AIPS 2002 Workshop on
On-line Planning and Scheduling
Toulouse, France, April 24, 2002

Background

Whereas the first automatic planning and scheduling systems were designed to run in an off-line setting (planning/scheduling and execution performed in sequence), current systems are frequently designed to run in an on-line setting (planning/scheduling and execution running concurrently). Application domains include manufacturing processes, supply chains, workforce organizations, power or communication networks, air or ground transportation, robot control, autonomous spacecraft, and unmanned air vehicles.

New requirements and new technical challenges arise in such a setting. Among them:

• the planning/scheduling problem is no longer a static problem; it becomes a dynamic problem, with typically small changes in the definition of the instance to solve between successive calls to the planning/scheduling function;
• new requirements appear, such as robustness and stability in the face of modeling uncertainties and unexpected events that may occur during execution; these requirements must be combined with the usual requirement of producing a plan/schedule of the best possible intrinsic quality;
• hard and soft constraints on the time taken by the planning/scheduling function are introduced, requiring the planning/scheduling module to monitor and control its reasoning process;
• it becomes necessary to take into account inside the planning/scheduling reasoning the time at which the plan/schedule will be provided and executed.

Topics of interest

The workshop will focus on these requirements and the various ways of satisfying them. Topics of interest include:

• analysis of the on-line setting and of the new arising requirements;
• planning/scheduling as a dynamic problem: methods and algorithms;
• reactive planning/scheduling; repair-based planning/scheduling;
• plan/schedule quality, robustness and stability: how to define, to combine and to optimize them?
• planning/scheduling at various abstraction levels with various temporal horizons;
• constraints on the time taken by the planning/scheduling function : what are they? how to set and to meet them?
• control of the planning/scheduling reasoning; what trade-offs exist between quality and time?
• reasoning about time and within time;
• what trade-offs exist between off-line and on-line computing?
• task sharing and interactions between the planning, scheduling, and execution functions;
• validation and assessment of an on-line planning/scheduling system;
• real-world on-line planning/scheduling applications; selected approaches, implementation issues, experimental results, comparisons between approaches or implementations.

Submissions

Authors are invited to submit either long papers (approximately 8 pages), or short position papers (1-2 pages). Papers must be written in English. They must be submitted as Postscript, PDF, or Word files. They must be sent to the program chair by the 11th of February, 2002, preferably by electronic mail. If electronic submission is not possible, please send 3 copies by surface mail. The first page of the submission must indicate clearly the contact author and provide complete contact information.

Each paper will be reviewed by at least two members of the program committee. Decisions of acceptance or rejection will be sent electronically to the contact author by the 11th of March.

In case of acceptance, the final version will have to be sent by the 25th of March. Final versions will be included in the working notes of the workshop and made electronically available on the workshop web site.

At least one of the authors is expected to attend the workshop and to present the paper. All the workshop participants are also expected to register to the AIPS 2002 conference.

Workshop organization

The workshop will take place on April 24, 2002. It will be both an AIPS 2002 workshop and a workshop of the TCU (Technical Coordination Unit) On-line Planning and Scheduling of thePLANET network (European Network of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence Planning).

To encourage interaction, each presentation will be followed by a short talk of one of the program committee members, the role of which will be to critique some of the proposals, highlight some positive or negative aspects, ask questions, and enliven the debate.

Workshop chair

Gérard Verfaillie
ONERA, Centre de Toulouse
DCSD
2 av. Edouard Belin, BP 4025
31055 Toulouse Cedex 4
France
phone: +33 5 62 25 26 32
fax: +33 5 62 25 25 64

email: verfaillie@cert.fr

Program committee

• Chris Beck, Ilog, France, cbeck@ilog.fr;
• Markus Fromherz, Xerox PARC, USA, fromherz@parc.xerox.com;
• Simon de Givry, Thales Research & Technology, France, simon.degivry@thalesgroup.com;
• Félix Ingrand, LAAS/CNRS, France, felix@laas.fr;
• Ari Jonsson, NASA Ames, USA, ajonsson@arc.nasa.gov;
• Russell Knight, JPL, USA, knight@aig.jpl.nasa.gov;
• François Laburthe, Bouygues/DTN, France, flaburthe@bouygues.com;
• Angelo Oddi, IP-CNR, Italy, oddi@www.ip.rm.cnr.it;
• Jon Spragg, APSOLVE, UK, john.spragg@bt.com;
• Gérard Verfaillie, ONERA, France, verfaillie@cert.fr;
• Shlomo Zilberstein, University of Massachusetts, USA, shlomo@cs.umass.edu.

Important dates

• Submission deadline: February 11, 2002
• Notification of acceptance or rejection: March 11, 2002
• Final version deadline: March 25, 2002
• Workshop: April 24, 2002

Workshop schedule

9.00-10.00: Invited presentation

•  Technologies for Dynamic Scheduling, Stephen F. Smith , CMU, USA

10.00-10.30: Coffee break

10.30-12.30: Long presentations

• Anticipatory Scheduling for Dynamic Job Shop Problems, Jurgen Branke and Dirk C. Mattfeld, Universities of Karlsruhe and Bremen, Germany
• Dynamic task sequencing in temporal problems with uncertainty, M.J. Huguet, P. Lopez, and T. Vidal, LAAS and ENIT, France
• Predictable Multiprocessor Scheduling in Manufacturing Systems underlying Hard Real-Time Constraints, Dania A. El-Kebbe, University of Paderborn, Germany
• Programming Hierarchical Task Networks in the Situation Calculus, Alfredo Gabaldon, University of Toronto, Canada

12.30-14.00: Lunch

14.00-15.00: Short presentations

• Dynamic Scheduling and Plan Execution for Operations Automation in Multi-Satellite Control Centers, Pierrick Grandjean and Pascal Albarede, Astrium, France
• Rescheduling strategies for managing manufacturing systems complexity, Luisa Huaccho Huatuco, University of Oxford, UK
• A constraint optimisation framework for real-time applications, Simon de Givry, Philippe Gérard, Laurent Jeannin, Juliette Mattioli, Nicolas Museux, and Pierre Savéant, Thales R&T, France
• Bringing out IxTeT in the dynamic world ?, Solange Lemai and Romain Trinquart, LAAS, France
• Explanations and repair for solving dynamic scheduling problems,Abdallah Elkhyari, Christelle Guéret, and Narendra Jussien, EMN, France
• Dynamic Arc-Consistency for Interval-based Temporal Reasoning, Malek Mouhoub and Jonathan Yip, University of Lethbridge, Canada

15.00-15.30: Long presentation

• The Challenge of Planning and Execution for Spacecraft Mobile Robots, Gregory A. Dorais, and Yuri Gawdiak, NASA Ames, USA

15.30-16.00: Coffee break

16.00-17.30: Long presentations

• IDEA: Planning at the Core of Autonomous Reactive Agents, Nicola Muscettola, Gregory A. Dorais, Chuck Fry, Richard Levinson, and Christian Plaunt, NASA Ames, USA
• Execution, monitoring and replanning in dynamic environments, Oscar Sapena and Eva Onainda, University of Valencia, Spain
• CLEaR: A Framework for Balancing Deliberative and Reactive Control, Forest Fisher, Daniel M. Gaines, Tara Estlin, Steve Schaffer, and Caroline Chouinard, JPL, USA

17.30-18.00: Final Discussion