Termination of logic programs with negated body atoms (here called general logic programs) is an important topic. One reason is that many computational mechanisms used to process negated atoms, like Clark's negation as failure and Chan's constructive negation, are based on termination conditions. This paper introduces a methodology for proving termination of general logic programs w.r.t. the Prolog selection rule. The idea is to distinguish parts of the program depending on whether or not their termination depends on the selection rule. To this end, the notions of low-, weakly up-, and up-acceptable program are introduced. We use these notions to develop a methodology for proving termination of general logic programs, and show how interesting problems in non-monotonic reasoning can be formalized and implemented by means of terminating general logic programs.

LOLA's entry in the Office Delivery event of the 1995 Robot Competition and Exhibition, held in conjunction with the Fourteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, was the culmination of a three-month design and implementation period for an indoor navigation system for topological maps. This article describes the major components of the robot's navigation architecture. It also summarizes the experiences and lessons learned from the competition.

In 1992, the seemingly unbeatable World Checker Champion Marion Tinsley defended his title against the computer program CHINOOK. After an intense, tightly contested match, Tinsley fought back from behind to win the match by scoring four wins to CHINOOK's two, with 33 draws. This match was the first time in history that a human world champion defended his title against a computer. This article reports on the progress of the checkers (8 3 8 draughts) program CHINOOK since 1992. Two years of research and development on the program culminated in a rematch with Tinsley in August 1994. In this match, after six games (all draws), Tinsley withdrew from the match and relinquished the world championship title to CHINOOK,citing health concerns. CHINOOK has since defended its title in two subsequent matches. It is the first time in history that a computer has won a human-world championship.

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) held its 1995 Fall Symposia Series on 10 to 12 November in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This article contains summaries of the eight symposia that were conducted: (1) Active Learning; (2) Adaptation of Knowledge for Reuse; (3) AI Applications in Knowledge Navigation and Retrieval; (4) Computational Models for Integrating Language and Vision; (5) Embodied Language and Action Symposium; (6) Formalizing Context; (7) Genetic Programming; and (8) Rational Agency: Concepts, Theories, Models, and Applications.

The 1994 Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) focused on the evaluation of CBR theories, models, systems, and system components. The CBR community addressed the evaluation of theories and implemented systems, with the consensus that a balance between novel innovations and evaluations could maximize progress.

The goal of the Workshop on Adaptation and Learning in Multiagent Systems was to focus on research that addresses unique requirements for agents learning and adapting to work in the presence of other agents. Recognizing the applicability and limitations of current machine-learning research as applied to multiagent problems and developing new learning and adaptation mechanisms particularly targeted to this class of problems were the primary research issues that we wanted the authors to address. This article outlines the presentations that were made at the workshop and the success of the workshop in meeting the established goals. Issues that need to be better understood are also presented.

The University of Chicago's robot, CHIP, is part of the Animate Agent Project, aimed at understanding the software architecture and knowledge representations needed to build a general-purpose robotic assistant. CHIP's strategy for the Office Cleanup event of the 1995 Robot Competition and Exhibition was to scan an entire area systematically and, as collectible objects were identified, pick them up and deposit them in the nearest appropriate receptacle. This article describes CHIP and its various systems and the ways in which these elements combined to produce an effective entry to the robot competition.

CAIR-2 from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) placed first in the Office Delivery event at the 1995 Robot Competition and Exhibition, held in conjunction with the Fourteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-95). CAIR-2 is a totally self-contained and autonomous mobile robot, and its control architecture incorporates both behavior-based and planner-based approaches. In this article, we present a short description of CAIR-2's hardware, system and control architecture, realtime vision, and speech recognizer.

The 1995 Robot Competition and Exhibition was held in Montreal, Canada, in conjunction with the 1995 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The competition was designed to demonstrate state-of-the-art autonomous mobile robots, highlighting such tasks as goal-directed navigation, feature detection, object recognition, identification, and physical manipulation as well as effective human-robot communication. The competition consisted of two separate events: (1) Office Delivery and (2) Office Cleanup. The exhibition also consisted of two events: (1) demonstrations of robotics research that was not related to the contest and (2) robotics focused on aiding people who are mobility impaired. There was also a Robotics Forum for technical exchange of information between robotics researchers. Thus, this year's events covered the gamut of robotics research, from discussions of control strategies to demonstrations of useful prototype application systems.

The goal of the Fourth International Conference on User Modeling (UM94) was to bring together user-modeling researchers from different parts of the field to discuss and learn about each other's research, contrast approaches, and develop a basis for future research and collaboration. A broad international audience of more than 110 people attended the conference, which featured system demonstrations, paper and poster sessions, three tutorials, and a set of special interest group meetings.