In the field of artificial intelligence, "planning" is defined as designing the behavior of some entity that acts, either an individual, a group, or an organization. The output is some kind of blueprint for behavior, which we call a plan. There are a wide variety of planning problems, differentiated by the types of their inputs and outputs. Typically, planning problems get more and more difficult as more flexible inputs are allowed and fewer constraints on the output are required. As this flexibility increases, the space of possibilities needing to be explored by the planning algorithm grows extremely quickly (usually exponentially).
The goal of this workshop is to provide a specific focus on controlling this search. This problem is the essence of the planning problem, and it arises regardless of which specific planning methodology is used (nonlinear planning, deductive planning, hierarchical planning, etc.) - in all of these controlling an exponentially growing search space is a central problem.
Participation in this meeting is by invitation only.
A the meeting, a number of members of the planning community
expressed a desire to be better able to compare systems on common
problems and domains. Argument ranged as to how best to do this, but
one idea which emerged was the creation of a "repository" on the web,
in which one could find links to existing domains, or in which one
could post details of a new domain. We realized other repositories
for AI, such as the CMU AI Repository exist, but the goal here was to
create something focused on facilitating the comparison of planners,
not on sharing the planners per se.
In response to this request, we have created a WWW "AI Planning Domain
Repository." Located at http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/planning/" the
repository will contain pointers to any domains that people wish to
add. Visit the page to see some examples.
If you wish to add a domain description and pointer, simply send the
information to me (hendler@cs.umd.edu) and I will add it. Please
provide a web pointer, a short description, and the name of a contact
person.