WS 6: Workshop on Constraint Satisfaction Techniques (COPLAS)

The workshop aims at providing a forum to discuss novel issues on planning, scheduling, and constraint satisfaction problems. Solutions to many real-world problems need to integrate plan synthesis capabilities with time and resource allocation, which can be efficiently managed by constraint satisfaction and OR techniques. Formulations of P&S problems as CSPs, resource and temporal global constraints, and inference techniques are of particular interest of COPLAS.

The full COPLAS proceedings are now available.

Schedule

Objectives and Topics

The areas of AI planning and scheduling have seen important advances thanks to the application of constraint satisfaction models and techniques. Especially solutions to many real-world problems need to integrate plan synthesis capabilities with resource allocation, which can be efficiently managed by using constraint satisfaction techniques. The workshop will aim at providing a forum for researchers in the field of Artificial Intelligence to discuss novel issues on planning, scheduling, constraint programming/constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) and many other common areas that exist among them. On the whole, the workshop will mainly focus on managing complex problems where planning, scheduling and constraint satisfaction must be combined and/or interrelated, which entails an enormous potential for practical applications and future research. COPLAS is ranked as CORE B in ERA Conference Ranking and it is covered in selected Elsevier database products.

We invite submissions on any topic relevant to the workshop, particularly those that combine techniques from both perspectives, planning & scheduling, and constraint programming. This includes but is not limited to:

1. Planning (constraint management, temporal planning, multi-criteria planning, planning with resources, reformulations to CSP etc.),
2. Scheduling (global constraints, innovative models, robust solutions, energy efficient scheduling, etc.),
3. Integration of planning and scheduling (from a CSP perspective),
4. Temporal CSPs,
5. SAT and ASP based techniques,
6. Metaheuristics techniques,
7. Hybrid CP and OR techniques for P&S,
8. Real life applications

We are pleased to accept papers based on recent publications from other (non ICAPS) venues such as specialized conferences (CP, CP-AI-OR, AAMAS, ...), or general AI conferences (AAAI, IJCAI, ECAI, ...). This must be however clearly indicated in the submitted paper.

Accepted Papers

• Revisiting Dynamic Constraint Satisfaction for Model-Based Planning
  Jeremy Frank.
• Decentralized Cooperative Metaheuristic for the Dynamic Berth Allocation Problem
  Eduardo Lalla-Ruiz, Belén Melián-Batista and J. Marcos Moreno-Vega.
• Combining Heuristics to Accelerate Forward Partial-Order Planning
  Oscar Sapena, Eva Onaindía and Alejandro Torreño.
• A Metaheuristic Technique for Energy-Efficiency in Job-Shop Scheduling
  Joan Escamilla, Miguel A. Salido, Adriana Giret and Federico Barber.
• A Constraint-based Approach for Planning UAV Activities.
  Christophe Guettier and Francois Lucas.

Submission

Papers must be prepared according to the instructions for ICAPS-14 (in AAAI format) and must be no more than ten (10) pages long, including figures and bibliography. Papers must be in the PDF format and should be submitted by March 7th, 2014 via the EasyChair conference system. Every submitted paper will be reviewed by at least two members of the Program Committee. Late submissions must be consulted with the workshop organizers prior the submission deadline. Accepted papers will be included in the workshop notes.

The authors of papers accepted to COPLAS are invited to have a poster in the main poster session at ICAPS in addition to presentation during the COPLAS workshop. The authors are kindly asks to indicate the intention to present a poster when submitting the paper. A journal special issue is under consideration for the best papers of COPLAS’14.

Important Dates

• Paper submission: March 7th, 2014
• Notification of acceptance: March 20th, 2014
• Camera-ready paper submission: May 23rd, 2014
• Workshop date: June 23rd (PM), 2014

Organizing Committee

• Miguel A. Salido (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain)
• Roman Barták (Charles University, Czech Republic)

Program Committee

• Federico Barber (Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain)
• Roman Bartak (Charles University, The Czech Republic)
• Amedeo Cesta (ISTC-CNR, Italy)
• Minh Binh Do (NASA Ames Research Center, USA)
• Agostino Dovier (Universita Degli Studi di Unide, Italy)
• Enrico Giunchiglia (Universita di Genova, Italy)
• Eva Onaindia (Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain)
• Nicola Policella (European Space Agency, Germany)
• Hana Rudova (Masaryk University, The Czech Republic)
• Migual A. Salido (Universidad Politecnica Valencia, Spain)
• Torsten Schaub (Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany)
• Dunbing Tang (Nanjing University of Aeronautics&Astronomics, China)
• Enrico Pontelli (New Mexico State University, USA)
• Ramiro Varela (Universidad de Oviedo, Spain)
• Gerard Verfaillie (ONERA, Centre de Toulouse, France)
• Vincent Vidal (CRIL-IUT, France)
• Petr Vilim (ILOG, France)
• Neil Yorke-Smith (American University of Beirut/SRI International, USA)
• Neng-Fa Zhou (The City University of New York, USA)