Charles Rosen -- expert on robots, co-founder of winery

Charles Rosen, who pioneered artificial intelligence in the 1960s and 1970s and helped found one of California's best known wineries, died in Atherton on Dec. 8, one day after his 85th birthday. Mr. Rosen did his groundbreaking artificial intelligence work while at Stanford Research Institute, known now as SRI International, a Menlo Park nonprofit research and development organization. His success came from his ability to find the edge of creative thought and innovation in his discipline and to push past the known limits, friends and colleagues say, developing things like neural networks in machines and Shakey, the first robot to see and learn on its own. "If it looked new and exciting and untried, that was Charlie's meat," said Nils Nilsson, who was hired by Mr. Rosen at the institute and chaired the computer science department at Stanford University from 1985 to 1990. "He loved that sort of thing, especially if people cautioned him against it."