Synthesis and Planning

Motivation

This meeting has brought together researchers working in two complementary fields: automatic synthesis of (control) programs, and methods for devising planning algorithms in artifical intelligence (AI). Thus, the seminar combines a strong thread of current research in automata theory with an area of possible but so far unexplored applications.

The idea of organizing such a seminar arose during IJCAI 2003, where Vardi gave an invited talk on the automata-theoretic approach to design verification. In discussions between Kautz and Vardi after the talk it became clear that methods of synthesizing strategies for reactive systems is an issue of common interest to automata theory and artificial intelligence.