Learning by observation is an important goal in developing complete intelligent robots that learn interactively. We present a visual analogy approach toward an integrated, intelligent system capable of learning skills from observation. In particular, we focus on the task of retrieving a previously acquired case similar to a new, observed skill. We describe three approaches to case retrieval: feature matching, feature transformation, and fractal analogy. SIFT features and fractal encoding were used to represent the visual state prior to the skill demonstration, the final state after the skill has been executed, and the visual transformation between the two states. We discovered that the three methods (feature matching, feature transformation, and fractal analogy) are useful for retrieval of similar skill cases under different conditions pertaining to the observed skills.

In case-based reasoning (CBR), problems are solved by retrieving prior cases and adapting their solutions to fit; learning occurs as new cases are stored. Controlling the growth of the case base is a fundamental problem, and research on case-base maintenance has developed methods for compacting case bases while maintaining system competence, primarily by competence-based deletion strategies assuming static case adaptation knowledge. This paper proposes adaptation-guided case-base maintenance (AGCBM), a case-base maintenance approach exploiting the ability to dynamically generate new adaptation knowledge from cases. In AGCBM, case retention decisions are based both on cases' value as base cases for solving problems and on their value for generating new adaptation rules. he paper illustrates the method for numerical prediction tasks (case-based regression) in which adaptation rules are generated automatically using the case difference heuristic. In comparisons of AGCBM to five alternative methods in four domains, for varying case base densities, AGCBM outperformed the alternatives in all domains, with greatest benefit at high compression.

This page includes forthcoming AAAI sponsored conferences, conferences presented by AAAI Affiliates, and conferences held in cooperation with AAAI. AI Magazine also maintains a calendar listing that includes nonaffiliated conferences at www.aaai.org/Magazine/calendar.php. AAAI-14 will be on Principles of Knowledge 6th International Joint Conference held July 27-31 in Quebec City, Quebec, Representation and Reasoning. AIIDE-14 will be held SOCS 2014 will be held August 15-17 Fifth International Conference on October 3-7 in Raleigh, NC, USA in Prague, Czech Republic Social Robotics. HRI 2015 will be held March 1-4 Robotics: Science and Systems 2014. in Portland, Oregon USA RSS 2014 will be held July 12-16 in AAAI Fall Symposium Series.

Nearest neighbor methods are a popular class of nonparametric estimators with several desirable properties, such as adaptivity to different distance scales in different regions of space. Prior work on convergence rates for nearest neighbor classification has not fully reflected these subtle properties. We analyze the behavior of these estimators in metric spaces and provide finite-sample, distribution-dependent rates of convergence under minimal assumptions. As a by-product, we are able to establish the universal consistency of nearest neighbor in a broader range of data spaces than was previously known. We illustrate our upper and lower bounds by introducing smoothness classes that are customized for nearest neighbor classification.

The CBR special track at FLAIRS has come to fill the important role of a North American symposium on CBR and it is well regarded in the community. Ths year we were pleased to accept two full papers and one poster paper.

We study in this paper how explicit user feedback can be used by a case-based reasoning system to improve the quality of its retrieval phase. More specifically, we explore how both ranking feedback and relevance feedback can be exploited to modify the weights of case features. We propose some options to cope with each type of feedback. We also evaluate, in an interactive setting, their impact on a travel scenario where some user provides feedback on a series of queries. Our results indicate that the combined weight-learning scheme proposed in this paper succeeds, on average, to assign more weights to the features used to formulate relevance and ranking feedback.

Instance-based learning methods predict the solution of a case from the solutions of similar cases.However, solutions can be generated from less similar cases as well, provided appropriate case adaptation rules are available to adjust the prior solutions to account for dissimilarities. In fact, case-based reasoning research on adaptation-guided retrieval (AGR) shows that it may be beneficial to base retrieval decisions primarily on the availability of suitable adaptation knowledge, rather than on similarity. This paper proposes a new method for adaptation-guided retrieval for numerical prediction (regression) tasks. The method, EAGR (ensemble of adaptations-guided retrieval) works by retrieving an ensemble of cases, with a case favored for retrieval if there exists an ensemble of adaptation rules suitable for adapting its solution to the current problem. The solution for the input problem is then calculated by applying each retrieved case's ensemble of adaptations to that case, and combining the generated values. The approach is evaluated on four sample domains compared to three baseline methods: k-NN, an adaptation-guided retrieval approach, and a previous approach using ensembles of adaptations without adaptation-guided retrieval. EAGR improves accuracy in the tested domains compared to the other methods.

In cooperation with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the twenty-first International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ICCBR), the premier international meeting on research and applications in Case-Based Reasoning (CBR), was held in July 2013 in Saratoga Springs, NY. ICCBR is the annual meeting of the CBR community and the leading conference on this topic. This year ICCBR featured the Industry Day, the fifth annual Doctoral Consortium and three workshops.

Springs, NY. ICCBR is the annual meeting of the CBR community and the ICCBR also featured a workshop program consisting of three workshops. The main conference track featured 16 research paper presentations, nine posters, and two invited speakers. The papers and posters reflected the state of the art of case-based reasoning, dealing both with open problems at the core of CBR (especially in similarity assessment, case adaptation, and case-based maintenance), as well as trending applications of CBR (especially recommender systems and computer games) and the intersections of CBR with other areas such as multiagent systems. The first invited speaker, Igor Jurisica from the Ontario Cancer Institute and the University of Toronto, spoke about how to scale up case-based reasoning for "big data" applications. The Case-Based Reasoning in Health Sciences workshop, organized by Isabelle Bichindaritz, Cindy Marling, and Stefania Montani, and the EXPPORT workshop (Experience Reuse: Provenance, Process-Orientation and Traces), organized by David Leake, Béatrice Fuchs, Juan A. Recio Garcia, and Stefania Montani, were held jointly and dealt with how to deal with data represented CDPHP, was the local chair; William E. University, and Jonathan Rubin, from Registration information is available at www.aaai.org/Symposia/ the Palo Alto Research Center, were the Spring/ sss14.php.

Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) is the process of solving new problems based on the solution of similar past problems. In the present paper we introduce an absorbing Markov chain on the main steps of the CBR process. In this way we succeed in obtaining the probabilities for the above process to be in a certain step at a certain phase of the solution of the corresponding problem, and a measure for the efficiency of a CBR system. Examples are also given to illustrate our results. Introduction Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) is a recent theory for problem-solving and learning in computers and people.