaria.
This year's AIMSA focuses on topics like Planning, Temporal Reasoning, Constraint-based Reasoning, Multi-agent Systems, and Knowledge Acquisition, among others.
Submission deadline: April 3, 1998.

Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation, and Approximation (SARA-98), organised by Thomas Ellman and Fausto Giunchiglia, to be held from May 9th to 12th in Pacific Grove, California, USA. Deadline for the submission of research summaries and extended abstracts is February 17, 1998.

Ninth International Workshop on Principles of Diagnosis (DX-98), organised by Pandurang Nayak and Brian Williams, to be held from May 24th to 27th in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA.
This time, the workshop is specifically interested in submissions from areas that have become increasingly related, like planning and execution, Bayesian reasoning, POMDPs, and hybrid systems.
Deadlines: abstracts due: February 13, 1998 · papers due: February 16, 1998.

Interactive and Collaborative Planning, organised by Karen Myers, Stephen Smith, and George Ferguson, to be held in conjunction with AIPS-98 on June 7 in Pittsburgh, USA.   Paper submission deadline: February 20, 1998.

Planning as Combinatorial Search: Propositional, Graph-based, and Disjunctive Planning Methods, organised by Henry Kautz, Avrim Blum, Subbarao Kambhampati, and Bart Selman, to be held in conjunction with AIPS-98 on June 7 in Pittsburgh, USA.   Statement of interest submission deadline: March 3, 1998.

Integrating Planning, Scheduling, and Execution in Dynamic and Uncertain Environments, organised by Ralph Bergmann and Alexander Kott, to be held in conjunction with AIPS-98 on June 7 in Pittsburgh, USA.   Paper submission deadline: March 3, 1998.

Knowledge Engineering and Acquisition for Planning: Bridging Theory and Practice, organised by Leliane Nunes de Barros, Richard Benjamins, Yuval Shahar, Austin Tate, and Andre Valente, to be held in conjunction with AIPS-98 on June 7 in Pittsburgh, USA.   Paper submission deadline: March 3, 1998.

AI and Information Integration, organised by Craig Knoblock and Alon Levy, to be held in conjunction with AAAI-98 (July 26 - 30) in Madison, Wisconsin, USA.   Submission deadline: March 11, 1998.

Using AI for Knowledge Management and Business Process Reengineering, organised by Rose Gamble and Daniel E. O'Leary, to be held in conjunction with AAAI-98 (July 26 - 30) in Madison, Wisconsin, USA.   Submission deadline: March 11, 1998.

Monitoring and Control of Real-time Intelligent Systems, organised by Abdel-Illah Mouaddib, Shlomo Zilberstein, Francois Charpillet, Eric Grégoire, and Ann Nicholson, to be held in conjunction with ECAI-98 on August 24 in Brighton, UK.   Submission deadline: March 30, 1998.

Binding Environmental Sciences and Artificial Intelligence, organised by Ulises Cortés, René Bañares-Alcántara, Javier Lafuente, Manel Poch, Yoram Reich, and Miquel Sànchez-Marrè, to be held in conjunction with ECAI-98 on August 24 in Brighton, UK.   Paper submission deadline: April 1, 1998.

Practical Reasoning and Rationality, organised by John Bell, Zhisheng Huang, John-Jules Meyer, Mark Ryan, Marek Sergot, and Sam Steel, to be held in conjunction with ECAI-98 on August 24 in Brighton, UK.   Paper and statement of interest submission deadline: April 3, 1998.

Decision Theory Meets Artificial Intelligence - Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, organised by Jerome Lang, Craig Boutilier, Didier Dubois, Hélène Fargier, Frédérick Garcia, Daniel Lehmann, Patrice Perny, Moshe Tennenholtz, Sylvie Thiébaux, Leendert van der Torre, Emil Weydert, and Frans Voorbraak, to be held in conjunction with ECAI-98 on August 24 in Brighton, UK.   Paper submission deadline: April 6, 1998.

Non Binary Constraints, organised by Jean-Charles Regin, Wim Nuijten, Christian Bessière, Claude Le Pape, Francesca Rossi, Peter van Beek, and Pascal van Hentenryck, to be held in conjunction with ECAI-98 on August 25 in Brighton, UK.   Paper submission deadline: April 15, 1998.

Empirical AI, organised by Toby Walsh, Bernhard Nebel, Barbara Smith, and Christian Suttner, to be held in conjunction with ECAI-98 on August 24 in Brighton, UK.   Application form submission deadline: May 1, 1998.

Local Search Techniques for Scheduling Problems by Andrea Schaerf,
to be held at ECAI-98 on Monday, August 24th.

RoboCup, the Robot World Cup Initiative, is an attempt to foster AI and intelligent robotics research by providing a standard problem where a wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined. For this purpose, RoboCup chose to use the soccer game and organise RoboCup: The Robot World Cup Soccer Games and Conferences. The first RoboCup was held in conjunction with IJCAI-97. All about this competition including final results and forthcoming events can be found via the RoboCup home page.
RoboCup-98 will be held from July 2 - 9 in Paris. RoboCup-98 is the official associate event of The World Cup France 98, the real soccer World Cup to be held in France from June 10 - July 12, 1998.

Planning Systems Competition. The 1998 Conference on Artificial Intelligence Planning Systems (AIPS-98:) will host the first planning systems competition. The goal of this competition is to foster development of state-of-the-art planning systems and to encourage the comparison of competing approaches to planning. The competition will be comprised of three tracks, the first two focus on general approaches to operator-based planning for different operator languages and the third one focuses on planners for solving a specific transportation planning domain. More information about the competition, the rules, and the requirements is available at the AIPS-98 home page - click on "Competitions". People who plan to compete should send a short message to planning-contest@isi.edu by January 31, 1998.

Mobile Robot Competition. The Seventh Annual AAAI Mobile Robot Competition will take place from July 28 - 31, in conjunction with AAAI-98, in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. This year, the competition will consist of two events: one rewarding innovation in human-robot interaction, and the other challenging more traditional navigation, task planning, and mapping activities. The mission of the 1998 competition is to serve AAAI, AI-robotics researchers, and the larger AI community by promoting innovative research through events which appeal to media and sponsors, while conducting these events in a format that facilitates comparison of approaches. Most recent information is available at the Mobile Robot Competition home page.

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 in intelligent scheduling. 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
- Genetic algorithms
- Mathematical techniques for optimization
- Hybrid approaches to real scheduling problems

A Ph.D. in a related area of study is preferred. The position also requires:
- Experience in software development and working with software developers
- Good verbal and written communication skills

ShivaSoft's reputation for technical excellence and innovative yet practical solutions is a result of its dedicated personnel and informal, creative atmosphere.
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.

Send your resume marked "Research" to: HR Manager. e-mail: resume@shivasoft.com, fax: (403) 423 0414
Please direct inquires regarding this position to either vasu@shivasoft.com or john@shivasoft.com.

ShivaSoft Inc.
#455 Phipps McKinnon Building
10020 101A Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 3G2
URL: http://www.shivasoft.com

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 KR-98, IJCAI-97, AAAI-97, and ECAI-96, and the papers of AIPS-98, ECP-97, and AIPS-96 are listed in the bibliography of the Electronic Colloquium.