Welcome

Artificial Intelligence Group

Our research is focused on the development of algorithms and tools for intelligent problem solving. We are interested in all kinds of combinatorial search and optimization problems, with a particular focus on the area of automated planning, the problem of finding a course of action that changes the current state of the world to one that satisfies the planning agent's goals and objectives.

Planning problems come in many shapes and guises, and planning techniques can be applied to problems as diverse as solving combinatorial puzzles, scheduling ground traffic at an airport, controlling intelligent manufacturing plants, verifying the security of communication protocols or the correctness of software and hardware designs, and computing the evolutionary distance of genomes.

Finding solutions to such problems is computationally hard because of fast-growing state spaces. Therefore, a major challenge in search and optimization is to find intelligent ways to handle large state spaces.

Contact

Address
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Spiegelgasse 1
CH - 4051 Basel, Switzerland
Head of Group
Malte Helmert
Secretary
Barbara Wenger

Awards

  • ICAPS 2024 Influential Paper Award for the ICAPS 2014 paper LP-based Heuristics for Cost-optimal Planning (PDF) by Florian Pommerening, Gabriele Röger, Malte Helmert and Blai Bonet at the 34th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2024).
  • Best Paper Award for the paper Decoupled Search for the Masses: A Novel Task Transformation for Classical Planning (PDF) by David Speck and Daniel Gnad at the 34th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2024).
  • "Quality Champion" PC award for Salomé Eriksson at the 26th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2023).
  • "Quality Champion" PC award for Florian Pommerening at the 26th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2023).
  • Distinguished Program Committee Member for Gabriele Röger at the 32nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2023).
  • Distinguished Program Committee Member for Salomé Eriksson at the 32nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2023).
  • Best Paper Award for the paper Landmark Progression in Heuristic Search (PDF) by Clemens Büchner, Thomas Keller, Salomé Eriksson and Malte Helmert at the 33rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2023).
  • Outstanding Program Committee Member Award for Malte Helmert at the 33rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2023).
  • Runner Up, Best Student Paper Award for the paper Grounding Planning Tasks Using Tree Decompositions and Iterated Solving (PDF) by Augusto B. Corrêa, Markus Hecher, Malte Helmert, Davide Mario Longo, Florian Pommerening and Stefan Woltran at the 33rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2023).
  • Winner, Deterministic Sequential Satisficing Track for the planning system Levitron (PDF) by Augusto B. Corrêa, Guillem Francès, Markus Hecher, Davide Mario Longo and Jendrik Seipp at the 10th International Planning Competition (IPC 2023) at ICAPS 2023.
  • Winner, Deterministic Sequential Satisficing Track for the planning system Scorpion Maidu (PDF) by Augusto B. Corrêa, Guillem Francès, Markus Hecher, Davide Mario Longo and Jendrik Seipp at the 10th International Planning Competition (IPC 2023) at ICAPS 2023.
  • Runner-Up, Deterministic Sequential Satisficing Track for the planning system Fast Downward Stone Soup 2023 (PDF) by Clemens Büchner, Remo Christen, Augusto B. Corrêa, Salomé Eriksson, Patrick Ferber, Jendrik Seipp and Silvan Sievers at the 10th International Planning Competition (IPC 2023) at ICAPS 2023.
  • Runner-Up, Deterministic Sequential Agile Track for the planning system Fast Downward Stone Soup 2023 (PDF) by Clemens Büchner, Remo Christen, Augusto B. Corrêa, Salomé Eriksson, Patrick Ferber, Jendrik Seipp and Silvan Sievers at the 10th International Planning Competition (IPC 2023) at ICAPS 2023.
  • Fellow of Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA) for Malte Helmert.
  • Distinguished Program Committee Member for Salomé Eriksson at the 31st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2022).
  • Distinguished Program Committee Member for Thomas Keller at the 31st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2022).
  • SoCS 2022 Best Program Committee Member Award for Malte Helmert at the 15th International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2022).
  • SoCS 2022 Best Paper Award for the paper Additive Pattern Databases for Decoupled Search (PDF) by Silvan Sievers, Daniel Gnad and Álvaro Torralba at the 15th International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2022).
  • CoRe Challenge 2022 Awards for the planning system PARIS: Planning Algorithms for Reconfiguring Independent Sets (PDF) by Remo Christen, Salomé Eriksson, Michael Katz, Emil Keyder, Christian Muise, Alice Petrov, Florian Pommerening, Jendrik Seipp, Silvan Sievers and David Speck at the 2nd Workshop on Combinatorial Reconfiguration, affiliated with the 49th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2022).
  • Best Student Paper Runner-Up Award for the paper Cost Partitioning Heuristics for Stochastic Shortest Path Problems (PDF) by Thorsten Klößner, Florian Pommerening, Thomas Keller and Gabriele Röger at the 32nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2022).
  • Outstanding Program Committee Member Award for Malte Helmert at the 32nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2022).
  • Best System Demonstration for the demo Machetli: Simplifying Input Files for Debugging (PDF) by Lucas Galery Käser, Clemens Büchner, Augusto B. Corrêa, Florian Pommerening and Gabriele Röger at the 32nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2022).
  • Runner-Up, Best System Demonstration for the demo Planutils: Bringing Planning to the Masses (PDF) by Christian Muise, Florian Pommerening, Jendrik Seipp and Michael Katz at the 32nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2022).
  • Third Place, Best System Demonstration for the demo Unified Planning: A Python Library Making Planning Technology Accessible (PDF) by Andrea Micheli, Alexandre Arnold, Arthur Bit-Monnot, Luigi Bonassi, Luca Framba, Alfonso Gerevini, Selvakumar Hastham Sathiya Satchi, Malte Helmert, Félix Ingrand, Luca Iocchi, Uwe Köckemann, Oscar Lima, Fabio Patrizi, Federico Pecora, Guillaume Poveda, Gabriele Röger, Alessandro Saetti, Alessandro Saffiotti, Enrico Scala, Ivan Serina, Sebastian Stock, Florent Teichteil-Koenigsbuch, Alessandro Trapasso, Paolo Traverso and Alessandro Valentini at the 32nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2022).
  • Faculty Award 2021 from the Faculty of Science at University of Basel for the doctoral thesis Certifying Planning Systems: Witnesses for Unsolvability (PDF) by Salomé Eriksson at Dies academicus of the University Basel.
  • Outstanding Senior Program Committee Member Award for Thomas Keller at the 31st International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2021).
  • Outstanding Program Committee Member Award for Salomé Eriksson at the 31st International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2021).
  • Best Student Paper Runner-Up Award for the paper Exploiting Cyclic Dependencies in Landmark Heuristics (PDF) by Clemens Büchner, Thomas Keller and Malte Helmert at the 31st International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2021).
  • AAAI Fellow for Malte Helmert at the 35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2021) for "significant contributions to the theory and practice of automated planning and combinatorial search".
  • Outstanding Senior Program Committee Award for Florian Pommerening at the 35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2021).
  • Outstanding Senior Program Committee Award for Thomas Keller at the 35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2021).
  • ICAPS 2020 Influential Paper Award for the ICAPS 2009 paper Landmarks, Critical Paths and Abstractions: What's the Difference Anyway? (PDF) by Malte Helmert and Carmel Domshlak at the 30th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2020).
  • ICAPS 2020 Best Dissertation Award for the doctoral thesis Counterexample-guided Cartesian Abstraction Refinement and Saturated Cost Partitioning for Optimal Classical Planning (PDF) by Jendrik Seipp at the 30th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2020).
  • EurAI Fellow for Malte Helmert at the 24th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2020).
  • SoCS 2020 Best Paper Award for the paper An Atom-Centric Perspective on Stubborn Sets (PDF) by Gabriele Röger, Malte Helmert, Jendrik Seipp and Silvan Sievers at the 13th International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2020).
  • Outstanding Senior Program Committee Award for Thomas Keller at the 34th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2020).
  • Distinguished Program Committee Member for Silvan Sievers at the 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2019).
  • ICAPS 2019 Best Paper Award for the paper Lagrangian Decomposition for Optimal Cost Partitioning (PDF) by Florian Pommerening, Gabriele Röger, Malte Helmert, Hadrien Cambazard, Louis-Martin Rousseau and Domenico Salvagnin at the 29th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2019).
  • Faculty Award 2018 from the Faculty of Science at University of Basel for the doctoral thesis New Perspectives on Optimal Cost Partitioning for Classical Planning (PDF) by Florian Pommerening at Dies academicus of the University Basel.
  • EurAI Artificial Intelligence Dissertation Award 2017 for the doctoral thesis New Perspectives on Optimal Cost Partitioning for Classical Planning (PDF) by Florian Pommerening at the Twenty-Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2018).
  • Distinguished Program Committee Member (Level 2) for Thomas Keller at the 27th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2018).
  • Winner, Deterministic Sequential Satisficing Track for the planning system Fast Downward Stone Soup 2018 (PDF) by Jendrik Seipp and Gabriele Röger at the 9th International Planning Competition (IPC 2018) at ICAPS 2018.
  • Runner-Up, Deterministic Sequential Satisficing Track for the planning system LAPKT-DUAL-BFWS (PDF) by Nir Lipovetzky, Miquel Ramírez, Guillem Francès and Héctor Geffner at the 9th International Planning Competition (IPC 2018) at ICAPS 2018.
  • Winner, Deterministic Sequential Cost-Bounded Track for the planning system Fast Downward Stone Soup 2018 (PDF) by Jendrik Seipp and Gabriele Röger at the 9th International Planning Competition (IPC 2018) at ICAPS 2018.
  • Winner, Deterministic Sequential Optimal Track for the planning system Delfi: Online Planner Selection for Cost-Optimal Planning (PDF) by Michael Katz, Shirin Sohrabi, Horst Samulowitz and Silvan Sievers at the 9th International Planning Competition (IPC 2018) at ICAPS 2018.
  • Winner, Deterministic Sequential Agile Track for the planning system LAPKT-BFWS-Preference (PDF) by Nir Lipovetzky, Miquel Ramírez, Guillem Francès and Héctor Geffner at the 9th International Planning Competition (IPC 2018) at ICAPS 2018.
  • ICAPS 2018 Best Dissertation Award for the doctoral thesis New Perspectives on Optimal Cost Partitioning for Classical Planning (PDF) by Florian Pommerening at the 28th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2018).
  • ICAPS 2018 Best Dissertation Award Honorable Mention for the doctoral thesis Effective Planning with Expressive Languages (PDF) by Guillem Francès at the 28th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2018).
  • Outstanding PC Member Award for Silvan Sievers at the 28th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2018).
  • ICAPS 2017 Best Dissertation Award for the doctoral thesis Anytime Optimal MDP Planning with Trial-based Heuristic Tree Search (PDF) by Thomas Keller at the 27th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2017).
  • ICAPS 2017 Best Student Paper Award for the paper Unsolvability Certificates for Classical Planning (PDF) by Salomé Eriksson, Gabriele Röger and Malte Helmert at the 27th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2017).
  • SoCS 2017 Best Paper Award for the paper Understanding the Search Behaviour of Greedy Best-First Search (PDF) by Manuel Heusner, Thomas Keller and Malte Helmert at the 10th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2017).
  • SoCS 2017 Best Student Paper Award for the paper Better Orders for Saturated Cost Partitioning in Optimal Classical Planning (PDF) by Jendrik Seipp at the 10th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2017).
  • Outstanding PC Member Award for Florian Pommerening at the 9th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2016).
  • SoCS 2016 Best Paper Award for the paper Sleep Sets Meet Duplicate Elimination (PDF) by Yusra Alkhazraji and Martin Wehrle at the 9th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2016).
  • ICAPS 2016 Influental Paper Award for the ICAPS 2004 paper A Planning Heuristic Based on Causal Graph Analysis (PDF) by Malte Helmert at the 26th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2016).
  • ICAPS 2016 Outstanding Reviewer Award for Malte Helmert at the 26th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2016).
  • ICAPS Best Dissertation Award 2016 for the doctoral thesis Planning Techniques and the Action Language Golog (PDF) by Gabriele Röger at the 26th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2016).
  • Winner, Unsolvability IPC 2016 for the planning system Fast Downward Aidos (PDF) by Jendrik Seipp, Florian Pommerening, Silvan Sievers, Martin Wehrle, Chris Fawcett and Yusra Alkhazraji at the 1st Unsolvability International Planning Competition (UIPC 2016) at ICAPS 2016.
  • AAAI 2015 Outstanding Paper Award for the paper From Non-Negative to General Operator Cost Partitioning (PDF) by Florian Pommerening, Malte Helmert, Gabriele Röger and Jendrik Seipp at the 29th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2015).
  • Runner-Up and "Best Learner" Award, IPC 2014 Learning Track for the planning system Fast Downward Cedalion (PDF) by Jendrik Seipp, Silvan Sievers and Frank Hutter at the 8th International Planning Competition (IPC 2014) at ICAPS 2014.
  • Third Place and "Best Basic Solver" Award, IPC 2014 Learning Track for the planning system Fast Downward SMAC (PDF) by Jendrik Seipp, Silvan Sievers and Frank Hutter at the 8th International Planning Competition (IPC 2014) at ICAPS 2014.
  • Nomination for the Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching for the course Grundlagen der Künstlichen Intelligenz (Foundations of Artificial Intelligence) by Malte Helmert at University of Basel.
  • AAAI 2014 Outstanding Paper Award Honorable Mention for the paper Generalized Label Reduction for Merge-and-Shrink Heuristics (PDF) by Silvan Sievers, Martin Wehrle and Malte Helmert at the 28th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2014).
  • Outstanding Senior Program Committee Member Award for Malte Helmert at the 28th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2014).
  • ICAPS 2014 Outstanding Paper Award for the paper LP-based Heuristics for Cost-optimal Planning (PDF) by Florian Pommerening, Gabriele Röger, Malte Helmert and Blai Bonet at the 24th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2014).
  • Outstanding PC Member Award for Malte Helmert at the Twenty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2013).
  • Outstanding PC Member Award for Gabriele Röger at the Twenty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2013).
  • ICAPS 2013 Best Paper Award for the paper The Relative Pruning Power of Strong Stubborn Sets and Expansion Core (PDF) by Martin Wehrle, Malte Helmert, Yusra Alkhazraji and Robert Mattmüller at the 23rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2013).
  • ICAPS 2013 Best Student Paper Award for the paper Trial-based Heuristic Tree Search for Finite Horizon MDPs (PDF) by Thomas Keller and Malte Helmert at the 23rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2013).
  • SoCS 2012 Best Student Paper Award for the paper Better Parameter-Free Anytime Search by Minimizing Time Between Solutions (PDF) by Jordan T. Thayer, J. Benton and Malte Helmert at the Fifth Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2012).