The 1994 AAAI Robot-Building Laboratory (RBL-94) was held during the Twelfth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The primary goal of RBL-94 was to provide those with little or no robotics experience the opportunity to acquire practical experience in a few days. Thirty persons, with backgrounds ranging from university professors to practitioners from industry, participated in the three-part lab. The event was meant to appeal to the hacker yearnings of participants to experience for themselves the joys and excitement of constructing a robot and to learn about the real problems of such an endeavor. RBL-94 was inspired by and shared a common history with a couple of robot-building laboratories.

The Twenty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-13) and the Twenty-Fifth Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-13) will be held in Bellevue, Washington at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue Hotel, July 14-18, 2013. The AAAI technical program will consist of the main technical track and four special tracks on AI and the web, cognitive robotics, computational sustainability and AI, and robotics, as well as the continuation of the very successful spotlights track, highlighting significant AI results presented at our sister conferences in the past two years. The AAAI and IAAI programs will also feature a keynote address by Raymond Mooney, entitled Grounded Language Learning, the Robert S. Engelmore Award Lecture by Deborah L. McGuinness (Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute), a joint IAAI/AAAI invited talk by Larry Birnbaum (Northwestern University), and invited talks by Kristin P. Bennett (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Vijay Kumar (University of Pennsylvania), Maja Mataric (University of Southern California), Tuomas Sandholm (Carnegie Mellon University), and Lawrence Hunter (University of Colorado). The fourth iteration of the AAAI Symposium on Educational Advances on AI will be collocated with AAAI, and the AAAI program will also include 16 half-day tutorials, 12 workshops, AAAI robotics events, the AAAI Poker Competition, the Video Competition, Student Abstract Posters, the AAAI/SIGART Doctoral Consortium, and more! The conference banquet will be held at the Bellevue Art Museum, and other special events are planned, such as a Puzzle Hunt.

A series of special events celebrating the Alan M. Turing Centenary, including the 2012 Inaugural AAAI Turing Lecture by Christos Papadimitriou (University of California, Berkeley) and a special performance of "Hello Hi There" will be featured at AAAI-12 in Toronto. The Twenty-Sixth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-12) and the Twenty-Fourth Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-12) will be held in Toronto, Canada at the Sheraton Centre Hotel, July 22-23, 2012. The AAAI technical program will consist of the main technical track and four special tracks on AI and the Web, Cognitive Robotics (new!), Computational Sustainability and AI, and Robotics (new!), as well as a Best Paper Track, highlighting significant AI results presented at our sister conferences in the past two years. The program will also feature the keynote Presidential Address "Revisiting the Dream," by Henry Kautz, a joint IAAI / AAAI invited talk by Tom Gruber, and other invited talks by Regina Barzilay (CSAIL, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Ross King (Aberystwyth University), Josh Tenenbaum (Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT), Sebastian Thrun (Google / Stanford University), and Luis von Ahn (Carnegie Mellon University). The third iteration of the AAAI Symposium on Educational Advances on AI will be collocated with AAAI (details follow), and the AAAI program will also include 12 half-day tutorials, 10 workshops, the AAAI Robotics Program, AAAI Poker Competition, the Video Competition, Student Abstract Posters, the AAAI/SIGART Doctoral Consortium, and more!

The Twenty-Fifth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-11) and the Twenty-Third Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-11) will be held in San Francisco, California at the Hyatt Regency, August 7-11, 2011. AAAI will consist of a main technical track and four special technical tracks, AI and the Web, Computational Sustainability and AI (new!), Integrated Intelligence, and Physically Grounded AI, as well as Nectar Papers, highlighting significant AI results presented at our sister conferences in the past two years. The second iteration of the AAAI Symposium on Educational Advances on AI will be collocated with AAAI (see below for details). The AAAI-11 program will also include 16 half-day tutorials, 15 workshops, the AAAI Robotics Program, AAAI Poker Competition, and the Video Competition, Student Abstract Posters, the AAAI/SIGART Doctoral Consortium, and more! AAAI-11 sponsors to date include Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, the Institute for Sustainability, USC Information Sciences Institute, and IBM.

The Twenty-First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-06) will be held July 16-20, 2006, at the Seaport Hotel and World Trade Center in Boston Massachusetts. The Eighteenth Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence will be collocated with AAAI-06, and will be held July 18-20. The special track on AI and the Web invites technical papers on the use of AI techniques, systems, and concepts involving the Web. The program chairs are especially interested in receiving papers in two active research areas: (1) using text and language analysis to interpret and understand natural language text found on the web and (2) developing and exploiting semantic web languages and systems that explicitly encode knowledge using languages such as RDF and OWL. Papers submitted to this track should report on theoretical or empirical studies that highlight the role of integration of multiple components in achieving intelligent behavior.

Many of you have been receiving the AI Alert newsletter, which highlights selected features from the "AI in the News" section of the AAAI Pathfinder/AI Topics web pages. If you are a member of AAAI and would like to begin receiving this newsletter, along with other AAAI announcements, please subscribe to our AAAI membership list server by sending email to majordomo@aaai.org Be sure to visit the AI Topics web site at www.aaai.org/AITopics/aitopics.html The deadline for nominations is November 1, 2003. The 2004 Spring Symposium Series will be held March 22-24, 2004 at Stanford University.

This article is the content of an invited talk given by the authors at the Thirteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-96). The piece begins with a short history of the competition, then discusses the technical challenges and the political and cultural issues associated with bringing it off every year. We also cover the science and engineering involved with the robot tasks and the educational and commercial aspects of the competition. We finish with a discussion of the community formed by the organizers, participants, and the conference attendees. The original talk made liberal use of video clips and slide photographs; so, we have expanded the text and added photographs to make up for the lack of such media.

AAI-07 is the Twenty-Second National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI). The purpose of this conference is to promote research in AI and scientific exchange among AI researchers, practitioners, scientists and engineers in related disciplines. AAAI-07 will have multiple technical tracks, student abstracts, poster sessions, invited speakers, and exhibit programs, all selected according to the highest reviewing standards. AAAI-07 welcomes submissions on mainstream AI topics as well as novel cross-cutting work in related areas. As in AAAI-06, we will be including several special tracks.

The AAAI News Column covers membership and conference statistics, reports on workshops, financial data, Council activities, and other ongoing activities pursued by the society Please send suggestions and feedback by electronic mail to AAAI-Office@Sumex-Aim Stanford.edu Spring Symposium Series In March AAAI sponsored the first Spring Symposium Series, intended to promote technical discussion of specialty topics in small-group meetings. As the following reports testify, the Series was a tremendous success Plans are underway for the next Series, to be held at Stanford University again next March. Suggestions should be sent to Hector Levesque or Claudia Mazzetti. The following are edited reports provided by the five symposium leaders.

Taipei, May 29 (CNA) Computex Taipei 2017, a global trade show for information communication technologies (ITC) and the Internet of Things (IoT), will focus on five themes, including artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and IoT applications from May 30 to June 3, according to the organizers. While evolving in sync with global ICT industry trends, Computex 2017 positions itself as "Building Global Technology Ecosystems," focusing on such themes as AI and Robotics, IoT Applications, Innovations and Startups, Business Solutions, and Gaming and VR (virtual reality), said the Taipei Computer Association, one of the organizers. Exhibits and the high-profile CPX series forums will take place at Taipei World Trader Center, Nangang Exhibition Hall and Taipei International Convention Center, respectively. This year, for the first time ever American electric automobile manufacturer Tesla and computer maker Dell will join 1,600 businesses from around the world with booths at the annual ICT trade show in Taipei, the Taipei Computer Association said.