AIList-REQUEST@SRI-AI.ARPA (AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws) (10/09/85)
AIList Digest Wednesday, 9 Oct 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 138 Today's Topics: Update - G. Spencer-Brown Seminar, Seminars - Robot Legged Locomotion (GMR) & What is a Plan? (SRI) & Animating Human Figures (UPenn) & Inheritance and Data Models (UPenn), Conferences - 4th Int. Conf. on Entity-Relationship (ER) Approach & Symposium on Logic in Computer Science ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 7 Oct 85 11:17:52 PDT From: Charlie Crummer <crummer@AEROSPACE.ARPA> Subject: G. Spencer-Brown Seminar Was this some kind if joke? I could not find any company called UNI-OPS nor a Walter Zintz at (415)945-0048. The Miyako Hotel has no seminar on The Laws of Form, only a management association meeting. Has someone erased the distinction between G. S.-B.'s existence and non-existence? --Charlie From: william@aids-unix (william bricken) No hoax, although a possible unfortunate typo: the phone number of UNI-OPS is (415)945-0448. The seminar was cancelled at the last minute by SB himself (according to Zintz). Totally in character. Thus the existential dilemma. Zintz is working on re-establishing it, and is compiling a mailing list of those interested in the Laws of Form. I have developed an automated theorem prover using SB's stuff, and am encouraged by its applications to LISP program representation, optimization, and verification. William Bricken Advanced Information & Decision Systems 201 San Antonio Circle, #286 Mountain View, CA 94040 (415) 941-3912 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Oct 85 10:00 EST From: "S. Holland" <holland%gmr.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA> Subject: Seminar - Robot Legged Locomotion (GMR) General Motors Research Laboratories Warren, Michigan ROBOTS THAT RUN BALANCE AND DYNAMICS IN LEGGED LOCOMOTION Dr. Marc H. Raibert Carnegie-Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA Monday, October 21, 1985 Balance and dynamics are key ingredients in legged locomotion. To study active balance and dynamics we have built a series of machines that balance themselves as they run. Initial experiments focused on machines that hopped on one leg, but later work generalized the approach for two- and four-legged machines. A very simple set of algorithms provides control for hopping on one leg, running on two legs like a human, and trotting on four legs. We have begun to use these results from legged machines to improve understanding of running in animals. Marc Raibert received a B.S.E.E. from Northeastern University in 1973, and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977. Since 1980 Professor Raibert has been on the faculty of Carnegie-Mellon University, where he is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and a member of the Robotics Institute. He is currently exploring the principles of legged locomotion. -Steve Holland ------------------------------ Date: Tue 8 Oct 85 13:57:58-PDT From: LANSKY@SRI-AI.ARPA Subject: Seminar - What is a Plan? (SRI) WHAT IS A PLAN? Lucy Suchman Intelligent Systems Lab, Xerox PARC 11:00 AM, WEDNESDAY, October 9 SRI International, Building E, Room EJ228 (new conference room) Researchers in AI have equivocated between using the term "plan" to refer to efficient representations of action, and to the actual data and control structures that produce behavior. But while these two uses of the term have been conflated, they have significantly different methodological implications. On the first use, the study of plans, as internal representations of actions and situations, is an important companion to the study of situated actions, but essentially derivative. On the second use, plans as the actual mechanisms that produce behavior are foundational to a theory of situated actions. In this talk I will argue in support of the first use of "plans," to refer simply to efficient representations of actions. Situated actions, on this view, are the phenomena to be modelled, whereas the function of plans in the generation of situated actions is taken to be an open question. The interesting problem for a theory of situated action is to find the mechanisms that bring efficient representations and particular environments into productive interaction. The assumption in classical planning research has been that this process consists in filling in the details of the plan to some operational level. In contrast with this assumption, I will present evidence in support of the view that situated action turns on local interactions between the actor and contingencies of his or her environment that, while they are made accountable to a plan, remain essentially outside of the plan's scope. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Oct 85 12:12 EDT From: Tim Finin <Tim%upenn.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA> Subject: Seminar - Animating Human Figures (UPenn) ANIMATING HUMAN FIGURES IN A TASK-ORIENTED ENVIRONMENT: AN EVOLVING CONFLUENCE OF COMPUTER GRAPHICS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH Norman I. Badler Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania Tuesday, October 8, 1985 Room 216 Moore A system called TEMPUS is outlined which is intended to graphically simulate the activities of several simulated human agents in a three-dimensional environment. TEMPUS is a task simulation facility for the design and evaluation of complex working environments. The primary components of the TEMPUS system include human body specification by size or statistical population, 3-D environment design, a human movement simulator and task animator, a user-friendly interactive system, real-time motion playback, and full 3-D color graphics of bodies, environments, and task animations. Research efforts in human dynamics control and natural language specification of movements will also be described. Recent efforts to link computer graphics and artificial intelligence will be discussed, especially as they relate to future plans of NASA and the Space Station. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Oct 85 12:12 EDT From: Tim Finin <Tim%upenn.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA> Subject: Seminar - Inheritance and Data Models (UPenn) INHERITANCE, DATA MODELS AND DATA TYPES Peter Buneman Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania Thursday, October 10, 1985, 216 Moore The notion of type inheritance (subsumption, ISA hierarchies) has long been recognised as central to the development of programming languages, databases and semantic networks. Recent work on the semantics of programming languages has shown that inheritance can be cleanly combined with functional programming and can itself serve as a model for computation. Using a definition of partial functions that are well behaved with respect to inheritance, I have been investigating a new characterization of the relational and functional data models. In particular, I want to show the connections of relational database theory with type inheritance and show how both the relational and functional data models may be better integrated with typed programming languages. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Oct 85 17:30:00 cdt From: Peter Chen <chen%lsu.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA> Subject: 4th Int. Conf. on Entity-Relationship (ER) Approach Title of the Conference: 4th International Conference on Entity-Relationship (ER) Approach (See advertisement in Communications of the ACM, Sept. 1985 or the IEEE Computer Magazine, Sept. 1985) Major Theme: The use of entity/relationship concept in knowledge representation Sponsor: IEEE Computer Society Date: October 28-30, 1985 Location: Hyatt Regency Hotel at O'Hare airport, Chicago (312) 696-1234, $74 Single, $84 Double Keynote Address: Roger Schank, Yale Invited Addresses: Donald Walker, Bell Comm. Research Eugene Lowenthal, MCC Tutorial Sessions (on the first day -- Monday): 1. ER Modeling: A tool for analysis 2. AI and Expert systems 3. The Analyst's Round Table 4. Database Design Paper Sessions (on the next two days): Knowledge representation, database design methods, Query and manipulation languages, Entity-Relationship analysis, expert systems, modeling techniques, integrity theory, etc. Panel Sessions: 1. Mapping Specifications to Formalisms: Leader: John Sowa, IBM Panelist: Sharon S. Salveter, Boston Univ. Roger Schank, Yale Peter Freeman, UC-Irvine Peter Chen, Louisiana State Univ. 2. Knowledge engineering and Its Implications Leader: Ross Overbeek, Argonne National Lab. Panelists: Amil Nigan, IBM Earl Sacerdoti, Tecknowledge 3. Microcomputer DBMS Derby Leader: Rod Zimmerman, Standard Oil of California 4. Practical Applications of ER Approach Leader: Martin Modell, Merrill Lynch Panelists: Suresh Gadgil, " " Tom Meurer, ETA International Harold Piskiel, Goldman Sachs Elizabeth White For more information, contact the registration chairperson: Prof. Kathi Davis Computer Science Department Northern Illinois University Dekalb, IL 60115 (815) 753-0378 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1985 21:12 EDT From: MEYER@MIT-XX.ARPA Subject: Symposium on Logic in Computer Science Announcement and Call for Papers Symposium on Logic in Computer Science Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 16-18, 1986 THE CONFERENCE will cover a wide range of theoretical and practical issues in Computer Science that relate to logic in a broad sense, including algebraic and topological approaches. To date, many of these areas have been dealt with in separate conferences and workshops. It is the hope of the Organizing Committee that bringing them together will help stimulate further research. Some suggested, although not exclusive topics of interest are: abstract data types, computer theorem proving and verification, concurrency, constructive proofs as programs, data base theory, foundations of logic programming, logic-based programming languages, logic in complexity theory, logics of programs, knowledge and belief, semantics of programs, software specifications, type theory, etc. Organizing Committee J. Barwise E. Engeler A. Meyer W. Bledsoe J. Goguen R. Parikh A. Chandra (Chair) D. Kozen G. Plotkin E. Dijkstra Z. Manna D. Scott The conference is sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society, Technical Committee on Mathematical Foundations of Computing, and in cooperation with ACM SIGACT and ASL (request pending). PAPER SUBMISSION. Authors should send 17 copies of a detailed abstract (not a full paper) by Dec. 23, 1985 to the program committee chairman: Albert R. Meyer - LICS Program MIT Lab. for Computer Science 545 Technology Square, NE43-315 Cambridge, MA 02139. (617) 253-6024, ARPANET: MEYER at MIT-XX The abstract must provide sufficient detail to allow the program committee to assess the merits of the paper and should include appropriate references and comparisons with related work. The abstract should be at most ten double-spaced typed pages. The time between the paper due date and the program committee meeting is short, so late papers run a high risk of not being considered. In circumstances where adequate reproduction facilities are not available to the author, a single copy of the abstract will be accepted. The program committee consists of R. Boyer, W. Damm, S. German, D. Gries, M. Hennessy, G. Huet, D. Kozen, A. Meyer, J. Mitchell, R. Parikh, J. Reynolds, J. Robinson, D. Scott, M. Vardi, and R. Waldinger. Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection by Jan. 24, 1986. Copies of accepted papers, typed on special forms for inclusion in the symposium proceedings, will be due March 31, 1986. The general chairman is A. K. Chandra, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, P.O. Box 218, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, tele: (914) 945-1752, CSNET: ASHOK.YKTVMV at IBM. The local arrangements chairman is A. J. Kfoury, Dept. of Computer Science, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, tele: (617) 353-8911, CSNET: KFOURY at BOSTONU. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************