HMCI News

C A L L F O R P A P E R S

International Workshop on

Planning under Uncertainty and Execution Control for Autonomous Systems

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MARCH 17TH 2006!

June 6-10th, 2006: The English Lake District, Cumbria, United Kingdomn

Held in conjunction with ICAPS'06: 16th International Conference on
Automated Planning & Scheduling

-- Overview

The variety of autonomous systems is increasing both in industry and academia
(AUV, UGV, UAV, Robots, Space Probes), which addresses a broad range of
missions (space exploration, search and rescue, defense and
security,...). Such systems must operate with limited human intervention in a
changing environment and behave efficiently in spite of mission updates,
failure recovery or resource scheduling concerns. Recent experiences show
that simple planning and execution control techniques may endanger the system
when uncertain information or limited knowledge about the environment is
available. In order to achieve a consistent or optimized behavior, planning
and execution control problems, addressed separately in the past, have to be
solved in a combined and coordinated way. The environment being partially
known by an autonomous system, plan generation and execution must consider
uncertain information, biased data, unpredicted or contingent
events. Moreover, planning and execution control have to satisfy different
time scales, depending on mission, system and environment tempos. Lastly,
uncertainty may result from approximations at the planning level or unexpected
events may occur due to a lack of control. Various theoretical and practical
aspects of planning and execution control have been studied so far (Constraint
solving, combinatorial optimization, Markov decision processes, controllable
networks, Petri nets...). However, a broad range of hybrid algorithms,
architecture designs and alternative approaches may be explored during the
workshop.

-- Scope

This multi-disciplinary workshop invites submissions from researchers in
industry and academia. Submissions on planning and execution control
techniques as well as practical experiences with experimental or deployed
systems (including undersea, ground and aerospace systems ...) are
particularly encouraged. Relevant topics include but are not limited to:

Planning, scheduling and execution control techniques with uncertain,
incomplete or biased data, temporal uncertainty, spatial uncertainty or
geolocalisation issues. Robust planning, scheduling and execution control.
Uncertainty and constraints in AI planning, constraint based models,
constraint solving for planning under uncertainty, constrained optimization
techniques and specific consistency management methods (model decomposition,
propagation algorithms, arc-consistency...). Search techniques for planning
under uncertainty, including anytime, online and continuous search; generic
versus domain specific heuristics; hybrid search techniques (local search,
branch and bound, binary searches, greedy algorithms, global search, repair,
.). Time-constrained and time-dependent search techniques. Hybridized
planning approaches: planning and scheduling, planning and execution,
scheduling and execution monitoring, energy-aware planning; planning and
control methods, including model-predictive or adaptive control. Planning
with domain constraints of activities (land, air, undersea, space and other
systems of interest with autonomous behaviors). Real-world applications in
various domains, including undersea, land, air and space. Decision theoretic
planning with uncertainty for autonomous systems. Probabilistic approaches,
Markov Decision Processes, Modeling with Bayesian networks. Planning in
multi-agent systems, including planning for cooperative/collaborative agents;
plan coordination under uncertainty; and robust distributed planning /
execution control / scheduling.

-- Format

The workshop format will consist of technical presentations based on accepted
papers, followed by a discussion session on each paper, led by an assigned
moderator. As for "Planning Under Uncertainty for Autonomous Systems (2005)",
a commentary process will be implemented inspired from the "Int. Workshop on
P&S of Space (2000)". This process allows authors to have relevant feedback on
the paper. This is also an excellent way to initiate discussions between
author and attendees. Position papers will be briefly presented.

-- Submissions

Submissions may be regular papers (10 pages) or short position papers (2
pages). Position papers should focus on relevance to application domain,
positioning, and innovative ideas. For all papers, the format should conform
to the AAAI style template. Papers will be reviewed by at least two referees.

Submissions, in PDF format only, should be sent by email to
mailto:christophe.guettier@sagem.com using the subject line ICAPS'06 Workshop
Submission.

All workshop attendees must be registered for ICAPS'06.

-- Important Dates

The schedule of important dates for the workshop is as follows:

Paper submission deadline 17 March 2006
Notification of acceptance 7 Avril 2006
Camera-ready version deadline 18 April 2006 (hard)
Workshop date 6-7 June 2006

Workshop Chair
Christophe Guettier
SAFRAN SA
Paris, France
christophe.guettier@sagem.com

Co-Chair :
Mark Boddy
Adventium Labs
USA
mark.boddy@adventiumlabs.org

-- Programme Committee
Roy Turner (University of Maine - USA)
Patrick Fabiani (ONERA, France)
Felix Ingrand (LAAS/CNRS, France)
Wheeler Ruml (Palo Alto Research Center, USA)
David Ferguson (Canergie Mellon University - USA)
Gerard Verfaillie (ONERA, France)
Eric Jacopin (CREC Saint-Cyr - France)
Neil Yorke Smith (SRI International, USA)
Mark Wallace (Monash University - Australia)
Abdel-Illah Mouaddib (Universite de Caen - France)
Alessandro Saffiotti (Orebro University - Sweden)
Mark Wallace (Monash University - Australia)
Russel Knight (Jet Propulsion Lab - USA)
Nicolas Meuleau (NASA Ames Research Center - USA)
--

Patrick J. Coppock
Researcher: Philosophy and Theory of Language
Department of Social, Cognitive and Quantitative Sciences
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
Reggio Emilia
Italy
phone: + 39 0522.522404 : fax. + 39 0522.522512
email: coppock.patrick@unimore.it
www: http://coppock-violi.com/work/
faculty: http://www.cei.unimore.it
the voice: http://morattiddl.blogspot.com