Austin Tate

• University of Edinburgh

In this chapter, we describe our project dissemination efforts via a programmable, configurable, 3D Virtual World environment in Second Life and OpenSimulator.

Belief-Desire-Intention agents in realistic environments may face unpredictable exogenous changes threatening intended plans and debilitative failure effects that threaten reactive recovery. In this paper we present the CAMP-BDI (Capability Aware, Maintaining Plans) approach, where BDI agents utilize introspective reasoning to modify intended plans...

This chapter concerns the use of virtual worlds and web 2.0 technologies for on-line collaborative activities. The potential of this combination of technologies lies in the complementary notions of presence that these technologies offer their users. After discussing this idea, the nature of distributed collaboration and the implications this has fo...

This paper describes some of the lessons learned from the FireGrid project. It starts with a brief overview of the project. The discussion of the lessons learned that follows is intended for others attempting to develop a similar system, where sensor data is used to steer a super-real time simulation in order to generate predictions that will provi...

The guest editors discuss some recent advances in using intelligent systems for emergency management, as well as remaining technological challenges.

A framework is described for developing and deploying procedural knowledge in emergency situations where collaboration is needed. In this framework, procedural knowledge is represented in a wiki using an informal, textual description that's marked up with formal tags based on the I-N-C-A representation for hierarchical task networks used in AI plan...

Most major military, peacekeeping, and humanitarian operations are now coalition-based and require agility and effective use of limited resources to achieve complex and multiple objectives. This raises many challenges given technical incompatibilities, rules and regulations, as well as cultural norms. This special issue examines the contributions o...

An I-Room is an "intelligent room" which can act as a knowledge aid to support collaborative meetings and activities, especially when these involve sense-making about the current context, planning, considering options, and decision-making. The I-Room provides a generic technology basis for a wide range of potential collaborative applications and us...

An I-Room is a virtual world "intelligent room" that can support collaborative meetings and activities, especially when these involve sense-making about a current situation, planning, considering options, and decision making. The combination of a virtual worlds meeting space and intelligent systems to support planning and decision making in an I-Ro...

This paper concerns the use of new media technologies, including virtual worlds and web 2.0, for on-line collaborative activities, and specifically for the provision of expert advice about the response to large-scale crises. Internet technologies in general offer rich possibilities for interactions involving remote experts; however, the diversity,...

The FireGrid project aims to harness the potential of advanced forms of computation to support the response to large-scale emergencies (with an initial focus on the response to fires in the built environment). Computational models of physical phenomena are deployed on High Performance Computing (HPC) resources to interpret live sensor data from an...

The I-Room is a virtual environment intended to support a range of collaborative activities, especially those that involve sense making, deliberation, and decision making. The I-Room case studies described in this paper all employ virtual worlds technology to provide this interaction space and show how this can be augmented with external knowledge-...

Crisis response situations require collaboration across many different organizations with different backgrounds, training, procedures and objectives. The response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 and the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in 2005 emphasized the importance of effective communication and collaboration. Compounding the challenges ass...

We present a demonstration of a multi-agent prototype for distributed planning and coordination in dynamic non-deter- ministic multi-actor mixed-initiative environments. The sys- tem provides flexible planning, replanning, and task alloca- tion. The key technologies utilized in the system are (i) I-X hierarchical planner with (ii) agent-based archi...

We present an approach to distributed planning and coor- dination architecture for dynamic non-deterministic multi- actor mixed-initiative environment. The system provides exible planning, replanning, and task allocation. The key idea of the presented approach is in integration of (i) I-X hierarchical planner with (ii) agent-based architecture and...

We present an approach to distributed planning and coor- dination architecture for dynamic non-deterministic multi- actor mixed-initiative environment. The system provides exible planning, replanning, and task allocation. The key idea of the presented approach is in integration of (i) I-X hierarchical planner with (ii) agent-based architecture and...

The aim of the I-X research programme is to provide a general framework for performing mixed-initiative synthesis tasks, along with a set of tools that supports its use. This framework arises from and builds upon seminal work at the University of Edinburgh in the field of Artificial Intelligence planning. In this paper we describe the framework and...

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The report describes the I-X framework and its application to personnel recovery. When the I-X framework is instantiated with a domain-specific model, it is referred to as an I-X application. Such an application has been developed during the Co-OPR project for the task of personnel recovery and personnel recovery training. The I-X technology was ap...

One of the problems that must be solved dur- ing coalition operations is the planning problem: finding a course of actions for the operation. Knowledge-based planning is a technique that can be used to address this problem. However, tra- ditional planning has focussed on the finding of a plan that achieves a given goal or accomplishes a given task....

This paper describes a new agent framework that fuses an HTN planner, through its underlying conceptual model, with the mental attitudes of the BDI agent architecture, thus exploiting the strengths of each. On the one hand, the practical and proven ability to reason about actions that is the strength of HTN planning fleshes out the option generatio...

I-X is a framework that can be used to create an application in which multiple agents adopt a task-centric view of a situation, and which supports the necessary coordination of their activities to respond to that situation. The I-X process panel provides the functionality of a to-do list and instant messaging and thus, it is a useful tool when it c...

The aim of this paper is to describe I-Sim, a simulation tool that is a fully integrated part of the underlying agent framework, I-X. I-Sim controls a discrete event simulator, based on the same activity model that is shared between all I-X components, and multiple process-level simulators that model the continuous change caused by actions that are...

The aim of this paper is to describe the I-X system with its principal user interface, the I-X Process Panel, its underlying ontology, , and how this panel can be used as an intelligent to-do list that assists emergency responders in applying pre-defined standard operating procedures in different types of emergencies. In particular, multiple instan...

Imagine a future environment where networks of agents - people, robots and software agents - interact with sophisticated sensor grids and environmental actuators to provide advice, protection and aid. The systems will be integral to clothing, communications devices, vehicles, transportation systems, buildings, and pervasive in the environment. Vehi...

Besides numerous applications in industry and commerce the intelligent distributed systems technologies are ready to be deployed in fields of defense logistics applications, international coalitions operations, humanitarian relief operations and other OOTW (Operations Other Than War). For these very specific application domains the international re...

This paper investigates the implications of using concepts of collaboration as part of a planning architecture, which intends to support hierarchical coalition operations. Such concepts are mostly based on Teamwork approaches and they were integrated into the planning architecture via the same constraint-based framework, already in use by the archi...

A future network of sophisticated sensors, protection, and repair systems which could be integral to clothing, communications devices, transportation systems, buildings, and the environment, are discussed. Requests for assistance could be validated and brokered through this framework to available and appropriate services in a highly distributed mar...

The Coalition Search and Rescue Task Support (CoSAR-TS) has been a DARPA DAML Program project to provide advanced capabilities linking models of organizational structures, policies, and doctrines with intelligent task support software. The project integrates AIAI's I-X planning and collaboration technology, IHMC's KAoS policy and domain services, a...

The aim of this paper is to describe the I-X system with its principal user interface, the I-X Process Panel, its underlying ontology, , and how this panel can be used as an intelligent to-do list that assists emergency responders in applying pre-defined standard operating procedures in different types of emergencies. In particular, multiple instan...

The CoAKTinG project aims to advance the state of the art in collaborative mediated spaces for the Semantic Grid. This paper presents an overview of the hypertext and knowledge based tools which have been deployed to augment existing collaborative environments, and the ontology which is used to exchange structure, promote enhanced process tracking,...

The CoAKTinG project aims to advance the state of the art in collaborative mediated spaces for the Semantic Grid. This paper presents an overview of the hypertext and knowledge based tools which have been deployed to augment existing collaborative environments, and the ontology which is used to exchange structure, promote enhanced process tracking,...

The use of planning assistant agents is an appropriate option to provide support for members of a coalition. Planning agents can extend the human abilities and be customised to attend different kinds of activities. However, the implementation of a planning framework must also consider other important requirements for coalitions, such as the perform...

Templates are standard operating procedures that can be used for solving typical problems and as a starting point for solving novel problems. These structures contain relevant variables (and required activities) and current variable values (or specific activities) that affect a problem or have been chosen in a problem-solving instance. With templat...

The interplay of constraint and planning, and the differences between propositional satisfiability (SAT), integer programming (IP) and constraint programming (CP) are discussed. Constraint optimization requires an additional function that assigns a quality value to a solution and tries to find a solution that maximizes this value. The hierarchical...

In the last decades, many advances have been made in intelligent planning systems. Significant im- provements related to core problems, providing faster search algorithms and shortest plans have been proposed. However, there is a lack in re- searches allowing a better support for a proper use and interaction with planners, where, for instance, visu...

In this paper we describe our experience in applying KAoS services to ensure policy compliance for Semantic Web Services workflow composition and enactment. We are developing these capabilities within the context of two applications: Coalition Search and Rescue (CoSAR-TS) and Semantic Firewall (SFW). We describe how this work has uncovered requirem...

This paper describes our efforts to provide a collaborative problem solving architecture driven by semantic-based workflow orchestration and con-straint problem solving. These technologies are based on a shared ontology that allows two open systems of very different natures to communicate, perform spe-cialised tasks and achieve common goals. We giv...

In the last decades, many advances have been made in intelligent planning systems. Significant improvements related to core problems, providing faster search algorithms and shortest plans have been proposed. However, there is a lack in researches allowing a better support for a proper use and interaction with planners, where, for instance, visualiz...

Web Services power through explicit representations of Web resources underlying semantics and the development of an intelligent Web infrastructure that can fully exploit them. Semantic Web languages, such as OWL, extend RDF to let users specify ontologies comprising taxonomies of classes and inference rules. Both people and software agents can effe...

In the last decades, many advances have been made in intelligent planning systems. Significant improvements related to core problems, providing faster search algorithms and shortest plans have been proposed. However, there is a lack in researches allowing a better support for a proper use and interaction with planners, where, for instance, visualiz...

The CoAKTinG project aims to advance the state of the art in collaborative mediated spaces for distributed e-Science. The project is integrating several knowledge based and hypertext tools into existing collaborative environments, and through use of a shared ontology to exchange structure, promotes enhanced process tracking and navigation of resour...

I-X Process Panels are used to support users who are carrying out processes and responding to events in a cooperative working environment. The panels support the tracking of personal or group issues, the planning and execution of activities and the checking of constraints. Panels can be connected to other panels, and also to a range of services, ag...

Multinational coalitions are increasingly important in military operations. But coalitions today suffer from heterogeneous command systems, labour-intensive information collection and coordination, and different and incompatible ways of representing information. The purpose of Network Enabled Capability (NEC) is to enhance military capability by ex...

This paper presents M-Planning, a mobile tool to support collaborative planning, and its conjunction use with the IX Process Panels. M-Planning works like an intelligent mobile panel for agents on the move. The tool permits agents' interaction, visualisation and manipulation of information related to collaborative processes of planning. The archite...

This paper is in two parts. In the first part, we describe work towards the creation of a common ontology and representation for plans, processes and other information related to activity. We briefly describe the work going on in two areas: military planning and standards for representing activities and processes. Our own systems are based on an un...

During space missions, the interaction between a spacecraft's planner and ground teams is very limited due to restrictions in communication. Commonly the role of such teams is reduced to receive the current state of a spacecraft and to send sequences of activities to it. However this concept of planning tends to change with the future advent of hum...

This paper summarizes our efforts to develop capabilities for policy and contract management for Semantic Web Services applications. KAoS services and tools allow for the specification, management, analyzes, disclosure and enforcement of policies represented in OWL. We discuss three current Semantic Web Services applications as examples of the kind...

The teamwork research defines several important concepts regarding the design of agents so that they are in fact able to play as members of a collaborative group. Currently such research has been focused on multiagent domains, where agents have full autonomy to take decisions. However this model is not common in real applications where humans may w...

This paper presents M-Planning, a mobile tool to support collaborative planning, and its conjunction use with the I-X Process Panels. M-Planning works like an intelligent mobile panel for agents on the move. The tool permits agents' interaction, visualisation and manipulation of information related to collaborative processes of planning. The archit...

In this work we discuss and propose a new approach for semantic enhancement in mobile devices profiling. This work is motivated by the lack of semantic in existing profiling methods and is part of a broaden framework for visualisation of intelligent planning information in collaborative environments. In this paper, before the discussion of this new...

The CoAKTinG project aims to advance the state of the art in collaborative mediated spaces for distributed e-Science. The project is integrating several knowledge based and hypertext tools into existing collaborative environments, and through use of a shared ontology to exchange structure, promotes enhanced process tracking and navigation of resour...

The CoAKTinG project aims to advance the state of the art in collaborative mediated spaces for the Semantic Grid. This paper presents an overview of the hypertext and knowledge based tools which have been deployed to augment existing collaborative environments, and the ontology which is used to exchange structure, promote enhanced process tracking,...

The Coalition Search and Rescue Task Support demonstration shows cooperative agents supporting a highly dynamic mission in which AI task planning, inter-agent collaboration, workflow enactment, policy-managed communications, semantic web queries, semantic web services matchmaking and knowledge-based notifications are employed.

IntroductionThe coordination of resource and activity to achieve somecommon objective is a key task within modern virtual organisations.The Semantic Web initiative promises to increase thenumber of knowledge and information resources available,presenting more (and more varied) opportunities for interaction.However, as the number and complexity of t...

O-Plan is an Artificial Intelligence Planning System written in Common Lisp that has been developed at the University of Edinburgh over the period 1983 to 1999. It is used in a wide variety of applications. It has been deployed as a planning service accessible over the World Wide Web since 1994 and has provided an HTTP interface to users and progra...

I-Rescue is a research programme that aims to develop knowledge-based tools for disaster relief domains. One important aspect of the I-Rescue development is to highlight the requirements regarding the collaborative activities of planning and execution, considering a hierarchical structure of decision-making and a mixedinitiative style of interactio...

I-X is a research programme with a number of different aspects in- tended to create a well-founded approach to allow humans and computer sys- tems to cooperate in the creation or modification of some product such as a de- sign, physical entity or plan - i.e. it supports cooperative synthesis tasks. The I- X approach involves the use of shared model...

I-X is a research programme intended to create a well-founded approach to allow humans and computer systems to cooperate in the creation or modification of some product such as a design, physical entity or plan -- i.e. it supports mixedinitiative synthesis tasks. The I-X mixed-initiative approach involves the use of shared models for task-orientate...

The goal of the international CoAX (Coalition Agents eXperiment) program was to demonstrate how agent systems could be used to provide agile and flexible command and control systems for coalition operations, and facilitate rapid integration of national C2 systems.

OF REPORT OF THIS PAGE OF SCT CSSIFIED UNCLASSIFIED UNCLASSIFIED UL NSN 7541]-01 Standard Form 298 (Rev, 2-89) Prescribed by ANSI Std Z39-18 298-102 Acknowledgements The O-Plan project began in 1984. Since thal time the following people have participated: Colin Bell, Ken Currie, Jeff Dalton. Roberto Desimone, Brian Drabble, Mark Drummond, Anja tIam...

Enterprise Modelling (EM) methods are well-recognised for their value in describing complex, informal domains in an or- ganised structure. EM methods are used in practice, particularly dur- ing the early stages of software system development, e.g. during the phase of business requirements elicitation. The built model, however, has not always provid...

this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. Government, other research sponsors or the University of Edinburgh. iv v Contents 1. Summary 1 2. History and Comparison of I-X to other Approaches 3 3. I...

As the World Wide Web continues to expand, it becomes increasingly difficult for users to obtain information efficiently. Because most search engines read format languages such as HTML or SGML, search results reflect formatting tags more than actual page content, which is expressed in natural language. Spinning the Semantic Web describes an excitin...

The use of mobile devices is becoming increasingly more frequent. Although very limited, these devices now have capacities for running more advanced systems. Opportunities for developing applications using artificial intelligence have emerged with the release of APIs that are not aimed at proprietary platforms, such as J2ME. This paper discusses so...

The goal of the intemational CoAX (Coalition Agents experiment) program was to demonstrate how agent systems could be used to provide agile andflexible command and control systems for coalition operations, and facilitate rapid integration of national C2 systems. The CoAX experiments modelled a coalition C4ISR system as a distributed, heterogeneous...

Grid infrastructures coupled with semantic web linkage and reasoning open up intriguing new possibilities for scientific collaboration. In this short paper, we outline the research agenda and collaboration technologies under development within the CoAKTinG project: Collaborative Advanced Knowledge Technologies in the Grid. CoAKTinG will provide too...

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The Coalition Agents Experiment aims to show that multi-agent systems offer effective tools for dealing with complex real-world problems by enabling agile and robust coalition operations and interoperability between heterogeneous military systems.

This document contains the final proceedings for the interdisciplinary conference KSCO-2002 which covered the following topics: Innovative theory and techniques for coalition formation and "virtual organizations"; Applications and requirements for knowledge-based coalition planning and operations; Knowledge-based approaches to command and control;...

Military Coalitions are examples of large-scale multi-faceted virtual organizations, which sometimes need to be rapidly created and flexibly changed as circumstances alter. The Coalition Agents eXperiment (CoAX) aims to show that multi-agent systems are an effective way of dealing with the complexity of real-world problems, such as agile and robust...

I-X is a research programme with a number of different aspects intended to create a well-founded approach to allow humans and computer systems to cooperate in the creation or modification of some product or products such as documents, plans or designs. I-X may also be used to support more general collaborative activity. The I-X research draws on ea...

This paper describes the need to view a planner as situated in an environment dealing with the whole "planning" problem. While a planning agent deals with plan generation aspects, other agents are concerned with aspects such as task elicitation, plan analysis, reactive execution, plan repair, etc. Each of these systems has its own perspective on th...

I-X is a research programme with a number of different aspects intended to create a well-founded approach to allow humans and computer systems to cooperate in the creation or modification of some product or products such as documents, plans or designs. I-X may also be used to support more general collaborative activity. The I-X research draws on ea...

I-X is a research programme with a number of different aspects intended to create a well-founded approach to allow humans and computer systems to cooperate in the creation or modification of some product such as a plan, design or physical entity -- i.e. it supports synthesis tasks. The I-X approach involves the use of shared models for task directe...

This paper describes how AIAI has used the ideas and techniques behind Technology Road Maps in order to provide a framework for developing Knowledge Asset Road Maps to support knowledge management initiatives. By carefully relating knowledge management actions upwards to business objectives and strategies, and downwards to specific knowledge assets...

An important class of problems is related to performing activities, and the planning of future activity, The doing of things" is at the heart of human endeavour.

Software agents can be viewed as semi-autonomous entities which help people cope with the complexities of working collaboratively in a distributed information environment. This paper describes the research that DERA is carrying out into Software Agents for use in Command Systems and the collaborative work with the 16 partners of an international Co...

Ontologies have become popular in the Articial Intelligence community as a way to standardise representation of domain knowledge. Despite their advocated use in areas such as knowledge sharing and reuse there is little discussion in the community regarding their application in other areas. In this paper we explore the use of ontologies in improving...

1 Realistic planning systems must allow users and computer systems to cooperate and work together using a “mixed initiative” style. Black box or fully automated solutions are not acceptable in many situations. Studies of expert human problem solvers in stressful or critical situations show that they share many of the problem solving methods employe...

This paper is concerned with the implementation of a mobile telephone interface onto the existing AIAI hierarchical planner O-Plan, and the investigation into how to maximise the usability of this limited media interface, with minimum loss of content. The resulting WOPlan (Wireless O-Plan) interface was developed as a Java Servlet application which...

The authors introduce Open Planning Process Panels (O-P³), which are based on explicit models of the planning process and can coordinate the development and evaluation of multipole courses of action. O-P³ can coordinate the workflow between multiple agents and visualize the development and evaluation of multiple courses of act...

This paper presents an approach to representing and manipulating plans and other synthesised artifacts in the form of a set of constraints. The 1 (Issues -- Nodes -- Orderings /Variables/Auxiliary) constraints model is used to characterise plans and processes. The more general (Issues -- Nodes -- Critical /Auxiliary) constraints model can be used f...

In these demonstrations we show O-Plan, an AI planning agent working over the WWW. There are a number of demonstrations ranging from a simple "single shot" generation of Unix systems administration scripts through to comprehensive use of AI technologies across the whole planning lifecycle in military and civilian crisis situations The applications...

Austin Tate 5, Gregg Yost 6 other members of the PIF Working Group 7

This project brought knowledge and experience of European knowledge engineering methods and techniques to the HPKB program. Originally, this was expected to be done through briefings and training courses, but it quickly became apparent that applying suitable techniques and demonstrating the results was more beneficial to the HPKB program. As a resu...

The world of business and organised work is changing. This change is driven by a shift of organisational focus away from individual fragmented tasks toward an examination of the holistic processes. New tools are being developed to assist individuals in building, evaluating, and managing these processes. The application of these tools though must be...

In this paper, we outline the requirements of a planning and decision aid to support US Army small unit operations in urban terrain and show how AI planning technologies can be exploited in that context. The work is a rare example of a comprehensive use of AI technologies across the whole planning lifecycle, set in a realistic application in which...

Work is described which supports multi-agent mixed initiative interaction between a "task assignment" or "command" agent and a planning agent. Each agent maintains an agenda of outstanding tasks it is engaged in and uses a common representation of tasks, plans, processes and activities based on the notion that these are all "constraints on behaviou...

A shared understanding, based on a shared underlying conceptual model, for objectives, the world state, activities, plans, the planning process, and inter-agent responsibilities and authorities can provide a framework for systems to support Coalition Operations. Such a shared model can have value in supporting separate organisational entities with...