[Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this email.]


*The submission deadline is extended to March 17th*



Planning, Search, and Optimization (PlanSOpt)

The field of AI planning shares many parallels with a diverse range of
optimization areas, such as mathematical programming, constraint
programming, and stochastic optimization. However, the potential
integration of concepts and techniques used in these fields remains
largely unexplored. For instance, one of the most popular strategies
for solving planning problems is A* search, which is similar in many
ways to a branch-and-bound strategy that is predominantly used to solve
mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problems. This opens the
possibility of adapting several auxiliary methods to speed up search
(including, e.g., merging, landmarks, and cutting planes algorithms)
from one area to the other.


Topics and Objectives

In this workshop, we aim to explore the similarities and differences of
AI and optimization, and ways that we can leverage the methodologies
from one field to the other. An important part of this workshop is
extending our knowledge of closely related fields, and positioning
ourselves as a community to introduce researchers of these fields to AI
planning concepts.

There have been some pioneering efforts at using optimization
techniques for planning; notably in compilation approaches to MILP
and/or constraint programming. We welcome submissions on these topics
and more, including (but not limited to):

  - formulating the heuristic generation and selection as an
    optimization problem;
  - using MILP algorithms and techniques for efficient computation of
    heuristics in classical planning;
  - hybridization of optimization techniques (e.g,. linear, mixed
    integer linear, constraint, nonlinear programming, and
    satisfiability modulo theory) to handle planning problems involving
    a combination of both logical and numeric constraints;
  - integration of existing optimization techniques with planning to
    improve search performance.


The goal of this workshop is to provide a forum for researchers in AI
planning, search, and optimization to investigate novel problems and
solution approaches, as well as to discuss opportunities and challenges
arising when applying optimization to planning and vice-versa. We
encourage applications of optimization technology to planning/search
problems, applications of traditional planning/search technology (e.g.,
variations of A* search) to optimization problems, and hybrid
approaches that combine planning and optimization. This workshop is
complementary to HSDIP, since the topic of heuristic search is highly
relevant for the optimization community. However, PlanSOpt will focus
more deeply on the language, ideas and methods from optimization
fields. The workshop will therefore be more accessible to conference
attendees from the general optimization community, and will provide an
excellent entry into AI planning topics.


Submissions

Please format submissions in AAAI style (see instructions in the Author
Kit at http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Templates/AuthorKit17.zip) and
keep them to at most 8 pages excluding references. Authors
considering submitting to the workshop papers rejected from the main
conference, please ensure you do your utmost to address the comments
given by ICAPS reviewers. Please do not submit papers that are already
accepted for the main conference to the workshop.

Submissions should be made through EasyChair at the following URL:
- https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=plansopt17


Deadlines and Dates

Submission deadline: March 17th, 2017
Notification: April 14th, 2017
Camera-ready version: May 10th, 2017
Workshop: June 19th or 20th, 2017

Every submission will be reviewed by three members of the program
committee according to the usual criteria such as relevance to the
workshop, significance of the contribution, and technical quality. The
review process will be single-blind: the authors' identity will be
known to the reviewers, but not vice versa.

Submissions sent to other conferences are allowed if this does not
interfere with their submission rules. Submissions under double-blind
review in another conference must be anonymous. In particular,
submissions of papers under revision in IJCAI17 must be anonymous.

The workshop is meant to be an open and inclusive forum, and we
encourage papers that report on work in progress or that do not fit
the mold of a typical conference paper.

At least one author of each accepted paper must attend the workshop in
order to present the paper. Authors must register for the ICAPS main
conference in order to attend the workshop. There will be no separate
workshop-only registration.


Workshop Organizers

Andre A. Cire, University of Toronto, Canada
Christina Burt, Zuse Institute Berlin, Germany
Florian Pommerening, University of Basel, Switzerland
Christian Muise, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA