CALL FOR PARTCIPATION

1st Computer Cooking Contest
CCC 2008 @ ECCBR 2008

September 1, 2008, Trier (Germany)
www.computercookingcontest.net

Who says that only human beings are able to cook delicious meals? We
aim to teach our computers the haute cuisine and therefore we need
your creativity and ideas! Come to the European Conference on Case-
Based Reasoning
(ECCBR'08) in Trier and participate in the Computer Cooking Contest
(CCC)!
Write your own software application for the live competition. Show
that your program is more creative than the average kitchen user. Let
your computer's recipe creations be evaluated by a professional cook
and an international jury of scientists!

Rationales
----------

Once upon a time in the past, when we still were students, we
wondered whether there could be a software which would relieve us
from the task of matching the content of our fridge to a dish. Given
a restricted set of ingredients, the task is to cook something, where
something does taste good.
Ideally, something moreish.

Once upon a time in the present, when we were not students anymore,
we wondered whether there could be a software which would relieve us
from the task of explaining what we are doing, e.g. case-based
reasoning, to a broader audience. Given the technological state of
the art, the task is to demonstrate something, where something solves
a problem. Ideally, something moreish.

Glue the two together and you get it: The Computer Cooking Contest!

Moreish means: it tastes like more. This is the rationale behind the
contest, too. It will attract new people, e.g. students, to deal with
AI technologies such as case-based reasoning, semantic technologies,
search and information extraction. Also cooking is fun, in particular
when using a computer for the design of the menu. Furthermore, the
contest will attract the public. Since everybody knows something
about cooking, people will be curious what a computer might do about
it. Furthermore, we all have noticed the increasing interest of the
public audience in cooking, stipulated by the growing insight that
good food is mandatory for health.
Hence, the Computer Cooking Contest offers the opportunity to explain
the benefits of our technologies intelligible to all.

Competition
-----------

The Computer Cooking Contest is an open competition. Any individual,
student, research group and professional is invited to submit
software that creates a recipe for a single dish or even a three
course menu. The input will be a database of basic recipes from which
appropriate recipes must be selected, modified, or even combined. The
queries to the system consist of a number of wanted ingredients and
other requirements for the dish or menu.

The overall competition is structured into a main compulsory task and
two additional challenge tasks.

The Compulsory Task involves answering queries that require the
selection and modification of recipe for a single dish. A sample
query could be to "cook a main dish with turkey, pistachio, and
pasta". An appropriate answer would be to select a recipe for
pistachio chicken and to replace chicken by turkey.

The Negation Challenge is to answer queries that involve avoiding
certain ingredients, which you donā??t like or which are not
available.
This can be done, for example, by selecting an appropriate recipe or
by replacing or removing some ingredients from a recipe. A sample
query could
be: "I want to have a salad with tomato but I hate garlic and
cucumber". An appropriate answer would be to select an italian tomato
salad and to omit the garlic.

The Menu Challenge requires the composition of a three-course menu
based on the available recipes. For example we might ask: "I do have
a filet of beef, carrots, celery, field garlic and cucumber. Potatoes
are available, too. For the dessert, we have oranges and mint. A soup
would be preferable for the starter." In this case, a Caldo Verde as
a starter, filet steak with baked potatoes, and an orange ice cream
with mint flavour would be a good solution.

Please note that for most of the queries there is not a single
correct or best answer. Usually many different solutions are
possible, depending on your creativity or the creativity of your
software. We also do not imply any restriction on the technology to
be used. Case-based reasoning is one candidate technology, but other
approaches are certainly suitable as well.
The only restriction we impose is that the given database of recipes
must be used as a starting point. We will not provide a formal query
language.
Queries will be described in free text but the software to be
developed can use any kind of user interaction (structural/ formula-
based, conversation, text-based).

Evaluation Criteria
-------------------

All systems will be evaluated with respect to scientific/technical
quality (technical originality of the approach, usability of the
software, maintainability, and scalability) and with respect to the
culinary quality of the created recipes (appropriate to the query,
tasty, cookable, creative). The evaluation will involve a peer-review
of the papers describing the system and an assessment by an
international jury of experts including a professional cook. We also
intend to give the ECCBR attendees an additional vote.

Competition Procedure and Timeline
----------------------------------

Now: Statement of Interest
Everybody interested in participating at the CCC should visit
www.computercookingcontest.net and subscribe to the mailing list
through which all relevant information will be communicated.

September 1, 2007:
Publication of Contest Conditions and Material A detailed description
of the competition rules, an initial database of recipes in XML
format, and a first set of queries has been published. With this
information, the contest participants can start with the development
of their system.

June 2, 2008:
Qualifying Examination
To this deadline, the contest participants must submit:
- an up-to-10-page technical description of the system,
- the URL of the running system (web interface) or the executable
software (must run on Windows)
- the system results for the first set of queries.
In a peer review process, the submitted papers and the systems will
be evaluated and the best contestants are selected for participation
in the final. The finalists may of course continue to improve their
systems for the final.

August 1, 2008:
Publication of the Contest Recipes An extended database including
additional recipes will be published four weeks prior to the contest.
The extended database must be used for all queries in the
competitions' final. The contest participants must update their
system to include the new recipes.

September 1, 2008:
Computer Cooking Contest The finalist systems are demonstrated at the
Computer Cooking Contest at ECCBR. At least one person per finalist
must register for ECCBR, demonstrate the system and give a technical
presentation at the CCC workshop. The technical descriptions of the
finalist systems will be published in the ECCBR workshop proceedings.
The systems are evaluated according to the initial set of queries and
a confidential set of new queries. The new queries are different, but
similar in type and difficulty to the first set. The evaluation will
be performed by an international jury.
Separate prices will be awarded for the compulsory tasks and for the
two challenges.

Contact: Please do not hesitate to contact ccc-org2008 'at' uni-
trier.de in case you have any questions.