This article gives an overview of two recent events on the validation and verification of knowledge-based systems: (1) the 1997 European Symposium on the Verification and Validation of Knowledge-Based Systems (EUROVAV-97) and (2) the Four-teenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence Workshop on the Verification and Validation of Knowledge- Based Systems. To give an integrated view of current research issues in this field, we organized this article along thematic lines, unifying the reports of the two separate meetings. Our report focuses on the trends that we think will be important in the near future in this field.

To remain competitive, enterprises must become increasingly agile and integrated across their functions. Enterprise models play a critical role in this integration, enabling better designs for enterprises, analysis of their performance, and management of their operations. This article motivates the need for enterprise models and introduces the concepts of generic and deductive enterprise models. It reviews research to date on enterprise modeling and considers in detail the Toronto virtual enterprise effort at the University of Toronto.

Robot soccer competition provides an excellent opportunity for integrated robotics research. In particular, robot players in a soccer game must recognize and track objects in real time, navigate in a dynamic field, collaborate with teammates, and strike the ball in the correct direction. All these tasks demand robots that are autonomous (sensing, thinking, and acting as independent creatures), efficient (functioning under time and resource constraints), cooperative (collaborating with each other to accomplish tasks that are beyond an individual's capabilities), and intelligent (reasoning and planning actions and perhaps learning from experience). Furthermore, all these capabilities must be integrated into a single and complete system, which raises a set of challenges that are new to individual research disciplines. This article describes our experience (problems and solutions) in these aspects. Our robots share the same general architecture and basic hardware, but they have integrated abilities to play different roles (goalkeeper, defender, or forward) and use different strategies in their behavior. Our philosophy in building these robots is to use the least sophistication to make them as robust and integrated as possible. At RoboCup-97, held as part of the Fifteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, these integrated robots performed well, and our DREAMTEAM won the world championship in the middle-size robot league.

Robotic soccer is a challenging research domain that involves multiple agents that need to collaborate in an adversarial environment to achieve specific objectives. In this article, we describe CMUNITED, the team of small robotic agents that we developed to enter the RoboCup-97 competition. We designed and built the robotic agents, devised the appropriate vision algorithm, and developed and implemented algorithms for strategic collaboration between the robots in an uncertain and dynamic environment. The robots can organize themselves in formations, hold specific roles, and pursue their goals. In game situations, they have demonstrated their collaborative behaviors on multiple occasions. We present an overview of the vision-processing algorithm that successfully tracks multiple moving objects and predicts trajectories. The article then focuses on the agent behaviors, ranging from low-level individual behaviors to coordinated, strategic team behaviors. CMUNITED won the RoboCup-97 small-robot competition at the Fifteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Nagoya, Japan.

's performance in is driven by's development was driven by the Using Further aspects of multiagent agents could not always quickly locate and agent and team modeling. With respect to learning, as well as arenas of agent and intercept the ball or maintain awareness of teamwork, our previous work was based on team modeling (particularly to recognize positions of teammates and opponents. It then enables team members to make any decisions. Instead, all the decision Yaser Al-Onaizan, Ali Erdem, autonomously reason about coordination making rests with the higher level, Gal A. Kaminka, Stacy C. Marsella, and communication in teamwork, providing implemented in the Given its domain architecture, which takes into account the independence, it also enables reuse across recommendations made by the lower level. 's teamwork reasoning is currently test domain given its substantial also implemented in

In this article, we describe the milestone of our research efforts in our work for the RoboCup middle-size league competition. Reinforcement learning in applying it to real robot applications; we then give our method of coping with these has recently been receiving increased attention issues in the context of RoboCup. Finally, we as a method for robot learning with little or no show our system and the experimental results a priori knowledge and a higher capability for of RoboCup-97. The robot senses the current state First, we follow the explanation of Q-learning of the environment and selects an action. For a more thorough treatment, Based on the state and the action, the environment see Watkins and Dayan (1992).

The robot uses a layered Intelligence (AAAI-97). Twenty-one robotic architecture for integrating planning and teams participated, making this the largest action. It differs from the usual approach of robot exhibition ever. See figure 1 for a photo interfacing a planner to a reactive system in a of the exhibition participants. Since the first layered architecture because the reactive system Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition at is replaced with a different kind of action AAAI-92, the exhibition has served to demonstrate system.

RoboCup-97, The First Robot World Cup Soccer Games and Conferences, was held at the Fifteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. There were two leagues: (1) real robot and (2) simulation. Ten teams participated in the real-robot league and 29 teams in the simulation league. Over 150 researchers attended the technical workshop. The world champions are CMUNITED (Carnegie Mellon University) for the small-size league, DREAMTEAM (University of Southern California) and TRACKIES (Osaka University, Japan) for the middle-size league, and AT-HUMBOLDT (Humboldt University) for the simulation league. The Scientific Challenge Award was given to Sean Luke (University of Maryland) for his genetic programming- based simulation team LUKE, and the Engineering Challenge Awards were given to UTTORI UNITED (Utsunomiya University, Toyo University, and Riken, Japan) and RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia) for designing novel omnidirectional driving mechanisms. Over 5000 spectators and 70 international media covered the competition worldwide. RoboCup-98, the Second Robot World Cup Soccer, was held in conjunction with the Third International Conference on Multiagent Systems in Paris, France, in July 1998.

After a summary of the rules, we outline the high and low points of the competition. Devising a sweep pattern on a bounded established in past contests. The only wrinkle uncluttered surface to ensure complete coverage concerned bag capacity: if the robot encountered is a well-formed and solved problem. A domestic or small office venue offered Points were awarded for cleaning the messes more complexity. The areas were smaller and (or just moving over them) and making contained more furniture.

In real life, such functions range of objects along with the perceptual might be useful for in-home care of the capabilities required to support it. The rules specified a fixed course and a fixed set This event was extremely difficult because it of objects that would populate it. The course forced teams to implement both manipulation consisted of typical household furniture and (the grasping and moving of objects) and visual Lexan partitions arranged to produce a simplified object recognition. The objects were typical required teams to implement them for a wide household objects, such as a television remote, range of objects. It therefore eliminated a a pill bottle, and fruits and vegetables.