Knowledge Engineering for Planning and Scheduling (KEPS)

The goal of the workshop is to promote research in the areas lying between planning & scheduling technology on the one side, and practical applications and problems on the other. Despite recent advances in the area, the performance of planning & scheduling systems is still dependent to a large extent on how problems and domains are formulated, resulting in the need for careful system fine-tuning. Knowledge engineering for planning & scheduling deals with this area, covering the acquisition, formalization, design, validation and maintenance of domain models, and the selection and optimization of appropriate machinery to work on them.

Online Proceedings (keps13-proceedings)

The KEPS workshop is scheduled on the 10th of June in the A5 room at the Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering (DIAG), University of Rome “SAPIENZA”.

09:00-09:10	Welcome
09:10-10:30	Mohammad Shah, Lukas Chrpa, Falilat Jimoh, Diane Kitchin, Lee McCluskey, Simon Parkinson and Mauro Vallati Knowledge Engineering Tools in Planning: State-of-the-art and Future Challenges (25 min, full paper) Rosimarci Basbaum, Tiago Vaquero and José Reinaldo Silva Requirement Analysis Method for Real World in Automated Planning Systems (25 min, full paper) Gerhard Wickler Using Static Graphs in Planning Domains to Understand Domain Dynamics (25 min, full paper) Commentator: Roman Barták
10:30-11:00	Coffee Break
11:00-12:30	Simone Fratini, Nicola Policella and Alessandro Donati A Service Oriented approach for the Interoperability of Mission Planning Systems (20 min, short paper) Giulio Bernardi, Amedeo Cesta, Alberto Finzi and Andrea Orlandini A Knowledge Engineering Environment for P&S with Timelines (25 min, full paper) Gérard Verfaillie and Cédric Pralet A Timeline, Event, and Constraint-based Modeling Framework for Planning and Scheduling Problems (25 min, full paper) Commentator: Nicola Policella
12:50-14:30	Lunch Break
14:30-16:00	Filip Dvorak, Daniel Toropila and Roman Bartak Towards AI Planning Efficiency: Finite-domain State Variable Reformulation (25 min, full paper) Pascal Bercher and Susanne Biundo Encoding Partial Plans for Heuristic Search (20 min, short paper) Alfonso Emilio Gerevini, Anna Roubickova, Alessandro Saetti and Ivan Serina Plan-library Maintenance Policies for Case-Based Planning (25 min, full paper) *Commentator: Lukáš Chrpa*
16:00-16:30	Coffee Break
16:30-17:40	Asma Kilani and Lukas Chrpa Post-planning plan Optimization: Overview and Challenges (25 min, full paper) Jeremy Frank What is a Timeline? (25 min, full paper) Umer Asgher Modeling of a Manufacturing Process Plan and its Optimization (short talk) (10 min) *Commentator: Susanne Biundo*
17:40-18:30	Discussion Panel – ICKEPS 2015

List of Accepted Papers

Jeremy Frank.
What is a Timeline?
Filip Dvorak, Daniel Toropila and Roman Bartak.
Towards AI Planning Efficiency: Finite-domain State Variable Reformulation
Alfonso Emilio Gerevini, Anna Roubickova, Alessandro Saetti and Ivan Serina.
Plan-library maintenance policies for case-based planning
Gérard Verfaillie and Cédric Pralet.
A timeline, event, and constraint-based modeling framework for planning and scheduling problems
Gerhard Wickler.
Using Static Graphs in Planning Domains to Understand Domain Dynamics
Pascal Bercher and Susanne Biundo.
Encoding Partial Plans for Heuristic Search
Rosimarci Basbaum, Tiago Vaquero and Reinaldo Silva.
Requirement Analysis Method for Real World in Automated Planning Systems
Mohammad Shah, Lukas Chrpa, Falilat Jimoh, Diane Kitchin, Lee McCluskey, Simon Parkinson and Mauro Vallati.
Knowledge Engineering Tools in Planning: State-of-the-art and Future Challenges
Asma Kilani and Lukas Chrpa.
Post-planning Plan Optimization: Overview and Challenges
Simone Fratini, Nicola Policella and Alessandro Donati.
A Service Oriented approach for the Interoperability of Mission Planning Systems
Giulio Bernardi, Amedeo Cesta, Alberto Finzi and Andrea Orlandini.
A Knowledge Engineering Environment for P&S with Timelines

Call for Papers

Topics and Objectives

Despite the progress in automated planning and scheduling systems, these systems still need to be fed by careful problem description and they need to be fine-tuned for particular domains and problems. Knowledge engineering for AI planning and scheduling deals with the acquisition, design, validation and maintenance of domain models, and the selection and optimization of appropriate machinery to work on them. These processes impact directly on the success of real planning and scheduling applications. The importance of knowledge engineering techniques is clearly demonstrated by a performance gap between domain-independent planners and planners exploiting domain dependent knowledge.

The KEPS workshop attracts audience interested in bridging the above-described gap between real-life problems and planning and scheduling algorithms. Its topics include domain and problem formulations, languages, knowledge acquisition (e.g. control rules), visualization, validation and analysis of plans/domains, problem (re)formulation etc.

We seek original papers ranging from experience reports to the description of new technology in the following areas:

formulation of domains and problem descriptions (including for example timelines, HTN etc.)
methods and tools for the acquisition of domain knowledge
pre- and post-processing techniques for planners and schedulers
acquisition and refinement of control knowledge
formal languages for domain description
re-use of domain knowledge
translators from other application-area-specific languages to solver-ready domain models (such as PDDL)
formats for specification of heuristics, parameters and control knowledge for solvers
import of domain knowledge from general ontologies
ontologies for describing the capabilities of planners and schedulers
automated reformulation of problems
automated knowledge extraction processes
domain model, problem and plan validation
visualization methods for domain models, search spaces and plans
mapping domain properties and planning techniques
plan representation and reuse
knowledge engineering aspects of plan analysis

Submissions

Two types of papers can be submitted. Full technical papers with the length up to 8 pages are standard research papers. Short application papers with the length up to 4 pages describe a particular system or an application. The papers will be presented at different sessions; the technical papers will have a standard presentation format with commentary, while the application papers will be presented in a dedicated session as a system demonstration (similar to ICKEPS system demo or ICAPS application showcase). All papers should conform to the AAAI style template (http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/author.php). The papers must be submitted in a PDF format via EasyChair system (http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=keps13). Submissions will be reviewed by at least two referees.