Author: SRI International

  • Stereo Matching By Hierarchical, Microcanonical Annealing

    An improved stochastic stereo-matching algorithm incorporates two substantial modifications to an earlier version: a new variation of simulated annealing.

  • Persistence, Intention, and Commitment

    This paper explores principles governing the rational balance among an agent’s beliefs, goals, actions, and intentions. Such principles provide specifications for artificial agents, and approximate a theory of human action (as philosophers use the term). By making explicit the conditions under which an agent can drop his goals, i.e., by specifying how the agent is…

  • The SRI Mobile Robot Testbed: A Preliminary Report

    This paper describes a mobile robot designed for experimentation in artificial intelligence (AI). Presented here are details of the robot?s hardware and software architecture. The robot is driven by two electrically powered wheels. On-board computers control the motors and visual and ultrasonic sensors. A library of low-level software provides primitive functions for high-level programs to…

  • Procedural Knowledge

    Much of commonsense knowledge about the real world is in the form of procedures or sequences of actions for achieving particular goals. In this paper, a formalism is presented for representing such knowledge using the notion of process. A declarative semantics for the representation is given, which allows a user to state facts about the…

  • Student Assessment Programs In The Western Region

  • A Computational Model Of Referring

    In this paper we present a theory of referring. This theory is presented within the framework of a general theory of speech acts and rationality advanced by Cohen and Levesque. Understanding a speech act involves two tasks on the part of the hearer: recognition of the literal goal, and recognition and satisfaction of identification constraints.…

  • Evidential Reasoning For Geographic Evaluation For Helicopter, Route Planning

    In order to plan operations where knowledge of significant elements is imprecise and uncertain, a means of characterizing the situation in terms of the various factors that may influence those operations must be provided. In this paper we discuss an approach to that characterization that uses evidential reasoning to handle the uncertainty, imprecision, and incompleteness…

  • On The Imaging Of Fractal Surfaces

    We examine the imaging of standard Brownian Fractal surfaces.

  • A Representation Of Parallel Activity Based On Events, Structure, and Causality

    Most AI domain representations have been based on state-oriented world models. In this paper we present an event-based model that focuses on domain events (both atomic and nonatomic) and on the causal and temporal relationships among them. Emphasis is also placed on representing locations of activity and using them to structure the domain representation. Our…

  • Inferring Domain Plans In Question-Answering

    The importance of plan inference in models of conversation has been widely noted in the com-putational-linguistics literature, and its incorporation in question-answering systems has enabled a range of cooperative behaviors. The plan inference process in each of these systems, however, has assumed that the questioner (Q), whose plan is being inferred, and the respondent (R),…

  • The Logical Foundations Of Evidential Reasoning

    The approach proposed by Carnap for the development of logical bases for probability theory is investigated by using formal structures that are based on epistemic logics. Epistemic logics are modal logics introduced to deal with issues that are relevant to the state of knowledge that rational agents have about the real world. The use of…

  • How To Clear A Block: A Theory Of Plans

    Problems in commonsense and robot planning are approached by methods adapted from program synthesis research; planning is regarded as an application of automated deduction. To support this approach, we introduce a variant of situational logic, called plan theory, in which plans are explicit objects. A machine-oriented deductive-tableau inference system is adapted to plan theory. Equations…