Florian Pommerening

Florian Pommerening
Address
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Spiegelgasse 1
CH - 4051 Basel, Switzerland
Room
04.005
Email
Phone
+41 61 207 05 37

I studied Computer Science at the University of Freiburg where I received my Master in 2012. During my studies in Freiburg, I also spend a year in Melbourne where I studied Information Technology at Monash University and received my Master in 2010. Between 2012 and 2017 I completed my PhD under the supervision of Malte Helmert.

My main research interest is classical domain-independent planning. So far, I mostly focused on optimal planning by heuristic search, but I am interested in other areas as well. I am specifically interested in using linear programs and mixed integer programs in planning.

Apart from my research, I work on Fast Downward and also like to program in my free time. For example, I can recommend Project Euler and Python Challenge. Together with Thomas Mayer, I wrote a Quine in SPL.

Tutorials

Publications

(Show all abstracts) (Hide all abstracts)

2023

  • Remo Christen, Salomé Eriksson, Michael Katz, Christian Muise, Alice Petrov, Florian Pommerening, Jendrik Seipp, Silvan Sievers and David Speck.
    PARIS: Planning Algorithms for Reconfiguring Independent Sets.
    In Proceedings of the 26th European Conference on Artifical Intelligence (ECAI 2023), pp. 453-460. 2023.
    (PDF) (slides; PDF) (poster; PDF) (code, scripts and data)

  • Augusto B. Corrêa, Markus Hecher, Malte Helmert, Davide Mario Longo, Florian Pommerening and Stefan Woltran.
    Grounding Planning Tasks Using Tree Decompositions and Iterated Solving (Extended Abstract).
    In KR 2023 Recently Published Research Track. 2023.
    Note: This is an abridged version of a paper published at ICAPS 2023.
    (PDF) (slides; PDF)

  • Remo Christen, Salomé Eriksson, Michael Katz, Christian Muise, Alice Petrov, Florian Pommerening, Jendrik Seipp, Silvan Sievers and David Speck.
    PARIS: Planning Algorithms for Reconfiguring Independent Sets.
    In Proceedings of the ICAPS 2023 Workshop on Heuristics and Search for Domain-independent Planning (HSDIP 2023). 2023.
    Note: This paper is superseded by the ECAI 2023 paper by the same name.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF)

  • Augusto B. Corrêa, Markus Hecher, Malte Helmert, Davide Mario Longo, Florian Pommerening and Stefan Woltran.
    Grounding Planning Tasks Using Tree Decompositions and Iterated Solving.
    In Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2023). 2023.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (code) (slides; PDF) (poster; PDF)

2022

  • Mohammad Abdulaziz, Florian Pommerening and Augusto B. Corrêa.
    Mechanically Proving Guarantees of Generalized Heuristics: First Results and Ongoing Work.
    In Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Generalization in Planning (GenPlan 2022). 2022.
    Note: This work was also presented at HSDIP 2022. Due to different page limits, the HSDIP version has some additional details.
    (Show abstract) (slides; PDF)

  • Remo Christen, Salomé Eriksson, Michael Katz, Emil Keyder, Christian Muise, Alice Petrov, Florian Pommerening, Jendrik Seipp, Silvan Sievers and David Speck.
    (PARIS) Planning Algorithms for Reconfiguring Independent Sets.
    In First Combinatorial Reconfiguration Challenge (CoRe Challenge 2022), pp. 15-22. 2022.
    (PDF)

  • Lucas Galery Käser, Clemens Büchner, Augusto B. Corrêa, Florian Pommerening and Gabriele Röger.
    Machetli: Simplifying Input Files for Debugging.
    In System Demonstrations at the 32nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2022). 2022.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (poster; PDF) (video; MP4) (interactive demo)

  • Christian Muise, Florian Pommerening, Jendrik Seipp and Michael Katz.
    Planutils: Bringing Planning to the Masses.
    In System Demonstrations at the 32nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2022). 2022.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (poster; PDF) (video)

  • Mohammad Abdulaziz, Florian Pommerening and Augusto B. Corrêa.
    Mechanically Proving Guarantees of Generalized Heuristics: First Results and Ongoing Work.
    In Proceedings of the ICAPS 2022 Workshop on Heuristics and Search for Domain-independent Planning (HSDIP 2022). 2022.
    Note: This work was also presented at GenPlan 2022. Due to different page limits, the HSDIP version has some additional details.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

  • Thorsten Klößner, Florian Pommerening, Thomas Keller and Gabriele Röger.
    Cost Partitioning Heuristics for Stochastic Shortest Path Problems.
    In Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2022), pp. 193-202. 2022.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (technical report; PDF)

  • Remo Christen, Salomé Eriksson, Florian Pommerening and Malte Helmert.
    Detecting Unsolvability Based on Separating Functions.
    In Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2022), pp. 44-52. 2022.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF) (poster; PDF) (code, scripts, and data)

  • Augusto B. Corrêa, Florian Pommerening, Malte Helmert and Guillem Francès.
    The FF Heuristic for Lifted Classical Planning.
    In Proceedings of the 36th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2022), pp. 9716-9723. 2022.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides (short); PDF) (slides (long); PDF) (poster; PDF) (code and appendix)

2021

  • Florian Pommerening, Thomas Keller, Valentina Halasi, Jendrik Seipp, Silvan Sievers and Malte Helmert.
    Dantzig-Wolfe Decomposition for Cost Partitioning.
    In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2021), pp. 271-280. 2021.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (technical report; PDF) (slides; PDF) (recording) (poster; PDF) (code)

  • Augusto B. Corrêa, Guillem Francès, Florian Pommerening and Malte Helmert.
    Delete-Relaxation Heuristics for Lifted Classical Planning.
    In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2021), pp. 94-102. 2021.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF) (recording) (poster; PDF) (code)

  • Rik de Graaff, Augusto B. Corrêa and Florian Pommerening.
    Concept Languages as Expert Input for Generalized Planning: Preliminary Results.
    In Proceedings of the ICAPS 2021 Workshop on Knowledge Engineering for Planning and Scheduling (KEPS 2021). 2021.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

2020

  • Florian Pommerening, Gabriele Röger, Malte Helmert, Hadrien Cambazard, Louis-Martin Rousseau and Domenico Salvagnin.
    Lagrangian Decomposition for Classical Planning (Extended Abstract).
    In Proceedings of the 29th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2020), pp. 4770-4774. 2020.
    Note: This paper was invited for submission to the Best Papers From Sister Conferences Track, based on a paper that appeared in the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS) 2019. When referring to this work, please cite the ICAPS 2019 paper instead of this version.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF) (short recording; MP4) (long recording; MP4) (poster; PDF)

  • Silvan Sievers, Florian Pommerening, Thomas Keller and Malte Helmert.
    Cost-Partitioned Merge-and-Shrink Heuristics for Optimal Classical Planning.
    In Proceedings of the 29th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2020), pp. 4152-4160. 2020.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (technical report; PDF) (slides (short); PDF) (slides (long); PDF) (poster; PDF) (5m talk; MP4) (15m talk; MP4) (code, scripts and data)

  • Jörg Hoffmann, Malte Helmert, Daniel Gnad and Florian Pommerening.
    Planen.
    In Günther Görz, Ute Schmid and Tanya Braun (eds.), Handbuch der Künstlichen Intelligenz, pp. 395-428. De Gruyter 2020.
    (link)

  • Augusto B. Corrêa, Florian Pommerening, Malte Helmert and Guillem Francès.
    Lifted Successor Generation using Query Optimization Techniques.
    In Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2020), pp. 80-89. 2020.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF) (recording) (poster; PDF)

2019

  • Guillem Francès, Augusto B. Corrêa, Cedric Geissmann and Florian Pommerening.
    Generalized Potential Heuristics for Classical Planning.
    In Proceedings of the 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2019), pp. 5554-5561. 2019.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (technical report; PDF) (slides IJCAI 2019; PDF) (slides GenPlan 2020; PDF) (poster; PDF)

  • Florian Pommerening, Gabriele Röger, Malte Helmert, Hadrien Cambazard, Louis-Martin Rousseau and Domenico Salvagnin.
    Lagrangian Decomposition for Optimal Cost Partitioning.
    In Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2019), pp. 338-347. 2019.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF)

  • Augusto B. Corrêa and Florian Pommerening.
    An Empirical Study of Perfect Potential Heuristics.
    In Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2019), pp. 114-118. 2019.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF) (code)

  • Michael Katz, Emil Keyder, Florian Pommerening and Dominik Winterer.
    Oversubscription Planning as Classical Planning with Multiple Cost Functions.
    In Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2019), pp. 237-245. 2019.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

  • Amanda Coles, Andrew Coles, Moisés Martínez, Emre Savas, Thomas Keller, Florian Pommerening and Malte Helmert.
    On-board Planning for Robotic Space Missions using Temporal PDDL.
    In Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space (IWPSS 2019), pp. 34-42. 2019.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

2018

  • Jorge Ocón, Francisco Colmenero, Joaquin Estremera, Karl Buckley, Mercedes Alonso, Enrique Heredia, Javier Garcia, Andrew Coles, Amanda Coles, Moises Martinez Munoz, Emre Savas, Florian Pommerening, Thomas Keller, Spyros Karachalios, Mark Woods, Iulia Dragomir, Saddek Bensalem, Pierre Dissaux and Arnaud Schach.
    The ERGO Framework and its Use in Planetary/Orbital Scenarios.
    In Proceedings of the 69th International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2018). 2018.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

  • Augusto B. Corrêa, Florian Pommerening and Guillem Francès.
    Relaxed Decision Diagrams for Delete-Free Planning.
    In Proceedings of the CP 2018 Workshop on Constraints and AI Planning (ConsAIPlan 2018). 2018.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

  • Michael Katz, Vitaly Mirkis, Florian Pommerening and Dominik Winterer.
    Reformulating Oversubscription Planning Tasks.
    In Proceedings of the ICAPS-2018 Workshop on Heuristics and Search for Domain-independent Planning (HSDIP 2018), pp. 81-88. 2018.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

  • Jorge Ocón, Karl Buckley, Francisco Colmenero, Saddek Bensalem, Iulia Dragomir, Spyros Karachalios, Mark Woods, Florian Pommerening and Thomas Keller.
    Using the ERGO Framework for Space Robotics in a Planetary and an Orbital Scenario.
    In Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (i-SAIRAS 2018). 2018.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

2017

  • Florian Pommerening, Malte Helmert and Blai Bonet.
    Abstraction Heuristics, Cost Partitioning and Network Flows.
    In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2017), pp. 228-232. 2017.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

  • Florian Pommerening.
    New Perspectives on Cost Partitioning for Optimal Classical Planning.
    Ph.D. Thesis, University of Basel, Switzerland, 2017.
    Date of disputation: 2017-05-31.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

  • Florian Pommerening, Malte Helmert and Blai Bonet.
    Higher-Dimensional Potential Heuristics for Optimal Classical Planning.
    In Proceedings of the 31st AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2017), pp. 3636-3643. 2017.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF)

2016

  • Thomas Keller, Florian Pommerening, Jendrik Seipp, Florian Geißer and Robert Mattmüller.
    State-dependent Cost Partitionings for Cartesian Abstractions in Classical Planning.
    In Proceedings of the 25th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2016), pp. 3161-3169. 2016.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (technical report; PDF)

  • Jendrik Seipp, Florian Pommerening, Gabriele Röger and Malte Helmert.
    Correlation Complexity of Classical Planning Domains.
    In Proceedings of the 25th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2016), pp. 3242-3250. 2016.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF) (poster; PDF)

  • Jendrik Seipp, Florian Pommerening, Silvan Sievers, Martin Wehrle, Chris Fawcett and Yusra Alkhazraji.
    Fast Downward Aidos (planner abstract).
    In First Unsolvability International Planning Competition (UIPC 2016). 2016.
    (PDF) (Code)

  • Florian Pommerening and Jendrik Seipp.
    Fast Downward Dead-End Pattern Database (planner abstract).
    In First Unsolvability International Planning Competition (UIPC 2016). 2016.
    (PDF)

  • Jendrik Seipp, Florian Pommerening, Gabriele Röger and Malte Helmert.
    Correlation Complexity of Classical Planning Domains.
    In Proceedings of the ICAPS-2016 Workshop on Heuristics and Search for Domain-independent Planning (HSDIP 2016), pp. 12-20. 2016.
    Superseded by the IJCAI 2016 paper by the same name.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF)

2015

  • Florian Pommerening, Gabriele Röger, Malte Helmert and Blai Bonet.
    Heuristics for Cost-Optimal Classical Planning based on Linear Programming.
    In Proceedings of the 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2015), pp. 4303-4309. 2015.
    Note: This paper was invited for submission to the Best Papers From Sister Conferences Track, based on a paper that appeared in the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS) 2014. When referring to this work, please cite the ICAPS 2014 paper instead of this version.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

  • Sascha Scherrer, Florian Pommerening and Martin Wehrle.
    Improved Pattern Selection for PDB Heuristics in Classical Planning (Extended Abstract).
    In Proceedings of the 8th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2015), pp. 216-217. 2015.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (poster; PDF)

  • Florian Pommerening and Malte Helmert.
    A Normal Form for Classical Planning Tasks.
    In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2015), pp. 188-192. 2015.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF)

  • Jendrik Seipp, Florian Pommerening and Malte Helmert.
    New Optimization Functions for Potential Heuristics.
    In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2015), pp. 193-201. 2015.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF) (recording)

  • Florian Pommerening, Malte Helmert, Gabriele Röger and Jendrik Seipp.
    From Non-Negative to General Operator Cost Partitioning.
    In Proceedings of the 29th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2015), pp. 3335-3341. 2015.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF) (technical report; PDF) (erratum; PDF)

  • Gabriele Röger and Florian Pommerening.
    Linear Programming for Heuristics in Optimal Planning.
    In Proceedings of the AAAI-2015 Workshop on Planning, Search, and Optimization (PlanSOpt), pp. 69-76. 2015.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

2014

  • Gabriele Röger, Florian Pommerening and Malte Helmert.
    Optimal Planning in the Presence of Conditional Effects: Extending LM-Cut with Context-Splitting.
    In Proceedings of the 21st European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2014), pp. 765-770. 2014.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

  • Gabriele Röger, Florian Pommerening and Jendrik Seipp.
    Fast Downward Stone Soup 2014 (planner abstract).
    In Eighth International Planning Competition (IPC 2014), Deterministic Part, pp. 28-31. 2014.
    (PDF)

  • Yusra Alkhazraji, Michael Katz, Robert Mattmüller, Florian Pommerening, Alexander Shleyfman and Martin Wehrle.
    Metis: Arming Fast Downward with Pruning and Incremental Computation.
    In Eighth International Planning Competition (IPC 2014), Deterministic Part, pp. 88-92. 2014.
    (PDF)

  • Florian Pommerening, Gabriele Röger, Malte Helmert and Blai Bonet.
    LP-based Heuristics for Cost-optimal Planning.
    In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2014), pp. 226-234. 2014.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF) (poster; PDF)

  • Manuel Heusner, Martin Wehrle, Florian Pommerening and Malte Helmert.
    Under-Approximation Refinement for Classical Planning.
    In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2014), pp. 365-369. 2014.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

  • Gabriele Röger, Florian Pommerening and Malte Helmert.
    Optimal Planning in the Presence of Conditional Effects: Extending LM-Cut with Context-Splitting.
    In Proceedings of the ICAPS-2014 Workshop on Heuristics and Search for Domain-independent Planning (HSDIP), pp. 80-87. 2014.
    Superseded by the ECAI 2014 paper by the same name.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

2013

  • Florian Pommerening, Gabriele Röger and Malte Helmert.
    Getting the Most Out of Pattern Databases for Classical Planning.
    In Proceedings of the 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2013), pp. 2357-2364. 2013.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF) (poster; PDF)

  • Florian Pommerening and Malte Helmert.
    Incremental LM-Cut.
    In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2013), pp. 162-170. 2013.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF)

2012

  • Florian Pommerening and Malte Helmert.
    Optimal Planning for Delete-free Tasks with Incremental LM-cut.
    In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2012), pp. 363-367. 2012.
    (Show abstract) (PDF) (slides; PDF)

2009

  • Florian Pommerening, Stefan Wölfl and Matthias Westphal.
    Right-of-Way Rules as Use Case for Integrating GOLOG and Qualitative Reasoning.
    In Proceedings of the 32nd Annual German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI 2009), pp. 468-475. 2009.
    (Show abstract) (PDF)

Awards

  • "Quality Champion" PC award at the 26th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2023).
  • Runner Up, Best Student Paper Award for the paper Grounding Planning Tasks Using Tree Decompositions and Iterated Solving (PDF) with Augusto B. Corrêa, Markus Hecher, Malte Helmert, Davide Mario Longo and Stefan Woltran at the 33rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2023).
  • CoRe Challenge 2022 Awards for the planning system PARIS: Planning Algorithms for Reconfiguring Independent Sets (PDF) with Remo Christen, Salomé Eriksson, Michael Katz, Emil Keyder, Christian Muise, Alice Petrov, 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) with Thorsten Klößner, Thomas Keller and Gabriele Röger 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) with Lucas Galery Käser, Clemens Büchner, Augusto B. Corrêa 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) with Christian Muise, Jendrik Seipp and Michael Katz at the 32nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2022).
  • Outstanding Senior Program Committee Award at the 35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2021).
  • ICAPS 2019 Best Paper Award for the paper Lagrangian Decomposition for Optimal Cost Partitioning (PDF) with 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) 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) at the Twenty-Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2018).
  • ICAPS 2018 Best Dissertation Award for the doctoral thesis New Perspectives on Optimal Cost Partitioning for Classical Planning (PDF) at the 28th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2018).
  • Outstanding PC Member Award at the 9th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2016).
  • Winner, Unsolvability IPC 2016 for the planning system Fast Downward Aidos (PDF) with Jendrik Seipp, 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) with Malte Helmert, Gabriele Röger and Jendrik Seipp at the 29th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2015).
  • ICAPS 2014 Outstanding Paper Award for the paper LP-based Heuristics for Cost-optimal Planning (PDF) with Gabriele Röger, Malte Helmert and Blai Bonet at the 24th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2014).
  • Dux of the Master of Information Technology 2010 at Monash University.