[1990] Proceedings. The Fifth Annual AI Systems in Government Conference
Issues involved in the fusion of spatial data from textual messages with visual images are addres... more Issues involved in the fusion of spatial data from textual messages with visual images are addressed. Although geometric reasoning has been successfully applied within image understanding, spatial reasoning using the relative and approximate cues provided in text messages is not yet well understood. Approaches to these issues and the experience gained from a prototype implementation are described. Particular attention is
Participation of TacAir-Soar in RoadRunner and Coyote Exercises at Air Force Research Lab, Mesa AZ
This paper describes the participation of the TacAir-Soar (TAS), intelligent constructive forces ... more This paper describes the participation of the TacAir-Soar (TAS), intelligent constructive forces in two events hosted by Air Force Research Laboratory, Mesa AZ. The first event, RoadRunner 98, was an aircrew training exercise focused on F-16 pilots and Airborne Warning and Control controllers. TAS provided "aircraft" tracks to improve the air picture and support the training exercise. The second event,
TacAir-Soar is an intelligent, rule-based system that generates believable human-like" behavior f... more TacAir-Soar is an intelligent, rule-based system that generates believable human-like" behavior for military simulations. The innovation of the application is primarily a matter of scale and integration. The system is capable of executing most of the airborne missions that the United States military ies in xed-wing aircraft. It accomplishes this by i n tegrating a wide variety o f i n telligent capabilities, including reasoning about interacting goals, reacting to rapid changes in real time or faster, communicating and coordinating with other agents including humans, maintaining situational awareness, and accepting new orders while in ight. The system is currently deployed at the Oceana Naval Air Station WIS-SARD, and its most dramatic use to date was in the Synthetic Theater Of War 1997, an operational training exercise consisting of 48 straight hours and approximately 700 xed-wing aircraft ights, all own by instances of the TacAir-Soar system.
Proceedings of the second international conference on Industrial and engineering applications of artificial intelligence and expert systems - IEA/AIE '89, 1989
Automation of the control of complex systems has been achieved through the application of compute... more Automation of the control of complex systems has been achieved through the application of computers using such tools as closed-loop control, finite-state machines, etc. However, a number of tasks in the control of such processes must still be performed by human operators, resisting conventional automation efforts. These tasks usually involve unforeseen circumstances, such as defective controller hardware or unusual behavior of the application being controlled. Operators often use experience or heuristic reasoning to cope with these types of process deviations. In this paper, we will describe the theory and design of a generic temporal/causal system called TEMPROS (TEMporal PROgramming System) used to perform intelligent real-time control, capable of assuming many of the responsibilities that are currently exclusively performed by human operators. The system uses temporal propositions as its reasoning mechanism, deviating from current temporal reasoning systems by adding the new state "potentially true" to the truth value of a proposition. In addition, the system employs a plan hierarchy and a "lazy instantiation" mechanism to achieve the performance needed to make intelligent decisions in real time. We shall also outline the application of TEMPROS to the domain of growing gallium arsenide crystals using the LEC process.
The individual agents that interact in a multi-agent system typically exist along a continuum ran... more The individual agents that interact in a multi-agent system typically exist along a continuum ranging from heavyweight cognitive agents (often of the "BDI" type) to lightweight agents with limited individual processing (digital ants). Most systems use agents from a single position along this spectrum. We have successfully implemented several systems in which agents of very different degrees of internal sophistication interact with one another. Based on this experience, we identify several different ways in which agents of different kinds can be integrated in a single system, and offer observations and lessons from our experiences.
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1998
In many domains, intelligent agents must coordinate their activities in order for them to be succ... more In many domains, intelligent agents must coordinate their activities in order for them to be successful both individually and collectively. Over the last ten years, research in distributed artificial intelligence has emphasized building knowledge-lean systems, where coordination emerges either from simple rules of behavior or from a deep understanding of general coordination strategies. In this paper, we contend that there is an alternative for domains in which the types and methods of coordination are well structured (even though the environment may be very unstructured and dynamic). The alternative is to build real-time, knowledge-based agents that have a broad—but shallow—understanding of how to coordinate. We demonstrate the viability of this approach by example. Specifically, we have built agents that model the coordination performed by Navy and Air Force pilots and controllers in air-to-air and air-to-ground missions within a distributed interactive simulation environment. The...
... VIVEK V. BADAMI, PAUL NIELSEN and JAMES B. COMLY GE Corporate Research and Development Center... more ... VIVEK V. BADAMI, PAUL NIELSEN and JAMES B. COMLY GE Corporate Research and Development Center, Schenectady, NY 12301, USA ... The MC interacts in real time with a lower-level, closed-loop, digital feedback controller to grow GaAs boules. ...
In order for a program to interact with the world as well as people do, we must provide it with a... more In order for a program to interact with the world as well as people do, we must provide it with a great deal of commonsense about the way things work. Reasoning about the geometric interactions and motions of objects is an important part of that commonsense. Some of the most complex problems we solve involve reasoning about mechanical devices, such as gears, cams, and docks. Qualitative mechanics is the symbolic analysis of the motions and the geometric interactions of physical objects. This thesis describes a theory for analysis of rigid body mechanisms, an important subset of qualitative mechanics problems. This theory has been implemented and tested on several mechanisms including a mechanical clock. Beginning with drawings of the parts involved we compute a discrete symbolic description showing changes in position and motion of the parts of the mechanism as well as its global behavior. First and foremost I want to thank my advisor, Ken Forbus, for initiating and directing this research. I am grateful for his help and support throughout. His guidance, insightful comments, and encouragement is very much appreciated. Thanks to Donald Michie for encouraging my initial interest in artificial intelligence and providing a place for that interest to grow. I want to thank Mehdi Harandi for serving on my committee and for his support in the early days of my graduate work. Thanks to the other members of my committee, especially Gerald DeJong and Steven Lu for their insightful and useful comments .
up the command hierarchy, we would expect that the frequency of the messages will decrease and th... more up the command hierarchy, we would expect that the frequency of the messages will decrease and the length of the message will increase, placing less emphasis on reactivity and interruptibility and more emphasis on the process of interpreting and generating messages. Naval Research Laboratory. The authors would like to thank BMH Associates, Inc. for their technical help, and to the other members of the Soar/IFOR project. Biographies John E. Laird is an associate professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the director of the Arti cial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Michigan. He received his B.S. degree in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of Michigan in 1975 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1978 and 1983, respectively. His interests are centered on creating integrated intelligent agents (using the Soar architecture), leading to research in problem solving, complex behavior representation, machine learning, cognitive modeling. Randolph M. Jones received his Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine, in 1989. He is currently an assistant research scientist in the Arti cial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Michigan. His research interests lie in the areas of intelligent agents, problem solving, machine learning, and psychological modeling.
Integrating intelligent computer generated forces in distributed simulations: TacAir-Soar in STOW-97
Page 1. Integrating Intelligent Computer Generated Forces in Distributed Simulations: TacAir-Soar... more Page 1. Integrating Intelligent Computer Generated Forces in Distributed Simulations: TacAir-Soar in STOW-97 John E. Laird, Karen J. Coulter, Randolph M. Jones, Patrick G. Kenny, Frank Koss, Paul E. Nielsen University of Michigan 1101 Beal Ave. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2110 ...
Readings in Qualitative Reasoning About Physical Systems, 1990
Qualitative spatial reasoning has seen little progress This paper attempts to explain why We prov... more Qualitative spatial reasoning has seen little progress This paper attempts to explain why We provide a framework for qualitative kinematics (QK), qualitative spatial reasoning about motion We propose that no general-purpose, purely qualitative kinematics exists. We propose instead the MD/PV model of spatial reasoning, which combines the power of diagrams with qualitative representations Next we propose connectivity as the organizing principle for kinematic state, and describe a set of basic inferences which every QK system must make. The framework's utility is illustrated by considering two programs, one finished and one in progress We end by discussing the research questions this framework raises.
Forbus, K.D ., P. Nielsen and B. Faltings. Qualitative spatial reasoning : the CLOCK project. Art... more Forbus, K.D ., P. Nielsen and B. Faltings. Qualitative spatial reasoning : the CLOCK project. Artificial Intelligence 51 (1991) 417-471, Spatial reasoning is ubiquitous in human problem solving. Significantly, many aspects of it appear to be qualitative. This paper describes a general framework for qualitative spatial reasoning and demonstrates how it can be used to understand complex mechanical systems, such as clocks. The framework is organized around three ideas. (I) We conjecture that no powerful, general-purpose, purely qualitative representation of spatial properties exists (the poverty conjecture). (2) We describe the MDIPV model of spatial reasoning, which overcomes this fundamental limitation by combining the power of diagrams with qualitative spatial representations. In particular, a metric diagram. which combines quantitative and symbolic information, is used as the foundation for constructing a place vocabulary, a symbolic representation of shape and space which supports qualitative spatial reasoning. (3) We claim that shape and connectivity are the central features of qualitative spatial representations for kinematics. We begin by exploring these ideas in detail. pointing out why simpler representations have not proven fruitful. We also describe how inferences can be organized using the MD/PV model. We demonstrate the utility of this model by describing CLOCK. a program which reasons about complex two-dimensional mechanisms. CLOCK starts with a CAD description of a mechanism's parts and constructs a qualitative simulation of how it can behave. CLOCK successfully performed the first complete qualitative simulation of a mechanical clock from first principles, a milestone in qualitative physics. We also
[1990] Proceedings. The Fifth Annual AI Systems in Government Conference
Issues involved in the fusion of spatial data from textual messages with visual images are addres... more Issues involved in the fusion of spatial data from textual messages with visual images are addressed. Although geometric reasoning has been successfully applied within image understanding, spatial reasoning using the relative and approximate cues provided in text messages is not yet well understood. Approaches to these issues and the experience gained from a prototype implementation are described. Particular attention is
Participation of TacAir-Soar in RoadRunner and Coyote Exercises at Air Force Research Lab, Mesa AZ
This paper describes the participation of the TacAir-Soar (TAS), intelligent constructive forces ... more This paper describes the participation of the TacAir-Soar (TAS), intelligent constructive forces in two events hosted by Air Force Research Laboratory, Mesa AZ. The first event, RoadRunner 98, was an aircrew training exercise focused on F-16 pilots and Airborne Warning and Control controllers. TAS provided "aircraft" tracks to improve the air picture and support the training exercise. The second event,
TacAir-Soar is an intelligent, rule-based system that generates believable human-like" behavior f... more TacAir-Soar is an intelligent, rule-based system that generates believable human-like" behavior for military simulations. The innovation of the application is primarily a matter of scale and integration. The system is capable of executing most of the airborne missions that the United States military ies in xed-wing aircraft. It accomplishes this by i n tegrating a wide variety o f i n telligent capabilities, including reasoning about interacting goals, reacting to rapid changes in real time or faster, communicating and coordinating with other agents including humans, maintaining situational awareness, and accepting new orders while in ight. The system is currently deployed at the Oceana Naval Air Station WIS-SARD, and its most dramatic use to date was in the Synthetic Theater Of War 1997, an operational training exercise consisting of 48 straight hours and approximately 700 xed-wing aircraft ights, all own by instances of the TacAir-Soar system.
Proceedings of the second international conference on Industrial and engineering applications of artificial intelligence and expert systems - IEA/AIE '89, 1989
Automation of the control of complex systems has been achieved through the application of compute... more Automation of the control of complex systems has been achieved through the application of computers using such tools as closed-loop control, finite-state machines, etc. However, a number of tasks in the control of such processes must still be performed by human operators, resisting conventional automation efforts. These tasks usually involve unforeseen circumstances, such as defective controller hardware or unusual behavior of the application being controlled. Operators often use experience or heuristic reasoning to cope with these types of process deviations. In this paper, we will describe the theory and design of a generic temporal/causal system called TEMPROS (TEMporal PROgramming System) used to perform intelligent real-time control, capable of assuming many of the responsibilities that are currently exclusively performed by human operators. The system uses temporal propositions as its reasoning mechanism, deviating from current temporal reasoning systems by adding the new state "potentially true" to the truth value of a proposition. In addition, the system employs a plan hierarchy and a "lazy instantiation" mechanism to achieve the performance needed to make intelligent decisions in real time. We shall also outline the application of TEMPROS to the domain of growing gallium arsenide crystals using the LEC process.
The individual agents that interact in a multi-agent system typically exist along a continuum ran... more The individual agents that interact in a multi-agent system typically exist along a continuum ranging from heavyweight cognitive agents (often of the "BDI" type) to lightweight agents with limited individual processing (digital ants). Most systems use agents from a single position along this spectrum. We have successfully implemented several systems in which agents of very different degrees of internal sophistication interact with one another. Based on this experience, we identify several different ways in which agents of different kinds can be integrated in a single system, and offer observations and lessons from our experiences.
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1998
In many domains, intelligent agents must coordinate their activities in order for them to be succ... more In many domains, intelligent agents must coordinate their activities in order for them to be successful both individually and collectively. Over the last ten years, research in distributed artificial intelligence has emphasized building knowledge-lean systems, where coordination emerges either from simple rules of behavior or from a deep understanding of general coordination strategies. In this paper, we contend that there is an alternative for domains in which the types and methods of coordination are well structured (even though the environment may be very unstructured and dynamic). The alternative is to build real-time, knowledge-based agents that have a broad—but shallow—understanding of how to coordinate. We demonstrate the viability of this approach by example. Specifically, we have built agents that model the coordination performed by Navy and Air Force pilots and controllers in air-to-air and air-to-ground missions within a distributed interactive simulation environment. The...
... VIVEK V. BADAMI, PAUL NIELSEN and JAMES B. COMLY GE Corporate Research and Development Center... more ... VIVEK V. BADAMI, PAUL NIELSEN and JAMES B. COMLY GE Corporate Research and Development Center, Schenectady, NY 12301, USA ... The MC interacts in real time with a lower-level, closed-loop, digital feedback controller to grow GaAs boules. ...
In order for a program to interact with the world as well as people do, we must provide it with a... more In order for a program to interact with the world as well as people do, we must provide it with a great deal of commonsense about the way things work. Reasoning about the geometric interactions and motions of objects is an important part of that commonsense. Some of the most complex problems we solve involve reasoning about mechanical devices, such as gears, cams, and docks. Qualitative mechanics is the symbolic analysis of the motions and the geometric interactions of physical objects. This thesis describes a theory for analysis of rigid body mechanisms, an important subset of qualitative mechanics problems. This theory has been implemented and tested on several mechanisms including a mechanical clock. Beginning with drawings of the parts involved we compute a discrete symbolic description showing changes in position and motion of the parts of the mechanism as well as its global behavior. First and foremost I want to thank my advisor, Ken Forbus, for initiating and directing this research. I am grateful for his help and support throughout. His guidance, insightful comments, and encouragement is very much appreciated. Thanks to Donald Michie for encouraging my initial interest in artificial intelligence and providing a place for that interest to grow. I want to thank Mehdi Harandi for serving on my committee and for his support in the early days of my graduate work. Thanks to the other members of my committee, especially Gerald DeJong and Steven Lu for their insightful and useful comments .
up the command hierarchy, we would expect that the frequency of the messages will decrease and th... more up the command hierarchy, we would expect that the frequency of the messages will decrease and the length of the message will increase, placing less emphasis on reactivity and interruptibility and more emphasis on the process of interpreting and generating messages. Naval Research Laboratory. The authors would like to thank BMH Associates, Inc. for their technical help, and to the other members of the Soar/IFOR project. Biographies John E. Laird is an associate professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the director of the Arti cial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Michigan. He received his B.S. degree in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of Michigan in 1975 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1978 and 1983, respectively. His interests are centered on creating integrated intelligent agents (using the Soar architecture), leading to research in problem solving, complex behavior representation, machine learning, cognitive modeling. Randolph M. Jones received his Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine, in 1989. He is currently an assistant research scientist in the Arti cial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Michigan. His research interests lie in the areas of intelligent agents, problem solving, machine learning, and psychological modeling.
Integrating intelligent computer generated forces in distributed simulations: TacAir-Soar in STOW-97
Page 1. Integrating Intelligent Computer Generated Forces in Distributed Simulations: TacAir-Soar... more Page 1. Integrating Intelligent Computer Generated Forces in Distributed Simulations: TacAir-Soar in STOW-97 John E. Laird, Karen J. Coulter, Randolph M. Jones, Patrick G. Kenny, Frank Koss, Paul E. Nielsen University of Michigan 1101 Beal Ave. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2110 ...
Readings in Qualitative Reasoning About Physical Systems, 1990
Qualitative spatial reasoning has seen little progress This paper attempts to explain why We prov... more Qualitative spatial reasoning has seen little progress This paper attempts to explain why We provide a framework for qualitative kinematics (QK), qualitative spatial reasoning about motion We propose that no general-purpose, purely qualitative kinematics exists. We propose instead the MD/PV model of spatial reasoning, which combines the power of diagrams with qualitative representations Next we propose connectivity as the organizing principle for kinematic state, and describe a set of basic inferences which every QK system must make. The framework's utility is illustrated by considering two programs, one finished and one in progress We end by discussing the research questions this framework raises.
Forbus, K.D ., P. Nielsen and B. Faltings. Qualitative spatial reasoning : the CLOCK project. Art... more Forbus, K.D ., P. Nielsen and B. Faltings. Qualitative spatial reasoning : the CLOCK project. Artificial Intelligence 51 (1991) 417-471, Spatial reasoning is ubiquitous in human problem solving. Significantly, many aspects of it appear to be qualitative. This paper describes a general framework for qualitative spatial reasoning and demonstrates how it can be used to understand complex mechanical systems, such as clocks. The framework is organized around three ideas. (I) We conjecture that no powerful, general-purpose, purely qualitative representation of spatial properties exists (the poverty conjecture). (2) We describe the MDIPV model of spatial reasoning, which overcomes this fundamental limitation by combining the power of diagrams with qualitative spatial representations. In particular, a metric diagram. which combines quantitative and symbolic information, is used as the foundation for constructing a place vocabulary, a symbolic representation of shape and space which supports qualitative spatial reasoning. (3) We claim that shape and connectivity are the central features of qualitative spatial representations for kinematics. We begin by exploring these ideas in detail. pointing out why simpler representations have not proven fruitful. We also describe how inferences can be organized using the MD/PV model. We demonstrate the utility of this model by describing CLOCK. a program which reasons about complex two-dimensional mechanisms. CLOCK starts with a CAD description of a mechanism's parts and constructs a qualitative simulation of how it can behave. CLOCK successfully performed the first complete qualitative simulation of a mechanical clock from first principles, a milestone in qualitative physics. We also
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