Challenges in answer set solving

Abstract

Michael Gelfond’s application of Answer Set Programming (ASP) in the context of NASA’s space shuttle has opened the door of the ivory tower. His project has not only given our community self-confidence and served us as a reference for grant agencies and neighboring fields, but ultimately it helped freeing the penguins making them exclaim “Yes, we can [fly]!”. The community has taken up this wonderful assist to establish ASP as a prime tool for declarative problem solving in the area of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. Despite this success, however, ASP has not yet attracted broad attention outside this area. This paper aims at identifying some current challenges that our field has to overcome in the mid-run to ultimately become a full-fledged technology in Informatics.