The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) held its 1996 Fall Symposia Series on 9 to 11 November in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This article contains summaries of the seven symposia that were conducted: (1) Configuration; (2) Developing Assistive Technology for People with Disabilities; (3) Embodied Cognition and Action; (4) Flexible Computation: Results, Issues, and Opportunities; (5) Knowledge Representation Systems Based on Natural Language; (6) Learning Complex Behaviors in Adaptive Intelligent Systems; and (7) Plan Execution: Problems and Issues.

The YODA Robot Project at the University of Southern California/Information Sciences Institute consists of a group of young researchers who share a passion for autonomous systems that can bootstrap its knowledge from real environments by exploration, experimentation, learning, and discovery. Our participation in the Fifth Annual AAAI Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition, held as part of the Thirteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, served as the first milestone in advancing us toward this goal. YODA's software architecture is a hierarchy of abstraction layers, ranging from a set of behaviors at the bottom layer to a dynamic, mission-oriented planner at the top. This abstraction architecture has proven robust in dynamic and noisy environments, as shown by YODA's performance at the robot competition.

The Fifth Annual AAAI Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition was held in Portland, Oregon, in conjunction with the Thirteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The first event stressed navigation and planning. In addition to the competition, there was a mobile robot exhibition in which teams demonstrated robot behaviors that did not fit into the competition tasks. The robot competition raised the standard for autonomous mobile robotics, demonstrating the intelligent integration of perception, deliberation, and action.

Indoor mobile robots are becoming reliable enough in navigation tasks to consider working with teams of robots. Using SRI International's open-agent architecture (OAA) and SAPHIRA robot-control system, we configured three physical robots and a set of software agents on the internet to plan and act in coordination. Users communicate with the robots using a variety of multimodal input: pen, voice, and keyboard. The robust capabilities of the OAA and SAPHIRA enabled us to design and implement a winning team in the six weeks before the Fifth Annual AAAI Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition.

Ballots will be due Applications of Artificial Intelligence have an accepted technical paper, back at the AAAI office no later than (IAAI-97) will be held in and then to students who are actively June 13. Conference on Knowledge Discovery are encouraged to apply. For further information be held November 8-10 at the Massachusetts following the American Statistical about the Scholarship Program, Institute of Technology in Association annual meeting in Anaheim. The topics Information about these conferences please contact AAAI at scholarships@aaai.org, of seven symposia will be: is available by writing to All student scholarship recipients Context in Knowledge Representation Registration materials for AAAI-97, will be required to participate in the and Natural Language Sasa IAAI-97, and KDD-97 are now available Student Volunteer Program to support Buvac (buvac@cs.stanford.edu), For further information, participation is a valuable contribution.

The Third International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Planning Systems (AIPS-96) was held in Edinburgh, Scotland, from 29 to 31 May 1996. The main gathering of researchers in AI and planning and scheduling, the conference promoted the practical applications of planning technologies. Details of the conference papers and sessions are provided as well as information on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- Rome Laboratory Planning Initiative.

Y. Reich (Tel-Aviv University) proposed The paper by M. Benaroch (Syracuse University) suggested the use of knowledge-based tools for mass customization of service products; it dealt in general Grundstein (Framatome, France) reported than the other methods. At the macroeconomic and J. Zahavi (both of Tel-Aviv University) level, Deinichenko et al. presented found that genetic algorithms an expert system that utilizes performed even better than a fuzzy knowledge to analyze economic on Artificial Intelligence linear programming model on their Thus, their conclusion was Academy of Sciences) and T. Szapiro (AIEM4) was held in Tel-Aviv, that AI techniques might provide (Warsaw School of Economics) noted Israel, from 8 to 10 January 1996, better results than rigid analytic the lack of models appropriate to the with participants from 13 countries. Service to customers in the financial for discerning patterns in the economic As a matter of course, almost every area was another focus of the and demographic data of developing presentation at the workshop workshop. Lange et al. described a economies. The paper by touched on AI techniques in one way system for customizing investment Edmonds and S. Moss (Manchester or another.

Net-ID (San Francisco, Calif.) has been involving the deployment of the and performance management as well awarded a $500,000 grant by the National Army's vast resources. Intelligent Optimization (St. Louis, software for the rapid analysis and Mo.) has developed optimizor, a neural StockSmart (Dallas, Tex.) has integrated classification of the large number of network program designed to help hospital quest server, an intelligent searchand-discovery DNA and protein sequences produced staff members make more efficient The AIbased creates an optimal schedule that its web site. Visitors to StockSmart's software will be used to mine reflects an institution's own preferences web site can use Resumix (Sunnyvale, Calif.) has won a among thousands of mutual funds. The contract calls for Technology Office. Users will have installed in each regional location of systems in a real-time, interactive environment.

The workshop entitled "Gaps and Bridges: New Directions in Planning and Natural Language Generation" was held on 12 August 1996 in Budapest, Hungary. This article describes the four sessions of the workshop and summarizes the important themes that were revealed.

Computers are the only machines which both manipulate symbols and are manipulated by them; they are "physical symbol systems." As we know, AI uses this insight to implement systems capable of thought. However, some people find this idea of a symbolic machine very unsettling. This tension can be a clinical precursor of a disorder called symbolophobia.