TITLE: Logically Reasoning Robots

PRESENTER: Michael Thielscher

AFFILIATION: Computational Logic Group Dresden University, Germany

DATE: Thursday 28th August 2003

TIME: 12:00 noon - 1:00pm

PLACE: Seminar Room K17

ABSTRACT:

According to the logic-based paradigm of Artificial Intelligence, higher intelligence is grounded in a mental representation of the world, and intelligent behavior is the result of correct reasoning with this representation. Robots which are endowed with the ability to reason logically are able to memorize and logically combine sensor information acquired over time and to follow complex, long-term strategies. Further cognitive capabilities include devising plans and recovering from unexpected action failures. The talk gives an introduction to the Fluent Calculus as a theory of reasoning about actions that has been developed and thoroughly studied over the past years. Recently, this theory has evolved into the programming method and system FLUX, which allows one to write high-level control programs for reasoning robots. The talk includes an overview of recent projects that have been carried out using FLUX. More information on FLUX can be found at www.fluxagent.org

BIOGRAPHY OF SPEAKER:

Michael Thielscher received his PhD in Computer Science from Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany. Since 1997 he is a professor at Dresden University and head of the Computational Logic Group. He has been a guest researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, at Imperial College in London, at the University of Toronto, and at UNSW. In 1998, his Habilitation thesis was honored with the award for research excellence by the alumni of Darmstadt University of Technology. Michael has organized, or was a PC member of, many conferences, including IJCAI, KR, NRAC, KI. His research interests are mainly in knowledge representation, cognitive robotics, commonsense reasoning, and constraint logic programming. He has published over 50 papers and two books.

HOST

Maurice Pagnucco
School of Computer Science and Engineering

Seminar Convenor:

Bernhard Hengst
Tel: +61-2-9385-3988,
E-mail: bernhardh@cse.unsw.edu.au
School of Computer Science & Engineering, UNSW.