From mmv+@CAMOES.PRODIGY.CS.CMU.EDU Fri Apr 8 18:18:11 EDT 1994 Article: 21507 of comp.ai Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:21507 Newsgroups: comp.ai Path: honeydew.srv.cs.cmu.edu!mmv From: mmv+@CAMOES.PRODIGY.CS.CMU.EDU (Manuela Veloso) Subject: Call for papers Message-ID: Originator: mmv@CAMOES.PRODIGY.CS.CMU.EDU Sender: news@cs.cmu.edu (Usenet News System) Nntp-Posting-Host: camoes.prodigy.cs.cmu.edu Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon Date: Tue, 5 Apr 1994 20:22:39 GMT Lines: 115 CALL FOR PAPERS 1994 AAAI Fall Symposium PLANNING AND LEARNING: ON TO REAL APPLICATIONS November 4-6, 1994 New Orleans, LA Submission deadline - April 15, 1994 Planning and learning research has been progressing in parallel over the past several years, but very few research projects have bridged the two areas. However, there is a great deal of benefit from their interaction, especially when they are concerned with real applications. As the complexity of planning problems increases, it becomes of particular interest to identify learning opportunities in order to automate the acquisition of a planner's knowledge in new applications. At the same time, planning problems are a useful testbed and a source of challenges for learning research. The goal of this symposium is to discuss the implications of practical planning applications on both learning and planning research. The symposium will highlight empirical work on practical problems as an invaluable source for understanding the complexity of the planning task. We expect the analysis and discussion of practical domains to be a solid basis for turning formal planning and learning algorithms into efficient practical ones. As a desirable side effect of the symposium, we also envision the emergence of an initial comparative insight into different planning and learning algorithms from a practical standpoint. In particular we would like to discuss characterizations of application domains, comparisons of performance of different planners on the same task, and practical limitations or power of an approach. Specific topics of interest for the symposium include: - Practical problems: What makes practical real problems different from simplified simulated tasks? What are the implications of practical problems for specific planning algorithms? What are the learning opportunities for specific planning algorithms to handle practical problems efficiently? - Learning and knowledge acquisition: What learning algorithms were developed or extended to address needs of the application? What tools help extend and maintain planning knowledge? - Learning, planning efficiency, and plan quality: What are learning opportunities for a planning algorithm? How can a planner improve its efficiency based on its past experience? What are measures of plan quality in real applications? How can a planner improve the quality of the solutions it generates? - Scaling up: How well does the approach behave in tasks and problems of increasing size and complexity? What issues need to be addressed and what extensions to the framework are demanded by particular applications? - Domain features: What features of a practical domain stretch the representation language of a planner? What dimensions can be used to characterize and compare application domains? How can search spaces be characterized in terms of the application? We encourage submissions and participation of theoretical planning researchers interested in understanding more practical planning problems and the impact of learning in their algorithms, as well as contributions on practical planning applications that shed light on the challenging issues for learning, knowledge acquisition, and representation in planning domains. We especially welcome position papers that present discussions of issues relevant to the workshop as well as those written by teams with complementary research interests. The symposium will consist of presentations, invited talks, and discussion sessions. In order to encourage participation in the discussions, the organizing committee will put together a list of issues of concern from the submissions, and distribute it to the participants in advance. To participate, please submit an extended abstract (up to five pages). Abstracts should be received by April 15, 1994. Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited (but not required) to submit a longer paper for publication in the working notes. Those interested in attending should submit a one- to two-page research statement and a list of relevant publications. Please include your email address in all submissions. Submit four hard copies to: Yolanda Gil Information Sciences Institute University of Southern California 4676 Admiralty Way Marina del Rey, CA 90292 (310) 822-1511 (310) 823-6714 (fax) gil@isi.edu Organizing Committee: Steve Chien, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, chien@aig.Jpl.Nasa.Gov; Yolanda Gil (co-chair), USC/Information Sciences Institute, gil@isi.edu; Drew McDermott, Yale University, mcdermott-drew@cs.yale.edu; Dana Nau, University of Maryland, nau@cs.umd.edu; Manuela Veloso (co-chair), Carnegie Mellon University, veloso@cs.cmu.edu. Important dates: April 15, 1994 Extended abstracts due May 17, 1994 Notification of acceptance mailed September 1, 1994 Final versions of accepted papers due November 4-6, 1994 AAAI Fall Symposium