Dr. Jussi Rintanen Aalto University Department of Information and Computer Science email rintanenj at gmail dot com

My research interests are in search and automated reasoning, especially finding state, action, event or task sequences in very large transition systems. This problem appears as a subproblem when deciding what to do and how to do it, which can be viewed as a planning or controller synthesis problem. Most of the research challenges are caused by the astronomically high numbers of possible state/event/action/task sequences, and the alternative sequences that have to be considered when we cannot predict exactly what is going to happen. My research interests here are in the junction of the theoretical and the algorithmic: I am interested in understanding search methods such as SAT algorithms (propositional resolution proof systems) better, especially their capabilities in solving state-space reachability problems, as well as the capabilities of other symbolic (non-enumerative) search methods such as Binary Decision Diagrams, and the relations of these methods to enumerative state-space search algorithms.

In the application side, we are interested in discrete and hybrid systems control (planning), monitoring, and diagnosis, lately especially for intelligent networks such as the Smart Grid, the intelligent electricity networks of the near future. We try to understand, automatically, what happens in a complex system (monitoring, diagnosis), what could happen (contingency analysis), and what actions to take to avoid problems and to recover from faults (control). Problems I have solved in my research include intelligent alarm-processing and reconfiguration of electricity networks and Smart Grids. Another application area for our research is business processes. We are especially interested in goal-driven and declarative business process modeling, synthesis and execution. The main problems in these applications can be understood in terms of (discrete or hybrid) state-transition models, and the a main goal of the research is to transfer the results of our research to solve the application problems better, and to drive the research by the problems arising in the applications.

I obtained my PhD in Computer Science from the Helsinki University of Technology in 1997, held research and teaching positions at the universities of Ulm and Freiburg between 1997 and 2005, and have been in Australia since January 2006. See my CV for details.

Research

• Factored search methods for state-space search problems, especially based on model-finding and logic-based data structures.
• Application of state-space search methods to diagnosis, decision making, and syntesis of plans, controllers and policies
• Representation of high-level system specifications, as needed for high-level synthesis of business processes, workflows and information systems.
• Supervisory control of discrete and hybrid systems, such as electricity networks and other utility infrastructure.

planning as satisfiability (software, papers, links)

Courses and tutorials

Here is a brief technical overview of AI planning and state-space search methods in general, summarizing the main representations of state-space search problem and the main approaches for solving it (as applied to solving problems in computer-aided verification, including reachability analysis, deadlock detection, and model-checking, in artificial intelligence, and also to some extent in Intelligent Control.)

Photos: panoramas, birds