DAI-List Digest Friday, 31 January 1992 Issue Number 67 Topics: CFP for ICICIS 8th IEEE Conference on AI for Applications Conference Report on ECSCCW'91 Query on Cooperation between DAI and DCS CFP for Workshop on Intelligent Systems in Concurrent Engineering Please send submissions to DAI-List@mcc.com. Send other requests, such as changes in your e-mail address, to DAI-List-Request@mcc.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Jan 92 13:03:09 +0100 From: louis@ailab.eur.nl Subject: ICICIS Preliminary call for papers First International Conference on Intelligent and Cooperative Information Systems (ICICIS) May 1993 Rotterdam, The Netherlands Aims of the Conference: Purpose of the International Conference on Intelligent & Cooperative Information Systems (ICICIS) is to provide the forum within which both the AI and DB research communities can come to understand the intricacies of intelligent cooperative work. The existence of this forum would contribute towards the evolution of Intelligent Cooperative Information Systems (ICIS), thereby leading to its appreciation by the wider computer science community and its integration into the next generation of information systems. ICICIS addresses a two-sided problem: how can the information system technology of the future benefit from AI, and what can information technology offer to contemporary and future AI systems. ICIS represents the broad area where the fields of information systems (in particular, data/knowledge representation and modeling and distributed databases) and distributed AI systems overlap. Specifically, the conference will provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and for the identification of the potential roles and nature of the emerging notion of ICIS. It will examine a wide spectrum of issues related to interdisciplinary research and development in ICIS and will help assess the state-of-the-art and future prospects of ICIS. ICICIS solicits papers describing original ideas and new results on the foundations and role of intelligent and cooperative information systems. Suggested topics include but are not limited to: o Novel Architectures for ICIS, o Advanced Modeling and Reasoning Techniques for Intelligent Information Processing, o Knowledge Engineering Techniques in ICIS, o Higher Level Descriptive Programming Languages for ICIS, o Data/Knowledge Representation and Management Techniques for Coordinating Multiple Cooperating Agents, o Interoperability Issues in Distributed, Heterogeneous Knowledge Bases, o Techniques for Cooperative Distributed Problem Solving, o Techniques for Partitioning and Composing Data and Knowledge, o Effective Techniques for Cooperative Problem Solving, o Active Decision Support Systems, o Cooperative User Interfaces for Problem Solving and Effective Decision Making. o Transaction Scheduling Models for Cooperative Information Systems. The Conference welcomes methodology oriented, practical contributions, solid theoretical results, and empirical studies that are expected to have a potential impact on the emerging field of ICIS. Author Information Contributions should be submitted to the corresponding Chairman in a double-spaced format, not exceeding the length of 5000 words. European Chairman American Chairman Guenther Schlageter Michael Huhns Fern Univ. Hagen MCC Praktische Informatik I 3500 West Balcones Center Dr. Feithstrasse 140 Austin, TX 78759-6509 D-5800 Hagen USA Germany huhns@mcc.com Far East Chairman Mike Papazoglou QUT, School of Information Systems Faculty of Information Technology GPO Box 2434 Brisbane QLD 4001 Australia For further information and/or enquiries about the conference please contact the above mentioned addresses or write to: ICICIS@fac.fbk.eur.nl Important Dates Papers submissions due: September 1992 Notification of Acceptance: January 1993 Camera-ready copies: February 1993. All accepted papers will be published in the Conference Proceedings. Selected papers will be published in a special issue of the International Journal of Intelligent and Cooperative Information Systems. General Program Chairman Mike Papazoglou (QUT, Australia) Program-Chairs Michael Huhns (MCC, TX), Guenther Schlageter (Fern Univ. Hagen), Program Committee Bruce Blum (John Hopkins Univ.), Patrick Bobbie (Univ. of Florida), Ron Brachman (AT&T Bell Labs.), David Bree (Univ. of Manchester), Michael Brodie (GTE Labs Inc. MA), Edward Durfee (Univ. of Michigan), Les Gasser (USC, Los Angeles), Jaap v. d. Herik (Univ. of Limburg, Holland), John Hughes (Univ. of Ulster), Matthias Jarke (Univ. of Aachen), Yahiko Kambayashi (Univ. of Kyoto), Dimitris Karagiannis (FAW - Ulm), Stefan Kirn (Fern Univ. Hagen), Bernd Kraemer (GMD, Germany), Steven Laufmann (US West Advanced Technologies), Frederick Lochovsky (Univ. of Hong-Kong), Vince Lum (Naval Postgraduate School), Frank Manola (GTE Labs Inc. MA), Louis Marinos (Erasmus Univ. Rotterdam), Matthew Morgenstern (Xerox Advanced Info. Systems), John Mylopoulos (Univ. of Toronto), Moira Norrie (Univ. of Glasgow), Jos Schreinemakers (Erasmus Univ. Rotterdam), Timos Sellis (Univ. of Maryland), Susan Urban (Arizona State Univ.), Joe Urban (Arizona State Univ.), Ben Wah (Univ. of Illinois at Urbana), Jay Weber (Lockheed Labs, Palo Alto), Keith Werkman (IBM, Owengo Labs), John Zeleznikow (La Trombe Univ. Australia), Noshihiko Yoshida (Kuyshu Univ.) Organizing Committee Chairman: Louis Marinos (Erasmus Univ. Rotterdam) Local Organization: Joyce Bokhoven (Erasmus Univ. Rotterdam), Ruud Smit (Erasmus Univ. Rotterdam) Conference Office: Erasmus Congress Bureau, Burg. Oudlaan 50, 3036 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands Organization: AI-Lab, Erasmus University Rotterdam ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Jan 92 21:30:27 EST From: finin@algol.cs.umbc.edu (Timothy Finin) Subject: CAIA-92: 8th IEEE Conference on AI for Applications Note: The deadline for conference rates at the Doubletree hotel is Sat. Feb. 1st at 5:00pm. The deadline for advance registration is Fri., Feb. 7th. Send mail to CAIA@CS.UMBC.EDU for registration information and forms. Call for Participation CAIA-92 The Eighth IEEE Conference on ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE for APPLICATIONS March 2-6, 1992 Doubletree Hotel, Monterey, California During the last seven years, the IEEE Computer Society's Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Applications has established itself as a key conference for business and technical people who want to keep up on the fast-changing world of commercial AI. This year the eighth annual CAIA will continue that tradition by providing a provocative mix of introductory, intermediate and advanced talks, tutorials, workshops, and panels. This year's conference will also feature a special series of talks and panels on the various knowledge representation standardization efforts that are underway in a variety of organizations. Special plenary talks will be: DR. MELVIN MONTEMERLO, NASA AI Applications at NASA: Hindsight and Foresight PROFESSOR RANDALL DAVIS, MIT Software Patents and Copyrights: How Did We Get Into This Mess? And How Do We Get Out? PROFESSOR LOTFI ZADEH, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA The Calculus of Fuzzy If-Then Rules and Its Application For a complete copy of the text of the advance program, send email to CAIA@CS.UMBC.EDU. A mail agent will immediately respond with the program which describes the tutorials and workshops, lists all of the invited talks, panels, and accepted papers, and includes information of registration and housing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: 28 Jan 92 13:33 +0100 From: Kjeld Schmidt Subject: ECSCW '91 Review Nigel Seel BNR Europe Limited, London Road, Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA. U.K. email: nrs@bnr.co.uk The 2nd European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) took place between Wednesday and Friday, 24-27 September, 1991 at the Trippenhuis, Amsterdam. The main conference was preceded on the Tuesday by workshops, also held at the Trippenhuis. Three workshops took place: "CSCW and AI", "Developing Open CSCW Systems" and "Observational Studies of Programmers and Organisational Programming". I understand that all the workshops were a success, but as I organised the "CSCW and AI" workshop, I was unable to get first-hand knowledge of the other two, and just report here on the first. The Workshop on CSCW and AI --------------------------- This was organised to consider "how AI ideas and technologies could be applied in the CSCW domain, and conversely, how CSCW concerns for systems which aid, rather than replace people, could feed back into the technical agenda of AI research". Nigel Seel (BNR Europe Limited) introduced the workshop by considering the two directions separately. He argued that AI could contribute : (i) a collection of technologies (e.g. knowledge representation techniques, inferencing); (ii) technologies for embedded taskable agents (cf. Information Lens - Malone et al, 1987); (iii) agents in the human-computer interface (such as the Surrey University Advisor system - Gilbert et al, 1990). Conversely, CSCW could provide for AI: (i) a more situated view of human agency drawn from ethnomethodology, activity theories, and the like; (ii) an explicitly social setting for artificial agents, to complement the nonsocial naturalistic settings currently explored by agent theorists (cf. artificial insects - Beer et al, 1990, Creatures - Brooks, 1991). Steve Scrivener (Loughborough), representing the CSCW camp, argued against the gratuitous introduction of AI technology. He felt that providing a medium through which people could express their required practices was the main objective, and he looked more to Virtual Reality than AI to achieve this. Mike Sharples (Sussex) responded that some CSCW systems used AI techniques such as temporal reasoning precisely to create a more adequate environment for 'breakdown-free' practice. The discussion ranged widely after this, covering areas such as: - whether the chequered history of AI holds any lessons for CSCW researchers (AI history allegedly including foibles such as an emphasis on toy problems, reinventing wheels, looking only under the light, evaluating systems only on the basis of the design assumptions); - the distinction between the platonic tradition, in which dialogue is considered as a means to the discovery of truth, versus the sophist tradition, in which conversation, as rhetoric, is seen as a means to achieve consensus. The sophist tradition has typically had a bad press, has been ignored in AI and is coming to be ignored in CSCW. But perhaps it is the right place to be. In arguing this point, Mike Sharples put up a list of what he called 'dichotomies' to illustrate the two approaches expertise consensus goal-directed discursive problem-solving negotiation knowledge opinion abstraction engagement knowledge transfer move to consensus logic rhetoric John Bowers (Manchester) outlined how the sophist tradition was currently being reexamined in social science, and drew links with the 'fight against neorationalism' (cf Winograd and Flores, 1986). At the end of the workshop, there was a general feeling that the foundational questions of conceptualising human agency as a social phenomenon were common concerns to both AI and CSCW researchers, although their 'deliverables' might be different. It is to be hoped that a second such workshop can be organised at the CSCW '92 conference in November, 1992 at Toronto, Canada. --------------------------------------------------------- The Conference -------------- The conference overall was generally considered a great success. The one-track format ensured a cohesive environment, and a steady sense of progress during the three days. The number attending, about 200, again provided the right kind of manageable community. The papers, and therefore topics of discussion, can be grouped (rather impressionistically) into five categories: Theory of CSCW, Shared Window systems, Design, Confessions and EuroPARC. Theory of CSCW -------------- Rather good papers by Kjeld Schmidt, Dan Shapiro and Kari Kuuti each attempted to apply elements of modern sociological theory to attempt to identify what constituted the discipline of 'CSCW', and to analyse with care the technical apparatus needed to determine what exactly is happening when people interact with each other in the constitution of an organisation. The belief of non-sociologists that this is 'obvious', and the terrible consequences thereof, are somewhat indicated in the topic 'Confessions' below. One system which relies on a theory of social interaction is the 'Coordinator' (Winograd and Flores, 1986). It has become a cliche that CSCW conferences provide an opportunity for collective 'Coordinator bashing', following the widespread reports of field trials of the system, in which users are alleged to have found the system coercive, and as a consequence to have given up using it. The problem appears to lie not in the general approach of Winograd and Flores, but in the use of an inappropriate theory - Speech Act theory - in the context of organisational analysis. A paper by Dietz and Widdershoven (University of Limburg, the Netherlands), attempted to remedy this by making some fine distinctions in the 'Conversations for Action' model, due to Habermas. My personal feeling is that it is time we stopped misusing speech act theory. It is a good (as far as it goes) conceptual analysis of what is logically involved in acting linguistically. It is not a performance theory of conversation - this was demonstrated by Levinson in (Levinson 1981). Neither is it an adequate theory of organisational activity, as the large literature on the subject indicates (eg Silverman, 1970; Giddens, 1984). Someone should write a definitive critique. Shared Window systems --------------------- A shared window system is an application environment running on two or more workstations distributed across a LAN or WAN and providing the following kinds of facilities. A voice link between all the cooperating group of users + one or more shared windows, so that items moved into the shared windows can be seen and perhaps manipulated by a subset of the cooperating group (normally all of them) + some extra screen furniture to facilitate management of the group interaction + possibly video and other multimedia facilities. There were something like five shared window system projects presented at the conference, plus others represented by delegates. There appears to be a trend towards being more mindful of the actual social protocols which people adopt (eg turn taking, entering or leaving gatherings, topic introduction, repair, making references), all of which have been the subject of careful study by the Conversation Analysts (eg Heritage, 1989; Levinson, 1983; Luff et al, 1990). Having said that, some systems were very technology-oriented (Lu, Ishii) whilst others were explicitly motivated by results from Conversation Analysis (Jirotka). The conference provided an opportunity for the designers of shared-window systems to get together, and a loose association has been set up, to exchange papers and opinions, and to prepare a focussed workshop at CSCW'92. The coordinator is Saul Greenberg, and for more information he can be emailed at saul@cpsc.ucalgary.ca. Design ------ A paper by Green, Owen and Pain (Sheffield) on the experiences of introducing a new municipal library system in a 'Northern City' reminded us that new technology opens up a struggle between many interest groups (accountants, employers, equipment suppliers). The final users of the system (librarians and members of the public) may be the least powerful voices on this terrain. Christian Heath (Surrey) continued the London Underground Controllers Saga. The new technology has now been introduced, and the expected problems of context-loss are being observed. We await with interest how the insights of ethnomethodology can be applied in the further design process ... Robinson and Bannon, in their jointly-given paper "Questioning Representations", described the process by which descriptions of the designer's reality at one stage of the design process become objectified resources for the constructions of new descriptions at subsequent design stages, leading to 'ontological drift'. There was some discussion as to how useful it was to redescribe a rather well-known phenomenon in this way. I think it rather depends on what further use can be made of these concepts. Confessions ----------- Both Tom Rodden (Lancaster) and Thomas Kreifelds (GMD) positioned themselves as fairly orthodox computer scientists, confronting the new realities of developing software aimed at groups of people working in an organisational context. In Kreifelds' case, they had been working on a Petri Net-based activity coordination model, called DOMINO, for a number of years. The system was based on a respectable computer-science theory of concurrent processing (ie Petri Nets) and this was assumed to apply unproblematically to human behaviour. The presentation was an account of their experiences in trialling the system at GMD for supporting an equipment purchasing procedure. In a manner reminiscent of Coordinator, they found that people in organisations do considerably more than follow rather coarse-grained formal procedures (the paper outlines this in some detail), hence their system is not an unqualified success. Many people in CSCW will hardly be surprised by this - in a sense, the whole area of CSCW is a response to engineering failure. A recognition that the old ways of designing systems do not work for the new class of organisationally-pervasive group-support systems. It seems to me that three kinds of conclusions are being drawn from this. Thomas Kreifelds seems to respond in a classically computer-science way: emphasising the need for better requirements studies, a rapid-prototyping model of systems development, much more extensive testing. Tom Rodden, in his talk, was more radical. He suggests a model of interdisciplinarity. The enlightened computer scientist realises that the sociologists have a valid contribution to make. There is still an additive flavour about this, however. Still a cosy sense in which the traditional roles are reaffirmed, even though we talk to new types of people. I would be more radical still. The old-style computer-scientist, who takes in pre-given requirements and produces systems, is finished in CSCW - rapid prototyping or not. The new CSCW systems designer/researcher has to be social-science literate, has to conceptualise the group situation and the consequences of system introduction in an informed manner. Just as Systems Analysts have to master business practices as well as computer technology, so the CSCW researcher will be expected to know about ethnomethodology (cf Garfinkel, 1984), or structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) as well as WAN's, LAN's, 'X' and UNIX. Note that this is not to say that computer scientists have to be social science researchers (or vice versa). EuroPARC -------- There were three papers from Rank Xerox EuroPARC, all reporting on aspects of the Activity-based Information Retrieval (AIR) programme. The EuroPARC office is heavily equipped with video tunnels, sound generators in offices and 'active badges', worn by lab personnel, which can be location- sensed by the in-house computer system. The effect must be rather like 'living inside a computer system'. The system is somewhat aware of the location of all badge holders, monitoring and logging their positions. It is able to apply some heuristics to these logs so as to retrieve high-level descriptions of the inhabitants' activities such as formal and informal meetings. These are mailed to people everyday (for the preceding day) - and that is the PEPYS system, described by William Newman. Another facility maintained by the building/computer system is maintaining an event-log. If it was raining outside (physical event), I might hear raindrop sounds synthesised in my office. If someone used the office-to-office video- connect to glance at me, I might hear the sound of a door creaking. When it's time for tea, I hear a kettle whistling sound. Events can be added to the log by staff in a straightforward way. This is the Khronika/EAR system, described by Lennart Lovstrand and Bill Gaver (in two separate talks). What is one to make of this? In a worst-case analysis, it seems that privacy has been abolished, while a cacophony of sounds and interruptions make sustained work impossible. And are any of these applications actually useful? There are important social-control implications to the EuroPARC work, and these were not well-fielded by the staff. Nevertheless, the types of systems being explored here are going to happen as the networks become more pervasive, buildings become more intelligent, and multimedia systems get cheaper. The difficult thing is to find the right levels of enhanced functionality as the technologies mature and come into use; to find the kind of computer/network environment which is useful, non-threatening etc. In this perspective, the work at EuroPARC is essential, although one may be sceptical about the utility of the functionalities reported here. Perhaps the EuroPARC system should be a little smarter, more agent-based and more conversational, and a little less intrusive. Conclusions ----------- This was a good conference, bringing together a number of committed and enthusiastic people to construct an 'ideas-rich' environment. I especially liked the feeling that the conference was a learning experience, and that progress seems to have been made during its course. Shared-window systems seem to be popular, effective and varied. The work in Conversation Analysis provides an extensive and sophisticated resource for designers in this field, and there is plenty of evidence that design teams are becoming familiar with it. For so-called 'asynchronous systems', better described as process-support systems, the situation is much less active at the moment. The first generation of such systems: Coordinator, Domino etc have encountered well-publicised difficulties in the field. However, the process of bringing together sociologists, interested in how people constitute organisations, and systems designers, interested in how computer/telecommunications technologies can mediate such processes, is well under way. It is to be hoped that some synthesis of these concerns may result, leading to the design of a next generation of more effective process support systems (or a proof that this is impossible!). These prospects should make ECSCW93 in Milan a very interesting occasion. References ---------- 1. Beer, R. D., Chiel, H. J. & Sterling, L. S. (1990). A Biological Perspective on Autonomous Agent Design. In: P. Maes (Ed) Designing Autonomous Agents, Bradford Books/MIT Press (1991) 169-186. 2. Brooks, R. A. (1990). Elephants don't play chess. In: P. Maes (Ed) Designing Autonomous Agents, Bradford Books/MIT Press (1991) 169-186. 3. Garfinkel, H. (1984). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 4. Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of a Theory of Structuration. Polity Press, Cambridge. 5. Gilbert, N., Buckland, S., Frohlich, D., Jirotka, M. and Luff, P. (1990). Providing Advice Through Dialogue. In Proceedings of the Ninth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI-90. 6. Heritage, J. C. (1989). Current Developments in Conversation Analysis. In: D. Roger and P. Bull (eds.) Conversation: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon and Philadelphia, 21-47. 7. Levinson, S. C. (1981). The Essential Inadequacies of Speech Act Models of Dialogue. In H. Parrett (Ed.), Possibilities and Limitations of Pragmatics, 473-492. J. Benjamin, B. V. Amsterdam. 8. Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics (Chapter 6). Cambridge University Press. Luff, P., Gilbert, N. and Frohlich, D. (1990). Computers and Conversation. Academic Press. 9. Malone, T. W., Grant, K. R., Lai, K., Rao, R. and Rosenblitt, D. (1987). Semistructured Messages are Surprisingly Useful for Computer- Supported Coordination. ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, Volume 5 Number 2. 10. Silverman, D. (1970). The Theory of Organisations. Gower. 11. Winograd, T. & Flores, F. (1986). Understanding Computers and Cognition. Addison-Wesley. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: bernon@irit.fr (Carolle BERNON) Subject: Cooperation between DAI and DCS Date: 28 Jan 92 14:33:01 GMT Organization: IRIT-UPS, Toulouse FRANCE Hello, I'm just beginning a thesis in Distributing Computing Systems. Our research team tries to really distribute an operational multiagent system in collaboration with researchers in Distributed Artificial Intelligence. We want to use DAI techniques for distributing these kind of systems in an 'intelligent' manner. In fact, we would like that DAI and DCS become complementary domains. I'm looking for anything dealing with such a cooperation between these two domains (references of papers and books, researchers' e-mail, contacts with persons .... ). Could you send me information about this subject by E-mail? Thank you for your help. C. Bernon email : bernon@irit.fr ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: jabowen@adm.csc.ncsu.edu (Jim Bowen) Subject: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN DESIGN: CONCURRENT ENGINEERING (CFP) Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1992 12:52:48 GMT CALL FOR PAPERS WORKSHOP ON INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS IN CONCURRENT ENGINEERING in conjunction with SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN DESIGN 22-25 June 1992, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA. This workshop, which will be held in conjunction with the 2nd Intn'l Conf. on AI in Design, is intended to provide a forum for discussion among researchers and engineers who are interested in the use of Artificial Intelligence techniques to develop on-line design advisors for Concurrent Engineering. It is also intended to help establish the foundation for a world-wide ``network of excellence'' amongst research groups who are working in this field. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, Computational Models of CE, Distributed AI in CE, Modeling (of Products, Processes and/or Enterprises), Negotiation in CE, Human Interface Factors. Three kinds of position statement are invited: descriptions of perceived obstacles to CE, presentations of new research and survey analyses of relevant work. ATTENDANCE: The aim is to facilitate lively discussion among participants so no more than 10 position statements will be accepted and attendance will be limited to authors of the statements. Multiple authors per position statement will be allowed to attend, up to a maximum attendance of thirty. The workshop registration fee, to be paid by all participants, is \$50. All participants must also register for the main conference. FORMAT: The workshop will occupy a half day. Seating in the meeting-room will be arranged in a circular fashion, as all attendees will be expected to be active contributors to the discussion. Preprints of all selected position statements will be distributed to all participants several weeks before the workshop. Participants will not present their own position statements at the workshop; instead, to instigate some lively and controversial discussion, the organising committee will assign to participants the task of paraphrasing and reviewing the position statement of other participants. These assignments will be made several weeks before the workshop and participants will be encouraged to contact their ``neighbours'' and initiate the discussion before the workshop. After the workshop, selected participants will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers to a special issue of the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering. SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS: Send one copy of a short position statement -- no submission should be longer than six pages in length. Submissions may be in in hard copy, but email submissions of standard LaTeX or pure ASCII files is preferred. All submissions, email or hard copy, must arrive by April 27. Authors of selected submissions will be notified by May 15. Camera-ready versions of the selected position statements are due by May 30; beyond this date, they may not be published in the workshop preprints. SUBMIT TO: James Bowen, Department of Computer Science, Box 8206, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8206, USA. Telephone: +1-919-515-7014; Fax: +1-919-515-7382; email: jabowen@adm.csc.ncsu.edu WORKSHOP COMMITTEE: Dennis Bahler, North Carolina State University, USA; James Bowen, North Carolina State University, USA; Ken MacCallum, University of Strathclyde, Scotland; Nel Wognum, University of Twente, Netherlands. DAI-List Digest Wednesday, 19 February 1992 Issue Number 68 Topics: Report available on Cooperative Problem Solving CFP for Blackboard Architectures and Applications Request for DAI System Development Environment Papers at 11th International Workshop on DAI Please send submissions to DAI-List@mcc.com. Send other requests, such as changes in your e-mail address, to DAI-List-Request@mcc.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1992 16:56:59 PST From: Bernardo Huberman Subject: Report available The following report is available "Cooperative Problem Solving" S. Clearwater, T. Hogg and B. A. Huberman Abstract We present a quantitative assessment of the value of cooperation for solving constraint satisfaction problems through a series of experiments, as well as a general theory of cooperative problem solving. These experiments, using both hierarchical and non-hierarchical cooperation, clearly exhibit a universal improvement in performance that results from cooperation. We also show both theoretically and experimentally the super-linear speed-up that results from having a diverse collection of skills among the cooperating agents. Our results suggest an alternative methodology to existing techniques for solving constraint satisfaction problems in computer science and distributed artificial intelligence. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 11:55:55 CDT From: Ajay Vinze Subject: CFP for Blackboard Architectures and Applications 26TH HAWAII INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SYSTEM SCIENCES (HICSS-26) CALL FOR PAPERS AND REFEREES MINITRACK ON IN BLACKBOARD ARCHITECTURES AND APPLICATIONS POIPU BEACH, KAUAI, HAWAII - JANUARY 5-8, 1993 =============================================================== Objective of the Mini-Track: The mini-track on Blackboard Architectures and Applications is being offered for the second time at the HICSS conference. The response to this mini-track at HICSS-25 was very positive. The purpose of the minitrack is to address the different facets of the blackboard paradigm, of particular interest are efforts in the areas of real-time systems, extensions to development environments, novel applications, and advanced architectures for such systems. Papers for this mini-track should be oriented toward either the application or the advancement of the blackboard approach. The conference proceedings are published by the IEEE Computer Society. This conference is jointly sponsored by the University of Hawaii, Pacific Research Institute for Information Systems in cooperation with the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society. A SELECT SET OF PAPERS IN THIS MINI-TRACK WILL BE CONSIDERED FOR INCLUSION IN THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EXPERT SYSTEMS WITH APPLICATIONS (SPECIAL ISSUE ON BLACKBOARD SYSTEMS) =============================================================== Instructions for Submitting Abstracts: (Abstract submission is optional) Each abstract submitted for review is limited to no more than 2 pages (1.5 spaced) or 5 e-mail screens and should provide the following information: Title, author(s), institution, telephone number, e-mail address Brief description of the research Expected contribution of the research effort =============================================================== Instructions for Submitting Papers: Submit 6 copies of the full paper consisting of 22-26 double spaced word-processed pages including tables, figures, and appendices to either Ajay Vinze or Arun Sen the mini-track co-chairs. The manuscript should not be submitted to more than one HICSS mini-track, nor should it be in review for a journal. Two title pages should be submitted. The first includes the title of the paper, full name of all authors, and their complete addresses including affiliation(s), telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and the second which contains only the title of the paper. The first page of the manuscript should include the title and a 300-word abstract of the paper. =============================================================== Deadlines: April 1, 1991: Abstracts submitted to the minitrack chair for indication as to appropriateness for the mini-track (OPTIONAL) April 15, 1991: Notification of abstract evaluation June 5, 1991: Full papers should be sent directly to either one of the minitrack co-chairs August 31, 1991: Notification of accepted papers will be mailed to the author October 1, 1991: Accepted manuscripts, in camera ready form, are due November 15, 1991: At least one author must register for the conference =============================================================== Send all correspondence to: AJAY VINZE or ARUN SEN, HICSS Minitrack Department of Business Analysis and Research College of Business Administration Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-4217 Telephone: (409) 845-1616 FAX: (409) 845-5653 E-mail (Bitnet): VINZE@TAMCBA or SEN@TAMCBA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 17:36:39 EST From: morris@cs.fit.edu (Robert Morris) Subject: Request for DAI System Development Environment I've been conducting research for NASA which has led me to study DAI systems. I have designed a system for monitoring, control and diagnosis of spacecraft power systems using a network of agents. Part of the system is being developed on a network of transputers using C, but as you can imagine, this environment has been an implementer's nightmare. What I really need is to test the design by using an environment for developing such systems. I would be interested in information regarding DAI system development environments which would be available for me to use for my application. Please write me regarding availability of software, system requirements, etc. many thanks. dr. bob morris dept. of computer science / florida institute of technology 150 W. university Blvd. Melbourne, FL. 32901 morris@cs.fit.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Feb 92 17:08:24 -0500 From: Ed Durfee Subject: Workshop Agenda 11TH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON DISTRIBUTED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FEBRUARY 25-29, 1992 GLEN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, USA Session 1: NEGOTIATION AND ORGANIZATION (Durfee) 1. Frank von Martial Coordination By Negotiation based on a Connection of Dialogue States with Actions 2. Richard Clark, Cliff Grosner, and T. Radhakrishnan CONSENSUS: A Planning Protocol for Cooperating Expert Systems 3. Toru Ishida The Tower of Babel: Towards Organization-Centered Problem Solving Session 2: DISTRIBUTED CONSTRAINT SEARCH (Conry) 1. Yoshiyasu Nishibe, Kazuhiro Kuwabara, and Toru Ishida Effects of Heuristics in Distributed Constraint Satisfaction: Towards Satisficing Algorithms 2. Toshiharu Sugawara Cooperation in Multiagent Systems by Hypothesis-based Preceding Reasoning 3. Makoto Yokoo and Ed Durfee Distributed Search Formalisms for Distributed Problem Solving: Overview Session 3: AGENT MODELING AND COMMUNICATION (Rosenschein) 1. Yoav Shoham Agent Oriented Programming 2. Piotr Gmytrasiewicz Decision-Theoretic Recursive Modeling and the Coordinated Attack Problem; Truth, Lies, Belief, and Disbelief in Communication between Autonomous Agents Session 4: AGENT SOCIETIES (Parunak) 1. Yoram Moses and Moshe Tennenholtz On Computational Aspects of Artificial Social Systems 2. Sabine Berthet, Yves Demazeau, Olivier Boissier Knowing Each Other Better Session 5: PANEL ON INTERNATIONAL DAI Moderator: Les Gasser Panelists: Yves Demazeau, Toru Ishida, Larry Rosenberg Session 6: QUANTITATIVE MODELS OF COORDINATION (Huhns) 1. Keith Decker and Victor Lesser The Analysis of Quantitative Coordination Relationships 2. Sandip Sen and Ed Durfee A Formal Analysis of Communication and Commitment in Distributed Meeting Scheduling Session 7: INTELLIGENT AGENTS (Weihmayer) 1. Mark Adler and Evangelos Simoudis Cooperation and Coordination in Help Desk Organizations 2. Mark Klein Supporting Conflict Management in Cooperative Design Teams 3. Carl Hewitt and Jeff Inman Mobile Computing Session 8: COORDINATION WITHOUT COMMUNICATION (Durfee) 1. Ran Levy and Jeff Rosenschein A Game Theoretic Approach to the Pursuit Problem 2. Rich Korf A Simple Solution to Pursuit Games 3. Discussion and MICE Experiments (Ed Durfee) Session 9: DISTRIBUTED PLANNING (Huhns) 1. Randy Pope, Susan Conry, and Robert Meyer Distributing the Planning Process in a Dynamic Environment 2. Eithan Ephrati and Jeff Rosenschein Planning to Please: Planning While Constrained by a Master Agent 3. C. Michael Lewis and Katia Sycara Informed Decision Making in Multi-Specialist Cooperation Session 10: DISTRIBUTED HIERARCHICAL PLANNING (Sycara) 1. Van Parunak How to Describe Behavior Space 2. Tom Montgomery and Ed Durfee Search Reduction in Hierarchical Problem Solving