Workshop on Heuristics and Search for Domain-independent Planning (HSDIP 2026)

Important dates

Aim and Scope of the Workshop

Heuristics and search algorithms are the two key components of heuristic search, one of the main approaches to many variations of domain-independent planning, including classical planning, temporal planning, planning under uncertainty and adversarial planning. This workshop seeks to understand the underlying principles of current heuristics and search methods, their limitations, ways for overcoming those limitations, as well as the synergy between heuristics and search.

The HSDIP workshop has always been welcoming of multidisciplinary work, for example, drawing inspiration from operations research (like row and column generation algorithms), convex optimization (like gradient optimization for hybrid planning), constraint programming, satisfiability, or applications of machine learning in heuristic search (e.g., learning heuristics, or heuristic selection).

The workshop is meant to be an open and inclusive forum, and we encourage papers that report on work in progress or that do not fit the mold of a typical conference paper. Contributions do not have to show that a new approach outperforms the state of the art. While performance measured in the number of evaluated nodes, time, and solution quality remains relevant, in this workshop we seek above all crisp and meaningful ideas and understanding. We are interested in all variations of domain-independent planning such as classical planning, temporal planning, hybrid planning, planning under uncertainty, adversarial planning, or (model-based) reinforcement learning. Non-trivial negative results are welcome to the workshop, but we expect the authors to argue for the significance of the presented results.

Topics of Interest

Examples of typical topics for submissions to this workshop are:

• automatic derivation of heuristic estimators for domain-independent planning
• formal results showing equivalence or dominance between heuristics
• novel heuristic methods dealing with planning with numeric variables and effects, partial observability and non-deterministic action effects
• heuristic estimators for domain-independent planning via procedures or suitably defined encodings of declarative descriptions of planning tasks into satisfiability or optimisation
• novel search techniques for domain-independent planning that explicitly aim at exploiting effectively the properties of existing heuristics
• empirical observations of synergies between heuristics and search in domain-independent planning
• challenging domains for existing combinations of heuristics and search algorithms
• applications of machine learning in heuristic search, e.g., learning heuristics, adaptive search strategies, or heuristic selection
• interesting algorithmic optimizations for the calculation of a heuristic or the execution of a search

Schedule

Talk length is shown in the last column: L = long paper (12+3 min), S = short paper (8+2 min).

Submission Details

Please format submissions in AAAI style (see instructions in the Author Kit at this link). Long (up to 9 pages including references) and short (up to 5 pages including references) papers are the standard category, submissions shorter than the page limit are welcome. Long papers will be allocated a longer presentation at the workshop.

Submissions will be made through EasyChair: Submission Website

The following conditions apply:

• Submissions will be double blind (except for two program chairs who will see author names).
• Papers will be reviewed by a member of the organizing committee, and/or external reviewers selected by the organizing committee, according to the usual criteria such as relevance to the workshop, significance of the contribution, and technical quality.
• Discussions between reviewers and organizers will remain private.

At least one author of each accepted paper must attend the workshop in order to present the paper.

Policy on Previously Published Materials

Previously published papers to conferences other than ICAPS are allowed. They will only receive a light review for relevance by a member of the organizing committee. Please do not submit papers accepted at the main conference.

Rejected papers from the main conference are welcome if you do your utmost to address the comments given by ICAPS reviewers.

Parallel submissions sent to other conferences are allowed from our side. It is your responsibility to ensure that those venues allow for papers submitted to be published in parallel “informal” ways (e.g. in workshop proceedings or websites without associated ISSN/ISBN).

Workshop Committee

Organizing Committee

You can contact us at hsdip@googlegroups.com.

• Malte Helmert, University of Basel, Switzerland
• Arnaud Lequen, Linköping University, Sweden
• Alison Paredes, Queen’s University, Canada
• Devin Thomas, University of New Hampshire, United States