Call for Participation
2nd International NASA Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space
http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/ic/psworkshop
March 16th to 18th 2000
San Francisco, California, USA
This meeting is the second in a regular series started in October 1997
at Oxnard, California. Since then, the importance of automated
planning and scheduling for the space enterprise has become
increasingly clear. NASA technologists and computer scientists have
also demonstrated the practical feasibility of these technologies in
the context of real missions. For example, the Deep Space 1 Remote
Agent Experiment in May 1999 for the first time demonstrated the use
of a planner/scheduler operating within the high-level closed-loop
control of a spacecraft traveling in interplanetary space. However, to
make Planning and Scheduling a ubiquitous technology for space
missions, many challenges still remain, including issues in design,
development and fielding of such systems in mission critical areas of
spacecraft operations. For example:
* Responsiveness: When operating within a closed-loop control system,
issues related to responsiveness and balance between deliberation and
reactivity become more and more important. So far we do not have good
answers on how to coherently insert planning activities with different
reactivity guarantees at the different levels of an optimizing,
hierarchical control system.
* Validation: Validating the behavior of an automated
planner/scheduler in an operational context is a major challenge. An
automated planner makes it possible for a system to adapt its actions
to changing execution conditions. However, we still do not know how to
guarantee that a plan generated in a previously untested situation
will indeed operate the system correctly and safely.
* Mixed-Initiative autonomy: As planning systems become an integral
part of mission operation concepts, it becomes crucial to solve the
problem of guaranteeing a seamless collaboration between automated
schedulers and human operators. This includes support for variable
levels of autonomy, representational formalisms for doing
mixed-initiative reasoning, resolving conflicts between operator
requests and existing plans or flight rules and providing the operator
with explanations or insight into the behavior of the planning system.
* Mission acceptance: Gaining acceptance of planning and scheduling
technology for real missions requires balancing the promise of
advanced technology with the need for safety and reliability. The
underlying representation, algorithms, interface with existing tools,
and user interface all play important roles in the final usefulness
and usability of the technology.
This workshop aims to debate these and other issues in the context of
space missions and applications involving both completely automated
systems and those with human intervention in the exploration of
space. Within this area, planning and scheduling is important in (but
not restricted to)
- - Spacecraft commanding and payload operations;
- - Operations of air, space and ground based scientific observatories;
- - Scheduling of critical resources whether on the ground or onboard;
- - Science data analysis;
- - Design and analysis of spacecraft systems;
- - Planning and scheduling of scientific experiments;
- - Planning and scheduling for life support systems;
- - Operations and payload scheduling for space transportation systems.
To guarantee a lively debate grounded in actual operational needs, the
workshop will bring together:
* Researchers addressing basic research relevant to realistic
applications for space;
* Technologists working on planning and scheduling applications for space;
* Mission representatives who have direct experience with planning and
scheduling technology or want to contribute in formulating problems
and requirements for the area.
We encourage attendance from members of all three of these communities.
The conference will consist of technical paper presentations, a poster
session, invited talks, and panel discussions. The format of the
paper presentation will include the presentation of the paper, the
presentation of a commentary by a member of a different community from
the author, a brief response by the author(s), and time for questions
from the floor.
Timetable
Early registration: February 11, 2000
Hotel reservation: February 14, 2000
Late registration (mail): February 25, 2000
Conference dates: March 16-18, 2000
Organizing Committee (email: nasa_ps2000_org@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov)
Jeremy Frank NASA Ames
Keith Golden NASA Ames
Rich Washington NASA Ames
Program Committee (email: nasa_ps2000_pc@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov)
Matthew Barry United Space Alliance
Steve Chien Jet Propulsion Laboratory (co-chair)
Richard Creasey European Space Agency
Tara Estlin Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Paul Hempel NASA Goddard
David Kortenkamp NASA Johnson
Nicola Muscettola NASA Ames (chair)
Karen Myers SRI International
Martha Pollack Univ. of Pittsburgh
Kanna Rajan NASA Ames
Steve Smith Carnegie Mellon Univ.
The workshop URL is at: http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/ic/psworkshop. Please
watch for the latest information and details on this site.
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