Planning and Robotics (PlanRob)

AI Planning & Scheduling (P&S) methods are crucial to enable intelligent robots to perform autonomous, flexible, and interactive behaviors, but a deep integration into robotic architectures is needed for their effective deployment. This requires a close collaboration between researchers from both the AI and the Robotics communities. In this direction, this workshop aims at constituting a stable, long-term forum where researchers from both the P&S and the Robotics communities can openly discuss about relevant issues, research and development progress, future directions and open challenges related to P&S when applied to Robotics. 

The PlanRob workshop is proposed in synergy with ICAPS tracks. We are trying to explore different ways to synchronize with Humans and Robotics Track but also with Knowledge Engineering, Integrated Execution and System Architecture track. The PlanRob WS aims to maintain a more informal forum where also more preliminary/visionary works can be discussed stimulating direct and open interactions.

Keynote Speaker

Rachid Alami (LAAS-CNRS)
“Planning and Controlling Human-Robot Joint Activities”

Abstract. This talk addresses some key decisional issues that are necessary for
a cognitive and collaborative robot which shares space and task with
a human.

One main challenge, inspired by the Joint Action framework, is to
endow the robot with the capacity to build and to maintain,
co-constructively with the human, and as long as necessary, the
collaborative process and relationship that come along with the task,
thus allowing its joint execution.

We adopt a constructive approach based on the identification and the
effective implementation of individual and collaborative skills.
Key design issues are linked to legibility, acceptability and pertinence
of robot decisions and behaviours.

I will provide some illustrative examples from several collaborative research projects.

Dr. Rachid Alami is Senior Scientist at LAAS-CNRS. He received an engineer diploma in computer science in 1978 from ENSEEIHT, a Ph.D in Robotics in 1983 from Institut National Polytechnique and an Habilitation HDR in 1996 from Paul Sabatier University He contributed and took important responsibilities in several national, European and international research and/or collaborative projects (EUREKA: FAMOS, AMR and I-ARES projects, ESPRIT: MARTHA, PROMotion, ECLA, IST: COMETS, IST FP6 projects: COGNIRON, URUS, PHRIENDS, and FP7 projects: CHRIS, SAPHARI, ARCAS, SPENCER, H2020: MuMMER , France: ARA, VAP-RISP for planetary rovers, PROMIP, several ANR projects).
His main research contributions fall in the fields of Robot Decisional and Control Architectures, Task and motion planning, multi-robot cooperation, and human-robot interaction.
Rachid Alami is currently the head of the Robotics and InteractionS group at LAAS.
He has been offered in 2019 the Academic Chair on Cognitive and Interactive Robotics at the Artificial and Natural Intelligence Toulouse Institute (ANITI)

Program

=== 22 October ===
(Schedule in CET)

12:00-12:15 PlanRob: Welcome and Introduction

12:15-13:20 Rachid Alami – “Planning and Controlling Human-Robot Joint Activities”

Session “Robots in Logistics”
13:20-13:40 Fabian Maas Genannt Bermpohl and Andreas Bresser.
Towards Autonomous Intralogistics: A Testbed Environment for the Coordination of a Robotic Fleet
13:40-14:00 Marco De Bortoli and Gerald Steinbauer.
The RoboCup Logistics League from a Planning Perspective

14:00-14:30 Break

Session “Robots in Extreme Environments (1/2)”
14:30-14:50 Robert Morris, Emma Zemler, Shaun Azimi, Kevin Chang and Jeremy Frank.
Integrating Task Planning with Robust Execution for Autonomous Robotic Manipulation in Space
14:50-15:10 Daniel Wang, Joseph A. Russino, Connor Basich and Steve A. Chien.
Using Flexible Execution, Replanning, and Model Parameter Updates to Address Environmental Uncertainty for a Planetary Lander
15:10-15:30 Filip Klaesson, Petter Nilsson, Tiago Stegun Vaquero, Scott Tepsuporn, Aaron D. Ames and Richard M. Murray.
Planning and Optimization for Multi-Robot Planetary Cave Exploration under Intermittent Connectivity Constraints
15:30-15:50 Sarah Bhaskaran, Jagriti Agrawal, Steve Chien and Wayne Chi.
Using a Model of Scheduler Runtime to Improve the Effectiveness of Scheduling Embedded in Execution

15:50-16:20 Break

Session “Task, Path and Motion Planning (1/2)
16:20-16:40 Valentin Noah Hartmann, Ozgur Oguz and Marc Toussaint.
Planning Planning: The Path Planner as a Finite State Machine
16:40-17:00 Or Wertheim, Ronen I. Brafman, Shashank Shekhar, Tal Feiner and Igal Pinsky.
ROS-POMDP – A Platform for Robotics Planning using PLPs and RDDL in ROS

Session “Human-Robot Interaction”
17:00-17:20 Stefan-Octavian Bezrucav and Burkhard Corves.
Improved AI Planning for Cooperating Teams of Humans and Robots
17:20-17:40 Tianyi Gu, Momotaz Begum, Naiqian Zhang, Dongpeng Xu, Sajay Arthanat and Dain LaRoche.
Adaptive Software Framework for Dementia-care Robot

=== 23 October ===

Session “Robot Planning with uncertainty”
12:00-12:20 Marcus Hoerger, Hanna Kurniawati and Alberto Elfes.
A Software Framework for Planning under Partial Observability
12:20-12:40 Jan Vermaelen, Hoang Tung Dinh and Tom Holvoet.
A Survey on Probabilistic Planning and Temporal Scheduling with Safety Guarantees
12:40-13:00 Alexander Kovalchuk and Ronen Brafman.
Verifying Plans and Scripts for Robotics Tasks Using Performance Level Profiles
13:00-13:20 Kaiyu Zheng and Stefanie Tellex.
pomdp_py: A Framework to Build and Solve POMDP Problems

13:20-14:00 Break

Session “Robots in Extreme environments (2/2)”
14:00-14:20 Andrew Branch, James Mason and Steve Chien.
Golden Section Search for Single Beacon Homing
14:20-14:40 James Mason, Andrew Branch, Guangyu Xu, Michael Jakuba, Christopher German, Steve Chien, Andrew Bowen, Kevin Hand and Jeffrey Seewald.
Evaluation of AUV Search Strategies for the Localization of Hydrothermal Venting

Session “Task, Path and Motion Planning (2/2)”
14:40-15:00 Balazs Nemeth and Andras Kovacs.
Robot Path Planning over a Sequence of Points Specified in Task Space
15:00-15:20 Nicolò Botteghi, Khaled Mustafa, Beril Sirmacek and Mannes Poel.
Entropy-Based Exploration for Mobile Robot Navigation: A Learning-Based Approach
15:20-15:40 Sarah Keren, Michael Cashmore, Gerard Canal and Daniele Magazzeni.
Task-Aware Waypoint Sampling for Planning Robots
15:40-16:00 Bhargav Adabala and Zlatan Ajanovic.
A Multi-Heuristic Search-based Motion Planning for Autonomous Parking

16:00-16:20 Workshop Conclusion

Topics

Topics of interest include but not limited to the following:
– planning domain representations for robotics applications;
– mission, path, and motion planning for robots;
– integrated planning and execution in robotic architectures;
– planning and coordination methods for multi-robot teams;
– mixed-initiative planning and sliding autonomy for robotic systems;
– human-aware planning and execution in human-robot interaction;
– adversarial action planning in competitive robotic domains;
– formal methods for robot planning and control;
– P&S methods for optimization and adaptation in robotics;
– benchmark planning domains for robots;
– optimizing behavior in large scale automated or semi-automated systems;
– real-world planning applications for autonomous and intelligent robots.

Important Dates

Paper submission (extended): July 31st
Notification of acceptance: TBD (September)
Camera-ready version due: TBD
Workshop Date: TBD

Submission Instructions

There are two types of submissions: short position statements and regular papers. Position papers are a maximum of 4 (four) pages. Regular papers are a maximum of 10 (ten) pages. 

All papers should be typeset in the AAAI style, described at: http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/author.php removing AAAI copyright. Accepted papers will be published on the workshop website and printed as a hard-copy. The papers must be submitted in a PDF format via EasyChair system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=planrob2020).

Notice that papers under review (e.g., submitted to IJCAI-2020) are also welcome, however, in order to avoid potential conflicts these manuscripts should be prepared as anonymous submissions for a double blind reviewing process. 

The organizers will investigate the availability of journal editors in order to invite a selection of accepted papers from the workshop to a special issue or post-proceedings volume.

Program Committee

Roman Barták Charles University
Arthur Bit-Monnot LAAS-CNRS
Ronen Brafman Ben-Gurion University
Jonathan Cacace University of Naples Federico II
Riccardo Caccavale Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II
Amedeo Cesta CNR – National Research Council of Italy
Riccardo De Benedictis CNR – National Research Council of Italy
Nick Hawes University of Oxford
Felix Ingrand LAAS/CNRS
Luca Iocchi Sapienza University of Rome
Erez Karpas Technion
Matteo Leonetti University of Leeds
Oscar Lima German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence – DFKI
Masoumeh Mansouri University of Birmingham
Tim Niemuller X, The Moonshot Factory
Ron Petrick Heriot-Watt University
Enrico Scala Universita’ di Brescia
Elisa Tosello University of Padua
Alessandro Umbrico National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISTC)

Organizers