Call for Papers

2021 International Workshop on Planning & Scheduling for Space

https://sites.google.com/view/iwpss2021/


This workshop represents the 24th anniversary of the first IWPSS and is the 12th in a regular series that includes Oxnard, California (1997) San Francisco (2000), Houston (2002), Darmstadt, Germany (2004), Baltimore (2006), Pasadena (2009, co-located with IJCAI), Darmstadt (2011 near ICAPS), Moffett Field (2013) near the AAAI Spring Symposium, Buenos Aires (2015, co-located with IJCAI), Pittsburgh (2017, co-located with ICAPS), Berkeley (2019, co-located with ICAPS ), and virtually in 2021. For information and proceedings of previous meetings see IWPSS main website.

IWPSS focuses on the challenges and opportunities facing the planning and scheduling community when addressing the needs of a wide range of space-based applications. We invite submissions on a wide range of topic areas relating to space and planning and scheduling (broadly interpreted) including: techniques and algorithms, applications to space or aerospace, planning, scheduling execution, knowledge acquisition for planning & scheduling systems, embedded planning, scheduling, and execution systems, validation of planning and execution systems, and other general topic areas relating to planning & scheduling for space.

In over 20 years since the first workshop in this series, planning and scheduling systems have been successfully deployed to mission ground systems as well as onto spacecraft. In many cases, these deployments have documented cost reduction, increased science returns, and enabling new types of scientific observations. Yet still future missions do not consider automation by default. An improved infusion process is motivated by the need for planning and scheduling technologies to support an increasingly large, complex suite of missions at ever shrinking costs. This will be even more acute as net-centric observatories emerge. This workshop will investigate how we can infuse planning and scheduling technologies into the evolving set of operational space missions.

Papers are solicited in all areas of planning, scheduling, execution, and knowledge acquisition relating to aerospace systems. Additionally, papers are solicited on the below topics. Papers covering other topics in Artificial Intelligence related to Space are encouraged to submit to our sister IJCAI Workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Space as well as i-SAIRAS.

Operational challenges of space applications: These are challenging problems currently solved by humans, which typically involve optimizing science returns in the face of mission cost and resource limitations, responding to unanticipated events, and operating in a partially understood environment.

Issues in deployment: Gaining mission acceptance of a planning and scheduling technology involves balancing the promise of a new technology with the need for safety, reliability, and usability. This includes the representation’s understandability, controllability of the underlying algorithms, interfaces to other tools, as well as the user interface.

Past and current deployments: There have been a number of past infusions of planning and scheduling technologies into missions, and each resulted in lessons learned when overcoming deployment obstacles as well as system use during the mission.

Recent advances in planning and scheduling and plan execution: These include advances in domain representation, algorithmic methods, verification, and embedded architectures for planning, scheduling, and plan execution applicable to space missions.


The aim of this workshop is to discuss these and other related issues in the context of space missions and applications. We welcome papers that offer insight into these and other planning and scheduling challenges. We especially welcome papers that describe deployed applications of planning and scheduling technology within space or space-relevant domains and papers that describe requirements for planning and scheduling in future missions.

Example applications include:

  • control of life support systems;

  • robotic assembly and construction;

  • spacecraft commanding and payload operations;

  • planning and scheduling for process control;

  • planning and scheduling for robotic space activities;

  • operations of air, space and ground-based scientific observatories;

  • planning and scheduling for sensor webs;

  • scheduling of critical resources on the ground and on-board;

  • science data analysis;

  • design and analysis of spacecraft systems;

  • planning and scheduling of scientific experiments; and planning and scheduling of crew activities.


We also welcome papers on new planning and scheduling technology that may be applicable to space domains and papers that integrate planning and scheduling with other techniques, such as:

  • planning and scheduling with time constraints;

  • planning and scheduling with uncertainty and resources;

  • mixed-initiative problem solving; robustness and fault tolerant schedules;

  • robust optimization;

  • and task execution.


Paper Submission:

Paper submission via EasyChair https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iwpss2021

Full papers up to 8 pages (not counting references) AAAI style (https://www.aaai.org/Publications/Templates/AuthorKit21.zip) or extended abstracts up to 4 pages.

IMPORTANT: please remove the copyright AAAI notation and replace with "(c) 2021 All rights reserved." IWPSS policy is that copyright remains with the authors/institution however permission to publish is granted to IWPSS to make the proceedings.


Important Dates:

  • Paper submission deadline: 17 May 2021

  • Authors notified: 16 June 2021 (Notifications emailed)

  • Camera-ready papers due: 12 July 2021

  • Dates of workshop: 27-29 July 2021 (Note the changed dates)


Inquiries: steve.chien at jpl.caltech.edu