[DL] 5th Answer Set Programming Competition 2014 - FIRST CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

[Francesco Calimeri]

[apologies for any cross-posting]

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              5th Answer Set Programming Competition 2014

                     Call for Participant Systems

     Aalto University, University of Calabria, University of Genova

                         Spring/Summer 2014

                   http://aspcomp2014.mat.unical.it/

                      aspcomp2014 at mat.unical.it

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 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 22nd, 2014 : Awards are presented at FLoC

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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.

In order to join the Vienna Summer of Logic, which is expected to be
the largest event in the history of logic, we this year depart from the
"usual" timeline, and the 5th ASP Competition will be run in the first
half of 2014 jointly at Aalto University (Finland), the University of
Calabria (Italy) and the University of Genova (Italy).  Another reason
for having an event only one year after the 4th ASP Competition is that
in 2013 the new ASP-Core-2 language was introduced, but at that time it
was not fully supported by most participant solvers, and/or the
submitters did not have sufficient time to support new language
features in a completely satisfactory way.  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-2 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 include sub-tracks not only based on "complexity"
of problems (as in past events), but also considering language
features.  Our 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.

We welcome the submission of parallel and portfolio systems exploiting
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 22nd, 2014 : Awards are presented at FLoC


For further information and submission instructions please visit the
competition web site

http://aspcomp2014.mat.unical.it/

or contact us by email: aspcomp2014 at mat.unical.it