Communications

[Mauro Vallati]

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  Deterministic Part of the 2014 International Planning Competition
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In the deterministic part of the next IPC (IPC-14) we are introducing some changes w.r.t. what was done in previous editions. In the following you'll find a summarization of the main changes.
Please feel free to provide feedbacks and to discuss any of the points, so that we can provide the best possible set of rules for a challenging and interesting competition :)
In particular, and if you are interested, please register to the google group ( https://groups.google.com/d/forum/ipc2014-deterministic ) and discuss there.


** Core features of the sequential track: STRIPS, action costs, negative preconditions and conditional effects.
Core features are those that will appear in some (if not all) of the domains. So, in order for a planner to have chances to win this track of the competition, all the core features must be supported. However, there will exist some domains that do not require all the core features.
We believe that negative preconditions and conditional effects are needed for improving the applicability of planning techniques in a real-world environment.
Such core features will be required for all the subtracks of the sequential track, namely: satisficing, optimal, multi-core and agile.


** The agile subtrack.
In many planning applications it is not possible to wait a significant amount of time for having a plan to use; satisficing plans are required as soon as possible and, eventually, they will be refined.
The goal of this subtrack is to find a satisficing solution as soon as possible,i.e., minimize the CPU time needed for finding a plan, given a very short amount of CPU time available (<5 minutes). We are still defining the actual available CPU time; probably it will be around 3 minutes.
The domains and problems for this subtrack will be obtained from real-world applications of planning techniques. The aim of the agile subtrack is to "simulate" the use of planning techniques in a real environment.


** A special award for the most innovative planner that will participate in the competition.

Please, share your thoughts on the deterministic track google group ( https://groups.google.com/d/forum/ipc2014-deterministic ).

Organizers
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Lukas Chrpa, Mauro Vallati and Lee McCluskey, University of Huddersfield, UK
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Mailing list ipc2014 deterministic part
https://groups.google.com/d/forum/ipc2014-deterministic

Website ipc2014 deterministic part
http://helios.hud.ac.uk/scommv/IPC-14/