Special Issue: Configuration

Abstract

The configuration task is commonly defined as composing a complex product from a set of predefined component types while taking into account a set of well-defined restrictions on how components belonging to these types can be combined. Configuration, always a successful artificial intelligence (AI) application area ever since the R1/XCON system of the early 1980s, has recently attracted renewed research interest. This is also demonstrated by an annual series of workshops on configuration that have been held at the AAAI, ECAI, and IJCAI conferences since 1999. Important real-world industrial configuration tasks are encountered in marketing, manufacturing, and design. They usually involve physical products, such as telecommunication switches, computers, elevators, large diesel engines, automation systems, or vehicles (some of which appear as application domains in the articles in this issue), but can also pertain to financial or other services or software.