SoCS 2012 - The Fifth International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS-2012)

SoCS'12 is the Fifth installment of the The International Symposium on Combinatorial Search. Heuristic search and other forms of combinatorial search are currently very active areas of research in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Planning and other areas of Computer Science. The International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS) is meant to bring researchers in such areas together to exchange their ideas and cross-fertilize the field.
Topics of Interest
SoCS is targeting researchers and submissions in all fields that use combinatorial search, including artificial intelligence, planning, robotics, constraint programming, operations research and bioinformatics. Overall, the main focus of SoCS is on the design of novel heuristic search methods, analysis of existing heuristic search methods and their applications. More specifically, topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:
Analysis of search algorithms
Automated synthesis of lower bounds
Bounding and pruning techniques
Combinatorial puzzles
Continuous problem solving
External-memory and parallel search
Incremental and active learning in search
Meta-reasoning and search
Methodology and critiques of current practice
Model-based search
Random vs. systematic search strategy selection
Pattern databases
Portfolios of search algorithms
Real-time search
Search focus in goal-directed problem solving
Search space discretization for continuous state-space problems
Self-configuring and self-tuning algorithms
Symmetry handling
Time, memory, and solution quality trade-offs
Special Scope This Year: Path Planning Competition
Previous SoCS events have provided special focus to Automated Planning and Robotics. This year, SoCS-2012 will include a special session on path planning and will be hosting the 2012 Grid-Based Path Planning Competition (GPPC) organized by Nathan Sturtevant. A call for participation in the competition can be found here. Each competition entry will have a lightly-reviewed 1-page description in the SoCS proceedings. We invite all researchers who use grid-based search to participate in the competition and/or submit their work to SoCS-2012. We are also interested in position papers covering aspects of grid-based search.
Submission Information
We encourage researchers and attendees of SoCS to submit papers to the symposium. Submissions should be in AAAI format and up to 8 pages long (see AAAI guidelines). Submissions should report on substantial, original and new research.
We also encourage submissions of position papers which are intended for the discussion of ideas and concepts related to search. Examples could include thoughtful critiques of the field, historical perspectives and analysis, technical discussions of various implementation techniques, methodological contributions, insightful reports on new and demanding applications, and papers related to the challenge area of this year conference. Position papers can be up to 8 pages in length.
Submissions will be carefully peer-reviewed by at least three reviewers.