icaps 2011 - SPARK. Scheduling and Planning Applications woRKshop

SPARK. Scheduling and Planning Applications woRKshop

The International Scheduling and Planning Applications woRKshop (SPARK) aims to provide a stable forum on relevant topics connected to application-focused research and the deployment of P&S systems. Application domains that entail planning and scheduling (P&S) problems present a set of interesting modeling, technological and institutional challenges to the AI planning and scheduling community that are becoming more and more frequently affordable for AI. SPARK aims at fostering the practical application of advances made in the AI P&S community.

The websites of the previous editions of the workshop series are available at http://decsai.ugr.es/~lcv/SPARK/.

Call for Papers

Workshop Aim

Application domains that entail planning and scheduling (P&S) problems present a set of compelling challenges to the AI planning and scheduling community, from modelling to technological to institutional issues. New real-world domains and problems are becoming more and more frequently affordable challenges for AI. The international Scheduling and Planning Applications woRKshop (SPARK) was established to foster the practical application of advances made in the AI P&S community.

The SPARK'11 workshop, the fourth in the series, aims to provide a stable forum on relevant topics connected to application-focused research and the deployment of P&S systems. Participation from researchers, practitioners, and users are welcomed.

The best papers from SPARK'07 and '08 were invited to a special issue of the journal Computational Intelligence. Discussions for SPARK'09 and '10 papers are in progress. Higher quality papers from the 2011 edition will be similarly invited to a journal special issue or post-proceedings volume.

Format

The workshop will retain the successful format of previous SPARK editions, consisting of a single full day. In order to foster discussion amongst speakers and attendees, reviewers of submissions will be asked to write a public critique of each paper composed by a set of public questions or thoughts, in addition to regular private comments to the authors and confidential comments to the organizers. These critiques will also be provided to the authors in advance of the workshop and distributed among the workshop attendees.

Each session will consist of presentations of technical papers, their commentaries, and a short discussion on the topic of papers. A joint session with related ICAPS'11 workshops is under consideration. The workshop will feature a panel discussion aiming at wrapping up all the relevant issues and challenges as possible propositions for future editions of the series.

Topics

Starting from the results of the previous editions, SPARK'11 will deepen the debate on application-relevant aspects of P&S theory and practice, with the aim of reporting and discussing experiences relating to deploying P&S systems. Topics of the workshop include, but are not limited to:

Novel domains and benchmark or challenge problems
Experiences in deploying P&S systems, from their conception to their maturity in practice
Comparison with previously existing technologies and/or systems
Integration of operational knowledge from existing legacy components
Integration of multiple sources of knowledge and reasoning schemes (actions, time, resources)
Algorithmic and technological issues
Mixed initiative approaches
User interface design, visualization and explanation
Plan execution and replanning
Handling dynamic and uncertain sources of knowledge
Machine learning methodologies applied to P&S systems
Engineering, deployment, and maintenance
Evaluation, testing, and validation
Assessment of impact on end users
Modelling and domain model acquisition
Submission Information

Submissions may be regular papers (preferably 6 pages, although consideration will be given to papers of up to 8 pages) or short position papers (at most 2 pages). All papers should conform to the AAAI style template. Submissions will be reviewed by at least two referees. Interested contributors are invited to communicate their intent to submit to the workshop organizers.

Submissions, in PDF format, may be submitted via the EasyChair site: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=spark11

All workshop participants must be registered for ICAPS'11.

Important Dates

Submission deadline for papers: February 11, 2011
Notification of acceptance/rejection: March 11, 2011
Final revisions: date to be announced
Workshop date: June 12 or 13, 2011
Organization

Gabriella Cortellessa, ISTC-CNR, Italy
Minh Do, Palo Alto Research Center, USA
Riccardo Rasconi, ISTC-CNR, Italy
Neil Yorke-Smith, American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and SRI International, USA
Programme Committee

Susanne Biundo, Universitat Ulm, Germany
Luis Castillo, IActive Intelligent Solutions, Spain
Steve Chien, NASA JPL, USA
Gabriella Cortellessa, ISTC-CNR, Italy (co-chair)
Andrew Davenport, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA
Mathijs de Weerdt, TU Delft, The Netherlands
Minh Do, PARC, USA (co-chair)
Heng-Soon Gan, University of Melbourne, Australia
Alexandra Kirsch, Technical University of Munich, Germany
Jana Koehler, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland
Tim Menzies, West Virginia University, USA
Nicola Policella, ESA-ESOC, Germany
Rong Qu, University of Nottingham, UK
Riccardo Rasconi, ISTC-CNR, Italy (co-chair)
Biplav Srivastava, IBM Research, India
Patrik Haslum, Australian National University, Canberra
Roman van der Krogt, Cork Constraint Computation Centre, Ireland
Gerard Verfaillie, ONERA, France
Neil Yorke-Smith, American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and SRI International, USA (co-chair)