TAMPRA

Combining Task and Motion Planning for Real-World Applications

Download the Call for Papers

A longstanding aim of research in AI has been to employ discrete task planning capabilities in the service of mobile robots. Since the early days of Shakey, the planning community has worked to build algorithms that would allow a robot to reason about its own actions before (or while) carrying them out physically. Recent advances in artificial vision, manipulation, motion planning and control have done a great deal to bring this vision closer to fruition.

Despite these promising developments, existing commercial systems rarely exhibit fully autonomous task and motion planning capabilities. This is not due to a lack of interest, but rather to our lack of understanding how discrete task planning can be integrated with advanced motion planning techniques. Research has not yet produced the algorithmic and theoretical results necessary to integrate techniques for automated decision making at the task and motion planning levels. The major challenges are twofold: real-world applications pose complex requirements, such as dynamic environments and real-time, continuous operation; and there is an inherent difficulty in combining the radically different search and inference procedures underlying the two forms of planning.

Focus

In the last few years, autonomous mobile robots have become a commercial reality. Despite the increasing availability of autonomous solutions, by and large, these systems rely on pre-calculated motions and static, pre-computed plans. Companies have a real interest in increasing the level of automation provided by their solutions, both at the task planning and at the motion planning levels. This workshop aims to bring an application focus to the problem of integrating these two forms of planning, and to ground the scientific problems underlying such integration.

Topics of interest

TAMPRA is open to solutions for any combination of task and motion planning techniques. Preference will be accorded to papers that include experimental work in real-world applications. Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

• Experimental results from fielded systems
• Reasoning with kinodynamic constraints
• Constraint-based reasoning
• Planning under uncertainty
• Geometric, temporal, and/or spatial reasoning
• Resource reasoning / scheduling
• Manipulation planning techniques
• Meta-CSP techniques for integrated reasoning
• HTN, classical and timeline-based planning
• Decision-theoretic planning

Workshop format

TAMPRA is a one-day workshop, and will be structured to foster discussion and interaction.  Selected papers accepted by the program committee will be presented in short sessions (2-3 papers) on a common theme.  A member of the PC will be assigned to each theme and provide a brief commentary on the collection of contributions pertaining to that theme.

A joint session with the ICAPS'12 SPARK workshop is under consideration.

Submissions

We welcome submissions of two types: technical papers, and position papers. The former can be up to eight pages in length, the latter up to four. Papers may address both technical solutions and problem statements. All accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings. In case of high interest in this workshop, we will pursue publication of a special journal issue to include the best papers.

Submission instructions. Authors should prepare their manuscript according to the AAAI formatting guidelines and style. Papers should be submitted by email in PDF format to: tampra2012@aass.oru.se

Important dates

• Paper submission deadline: April 1^st 2012   *deadline extended*
• Notification of acceptance: April 23^rd 2012
• Camera-ready version due: May 13^th 2012   *deadline extended*

Organizing committee

• Marcello Cirillo -- AASS, Örebro University
• Brian Gerkey -- Willow Garage
• Federico Pecora -- AASS, Örebro University
• Mike Stilman -- Georgia Institute of Technology

Program committee

• Bhaskara Marthi -- Willow Garage
• Emrah Akın Şişbot -- University of Washington
• Tsz-Chiu Au -- The University of Texas at Austin
• Adi Botea -- NICTA
• Wolfram Burgard -- University of Freiburg
• Marc Cavazza -- University of Teesside 
• Sachin Chitta -- Willow Garage
• Minh Do -- NASA Ames/SGT Inc.
• Esra Erdem -- Sabanci University
• Jean-Loup Farges -- ONERA
• Susana Fernández Arregui -- U. Carlos III de Madrid
• Alberto Finzi -- Università di Napoli "Federico II"
• Julien Guitton -- LAAS-CNRS
• Geoffrey Hollinger -- University of Southern California
• Kaijen Hsiao -- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Lars Karlsson -- Örebro University
• Sven Koenig -- University of Southern California
• Carlos Linares López -- Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
• Héctor Muñoz Ávila -- Lehigh University
• Jeff Orkin -- MIT Media Lab
• Volkan Patoğlu -- Sabanci University
• David Pizzi -- University of Teesside
• Erion Plaku -- Catholic University of America
• Roland Phillipsen -- Halmstad University
• Mihail Pivtoraiko -- Carnegie Mellon University
• Ananth Ranganathan -- Honda Research Institute
• Alessandro Saffiotti -- Örebro University
• Sanem Sariel Talay -- Istanbul Technical University
• David Sislak -- Czech Technical University in Prague
• David E. Smith -- NASA
• Kartik Talamadupula -- Arizona State University