Thirty-five papers from the May 1996 conference emphasize planning in the field of artificial intelligence both as a research tradition and as part of a "real world" application. The contributors tackle a range of topics, including practical algorithms for achieving efficiency in planning, formal results on the completeness and complexity of planning domains, classical planning, formal specification of planning knowledge and domains, constraint satisfaction techniques and their application, reactive planning, and repair and consistency checking in schedules. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.