Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
The Eleventh National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-93) was held July 11–15, 1993, at the Washington Convention Center, Washington, D.C.
Each year the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (NCAI) is the primary large-scale forum where the highest quality new research in artificial intelligence (AI) is presented and discussed. Quality is maintained by a highly competitive review and selection process in which fewer than one of every four submitted papers is accepted.
Papers were solicited for this year’s conference that describes significant contributions to all aspects of AI, including the principles underlying cognition, perception, and action in humans and machines; the design, application, and evaluation of AI algorithms and intelligent systems; and the analysis of tasks and domains in which intelligent systems perform. In recognition of the wide range of methodologies and research activities legitimately associated with AI, the conference program includes papers describing both experimental and theoretical results from all stages of AI research. This year we particularly encouraged the submission of papers that present promising new research directions by describing innovative concepts, techniques, perspectives, or observations that are not yet supported by mature results. To be accepted to the conference, such submissions were required to include a substantial analysis of the ideas, the technology needed to realize them, and their potential impact.
Because of the essential interdisciplinary nature of AI and the need to maintain effective communication across sub-specialties, authors were encouraged to position and motivate their work in the larger context of the general AI community. While papers concerned with applications of AI were invited, most such papers can be found in the program of the Innovative Applications of AI Conference, which is collocated with AAAI-93.
In addition to the refereed papers, the program includes a set of invited presentations by leaders of the AI research community and representatives from US govern-ment agencies. These presentations include Herb Simon’s keynote address; surveys of major AI research areas, such as a talk by Ray Reiter on nonmonotonic reasoning research; symposia on topics of general interest to the AI community, such as symposia chaired by Paul Cohen on methods for evaluating AI research; and a talk by Steve Cross on the Advanced Research Projects Agency’s strategic plan for AI.
This year’s conference will include two special events focused on using AI techniques to achieve effective behavior in the real world. In particular, we will again be holding a mobile robot competition patterned after the highly successful competition at last year’s conference. In addition, we are introducing a robot-building contest in which participants will design, build, and program small mobile robots on-site and in real time.
This multi-faceted conference program is designed to provide attendees with many opportunities for stimulating and enlightening experiences.
Richard Fikes and Wendy Lehnert