AAAI 2012 Workshop on Multi-Agent Pathfinding (WoMP)

WoMP-2012: The First Workshop on MAPF

Held at AAAI 2012

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Thanks to all who participated in this workshop! Many of the talk slides area available via the schedule.

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General Information

Recently, there has been a growing interest in multi-agent path planning (MAPF). The problem is to compute a path for each agent from an initial to a goal location without conflicting with other agents, often aiming to minimize a cost function, such as elapsed time or throughput. Applications include vehicle fleet coordination, computer games, robotics and various military scenarios.

Some researchers have worked at a theoretical level, while others implemented solvers to specific applications. Thus, related papers have appeared in multiple venues, including AIJ, JAIR, AAAI, IJCAI, ICRA, IROS, ICAPS and SoCS. Consequently, similar concepts were developed in different sub-communities, using varying terminology.

This workshop aims to bring together for the first time researchers working on multi-agent path planning from different communities. The main goals are the following:

1. Familiarize researchers from different areas with the varying contributions on this problem.
2. Standardize terminology and develop a taxonomy for different variants.
3. Present the state-of-the-art and discuss open challenges.
4. Encourage collaboration between participants.

Attendance and information for authors

Interested participants can submit one of the following via the workshop submission webpage.

• Unpublished papers, which adhere to the AAAI paper-formatting guidelines at most 8 pages). Papers under review elsewhere should state this explicitly. Two-page summaries of work in-progress are encouraged.
• Existing papers that appeared in established venues in the past few years. The submission should state the original venue. Two-page summaries of past work are encouraged.
• A short statement of interest.

Submissions will go through a light review process. Non-archival notes will be produced containing the material presented at the workshop.

Deadlines:

• Submission: April 30, 2012
• Notification: May 07, 2012
• Final-version: May 15, 2012

Workshop Format

• An introductory session will provide problem definitions, survey existing directions and propose a general terminology.
• Oral presentations of selected papers from the submissions.
• A poster session, including a poster highlights session.

Workshop Chairs:

Kostas Bekris, University of Nevada, Reno
Ariel Felner, Ben Guiron University of the Negev
Roni Stern, Ben Guiron University of the Negev
Nathan Sturtevant, University of Denver