[CfP] ICAPS 2026 Workshop on Knowledge Engineering for Planning and Scheduling (KEPS)
Leonardo Lamanna
[Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this email]
Workshop on Knowledge Engineering for Planning and Scheduling (KEPS) at ICAPS 2026
Dublin, Ireland
June 2026
https://icaps-keps.github.io/2026/
Aim and Scope of the Workshop
Despite the progress in automated planning and scheduling systems, these systems still need to be fed by carefully engineered domain and problem descriptions and they need to be fine-tuned for particular domains and problems. Knowledge engineering for AI planning and scheduling deals with the acquisition, design, validation, and maintenance of domain models, as well as the selection and optimization of appropriate machinery to work on them. These processes directly influence the success of real-world planning and scheduling applications. The importance of knowledge engineering techniques is clearly demonstrated by the performance gap between domain-independent planners and planners that exploit domain-specific knowledge.
The workshop continues the tradition of several International Competitions on Knowledge Engineering for Planning and Scheduling (ICKEPS) and previous KEPS workshops. While ICKEPS primarily focuses on software tools and domain encoding techniques, this workshop covers all aspects of knowledge engineering for AI planning and scheduling.
Topics of Interest
- Formulation of domains and problem descriptions
- Methods and tools for the acquisition of domain knowledge
- Pre- and post-processing techniques for planners and schedulers
- Acquisition and refinement of control knowledge
- Formal languages for describing domains
- Re-use of domain knowledge
- Translators from other application area-specific languages to solver-ready domain models (such as PDDL)
- Formats for the specification of heuristics, parameters and control knowledge for solvers
- Import of domain knowledge from general ontologies
- Ontologies for describing the capabilities of planners and schedulers
- Automated reformulation of problems
- Automated knowledge extraction processes
- Domain model, problem and plan validation
- Visualization methods for domain models, search spaces and plans
- Mapping domain properties and planning techniques
- Plan representation and reuse
- Knowledge engineering aspects of plan analysis
Important Dates
- Paper submission deadline: April 16th, 2026 (UTC-12 time zone)
- Notification: May 20th, 2026
The reference timezone for all deadlines is UTC-12. That is, as long as there is still some place anywhere in the world where the deadline has not yet passed, you are on time!
Submission Details
Two types of papers can be submitted. Full technical papers with the length up to 8 pages + 1 for references, are standard research papers. Short papers with the length between 2 and 4 pages (+1 for references) describe either a particular application or focus on open challenges. All papers must be submitted in PDF format and must conform to the AAAI style template.
The submissions are done via EasyChair https://easychair.org/conferences?conf=keps26.
Policy on Previously Published Papers: we welcome submissions based on recent publications from other (non-ICAPS) venues such as specialized conferences (e.g., AAMAS, ICRA, KR) or general AI conferences (e.g., AAAI, IJCAI, ECAI). Such submissions must clearly indicate the original venue. Submissions currently under review elsewhere are also welcome since the workshop is a non-archival venue. No copyright transfer is required. If the paper is under double-blind review at another venue, please anonymize the submission.
Organising Committee
- Lukas Chrpa, Czech Technical University
- Leonardo Lamanna, Fondazione Bruno Kessler
- Ron Petrick, Heriot-Watt University
- Mauro Vallati, University of Huddersfield
- Tiago Vaquero, NASA JPL, Caltech