First International Workshop on

Constraints and Design

Held in conjunction with

11th International Conference on
Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP2005

Melia Sitges Hotel, Sitges (Barcelona), Spain

October 1st, 2005

[ Overview ]

[ Scope ]

[ Submissions ]

[ Important Dates ]

[ Schedule ]

[ Organisation ]

The final workshop schedule is available; the proceedings is available also.

Overview

Constraint processing has emerged as an extremely expressive and powerful paradigm in which to model, solve and reason about many complex problems. Over the past several decades advances in both the fundamental aspects of constraint processing and practical applications of constraints have contributed to making it one of the most promising of Artificial Intelligence technologies.

In product development and design, constraints arise in many forms. The functional description of an artifact defines a set of constraints, as does the physical realization of that functionality. The production processes that will be used to manufacture the artifact can constrain the materials and dimensions that the designer can select. Preferences can be represented as constraints so that optimization techniques can be employed, as well as forming a basis for negotiation. Of course, in many situations constraints emerge during design. Therefore, techniques for supporting the acquisition and discovery of constraints are important. Finally, designers often wish to have explained to them why some design option is not available to them, or how to overcome blind-alleys. Techniques from the fields of diagnosis, as well as approaches to visualization and explanation are critical.

While the study of constraints has been maturing over the past several decades, there are many opportunities to hybridize constraint processing with other technologies from the fields of both Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science to develop sophisticated tools for supporting design. It is hoped that this workshop will demonstrate synergies between constraints and techniques from fields such as machine learning, information retrieval, psychology, engineering, human-computer interaction, visualization and intelligent user-interfaces. However, the objective of this workshop is to collect papers that primarily exploit developments in constraint processing in the domain of engineering design.

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Scope

Topics that may be addressed in papers for consideration for inclusion in this workshop include, but are not limited to:

• optimization and constraint solving techniques for mixed discrete/continuous problems and structured models;
• validation of models and solutions: robustness, sensitivity, existence;
• interface with functional analysis: translation into constraints of functional diagrams, actions, data flow;
• constraint-based approaches to supporting the major phases of design: conceptual/embodiment/detailed design;
• constraints for integrated product development, concurrent engineering, Design For X, etc.
• constraints for configuration;
• constraints and synthesis;
• constraints for design critiquing, design evaluation and design checking;
• fundamental advances in constraints that are relevant to design, such as constraint acquisition, explanation generation, preference handling, negotiation, etc.;
• hybrid systems for design involving a significant constraint-based element;
• realworld applications of constraints for design.

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Delivery & Submissions

All submissions will be anonymously reviewed by at least two expert reviewers, and a selection for publication made on the basis of these reviews. This workshop will be scheduled for one half day. We expect to structure the Workshop to allow ample time for discussion and demonstration. We would like to avoid a ``mini-conference''.

Prospective attendees can:

• Submit a paper, which can be up to 15 pages in length. Instructions for electronic submission of papers will follow in the full Call for Papers.
• Submit a one page statement of interest in plain text e-mail, indicating what perspective and background they will bring to the Workshop.
• Submit a position paper discussing ``what users need''.

Please send your submissions by email to b.osullivan@cs.ucc.ie using the subject line CAD-05 Workshop Submission.

The workshop is open to all delegates provided the workshop registration has been paid (a single registration fee provides entry to all CP and ICLP workshops). One author of each accepted paper must attend.

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Important Dates

The proposed schedule of important dates for the workshop is as follows:

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Workshop Schedule

This workshop will take place at 2:30pm until 16:15, i.e. it occupies a quarter-day. The schedule of talks is as follows. Note that each talk is 20 minutes long, with 5 minutes for questions.

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Organisation

Organising Committee

Barry O'Sullivan (Primary Contact)
Cork Constraint Computation Centre
University College Cork, Ireland
Email: b.osullivan@cs.ucc.ie
Tel: +353 21 4903085
Fax: +353 21 4903113
Web: http://www.cs.ucc.ie/~osullb/

Laurent Granvilliers
LINA, 2 rue de la Houssiniere
BP-92208, 44322 Nantes cedex 03, France
Email: Laurent.Granvilliers lina.univ-nantes.fr
Tel: +332 5112 5851
Fax: +332 5112 5812
Web: http://www.sciences.univ-nantes.fr/lina/en/

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Programme Committee

P. Barahona (New University of Lisbon)
F. Benhamou (LINA)
J. Bowen (UCC)
B. Faltings (EPFL)
X. Fischer (LIPSI ESTIA)
J. Gero (University of Sydney)
U. Junker (ILOG)
K. Kuchcinski (Lund University)
P. Sebastian (TREFLE, Bordeaux)
R. Szymanek (4C)
L. Zimmer (Dassault Aviation)

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