One very useful idea in AI research has been the notion of an explicit model of a problem situation. Procedural deduction languages, such as PLANNER, have been valuable tools for building these models. But PLANNER and its relatives are very…

The quality of higher education has been a growing concern in the United States and United Kingdom. There have been no notable improvements in the education system until the last few years. Considerable transformation in the higher education arena has…

This paper analyzes the suitability of reinforcement learning (RL) for both programming and adapting situated agents. We discuss two RL algorithms: Q-learning and the Bucket Brigade. We introduce a special case of the Bucket Brigade, and analyze and compare its…

We develop a novel autonomous control synthesis strategy called Phase Space Navigator for the automatic synthesis of nonlinear control systems. The Phase Space Navigator generates global control laws by synthesizing flow shapes of dynamical systems and planning and navigating system…

We develop a qualitative method for understanding and representing phase space structures of complex systems and demonstrate the method with a program, MAPS --- Modeler and Analyzer for Phase Spaces, using deep domain knowledge of dynamical system theory. Given a…

This paper describes ARLO, a representation language loosely modelled after Greiner and Lenant's RLL-1. ARLO is a structure-based representation language for describing structure-based representation languages, including itself. A given representation language is specified in ARLO by a collection of structures…

Artificial Intelligence research involves the creation of extremely complex programs which must possess the capability to introspect, learn, and improve their expertise. Any truly intelligent program must be able to create procedures and to modify them as it gathers information…

In this thesis we study the general problem of reconstructing a function, defined on a finite lattice from a set of incomplete, noisy and/or ambiguous observations. The goal of this work is to demonstrate the generality and practical value of…

It is obvious to anyone familiar with the rules of the game of chess that a king on an empty board can reach every square. It is true, but not obvious, that a knight can reach every square. Why is…

We describe the automatic synthesis of a global nonlinear controller for stabilizing a magnetic levitation system. The synthesized control system can stabilize the maglev vehicle with large initial displacements from an equilibrium, and possesses a much larger operating region than…