[apologies for any cross-posting] ======================================================================== ================================================================== 5th Answer Set Programming Competition 2014 Call for Participant Systems Aalto University, University of Calabria, University of Genova Spring/Summer 2014 https://www.mat.unical.it/aspcomp2014 aspcomp2014@mat.unical.it ================================================================== Special edition of the ASP competition series -system track- part of the Olympic Games of the Vienna Summer of Logic 2014 == Important Dates == * March 1st, 2014: Participant registration opens * March 31st, 2014: The competition starts * July 2014: Awards are presented at FLoC (22nd) and at ICLP (19th-22nd) ======================================================================== Answer Set Programming (ASP) is a well-established paradigm of declarative programming with close relationship to other declarative modeling paradigms and languages, such as SAT Modulo Theories, Constraint Handling Rules, FO(.), PDDL, CASC, and many others. The ASP Competition is usually a biannual event for evaluating declarative knowledge representation systems on hard and demanding AI problems. Past ASP Competition editions were held at the University of Potsdam (Germany) in 2007, the University of Leuven (Belgium) in 2009, the University of Calabria (Italy) in 2011 and the Vienna University of Technology (Austria) in 2013. As anticipated during the 2013 presentation, in order to join the Vienna Summer of Logic, which is expected to be the largest event in the history of logic, ASP competition departs, this year, from the "usual" timeline, and the 5th ASP Competition will be run in the first half of 2014, jointly at Aalto University (Finland), University of Calabria (Italy) and University of Genova (Italy). The event is affiliated with the 30th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP). Another reason for having an event just one year after the 4th ASP Competition is the fact that the new ASP-Core-2 language standard has been introduced in 2013, but, unfortunately, it was not fully supported by most participant to the 2013 edition, and/or submitters did not succeed at supporting the new language features in a completely satisfactory way, due to limited time resources. Thus, an "early" event can be an opportunity to push the usage of the new standard, and draw a more complete picture about the approaches that can efficiently solve problems with various features. == Call for Participant Systems == Participants of the Answer Set Programming Competition will compete on a selected collection of benchmark problems, taken from a variety of benchmark problem domains as well as real-world applications. These include, but are not limited to: * Classic and application-oriented graph problems * Scheduling, Timetabling, and other resource allocation problems * Sequential and Temporal Planning * Combinatorial Optimization problems * Deductive Database tasks on large data-sets * Puzzles and Combinatorics * Ontology reasoning * Automated Theorem Proving and Model Checking * Constraint Programming problems * Other AI problems The competition consists of a System Track (as called in past competitions), which compares dedicated solvers on ASP benchmarks. Participants compete with solving systems for the ASP-Core language. Some more details are given in the following: - The benchmark domains are taken from past editions. - Systems of the 2013 edition will be considered. (Developers will have the chance of submitting up-to-date versions of their solvers.) - Submissions of new solvers are encouraged. The competition will not be limited to sub-tracks based on "complexity" of problems (as in past events), but rather will take into consideration language features: sub-tracks will range from a basic language, to (by adding features such as aggregates and choice rules) to the ASP-Core-2 language. The aim is to clearly indicate what (combinations of) techniques work for a particular (set of) feature(s), and also widening the participation to teams that cannot (yet) support the full standard. The final sub-track design will depend on the availability of benchmarks as well as systems. Participants are encouraged to inform us about any limitations or requirements of their systems so that we can take them into account in the sub-track design. We welcome the submission of parallel and portfolio systems making use of multiple cores or multiple algorithms for solving the given instances. These solvers will have dedicated tracks, assuming a sufficient number of submissions in each track. Of course, we also welcome the submission of any kind of solvers, e.g., SAT solvers, SMT solvers, CP systems, FOL theorem provers, Description Logics reasoners, Planning reasoners, or any other that can be adapted/applied to the evaluation of logic programs encoded in ASP-Core-2. == Important Dates == * March 1st, 2014: Participant registration opens * March 31st, 2014: The competition starts * July 2014: Awards are presented at FLoC (22nd) and at ICLP (19th-22nd) For further information and submission instructions please visit the competition web site https://www.mat.unical.it/aspcomp2014 or contact us by email: aspcomp2014@mat.unical.it