CALL FOR PAPERS

IntCP 2005 workshop
Interval Analysis and Constraint Propagation for Applications

Melia Sitges Hotel
Sitges (Barcelona) Spain 
1st October 2005

Held in conjunction with the
Eleventh International Conference on Principles 
and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2005) 
=================================================================

* Important Dates:
------------------
04 Jul 2005 - Submission deadline
29 Jul 2005 - Notification of acceptance
01 Aug 2005 - Early registration deadline
16 Aug 2005 - Final camera-ready copies
01 Oct 2005 - Workshop day

* Description and goals:
------------------------

Since most physical laws are formulated as numerical constraints,
problem areas that use physical models usually involve such
constraints (e.g., robotics, control). Moreover, todays computing
systems are more and more embedded into their physical environment
(modern cars contain thousands of microprocessors), resulting in
models of the total system that contain numerical constraints in an
essential way. Constraint propagation solvers are appealing for
solving numerical problems because they can guarantee two essential
properties:

 * _completeness_ which means the ability to find all solutions if
any, or else to prove that there are no solutions to the problem,
 * _rigor_ which means that the rounding errors due to
floating-point computation can be rigorously controlled.

These two properties are essential in many practical applications. For
instance, real-world problems often have a continuum of solutions
which express a spectrum of equally relevant choices, as the possible
moving areas of a mobile robot, the collision regions between objects
in mechanical assembly, or different alternatives of shapes for the
components of a kinematic chain. These alternatives must be 
identified as completely and rigorously as possible.

Moreover, constraint propagation techniques can flexibly incorporate
relaxation techniques and the handling of preferences. This is also an
important feature since many applications lead to over-constrained
problems.

However, while constraint propagation solvers have proven particularly
efficient in solving challenging instances of numerical problems with
nonlinear constraints, they do not yet have enough appeal in many
practical problem areas.  One of the reasons is that they generally
provide representation of the solution set that are either
prohibitively verbose or poorly informative. Recent advances have
shown however that this matter of fact was not an intrinsinc
limitation and that constraint propagation can be considerably
improved by incorporating techniques from interval analysis and global
optimization.


One of the goals of this workshop is to explore the complementarity of
different approaches and how it can be used to produce _practical_
powerful solvers.  Other topics often relevant in applications are:

 * integrating uncertainty that can, for example, be modeled, by 
   logical quantifiers,
 * exploiting specific problem structure, for example in the case of 
   discrete time, continuous state systems,
 * handling mixture of discrete and continuous problem variables, 
 * developing specific techniques for inequality constraints or 
   problems with a huge number of discrete solutions,
 * improving solution selection by means of preferences or solution 
   space "browsing"

We seek contributions that address such questions, and present
relevant software tools, algorithms, theoretical results, or
applications of constraint propagation and interval analysis
techniques oriented toward real-world problems.


* Workshop format:
------------------
This is a half-day workshop, open to the entire community . Its aim is
to provide a forum where researchers currently working in this area
can discuss their most recent ideas and developments and think
together about the most promising new directions. We particularly
encourage the presentation of work that bridge the gap between theory
and practice.

* Submissions:
--------------
People wishing to give a talk should submit an extended abstract of at
least 2 pages. Submissions must be formatted using LNCS packages (see
CP formatting instructions). The title page should include the name,
address, telephone number and electronic mailing address for each
author. Please, email all submissions in postscript or pdf format to:

intcp-sub@mpi-sb.mpg.de

by July 04th 2005, specifying the name of the contact author in the
message.

At least one author of each accepted submission must attend the
workshop to present the paper.

The accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings, which
will be distributed to the participants.

* Reviewing process:
--------------------
Submissions will be reviewed by at least one committee member, and
will be selected on the basis of their contribution to the topic of
the workshop.  Authors will receive feedback in the form of reviewers'
comments.

* Accomodation/Registration:
----------------------------
Accomodation is provided by the hosting conference CP 2005. All
workshop attendees must pay the workshop fee. It is however possible
to attend the workshop without paying the CP 2005 regular registration
fee.

Please note that a single CP 2005 registration fee provides entry to
all CP and ICLP workhops.

* Committee:
------------

 - Frederic Goualard, University of Nantes, France.
 - Tim Hickey, Brandeis University, USA.
 - Luc Jaulin, ENSIETA Brest, France.
 - Christophe Jermann, University of Nantes, France (co-organizer).
 - Jean-Pierre Merlet, National Institute for Informatics and Control,
France.
 - Stefan Ratschan, Max-Planck Institut fuer Informatik, Germany
(co-organizer).
 - Djamila Sam-Haroud, EPFL, Switzerland (co-organizer).
 - Josep Vehi, University of Girona, Spain.

* Contacts:
-----------
Send questions about the workshop to: 
intcp-oc@mpi-sb.mpg.de

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