14 June 2024

David Speck and Daniel Gnad at the Machine Reasoning Lab have won the Best Paper Award at the Conference ICAPS 2024, one of the most important conferences for automated planning, a topic in artificial intelligence.

Image of diploma.

The paper "Decoupled Search for the Masses: A Novel Task Transformation for Classical Planning" has won the Best Paper Award at the 2024 International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS). The paper is authored by David Speck and Daniel Gnad of the Machine Reasoning Lab, Division Artificial Intelligence and Integrated Computer Systems at the Department of Computer and Information Science.

Paper description by the authors

Automated planning is an important topic in artificial intelligence and a core research area of the Machine Reasoning Lab at Linköping University, Sweden, led by Jendrik Seipp.

Planning itself can be described as the art and practice of thinking before acting. Modern artificial intelligence systems typically try to find a plan for a given planning task by searching through the possible states of the world until a sequence of actions is found that transforms the current state into a goal state. Prominent examples are satellite control or logistics problems. Since such problems typically involve more possible states than atoms in the universe, several paradigms exist to solve these planning tasks more efficiently.

One such paradigm is called decoupled search, which attempts to automatically decouple a given planning problem based on causal relationships. This means that in a satellite control problem, one can automatically deduce that different components of the satellite can be controlled independently, while synchronizing these components in a certain way. However, this approach has the disadvantage that it requires specialized search algorithms, and recent advances in automated planning cannot be directly applied to this type of automated reasoning. In our work, we have shown theoretically and empirically that one can simulate decoupled search by transforming the planning problem description. In this way, no special algorithms are required to causally decompose a planning task into separate components, and the full existing and future toolbox of planning research can be readily used together with this approach.

Read more:

  • The paper and supplementary material can be downloaded here.
  • The ICAPS Conference 2024 - a forum for exchanging news and research results on the theory and applications of intelligent and automated planning and scheduling technology.
From 1 June, David Speck has moved to the University of Basel, Switzerland.

Contact

Award winners at IDA

Organisation

Latest news from LiU

Superdatorn Berzelius.

Stronger Berzelius ready for the research of the future

The latest upgrading of the supercomputer Berzelius at LiU has now been completed. Its doubled capacity enables researchers across Sweden to tackle current and future challenges in areas such as materials science, bioinformatics and machine learning.

Gillian Einstein at her honorary doctorate lecture

Science without borders – Gillian Einstein honored at LiU

“It is such an honor, and I am truly proud to have been appointed honorary doctor.” That’s what Professor Gillian Einstein said when she visited Campus US for her honorary doctorate lecture and a couple of intense days at Linköping University.

Theodor Westny demonstrating a simulation of self-driving cars.

From simulation to reality with autonomous cars

If Linköping University is to be a leading player in self-driving vehicles, we need to gear up. This is according to Theodor Westny at the Division of Vehicular Systems who is the initiator of a new research and teaching platform.