ARPA-Rome Laboratory Planning Initiative Workshop, Tucson (AZ), 1994:

Toward the Development of Flexible Mixed-Initiative Scheduling Tools

Stephen F. Smith and Ora Lassila

The Robotics Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss work aimed at the development of interactive decision-support tools for complex, large-scale scheduling applications. Our approach is grounded on three basic premises: (1) that system organization and decision-support "services" should directly reflect the inherently reactive nature of decision-making in complex scheduling environments, (2) that diversity in the character and requirements of various user tasks will invariably require different specialized scheduling services in different decision-making contexts, and (3) that problem scale and complexity will necessitate user interaction at aggregate, task-oriented levels. We describe DITOPS, a transportation scheduling tool which integrates a hierarchical modeling infra-structure and reactive scheduling methodology with graphical schedule visualization and manipulation capabilities to provide a flexible interactive environment for construction and management of transportation schedules.

The research reported in this paper has been supported in part by the Advanced Projects Research Agency under contract F30602-90-C-0119 and the CMU Robotics Institute.

Full paper in Postscript