Natural language is a uniquely convenient means of communication due to, among its other properties, its flexibility and its openness to interpretation. These properties of natural language are largely made possible by its heavy dependence on context and common ground. Drawing on elements of Clark’s account of language use, we view natural language interactions as a coordination problem involving agents who work together to convey and thus coordinate their interaction goals. In the modeling work presented here, a sequence of interrelated modules developed in the Polyscheme cognitive architecture is used to implement several stages of reasoning the user of a simple video application would expect an addressee—ultimately, the application—to work through, if the interaction goal was to locate a scene they had previously viewed together.

In an attempt to solve as much of the AAAI Robot Challenge as possible, five research institutions representing academia, industry, and government integrated their research into a single robot named GRACE. This article describes this first-year effort by the GRACE team, including not only the various techniques each participant brought to GRACE but also the difficult integration effort itself.

In an attempt to solve as much of the AAAI Robot Challenge as possible, five research institutions representing academia, industry, and government integrated their research into a single robot named GRACE. This article describes this first-year effort by the GRACE team, including not only the various techniques each participant brought to GRACE but also the difficult integration effort itself.