Artificial Intelligence – Research and Applications

Abstract

This progress report describes the work performed during the most recent year and a half of a program of research in the field of Artificial Intelligence being conducted at SRI. Our research program concentrates especially on the development of systems that can automatically generate and execute complex plans and that can obtain information about their environment through the sense of vision. To provide a specific focus for our research, we have set ourselves the goal of building a “computer-based consultant” system that will serve as an expert consultant to a human apprentice. Together the system in the apprentice will be engaged in a task of checking out and repairing electro mechanical equipment in a workstation domain. We have developed a plan in which we have specify the capabilities of a system that can be demonstrated after five years of work ( 1978 ), and in which we have identified and discussed the major research problem areas involved. These include modeling and representation, automatic planning and problem-solving, machine vision, natural language communication communication and system integration. This report describes progress we have made in those areas.