=====================================
DEADLINE for SUBMISSION: 1 MARCH 2001
=====================================
Dear Colleagues:
Apologies if you receive this message more than once.
I would be most grateful if you could share the appended CFP with your
contacts.
Thank you very much for your time,
Best regards,
Max Garagnani
Special Session Chair
************************************************************************
[Apologies for cross-posting]
[Please forward to anyone who may be interested]
________________________________________________________________________
Call for Papers
Special Session on "Learning and Adapting in AI Planning"
at IC-AI 2001
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, June 25-28, 2001
http://mcs.open.ac.uk/mg343/AI-session.htm
________________________________________________________________________
A Special Session on "Learning and Adapting in AI Planning" will take place
at the Monte Carlo Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada (USA), during June 25-28, as
part of the 2001 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence
(IC-AI'2001, held in conjunction with the International Multiconference:
http://www.ashland.edu/~iajwa/conferences/).
Scope and Overview:
------------------
The past few years have seen dramatic advances in planning algorithms and
paradigms. Recent systems can quickly solve problems that are orders of
magnitude harder than those tackled by the best previous planners. However,
if planning systems are to find wide application in real-world situations,
they need to be able to offer good quality, real-time performances over a
large range of problems. The thesis underlying this session is that in order
to do so, not only must planners be fast, but also be flexible and able to
adapt automatically to different problems and domains.
Two current approaches tackling this issue from different perspectives are:
1) the automatic extraction of domain-specific knowledge through domain
analysis, and 2) the acquisition of domain-specific or search-control
knowledge and procedural abstractions through the employment of learning
techniques. In order to discuss the state of the art of these areas of
research and stimulate their cross-fertilisation, we invite submissions of
papers on one or both of these approaches. More specifically, topics of
particular interest concern the development of planning systems or
algorithms that can learn from past experience, and/or automatically analyse
and adapt to new problem domains, in order to 1) offer good performances
over a wide range of different situations or 2) improve efficiency or plan
quality on the basis of failures and successes.
Topics will include (but not be limited to):
- inference of invariants through domain analysis and hypothesis testing;
- acquisition of domain knowledge in incomplete or inaccurate domains;
- acquisition of strategies for action selection;
- acquisition of heuristics for state-space or plan-space search;
- learning macro-operators;
- learning plan-rewriting rules;
- reinforcement learning for conformant and stochastic planning;
- integration of planning, learning and execution;
and, in general, the use of any learning technique (such as
explanation-based, inductive, supervised, analytic or by-analogy learning)
for improvement and optimisation of current state-of-the-art planning
systems.
Submission Guidelines:
---------------------
Prospective authors are invited to submit their draft papers (about 4 or 5
single-spaced pages) to the Session Chair, Dr. Max Garagnani (address given
below) by ** MARCH 1, 2001 **. The first page of the draft paper should
include: title of the paper, name, affiliation, postal address, telephone
number, Fax and e-mail address of each author. The first page should also
specify the name of the Contact Author and a maximum of 5 keywords.
Notification of acceptance or rejection of submitted papers will be sent to
the e-mail address of the Contact Author by April 1, 2001. The length of the
Camera-Ready papers (if accepted) will be limited to 7 pages. Papers must
not have been previously published or currently submitted for publication
elsewhere.
Electronic submission is preferred. Papers can be submitted via e-mail or
made available on the web. In both cases, documents should be in ZIPPED
PostScript / PDF format and be named "author.zip", using the name of the
Contact Author. An e-mail message containing either the file or its URL
address (e.g. http://..../author.zip) should reach the Session Chair by
Thursday 1st March, 2001. If electronic submission is not possible, three
hard copies should reach the Session Chair by the same date. Notice that the
final version of accepted papers must be made available in PostScript, PDF,
or source form. We strongly encourage to use LaTeX for the preparation of
papers. Other formats are likely to be troublesome.
Evaluation Process:
------------------
Papers will be evaluated for originality, relevance, significance, soundness
and clarity. Each paper will be refereed by (at least) two researchers in
the topical area; written reviews will be returned to authors. The
Camera-Ready papers will be reviewed by one person. Accepted papers are
expected to be presented at IC-AI 2001 during the Special Session.
Publication:
-----------
Accepted papers will be published under the title of the Session in the
IC-AI 2001 Conference Proceedings. The Proceedings will be published by
CSREA Press (ISBN) in hardcopy and will be available at the Conference.
After the conference, some Sessions will be considered for publication as
Special Issues in appropriate journals.
Important Dates:
---------------
- March 1, 2001 (Thursday): Draft papers (about 4 to 5 pages) due
- April 1, 2001 (Sunday): Notification of acceptance/rejection
- May 1, 2001 (Tuesday): Camera-Ready papers and Pre-registration due
- June 25 - 28, 2001: Special Session & IC-AI Conference
Location:
--------
The Special Session will be held in the Monte Carlo Resort Hotel, Las Vegas,
Nevada, USA. This is a mega hotel with excellent conference facilities and
over 3,000 rooms. The Hotel is minutes from the Las Vegas airport, and
offers many vacation and recreational attractions, including: waterfalls,
casino, spa, pools & kiddie pools, sunning decks, Easy River water ride,
wave pool with cascades, lighted tennis courts, health spa (with workout
equipment, whirlpool, sauna, ...), arcade virtual reality game rooms,
nightly shows, snack bars, a number of restaurants, shopping area, bars, ...
Many of these attractions are open 24 hours a day and most are suitable for
families and children. The negotiated hotel's room rate for conference
attendees is very reasonable (79USD + tax) per night (no extra charge for
double occupancy) for the duration of the conference.
International Program Committee:
-------------------------------
Ricardo Aler Mur, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain)
Mike Barley, University of Auckland (New Zealand)
Jim Blythe, USC/Information Science Institute (USA)
Barbara Engelhardt, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (USA)
Maria Fox, University of Durham (UK)
Alfonso Gerevini, University of Brescia (Italy)
Henry Kautz, University of Washington, Seattle (USA)
Sven Koenig, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)
John Levine, University of Edinburgh (UK)
Derek Long, University of Durham (UK)
Lee McCluskey, University of Huddersfield (UK)
Peter Stone, AT&T Labs (USA)
All submissions, queries or comments should be mailed or e-mailed to the
Session Chair:
Dr. Max Garagnani
Department of Computing
The Open University,
Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
U.K.
Phone: +44 (0)1908 654812
Secr.: +44 (0)1908 653037
Fax: +44 (0)1908 652140
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://mcs.open.ac.uk/mg343
************************************************************************
