The workshop entitled "Gaps and Bridges: New Directions in Planning and Natural Language Generation" was held on 12 August 1996 in Budapest, Hungary. This article describes the four sessions of the workshop and summarizes the important themes that were revealed.

Computers are the only machines which both manipulate symbols and are manipulated by them; they are "physical symbol systems." As we know, AI uses this insight to implement systems capable of thought. However, some people find this idea of a symbolic machine very unsettling. This tension can be a clinical precursor of a disorder called symbolophobia.

Y. Reich (Tel-Aviv University) proposed The paper by M. Benaroch (Syracuse University) suggested the use of knowledge-based tools for mass customization of service products; it dealt in general Grundstein (Framatome, France) reported than the other methods. At the macroeconomic and J. Zahavi (both of Tel-Aviv University) level, Deinichenko et al. presented found that genetic algorithms an expert system that utilizes performed even better than a fuzzy knowledge to analyze economic on Artificial Intelligence linear programming model on their Thus, their conclusion was Academy of Sciences) and T. Szapiro (AIEM4) was held in Tel-Aviv, that AI techniques might provide (Warsaw School of Economics) noted Israel, from 8 to 10 January 1996, better results than rigid analytic the lack of models appropriate to the with participants from 13 countries. Service to customers in the financial for discerning patterns in the economic As a matter of course, almost every area was another focus of the and demographic data of developing presentation at the workshop workshop. Lange et al. described a economies. The paper by touched on AI techniques in one way system for customizing investment Edmonds and S. Moss (Manchester or another.

The next portion of the workshop was devoted to different approaches to preventing and repairing miscommunication. These sessions represent a progression between different parts of their discourse Research related to achieving from work that clarifies the model or between the discourse robust interaction is an important problem of miscommunication to model and the domain model. Early work concerned work that describes the strategies The last session was the presentation the correction of spelling or grammatical used to repair miscommunication. I of work involving deployed systems errors in a user's utterance so review the most significant issues using speech as a mode of interaction. The approaches were constrained by their have assumed that the system's model differed in two dimensions: First, experimenters impact on overall system performance is always correct.

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) held its 1996 Fall Symposia Series on 9 to 11 November in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This article contains summaries of the seven symposia that were conducted: (1) Configuration; (2) Developing Assistive Technology for People with Disabilities; (3) Embodied Cognition and Action; (4) Flexible Computation: Results, Issues, and Opportunities; (5) Knowledge Representation Systems Based on Natural Language; (6) Learning Complex Behaviors in Adaptive Intelligent Systems; and (7) Plan Execution: Problems and Issues.

We would have two robots searching for the rooms and professors and one remaining Lab, we have a long history of behind in the director's office and tell him/ Our current research focuses on realtime well before the competition. They run the Thirteenth National Conference on Artificial SRI's The agent robot has seven sonar sensors, a fast-track technology, called the open-agent architecture vision system from Newton Labs, and a (OAA), was developed at SRI as a way of portable computer on top with a radio ethernet accessing many different types of information for communication to a base station available in computers at different locations. (figure 1). The fast-track system is an interesting device: It consists of a small color video camera and a low-power processor. PC on top to communicate with the other robots and talk to the director.

Although RoboCup's primary objective is a Although RoboCup's final target is a world For the Although it is obvious that building a robot robot (physical robot and software agent) to to play a soccer game is an immense challenge, play a soccer game reasonably well, a wide readers might wonder why we propose range of technologies need to be integrated, RoboCup. It is our intention to use RoboCup and numbers of technical breakthroughs as a vehicle to revitalize AI research by offering must be accomplished. When the accomplishment intelligent robotics, and sensor fusion. of such a goal has significant social The first RoboCup, RoboCup-97, will be held impact, it is considered a grand-challenge during the Fifteenth International Joint Conference project (Kitano et al. 1993). Building a robot on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-97) in to play a soccer game itself does not generate Nagoya, Japan, as part of IJCAI-97's special significant social and economic impact, but Accessibility Complete Incomplete and architectures can be evaluated. Computer Sensor Readings Symbolic Nonsymbolic chess is a typical example of the standard Control Central Distributed problem. Various search algorithms were evaluated and developed using this domain. With the recent accomplishment by the Deep Blue team, which beat Kasparov, a human grand Table 1. A major reason for the success of computer chess as a standard problem is that the evaluation of the accomplishment will certainly be considered the progress was clearly defined.

The Third International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Planning Systems (AIPS-96) was held in Edinburgh, Scotland, from 29 to 31 May 1996. The main gathering of researchers in AI and planning and scheduling, the conference promoted the practical applications of planning technologies. Details of the conference papers and sessions are provided as well as information on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- Rome Laboratory Planning Initiative.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is being challenged to perform more frequent and intensive space-exploration missions at greatly reduced cost. Nowhere is this challenge more acute than among robotic planetary exploration missions that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) conducts for NASA. This article describes recent and ongoing work on spacecraft autonomy and ground systems that builds on a legacy of existing success at JPL applying AI techniques to challenging computational problems in planning and scheduling, real-time monitoring and control, scientific data analysis, and design automation.

Ballots will be due Applications of Artificial Intelligence have an accepted technical paper, back at the AAAI office no later than (IAAI-97) will be held in and then to students who are actively June 13. Conference on Knowledge Discovery are encouraged to apply. For further information be held November 8-10 at the Massachusetts following the American Statistical about the Scholarship Program, Institute of Technology in Association annual meeting in Anaheim. The topics Information about these conferences please contact AAAI at scholarships@aaai.org, of seven symposia will be: is available by writing to All student scholarship recipients Context in Knowledge Representation Registration materials for AAAI-97, will be required to participate in the and Natural Language Sasa IAAI-97, and KDD-97 are now available Student Volunteer Program to support Buvac (buvac@cs.stanford.edu), For further information, participation is a valuable contribution.