Comparative Analysis of AI Planning Systems

The Workshop on Comparative Analysis of AI Planning Systems, held during the 1994 national AI conference, was lively and interesting. Both the theoretical and practical sides of the AI planning community were represented. Several papers contributed to the theoretical analysis of planning algorithms, and others showed the first steps toward convergence between such theoretical work and practical work on the system engineering aspects of working planners. Both the theoretical and practical sides of the AI planning community were represented, and both sides seemed to understand the other side better after the workshop. Several papers contributed further to the theoretical analysis of planning algorithms, either through frameworks for reconstructing planning algorithms or through empirical studies (Christer Backstrom, Linkoping University, Sweden; Subbarao Kambhampati, Arizona State University; Henry Kautz, AT&T Bell Labs; Craig Knoblock, University of Southern California/Information Sciences Institute [USC/ISI]; and Qiang Yang, University of Waterloo, Canada).