One way to improve the robustness and flexibility of robot performance is to let the robot learn from its experiences. In this paper, we describe the architecture and knowledge-representation framework for a service robot being developed in the EU project RACE, and present examples illustrating how learning from experiences will be achieved. As a unique innovative feature, the framework combines memory records of low-level robot activities with ontology-based high-level semantic descriptions.

We present PULCinella and its use in comparing uncertainty theories. PULCinella is a general tool for Propagating Uncertainty based on the Local Computation technique of Shafer and Shenoy. It may be specialized to different uncertainty theories: at the moment, Pulcinella can propagate probabilities, belief functions, Boolean values, and possibilities. Moreover, Pulcinella allows the user to easily define his own specializations. To illustrate Pulcinella, we analyze two examples by using each of the four theories above. In the first one, we mainly focus on intrinsic differences between theories. In the second one, we take a knowledge engineer viewpoint, and check the adequacy of each theory to a given problem.

The growing presence of household robots in inhabited environments arises the need for new robot task planning techniques. These techniques should take into consideration not only the actions that the robot can perform or unexpected external events, but also the actions performed by a human sharing the same environment, in order to improve the cohabitation of the two agents, e.g., by avoiding undesired situations for the human. In this paper, we present a human-aware planner able to address this problem. This planner supports alternative hypotheses of the human plan, temporal duration for the actions of both the robot and the human, constraints on the interaction between robot and human, partial goal achievement and, most importantly, the possibility to use observations of human actions in the policy generated for the robot. The planner has been tested as a standalone component and in conjunction with our framework for human-robot interaction in a real environment.

AAAI presented the AAAI-04 workshop program on July 25-26, 2004 in San Jose, California. This program included twelve workshops covering a wide range of topics in artificial intelligence. The titles of the workshops were as follows: (1) Adaptive Text Extraction and Mining; (2) Agent Organizations: Theory and Practice; (3) Anchoring Symbols to Sensor Data; (4) Challenges in Game AI; (5) Fielding Applications of Artificial Intelligence; (6) Forming and Maintaining Coalitions in Adaptive Multiagent Systems; (7) Intelligent Agent Architectures: Combining the Strengths of Software Engineering and Cognitive Systems; (8) Learning and Planning in Markov Processes -- Advances and Challenges; (9) Semantic Web Personalization; (10) Sensor Networks; (11) Spatial and Temporal Reasoning; and (12) Supervisory Control of Learning and Adaptive Systems.

AAAI presented the AAAI-04 workshop program on July 25-26, 2004 in San Jose, California. This program included twelve workshops covering a wide range of topics in artificial intelligence. The titles of the workshops were as follows: (1) Adaptive Text Extraction and Mining; (2) Agent Organizations: Theory and Practice; (3) Anchoring Symbols to Sensor Data; (4) Challenges in Game AI; (5) Fielding Applications of Artificial Intelligence; (6) Forming and Maintaining Coalitions in Adaptive Multiagent Systems; (7) Intelligent Agent Architectures: Combining the Strengths of Software Engineering and Cognitive Systems; (8) Learning and Planning in Markov Processes -- Advances and Challenges; (9) Semantic Web Personalization; (10) Sensor Networks; (11) Spatial and Temporal Reasoning; and (12) Supervisory Control of Learning and Adaptive Systems.

RoboCup is no longer just the Soccer World Cup for autonomous robots but has evolved to become a coordinated initiative encompassing four different robotics events: (1) Soccer, (2) Rescue, (3) Junior (focused on education), and (4) a Scientific Symposium. RoboCup-2003 took place from 2 to 11 July 2003 in Padua (Italy); it was colocated with other scientific events in the field of AI and robotics. In this article, in addition to reporting on the results of the games, we highlight the robotics and AI technologies exploited by the teams in the different leagues and describe the most meaningful scientific contributions.

This article reports on the RoboCup-2003 event. RoboCup is no longer just the Soccer World Cup for autonomous robots but has evolved to become a coordinated initiative encompassing four different robotics events: (1) Soccer, (2) Rescue, (3) Junior (focused on education), and (4) a Scientific Symposium. RoboCup-2003 took place from 2 to 11 July 2003 in Padua (Italy); it was colocated with other scientific events in the field of AI and robotics. In this article, in addition to reporting on the results of the games, we highlight the robotics and AI technologies exploited by the teams in the different leagues and describe the most meaningful scientific contributions.

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence held its 2001 Fall Symposium Series November 2-4, 2001 at the Sea Crest Conference Center in North Falmouth, Massachusetts. The topics of the five symposia in the 2001 Fall Symposia Series were (1) Anchoring Symbols to Sensor Data in Single and Multiple Robot Systems, (2) Emotional and Intelligent II: The Tangled Knot of Social Cognition, (3) Intent Inference for Collaborative Tasks, (4) Negotiation Methods for Autonomous Cooperative Systems, and (5) Using Uncertainty within Computation. This article contains brief reports of those five symposia.

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence held its 2001 Fall Symposium Series November 2-4, 2001 at the Sea Crest Conference Center in North Falmouth, Massachusetts. The topics of the five symposia in the 2001 Fall Symposia Series were (1) Anchoring Symbols to Sensor Data in Single and Multiple Robot Systems, (2) Emotional and Intelligent II: The Tangled Knot of Social Cognition, (3) Intent Inference for Collaborative Tasks, (4) Negotiation Methods for Autonomous Cooperative Systems, and (5) Using Uncertainty within Computation. This article contains brief reports of those five symposia.