Based on the initial announcement of the competition, we put together a mailing list of 87 researchers expressing interest. As development of PPDDL, the server, the evaluation criteria, and the practice domains progressed, we kept the community informed by releasing a series of FAQs (May 2003, FAQ 0.1; September 2003, FAQ 0.5; November 2003 FAQ 1.01).
By early 2004, a core group of participants became evident and the competition logistics were finalized. Leading up to June 2004, participants ran their planners on the previously unseen test problems. We tabulated the scores in each of a set of evaluation categories and presented them at ICAPS'04 in Vancouver, Canada.
The following subsections describe the competition's participants, evaluation tracks, and results.