Scheduling and Planning Applications woRKshop (SPARK)

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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.

This is the 6th edition of SPARK. The websites of the previous editions of the workshop series are available at http://decsai.ugr.es/~lcv/SPARK/.

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'12 workshop, the sixth 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'10 and '11 papers are in progress. Higher quality papers from the 2012 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 the ICAPS'12 TAMPRA workshop is underconsideration. The SPARK'12 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'12 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

Accepted Papers

• Constraint-based Scheduling for Closed-loop Production Control in RMSs
  Emanuele Carpanzano, Andrea Orlandini, Anna Valente, Amedeo Cesta, Fernando Marinò, Riccardo Rasconi
• Planning Task Validation
  Maria Viviane Menezes, Leliane N. Barros and Silvio Do Lago Pereira
• Planning and Scheduling Ship Operations on Petroleum Ports and Platforms
  Tiago Stegun Vaquero, Gustavo Costa, Flavio Tonidandel, Haroldo Igreja, J. Reinaldo Silva and Chris Beck
• On Estimating the Return of Resource Aquisitions through Scheduling: An Evaluation of Continuous-Time MILP Models to Approach the Development of Offshore Oil Wells
  Thiago Serra, Gilberto Nishioka and Fernando Marcellino
• Digital Cityscapes: Challenges and Opportunities for Planning & Scheduling
  Ming C Lin and Dinesh Manocha
• EmergencyGrid – Planning in Convergence Environments
  Natasha C. Queiroz Lino, Clauirton de A. Siebra, Manoel Amaro and Austin Tate
• Planning for perception and perceiving for decision: POMDP-like online target detection and recognition for autonomous UAVs
  Caroline Ponzoni Carvalho Chanel, Florent Teichteil-Königsbuch and Charles Lesire
• Composition of Flow-Based Applications with HTN Planning
  Shirin Sohrabi, Octavian Udrea, Anand Ranganathan and Anton Riabov
• PELEA: a Domain-Independent Architecture for Planning, Execution and Learning
  César Guzmán, Vidal Alcázar, David Prior, Eva Onaindia, Daniel Borrajo, Juan Fernández-Olivares and Ezequiel Quintero

Workshop Schedule

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 formatting guidelines and style 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: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=spark12

All workshop participants must be registered for ICAPS'12 or one of the co-located conferences.

Important Dates

• Submission deadline for papers: March 15th, 2012 //EXTENDED!!!
• Notification of acceptance/rejection: April 13th, 2012
• Camera-ready version due: April 29th 2012

Organizers

• Luis Castilo Vidal, IActive, Spain
• Minh Do, NASA Ames Research Center / SGT Inc., USA
• Riccardo Rasconi, ISTC-CNR, Italy

Programme Committee

• Susanne Biundo, Universität Ulm, Germany
• Mark Boddy, Adventium, USA
• Luis Castillo, IActive Intelligent Solutions, Spain (co-chair)
• Gabriella Cortellessa, ISTC-CNR, Italy
• Mathijs de Weerdt, TU Delft
• Minh Do, NASA Ames Research Center / SGT Inc., USA (co-chair)
• Patrik Haslum, NICTA, Australia
• Jana Koehler, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland
• Robert Morris, NASA Ames, USA
• Nicola Policella, ESA-ESOC, Germany
• Riccardo Rasconi, ISTC-CNR, Italy (co-chair)
• David Smith, NASA Ames, USA
• Gérard Verfaillie, ONERA, France
• Neil Yorke-Smith, American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and SRI International, USA
• Terry Zimmerman, SIFT, USA