IAAI is the premier venue for learning about AI's impact through deployed applications and emerging AI technologies. Case studies of deployed applications with measurable benefits arising from the use of AI technology provide clear evidence of the impact and value of AI technology to today's world. The emerging applications track features technologies that are rapidly maturing to the point of application. The seven articles selected for this special issue are extended versions of the papers that appeared at the conference. Four of the articles describe deployed applications that are already in use in the field.

This article describes requirements for synthetic adversaries for urban combat training and a prototype application, MOUTBots. MOUTBots use a commercial computer game to define, implement, and test basic behavior representation requirements and the Soar architecture as the engine for knowledge representation and execution. The article describes how these components aided the development of the prototype and presents an initial evaluation against competence, taskability, fidelity, variability, transparency, and efficiency requirements.