A workshop at AAAI 2017, February 5, 2017, San Francisco, U.S.A.

Knowledge-based techniques for problem solving and reasoning
(KnowProS 2017)

organized by Roman Barták, Thomas Leo McCluskey, and Enrico Pontelli


Motivation | Topics | Program | Submissions| Dates | Committee

Despite recent attempts in various subareas of AI to integrate technologies to solve complex problems such as autonomous cars, there are still gaps between research communities that prevent efficient transfer of knowledge. For example, knowledge representation techniques focus on formal semantics and flexibility of modeling frameworks and put less emphasis on actual problem solving that requires efficient tools. Other communities such as planning and search put emphasis on efficiency of problem solving, but less attention is given to how the real problem is modeled, the connection between modeling and efficiency of problem solving, and the capability of the models to support other important features like plan revision and adaptation. This workshop attempts to bridge these particular communities with the goal to exchange information leading to more efficient problem solving starting with the problem requirements and finishing with the solved problem.

This is a second edition of the workshop, the first edition run at IJCAI 2016.

Workshop topics:

Formal problem modeling is a critical step during problem solving. A good modeling framework should be flexible enough to describe important properties of problems solved and should allow application of efficient problem solving techniques. This workshop attracts papers at the frontier between formal problem modeling and problem solving. Papers should see the formal models from the perspective of problem solving and vice versa — problem solving techniques are seen in relation to models of the problem. For example, the paper can discuss the relation between planning domain models and planning algorithms or show how to enhance the domain model by extra information such as control knowledge. Papers discussing methods on how to obtain information that is useful for efficient problem solving are welcome.

We are in particular interested in papers addressing some of the following questions. How do the formal models relate to efficiency of problem solving? How do various modeling frameworks compare from the perspective of problem solving? How can the model be acquired? How can the model be verified and validated? How can the formal model be reformulated to get an efficiently-solvable model? How can the solution be checked with respect to the model? How does the model evolve in time? How can the model support solution revisions at execution time?

Application papers are also welcome, if they highlight the relation between the formal model of the problem and the solving approach. Description of specific models for specific problems is also possible, if the particular modeling techniques are studied from the perspective of problem solving.

Possible topics of papers:

  • Modeling approaches (problem modeling, knowledge engineering)
  • Formalisms to describe (real-life) problems
  • Languages for problem description
  • Abstraction
  • Ontologies
  • Relations between modeling and solving
  • Automated transformations between formal models
  • Problem re-formulation
  • Formats for specification of heuristics, parameters and control knowledge for solvers
  • Validation of models and solutions
  • Visualization of models
  • Automated model acquisition
  • Tools and applications
  • Examples of particular modeling techniques

Workshop Program:

Location: Union Square 3/4 on the Fourth Floor of the Hotel
08:50 – 09:00 Welcome and opening notes
09:00 – 10:30 Epistemic Specifications and Conformant Planning
Yan Zhang and Yuanlin Zhang
Initial State Prediction in Planning
Senka Krivic, Michael Cashmore, Bram Ridder, Daniele Magazzeni, Sandor Szedmak and Justus Piater
Automatic Extraction of Axioms for Planning
Shuwa Miura and Alex Fukunaga
10:30 – 11:00 Coffee break
11:00 – 12:30 What is Going on: Utility-based Plan Selection in BDI Agents
Ameneh Deljoo, Tom van Engers, Leon Gommans and Cees de Laat
On Inductive Learning of Causal Knowledge for Problem Solving
Seng-Beng Ho and Fiona Liausvia
Causal Learning vs Reinforcement Learning for Knowledge Learning and Problem Solving
Seng-Beng Ho
12:30 – 14:00 Lunch break (on your own)
14:00 – 15:30 On Automated Defeasible Reasoning with Controlled Natural Language and Argumentation
Hannes Strass and Adam Wyner
T2KG: An End-to-End System for Creating Knowledge Graph from Unstructured Text
Natthawut Kertkeidkachorn and Ryutaro Ichise
Learning Knowledge Representation Across Knowledge Graphs 
Pengshan Cai, Wei Li, Yansong Feng, Yuanzhuo Wang, Yantao Jia (presented by Shuo Yang)
15:30 – 16:00 Coffee break
16:00 – 17:30 Context Recognition in Multiple Occupants Situations: Detecting the Number of Agents in a Smart Home Environment with Pervasive Sensors
Jennifer Renoux, Marjan Alirezaie, Lars Karlsson, Uwe Köckemann, Federico Pecora, and Amy Loutfi
Model Selection with Nonlinear Embedding for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation
Hemanth Venkateswara, Shayok Chakraborty, and Sethuraman Panchanathan
Knowledge-based Morphological Classification of Galaxies from Vision Features
Devendra Dhami, Sriraam Natarajan, and David Leake

Submission Procedure:

Submitted papers must be formatted according to AAAI guidelines and submitted electronically through the KnowProS 2017 paper submission site. Authors are required to submit their electronic papers in PDF format. Submitted technical papers are expected to have 5-8 pages in total (if the length of your paper is very different from this range, please contact the organizers prior submission). Include your names and affiliations in the submission.

In any case, please submit the title and the abstract of your paper by the submission deadline and if you need later submission please contact the workshop organizers.

At least one author of each accepted paper is required to attend the workshop to present the work. Proceedings of the workshop will be available as a AAAI technical report (informal, archival publication, with an ISBN, freely available in AAAI's digital library).

Important Dates:

Abstract submission: November 16, 2016
Submission: November 18, 2016
Notification: December 1, 2016
Camera-ready to AAAI: December 15, 2016
Workshop: February 5, 2017

Program Committee:

  • Marcello Balduccini
    Drexel University
  • Chitta Baral
    Arizona State University
  • Roman Barták (chair)
    Charles University
  • Mark Boddy
    Adventium Labs
  • Amedeo Cesta
    CNR - National Research Council of Italy
  • Lukáš Chrpa
    University of Huddersfield
  • Marc Denecker
    K.U.Leuven
  • Agostino Dovier
    Università degli Studi di Udine
  • Stefan Edelkamp
    Universität Bremen
  • Esra Erdem
    Sabanci University
  • Jeremy Frank
    NASA Ames
  • Simone Fratini
    European Space Agency - ESA/ESOC
  • Michael Gelfond
    Texas Tech University
  • Patrik Haslum
    Australian National University
  • Christopher Kiekintveld
    University of Texas at El Paso
  • Sven Koenig
    University of Southern California
  • Ugur Kuter
    Smart Information Flow Technologies
  • Daniele Magazzeni
    King's College London
  • Lee McCluskey (chair)
    University of Huddersfield
  • Sheila McIlraith
    University of Toronto
  • Enrico Pontelli (chair)
    New Mexico State University
  • Scott Sanner
    University of Toronto
  • Torsten Schaub
    University of Potsdam
  • Tran Cao Son
    New Mexico State University
  • Mirek Truszczynski
    University of Kentucky
  • Tiago Stegun Vaquero
    Caltech & MIT
  • Neng-Fa Zhou
    CUNY Brooklyn College and Graduate Center