The Fifth International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS-2012)
SoCS'12 is the Fifth installment of the The International Symposium on Combinatorial Search. Heuristic search and other forms of combinatorial search are currently very active areas of research in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Planning and other areas of Computer Science. The International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS) is meant to bring researchers in such areas together to exchange their ideas and cross-fertilize the field.
SoCS is targeting researchers and submissions in all fields that use combinatorial search, including artificial intelligence, planning, robotics, constraint programming, operations research and bioinformatics. Overall, the main focus of SoCS is on the design of novel heuristic search methods, analysis of existing heuristic search methods and their applications. More specifically, topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:
Previous SoCS events have provided special focus to Automated Planning and Robotics. This year, SoCS-2012 will include a special session on path planning and will be hosting the 2012 Grid-Based Path Planning Competition (GPPC) organized by Nathan Sturtevant. A call for participation in the competition can be found here. Each competition entry will have a lightly-reviewed 1-page description in the SoCS proceedings. We invite all researchers who use grid-based search to participate in the competition and/or submit their work to SoCS-2012. We are also interested in position papers covering aspects of grid-based search.
We encourage researchers and attendees of SoCS to submit papers to the symposium. Submissions should be in AAAI format and up to 8 pages long (see AAAI guidelines). Submissions should report on substantial, original and new research. We also encourage submissions of position papers which are intended for the discussion of ideas and concepts related to search. Examples could include thoughtful critiques of the field, historical perspectives and analysis, technical discussions of various implementation techniques, methodological contributions, insightful reports on new and demanding applications, and papers related to the challenge area of this year conference. Position papers can be up to 8 pages in length. Submissions will be carefully peer-reviewed by at least three reviewers. The reviewing will be "single blind": authors will not know the identity of their reviewers but the reviewers will know the names of the authors. Consequently, the title page of the submission should contain the authors' names. All SoCS papers should be submitted by following this link.To register a paper, just check the "abstract only" box in the "upload paper" section of the submission page. You will be able to update your submission and re-upload new pdf file until the final deadline.
In order to foster the exchange of ideas at SoCS, we encourage authors to submit papers describing new research which has been accepted to other venues or is being reviewed at other venues. Authors should clearly indicate whether a paper has been accepted or is under review and at which venue. This information should be indicated on the title page (either in the running title or in a footnote) and should also be sent via email to the conference chairs. Such papers will undergo a light reviewing process in order to ensure that they are of interest to the SoCS community. These papers will be given two pages in the proceedings and will be presented at the conference either as a poster.* The papers that are under current review should be submitted as short two-page papers, just the way they will show up in the final version if accepted.
* The papers that have already been accepted elsewhere can be submitted in their full (up to 8 pages) length but will need to be shortened to two pages if and when accepted.
SoCS has a formal archival proceedings. However, the authors of accepted papers (who submitted up to eight-page papers) can choose one of the two following publication options:
* A full paper. Up to eight pages will be allocated in the proceedings for such papers. Every full paper will be allocated a slot for an oral presentation. Papers accepted as full papers in the formal SoCS proceedings cannot be published elsewhere.
* A short paper. Up to two pages will be allocated in the proceedings. They will be presented as posters at the symposium.
Papers published in other venues or submitted for review at other venues should be clearly labeled so on the title page (see above for more info) and the conference chairs should be notified so as to ensure proper reviewing. Two pages will be allocated in the proceedings for such papers.
Position papers should be clearly labeled (preferably in the running title) and the conference chairs should be notified so as to ensure proper reviewing. Position papers will be allocated up to 8 pages in the proceedings.
We hope to be able to help students with funding for their trip to SoCS, as we have in all previous years. More information on this support however will be posted later.
SoCS will be co-located with AAAI 2012 and will take place in Niagara Falls near Toronto (Canada) and Buffalo (New York). The symposium will start with a banquet on Thursday July 19 and will finish in the late afternoon or evening on July 21. Transportation to the AAAI conference will be provided. SoCS web site: http://www.socs12.org
Paper registration deadline: April 18, 2012, 11:59PM UTC-11 Paper submission deadline: April 23, 2012, 11:59PM UTC-11 Notification: May 22, 2012 Camera-ready version due: June 1, 2012 Early registration deadline: June 4, 2012 Late registration deadline: June 15, 2012SoCS Conference: July 19-21, 2012
Daniel Borrajo, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain Ariel Felner, Ben-Gurion University, Israel Richard Korf, University of California Los Angeles, USA Maxim Likhachev, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Carlos Linares Lopez, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain Wheeler Ruml, University of New Hampshire, USANathan Sturtevant, University of Denver, USA
Jonathan Schaeffer, University of Alberta, Canada