The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) held its 1994 Spring Symposium Series on 19-23 March at Stanford University, Stanford, California. This article contains summaries of 10 of the 11 symposia that were conducted: Applications of Computer Vision in Medical Image Processing; AI in Medicine: Interpreting Clinical Data; Believable Agents; Computational Organization Design; Decision-Theoretic Planning; Detecting and Resolving Errors in Manufacturing Systems; Goal-Driven Learning; Intelligent Multimedia, Multimodal Systems; Software Agents; and Toward Physical Interaction and Manipulation. Papers of most of the symposia are available as technical reports from AAAI.

This report stems from an April 1994 meeting, organized by AAAI at the suggestion of Steve Cross and Gio Wiederhold.1 The purpose of the meeting was to assist ARPA in defining an agenda for foundational AI research. Prior to the meeting, the fellows and officers of AAAI, as well as the report committee members, were asked to recommend areas in which major research thrusts could yield significant scientific gain -- with high potential impact on DOD applications -- over the next ten years. At the meeting, these suggestions and their relevance to current national needs and challenges in computing were discussed and debated. An initial draft of this report was circulated to the fellows and officers. The final report has benefited greatly from their comments and from textual revisions contributed by Joseph Halpern, Fernando Pereira, and Dana Nau.

Real-time problem solving is not only reasoning about time, it is also reasoning in time. This ability is becoming increasingly critical in systems that monitor and control complex processes in semiautonomous, ill-structured, real-world environments. Many techniques, mostly ad hoc, have been developed in both the real-time community and the AI community for solving problems within time constraints. However, a coherent, holistic picture does not exist. This article is an attempt to step back from the details and examine the entire issue of real-time problem solving from first principles. We examine the degrees of freedom available in structuring the problem space and the search process to reduce problem-solving variations and produce satisficing solutions within the time available. This structured approach aids in understanding and sorting out the relevance and utility of different real-time problem-solving techniques.

Within a simple test-bed, application of feed-forward neurocontrol for short-term planning of robot trajectories in a dynamic environment is studied. The action network is embedded in a sensorymotoric system architecture that contains a separate world model. It is continuously fed with short-term predicted spatiotemporal obstacle trajectories, and receives robot state feedback. The action net allows for external switching between alternative planning tasks. It generates goal-directed motor actions - subject to the robot's kinematic and dynamic constraints - such that collisions with moving obstacles are avoided.

The action network is embedded in a sensorymotoric systemarchitecture that contains a separate world model. It is continuously fed with short-term predicted spatiotemporal obstacle trajectories, and receives robot state feedback. The action netallows for external switching between alternative planning tasks.It generates goal-directed motor actions - subject to the robot's kinematic and dynamic constraints - such that collisions withmoving obstacles are avoided. Using supervised learning, we distribute examples of the optimal planner mapping over a structure-level adapted parsimonious higher order network. The training database is generated by a Dynamic Programming algorithm. Extensivesimulations reveal, that the local planner mapping is highly nonlinear, but can be effectively and sparsely represented bythe chosen powerful net model. Excellent generalization occurs for unseen obstacle configurations. We also discuss the limitations offeed-forward neurocontrol for growing planning horizons.

The methodological underpinnings of AI are slowly changing. Benchmarks, test beds, and controlled experimentation are becoming more common. Although we are optimistic that this change can solidify the science of AI, we also recognize a set of difficult issues concerning the appropriate use of this methodology. We discuss these issues as they relate to research on agent design. We survey existing test beds for agents and argue for appropriate caution in their use. We end with a debate on the proper role of experimental methodology in the design and validation of planning agents.

Place he 1993 robot competition consisted of the Office, (2) Office Delivery, and (3) Lockheed Palo Alto Research Labs, Second Office Rearrangement. The unifying theme Place for these events was autonomous robotics in realistic office environments. The legs, and then to quickly complete a slalom office contained actual furniture, including course and recognize the finish wall. In the second event, Office Delivery, the This realistic environment was a hurdle for objective was to self-locate using an office conventional robotic sensory systems. Thinlegged map, search an area for a given object (a coffeepot), tables and chairs are nearly invisible to and then navigate to a specified sonars, as are black cabinets and bookcases to delivery area.

The camera is mounted on a rotating table that allows it to turn 360 degrees independently of robot motion. Interestingly, the two teams processor (Z80) controls the robot's used vastly different approaches in the design wheel speed and direction. 's software design is hierarchical in The final scores for the robots, based solely structure. At the top level is a supervising on competition-day performance, constitute planning system that decides when to call only a rough evaluation of the merits of the subordinate modules for movement, vision, various systems. This article provides a technical or the recalibration of the robot's position.

In Graves, S. C., Zipkin, P. H., and Kan, A. H. G. R. (Eds.), Logistics of Production and Inventory: Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science, Volume 4, pp. 445–522. North-Holland.

In AAAI-93, pp. 724–730.