Positions

Research Areas research areas

Overview

  • My main research is in artificial intelligence, although I also have interests in robotics, operations research, information visualization, and cognitive science. Very broadly, my goal is to understand how to build autonomous systems - for example, how a robot should decide what to do next. I'm also interested in decision support systems and in natural examples of cognition, such as humans. My current focus is on methods for heuristic search and planning, especially those that can be useful in robotics. In particular, I am interested in solving problems quickly (rational time-bounded decision-making) and in how on-line learning can inform optimization algorithms. I also enjoy experimental algorithmics.

    • Selected Publications

    Academic Article

    Year Title
    2024 Attacking Shortest Paths by Cutting Edges.  ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data.  18:1-42. 2024
    2022 Beam Search: Faster and Monotonic 2022
    2022 Beam Search: Faster and Monotonic.  Proceedings International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, ICAPS.  32:222-230. 2022
    2021 Optimal Edge Weight Perturbations to Attack Shortest Paths.  CoRR.  abs/2107.03347. 2021
    2021 PATHATTACK: Attacking Shortest Paths in Complex Networks.  Lecture Notes in Computer Science.  12976:532-547. 2021
    2020 EECBS: A Bounded-Suboptimal Search for Multi-Agent Path Finding.  CoRR.  abs/2010.01367. 2020
    2019 Improved Safe Real-time Heuristic Search.  CoRR.  abs/1905.06402. 2019
    2018 Solving Large Problems with Heuristic Search: General-Purpose Parallel External-Memory Search.  Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.  62:233-268. 2018
    2016 Effective Heuristics for Suboptimal Best-First Search.  Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.  57:273-306. 2016
    2015 Achieving Goals Quickly Using Real-time Search: Experimental Results in Video Games.  Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.  54:123-158. 2015
    2014 Real-time heuristic search for motion planning with dynamic obstacles.  AI Communications: the European journal on artificial intelligence.  27:345-362. 2014
    2014 The Fifth Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search.  AI Communications: the European journal on artificial intelligence.  27:327-328. 2014
    2013 Iterative-deepening search with on-line tree size prediction.  Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence.  69:183-205. 2013
    2013 Heuristic Search When Time Matters.  Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.  47:697-740. 2013
    2013 Online Reconfigurable Machines.  AI Magazine.  34:73-88. 2013
    2011 On-line Planning and Scheduling: An Application to Controlling Modular Printers.  Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.  40:415-468. 2011
    2010 Best-First Heuristic Search for Multicore Machines.  Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.  39:689-743. 2010
    2009 AAAI 2008 Workshop Reports.  AI Magazine.  30:108-118. 2009
    2006 Positioning using local maps.  Ad Hoc Networks.  4:240-253. 2006
    2006 Reports on the Twenty-First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-06) Workshop Program.  AI Magazine.  27:92-102. 2006
    2005 Interactivity and continuity in normal and aphasic language production..  Cognitive Neuropsychology.  22:131-168. 2005
    2004 Localization from connectivity in sensor networks.  IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems.  15:961-974. 2004
    2000 The selective impairment of phonological processing in speech production..  Brain and Language.  75:428-450. 2000
    2000 Testing assumptions in computational theories of aphasia.  Journal of Memory and Language.  43:217-248. 2000
    2000 An evaluation of a computational model of lexical access: comment on Dell et al. (1997)..  Psychological Review.  107:609-634. 2000
    1999 Alan W. Biermann, Great Ideas in Computer Science: A Gentle Introduction..  Minds and Machines: journal for artificial intelligence, philosophy and cognitive sciences.  9:417-421. 1999
    1996 Easily searched encodings for number partitioning.  Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications.  89:251-291. 1996

    Article

    Year Title
    2024 Planning and Acting While the Clock Ticks 2024
    2023 Rectangle Search: An Anytime Beam Search (Extended Version) 2023
    2023 Defense Against Shortest Path Attacks 2023
    2023 A Formal Metareasoning Model of Concurrent Planning and Execution 2023
    2022 Attacking Shortest Paths by Cutting Edges 2022

    Conference Paper

    Year Title
    2023 No Free Lunch: On the Increased Code Reuse Attack Surface of Obfuscated Programs.  2023 53rd Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN). 313-326. 2023
    2020 Anytime Kinodynamic Motion Planning using Region-Guided Search.  IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. 6789-6796. 2020
    2020 Beliefs We Can Believe in: Replacing Assumptions with Data in Real-Time Search.  THIRTY-FOURTH AAAI CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, THE THIRTY-SECOND INNOVATIVE APPLICATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CONFERENCE AND THE TENTH AAAI SYMPOSIUM ON EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 9827-9834. 2020
    2020 Envelope-Based Approaches to Real-Time Heuristic Search.  THIRTY-FOURTH AAAI CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, THE THIRTY-SECOND INNOVATIVE APPLICATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CONFERENCE AND THE TENTH AAAI SYMPOSIUM ON EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 2351-2358. 2020
    2020 Trading Plan Cost for Timeliness in Situated Temporal Planning.  PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWENTY-NINTH INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 4176-4182. 2020
    2019 Allocating Planning Effort When Actions Expire.  THIRTY-THIRD AAAI CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / THIRTY-FIRST INNOVATIVE APPLICATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CONFERENCE / NINTH AAAI SYMPOSIUM ON EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 2371-2378. 2019
    2019 Improved Safe Real-Time Heuristic Search..  SOCS. 172-173. 2019
    2019 Real-Time Heuristic Search in Dynamic Environments..  SOCS. 168-169. 2019
    2019 Real-Time Planning as Decision-Making under Uncertainty.  THIRTY-THIRD AAAI CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / THIRTY-FIRST INNOVATIVE APPLICATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CONFERENCE / NINTH AAAI SYMPOSIUM ON EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 2338-2345. 2019
    2019 Refining Abstraction Heuristics during Real-Time Planning.  THIRTY-THIRD AAAI CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / THIRTY-FIRST INNOVATIVE APPLICATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CONFERENCE / NINTH AAAI SYMPOSIUM ON EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 7578-7585. 2019
    2019 Replanning for Situated Robots..  ICAPS. 665-673. 2019
    2019 Revisiting Suboptimal Search..  SOCS. 18-25. 2019
    2019 Safe Temporal Planning for Urban Driving..  SafeAI@AAAI. 2019
    2018 Avoiding Dead Ends in Real-Time Heuristic Search.  THIRTY-SECOND AAAI CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / THIRTIETH INNOVATIVE APPLICATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CONFERENCE / EIGHTH AAAI SYMPOSIUM ON EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 1306-1313. 2018
    2018 Does Fast Beat Thorough? Comparing RTAA* and LSS-LRTA..  SOCS. 163-167. 2018
    2018 Real-Time Planning for Traffic Signal Control..  AAAI Workshops. 189-193. 2018
    2018 Situated Planning for Execution Under Temporal Constraints..  AAAI Spring Symposia. 2018
    2018 Temporal Planning while the Clock Ticks.  Proceedings International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, ICAPS. 39-46. 2018
    2017 An Effort Bias for Sampling-based Motion Planning.  IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. 2864-2871. 2017
    2017 Planning Time to Think: Metareasoning for On-Line Planning with Durative Actions.  Proceedings International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, ICAPS. 56-60. 2017
    2017 Value Directed Exploration in Multi-Armed Bandits with Structured Priors.  Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI). 1-16. 2017
    2017 Value Directed Exploration in Multi-Armed Bandits with Structured Priors..  UAI. 2017
    2016 Anytime versus Real-Time Heuristic Search for On-Line Planning..  SOCS. 131-132. 2016
    2015 Building a Heuristic for Greedy Search..  SOCS. 131-140. 2015
    2015 Max Is More than Min: Solving Maximization Problems with Heuristic Search.  PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (IJCAI). 4324-4330. 2015
    2015 Max Is More than Min: Solving Maximization Problems with Heuristic Search..  IJCAI. 4324-4330. 2015
    2015 Metareasoning in Real-Time Heuristic Search..  SOCS. 87-95. 2015
    2015 Recursive Best-First Search with Bounded Overhead.  PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWENTY-NINTH AAAI CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 1151-1157. 2015
    2015 Solving the Snake in the Box Problem with Heuristic Search: First Results..  SOCS. 96-104. 2015
    2015 Speedy versus Greedy Search.  PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (IJCAI). 4331-4337. 2015
    2015 Speedy versus Greedy Search..  IJCAI. 4331-4338. 2015
    2014 Bounded Suboptimal Search in Linear Space: New Results..  SOCS. 89-96. 2014
    2014 Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, ICAPS 2014, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA, June 21-26, 2014.  ICAPS. 2014
    2014 Simpler Bounded Suboptimal Search.  PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH AAAI CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 856-862. 2014
    2014 Sponsors..  ICAPS. 2014
    2013 Bounded Suboptimal Heuristic Search in Linear Space..  SOCS. 98-104. 2013
    2013 Experimental Real-Time Heuristic Search Results in a Video Game..  SOCS. 47-54. 2013
    2013 External Memory Best-First Search for Multiple Sequence Alignment..  AAAI. 409-416. 2013
    2013 Robust Bidirectional Search via Heuristic Improvement..  AAAI. 954-961. 2013
    2012 Abstraction-Guided Sampling for Motion Planning..  SOCS. 162-163. 2012
    2012 Anticipatory On-Line Planning..  ICAPS. 2012
    2012 Faster Bounded-Cost Search Using Inadmissible Estimates..  ICAPS. 2012
    2012 Heuristic Search Comes of Age..  AAAI. 2186-2191. 2012
    2012 Implementing Fast Heuristic Search Code..  SOCS. 25-32. 2012
    2012 Iterative-Deepening Search with On-Line Tree Size Prediction.  Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 1-15. 2012
    2012 Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search, SOCS 2012, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, July 19-21, 2012.  SOCS. 2012
    2012 Real-Time Motion Planning with Dynamic Obstacles..  SOCS. 33-40. 2012
    2012 When Does Weighted A* Fail?.  SOCS. 137-144. 2012
    2011 Best-First Search for Bounded-Depth Trees..  SOCS. 134-141. 2011
    2011 Bounded Suboptimal Search: A Direct Approach Using Inadmissible Estimates..  IJCAI. 674-679. 2011
    2011 Cost-Based Heuristic Search Is Sensitive to the Ratio of Operator Costs..  SOCS. 172-179. 2011
    2011 Deadline-Aware Search Using On-Line Measures of Behavior..  SOCS. 39-46. 2011
    2011 Faster Optimal and Suboptimal Hierarchical Search..  SOCS. 92-99. 2011
    2011 Heuristic Search for Large Problems With Real Costs..  AAAI. 30-35. 2011
    2011 Integrated Parallel Printing Systems with Hypermodular Architecture.  Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering. 787206-787206. 2011
    2011 Learning Inadmissible Heuristics During Search..  ICAPS. 2011
    2010 A Comparison of Greedy Search Algorithms..  SOCS. 129-136. 2010
    2010 Anytime Heuristic Search: Frameworks and Algorithms..  SOCS. 121-128. 2010
    2010 Continual On-line Planning as Decision-Theoretic Incremental Heuristic Search..  AAAI Spring Symposium: Embedded Reasoning. 2010
    2010 Finding Acceptable Solutions Faster Using Inadmissible Information..  SOCS. 98-99. 2010
    2010 Improving Determinization in Hindsight for On-line Probabilistic Planning..  ICAPS. 209-217. 2010
    2010 Parallel Best-First Search: The Role of Abstraction..  Abstraction, Reformulation, and Approximation. 2010
    2010 Real-Time Search in Dynamic Worlds..  SOCS. 16-22. 2010
    2010 Searching Without a Heuristic: Efficient Use of Abstraction.  PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH AAAI CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AAAI-10). 114-120. 2010
    2010 The Joy of Forgetting: Faster Anytime Search via Restarting..  ICAPS. 137-144. 2010
    2010 The Logic of Benchmarking: A Case Against State-of-the-Art Performance..  SOCS. 142-143. 2010
    2009 Best-First Heuristic Search for Multi-Core Machines.  IJCAI 2009, Proceedings of the 21st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Pasadena, California, USA, July 11-17, 2009. 449-455. 2009
    2009 Suboptimal and Anytime Heuristic Search on Multi-Core Machines..  ICAPS. 2009
    2009 Using Distance Estimates in Heuristic Search..  ICAPS. 2009
    2008 Faster than Weighted A*: An Optimistic Approach to Bounded Suboptimal Search..  ICAPS. 355-362. 2008
    2008 On-line Planning and Scheduling: An Application to Controlling Modular Printers..  AAAI. 1519-1523. 2008
    2008 Planning for Modular Printers: Beyond Productivity..  ICAPS. 68-75. 2008
    2007 Abstraction, Reformulation, and Approximation, 7th International Symposium, SARA 2007, Whistler, Canada, July 18-21, 2007, Proceedings.  SARA. 2007
    2007 Best-first Utility-guided Search.  20TH INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 2378-2384. 2007
    2006 Lessons Learned in Applying Domain-Independent Planning to High-Speed Manufacturing..  ICAPS. 370-373. 2006
    2006 Network flow modeling for flexible manufacturing systems with re-entrant lines.  Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. 1043-1050. 2006
    2005 Model-based search.  Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 365-366. 2005
    2005 On-line Planning and Scheduling for High-speed Manufacturing..  ICAPS. 30-39. 2005
    2004 Complete local search for propositional satisfiability.  PROCEEDING OF THE NINETEENTH NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE SIXTEENTH CONFERENCE ON INNOVATIVE APPLICATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. 161-166. 2004
    2004 Improved MDS-based localization.  Proceedings - IEEE INFOCOM. 2640-2651. 2004
    2003 Localization from mere connectivity.  Proceedings of the 4th ACM international symposium on Mobile ad hoc networking & computing. 201-212. 2003
    2002 Constructing distributed representations using additive clustering.  Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. 107-114. 2002
    2002 Principled Exploitation of Heuristic Information.  Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 345-346. 2002
    2001 Incomplete Tree Search using Adaptive Probing..  IJCAI. 235-241. 2001
    1997 Design galleries.  Proceedings of the 24th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques - SIGGRAPH '97. 389-400. 1997
    1997 Design galleries: a general approach to setting parameters for computer graphics and animation..  SIGGRAPH. 389-400. 1997
    1997 Design gallery browsers based on 2D and 3D graph drawing (Demo).  Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 322-329. 1997

    Teaching Activities

  • Algorithms Taught course
  • Algorithms Taught course
  • Doctoral Research Taught course
  • Doctoral Research Taught course
  • Intro Artificial Intelligence Taught course
  • Planning for Robots Taught course
  • Algorithms Taught course 2024
  • Algorithms Taught course 2024
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2024
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2023
  • Intro Artificial Intelligence Taught course 2023
  • Algorithms Taught course 2022
  • Algorithms Taught course 2022
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2022
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2022
  • Intro Artificial Intelligence Taught course 2022
  • Algorithms Taught course 2021
  • Algorithms Taught course 2021
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2021
  • Planning for Robots Taught course 2021
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2021
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2020
  • Internship Taught course 2020
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2020
  • Intro Artificial Intelligence Taught course 2020
  • Algorithms Taught course 2019
  • Algorithms Taught course 2019
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2019
  • Planning for Robots Taught course 2019
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2019
  • Independent Study Taught course 2019
  • Intro Artificial Intelligence Taught course 2019
  • Algorithms Taught course 2018
  • Algorithms Taught course 2018
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2018
  • Independent Study Taught course 2018
  • Top/Planning for Robots Taught course 2018
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2018
  • Independent Study Taught course 2018
  • Intro Artificial Intelligence Taught course 2018
  • Algorithms Taught course 2017
  • Algorithms Taught course 2017
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2017
  • Top/Planning for Robots Taught course 2017
  • Adv Top/Planning for Robots Taught course 2017
  • Algorithms Taught course 2017
  • Algorithms Taught course 2017
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2017
  • Independent Study Taught course 2017
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2016
  • Intro Artificial Intelligence Taught course 2016
  • Stdy/Artificial Intelligence Taught course 2016
  • Stdy/Thesis Taught course 2016
  • Advanced Topics Taught course 2016
  • Algorithms Taught course 2016
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2016
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2015
  • Intro Artificial Intelligence Taught course 2015
  • Stdy/Artificial Intelligence Taught course 2015
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2015
  • Independent Study Taught course 2015
  • Intro Artificial Intelligence Taught course 2015
  • Adv Topics/Robotics Taught course 2014
  • Algorithms Taught course 2014
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2014
  • Doctoral Research Taught course 2014

    • Education And Training

  • A.S./B.S. Computer Science, Harvard University
  • Ph.D. Computer Science, Harvard University

    • Full Name

  • Wheeler Ruml