Artificial Intelligence

Smart machines—those that can learn and make decisions autonomously—have become a reality. Artificial intelligence researchers in SRI's world-renowned Artificial Intelligence Center develop computer-based systems that exhibit intelligent behavior in complex situations. SRI's applied solutions solve problems, communicate with people in new ways, and interact with the physical world.

For commercial, industrial, and military clients, core artificial intelligence programs include

Projects

woman reading an e-reader
Automated User-Centered Reasoning and Acquisition System (AURA)

SRI is developing a "Digital Aristotle" — a computerized system that uses artificial intelligence to answer novel questions and solve advanced problems in a broad range of scientific disciplines.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
the ARM-H robotic hand
Autonomous Robotic Manipulation- Hand (ARM-H)

SRI and partners are developing highly dexterous low-cost robotic hands for military applications and other real-world uses.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence Force Protection Laboratory + Industrial Automation Robotics Unmanned Robotics Perception
silhouette of a man looking at BioCyc software
BioCyc Database Collection

A comprehensive website for sharing fundamental information about biochemical pathways and genomes with researchers around the world.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence Bioinformatics + Computational Biology Drug Discovery Metabolic Diseases
screenshot of the Integrated Bootstrapped Learning software interface
Bootstrapped Learning

SRI and partners developed human-instructable computing technology to let users change software in ways that traditionally require skilled programmers.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
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DoVETAIL: Domain Vocabulary Extraction and Transduction + Auto-Induction of Layout

SRI and partners are developing new tools to extract better meaning and actionable analysis from data sources.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence Intelligence, Surveillance + Reconnaissance
EcoCyc logo
EcoCyc: Encyclopedia of E. coli Genes and Metabolism

EcoCyc is SRI's bioinformatics database that describes the genome and the biochemical machinery of Escherichia coli.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence Drug Discovery
drawing of a computerized human-like figure reading stacks of books
FAUST: Flexible Acquisition and Understanding System for Text

SRI is developing an automated reading system that makes the information in textbooks accessible to a range of formal reasoning systems.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
artist's rendering of an eye, close up, with the Facebook logo over the eyeball
Meme Epidemiology

SRI is applying artificial intelligence principles to predict the emergence and spread of memes—ideas that spread from individual to individual, shaping social institutions and inspiring cultural movements.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
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Probative Rapid Interactive Modeling Environment

SRI is developing a decision support tool to help analysts forecast and understand the plausible effects of actions taken within complex socio-cultural environments.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence Homeland Security + National Defense Intelligence, Surveillance + Reconnaissance
Quadri: Intelligent Question Answering in the HIV Domain

SRI, Stanford University, and PARC co-developed an intelligent system for answering English questions about HIV treatment.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence

Products + Solutions

Karto software
Karto™ Software for Robots on the Move

Decades of leading-edge SRI robotics and artificial intelligence research has produced Karto™—robust software for use in robotic navigation, mapping, and exploration.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence Robotics
Pathway Tools screen shot
Pathway Tools

Comprehensive symbolic systems biology software used by researchers to create pathway databases for organisms with sequenced genomes. Hundreds of pathway databases within the BioCyc collection facilitate gene expression and metabolomics data analysis, and speed development of metabolic flux models.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence Bioinformatics + Computational Biology Drug Discovery
four people using SEAS software
Structured Evidential Argumentation System™ (SEAS)

The SEAS software tool uses best analytic practices to guide analysts in collaboratively reasoning from evidence about potential threats and opportunities.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence Homeland Security + National Defense Intelligence, Surveillance + Reconnaissance

Press Releases

two silhouetted figures look at computer screens
Agilent Technologies’ New Pathway Architect Software to Include SRI International’s BioCyc Pathway Database Collection

Agilent Technologies Inc. and SRI have signed a licensing agreement to offer laboratory research customers an integrated package that includes SRI's complete BioCyc Pathway Database Collection.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence Biofuels + Bioproducts Drug Discovery Proteomics Synthetic Biology
DARPA Selects SRI International to Develop Visual Intelligence System for Mind's Eye Program

SRI International is leading a team to design a visual intelligence system, known as VIGIL (Visual Intelligence Grounded in Learning), to enable a new era in unmanned robotic surveillance.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
DARPA Selects SRI International to Lead Development of PLATO, A Machine Learning System That Could Launch a New Field of Research

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded an SRI International-led team an initial contract to develop a learning system called Phased Learning through Analyzing, Teaching and Observation (PLATO).

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
Department of Energy Funds SRI to Enhance Bioinformatics Tools for Renewable Energy Research

SRI International, an independent nonprofit research and development organization, announced today it has been awarded a grant by the Department of Energy (DOE) to expand its MetaCyc database and enhance its Pathway Tools software.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence Bioinformatics + Computational Biology
C. Raymond Perrault
International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Honors SRI's Raymond Perrault with Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award

In recognition for his substantial contributions and extensive service to the field of artificial intelligence, C. Raymond Perrault, Ph.D., director of SRI International's Artificial Intelligence Center, was presented with the Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
complete human metabolic pathway map
New Software Speeds Development of Genome-Scale Models for Drug and Fuel Research

A new software tool can substantially decrease time required for researchers to construct genome-scale models of metabolic networks. Metabolic networks are the complete set of metabolic and physical processes that determine physiological and biochemical properties of a cell.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence Bioinformatics + Computational Biology Drug Discovery Software Engineering Synthetic Biology
SRI International Releases New Version of Karto™ Software for Mobile Robot Navigation

SRI International, an independent, nonprofit research and development institute, today announced the release of version 1.1 of SRI's Karto™ Software Development Kit (SDK).

Topics: Artificial Intelligence Robotics
SRI International's Artificial Intelligence Center Celebrates 40 Years of Innovation

SRI International celebrates 40 years of its innovations via its Artificial Intelligence Center (AIC), which has made major contributions to the development and advancement of computational principles underlying machine intelligence, including robotics, automated reasoning, and bioinformatics.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence Robotics

SRI In the News

Apple Acquires Personal Mobile Assistant Siri

This article reports that according to a number of well-informed sources, Apple just acquired Siri, the personal mobile assistant that won the SXSW BizSpark Accelerator competition last month. Siri was spun out of SRI International, and its core technology is based on..

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
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Siri for Travel, Desti, Launches iPad App in Public Beta Giving Users Their Own “Smart Travel Guide”

This article notes that SRI has produced some remarkable technologies over the years. Another one of Siri’s siblings has launched into public beta and hopes to help make travel planning and discovery much smarter.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
5 Questions for Norman Winarsky on Siri and What's Next from SRI

This article reports that Apple recently acquired Siri, a virtual personal assistant for the iPhone. According to the article, Siri was a VC-backed spinout of SRI International, a non-profit R&D lab whose past hits include Nuance Communications and Intuitive Surgical.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
A Fight to Win the Future: Computers vs. Humans

According to this article, in 1963 SRI's Douglas Engelbart formed what would become the Augmentation Research Center to pursue a radically different goal of "designing a computing system that would instead "bootstrap" the human intelligence of small groups of scientists and engineers."

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
Apple Acquires Mobile Search Company Siri

This article reports that Apple has acquired Siri, maker of a dutiful voice-activated "virtual personal assistant" iPhone app. According to the article's author, "Siri comes out of SRI International's Artificial Intelligence project."

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
Apple Buys a Start-Up for Its Voice Technology

This article reports that Apple Inc. continued its migration into Google's turf this week with the acquisition of Siri, a mobile application that allows users to perform Web searches by voice command on a cell phone.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
Apple Buys Search App Startup Siri

This article reports that Apple Inc. has reportedly bought Siri Inc. just a few months after the startup launched a voice-activated personal-assistant program in the iPhone App Store. According to the article, Dag Kittlaus started the company with Adam Cheyer, also of SRI, and with Tom Gruber.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
Apple Buys Virtual Assistant App Maker Siri

This article reports that an application developer called Siri confirmed to the Business Insider blog that it had been acquired by Apple. According to the article, Siri's main product is a mobile virtual personal assistant that allows users of the iPhone or iPod Touch, to ask questions about...

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
Apple Snaps Up Intelligent Assistant Start-up

This article reports that "Apple has snapped up Siri, which makes an "intelligent assistant" application for mobile devices." According to the article, Norman Winarsky, vice president of ventures, licensing, and strategic programs at SRI International.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
Apple's Siri: 'The Culmination Of Steve Jobs' Legacy'

Siri investor Gary Morgenthaler provides a revealing look at how Siri developed and what it could potentially do, including how it could reshape the worlds of e-commerce and advertising.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence

Events

AIC Seminar with Lenore Zuck: Rambling on Ethics in Computer Science

Lenore Zuck will give some of the "philosophical” reasons for incorporating ethical thinking when developing technology and in computer science, critique the existing codes of ethics, and suggest challenges that should be overcome to reach the idealistic goal of ethical data sharing.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
AIC Seminar with Margaret-Anne Storey: Collaborative Visualization of Ontologies and Ontology Mappings

Ontologies provide powerful and concise conceptualizations of domain knowledge that must be machine-processable but also human-readable to improve ease of use and also to ease communication across stakeholders.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
Jonathan Huang, Stanford University
AIC Seminar: Algebraic Approaches for Reasoning in Very Noisy Multi-Target Tracking Problems

Probabilistic reasoning and learning with permutation data arises as a fundamental problem in myriad applications. Huang will discuss an algebraic approach, and its implications for multi-target tracking.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
AIC Seminar: Measuring Semantic Similarity between Short Texts

SRI will host Mihai Lintean, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Computer Science Department at the University of Memphis. Lintean will present his work on measuring semantic similarity between short texts.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence

Publications

A Perspective On Multiagent Planning

This report presents an informal review of current research trends in planning and, in particular, my own views on multiagent planning. A short description of the GEMPLAN research project is provided, including both the current state of the system and my future research plans.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
A Calculus For Semantic Composition and Scoping

Certain restrictions on possible scopings of quantified noun phrases in natural language are usually expressed in terms of formal constraints on binding at a level of logical form.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
An Architecture For Intelligent Reactive Systems

Any intelligent system that operates in a moderately complex or unpredictable environment must be reactive — that is, it must respond dynamically to changes in its environment.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
Random Sample Consensus: A Paradigm for Model Fitting with Applications to Image Analysis and Automated Cartography

In 1981 SRI introduced RANSAC, a now widely referenced paradigm for robust communication ideally suited to computer vision (a type of artificial intelligence used in image analysis.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence Computer Vision
A Mobile Automation: an Application of Artificial Intelligence Techniques

A research project applying artificial intelligence techniques to development of integrated robot systems is described. The experimental facility consists of an SDS-940 computer and associated programs controlling a wheeled vehicle that carries a TV camera and other sensors.

Topics: Artificial Intelligence
Inquire: An Intelligent Textbook

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