Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
The Fourteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-97) was held July 27–31, 1997, at the convention center in Providence, Rhode Island.
As in years past, AAAI-97 continued to serve three major roles in the community: (1) Satisfying the needs of current and future technical specialists through 13 workshops and 50 technical sessions, the Student Poster Display, and the SIGART/AAAI Doctoral Consortium (2) Providing continued professional education through the Tutorial Forum and keynote and invited speakers, including reports on highlights from recent UAI, ML, KR and KDD conferences (3) Educating the public (while stimulating on-going research projects) through the Hall of Champions and Robot Competition.
The Hall of Champions was new to AAAI-97. At the Hall were demonstrations of the best computer players of a variety of classic games of strategy. AAAI-97 attendees and the public were able to compete with these programs, discuss technical and social issues with their authors, and viewed them playing a series of challenge matches against some of the best human players around.
The popular Tutorial Forum, introduced at AAAI-96, also continued, with conference admission allowing participation in up to four consecutive tutorials during two full days. For 1997, among other topics was “Belief Networks and Decision-Theoretic Reasoning for AI,” “Mobile Robot Control Architectures,” “Physics-Based Modeling for Vision and Virtual Human Animation,” and “Data Mining.”
We also continued the popular Student Abstract and Poster program, an opportunity for students to present and discuss their work during its early stages, meet peers with related interests, and introduce themselves to more senior members of the field. It presented a wonderful opportunity for all of us to get acquainted with some of the up-and-coming talent and their new research ideas. Also for students was the SIGART/AAAI Doctoral Consortium program—a small, focused gathering that allowed selected students to present their work to a faculty panel and their peers for discussion and practical advice.
In sum, the AI community continued its goal of enhancing the atmosphere of excitement, innovation, controversy, and intellectual engagement at its annual conference.
Ben Kuipers and Bonnie Webber
Sixth Annual AAAI Mobile Robot Competition — Results
Event One: Find Life on Mars
Challenge Round
Multiagent Manipulator Category
- First Place Award: Lewis and Clark, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Second Place Award: Isaac and Jules, University of Minnesota
- Third Place Award: Ben, Mae, and Ullanta, Brandeis University
Single Agent Manipulator Category
- First Place Award: Jules Verne, University of Minnesota
- Second Place Award: Lewis, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Certificate of Participation: Ramona, Brown University
Single Agent Nonmanipulator Category
- First Place Award: Invader, McGill University
- Second Place Award: Ramona, Brown University
- Third Place Award: Silver Bullet, Colorado School of Mines
- Certificate of Participation: Ben, Mae, and Ullanta, Brandeis University
- Certificate of Participation: Razorbot, University of Arkansas
Finals
Multiagent Manipulator Category
- First Place Award: Lewis and Clark, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Second Place Award: Isaac and Jules, University of Minnesota
- Certificate of Participation: Ben, Mae, and Ullanta, Brandeis University
Single Agent Manipulator Category
- First Place Award: Lewis, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Second Place Award: Jules, University of Minnesota
Single Agent Nonmanipulator Category
- First Place Award: Invader, McGill University
- Second Place Award: Ullanta, Brandeis University
- Third Place Award: Razorbot, University of Arkansas
Event Two: Where’s the Remote?
- First Place Award: Slick Willie, Kansas State University
Event Three: Home Vacuum
Phase One: Once a Week Cleaning
- First Place Award: Lobotomous, University of New Mexico
- Second Place Award: SK, Dartmouth College
- Third Place Award: Swarthmore College
- Certificate of Participation: Diablo, University of Texas at El Paso
Phase Two: Tidy Up
- First Place Award: Diablo, University of Texas at El Paso
- Second Place Award: Amadeus, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Certificate of Participation: SK, Dartmouth College
Event Four: Hors d’Oeuvres Anyone?
Technical Preliminaries
- First Place Award: Coyote, Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence
- Second Place Award: ServerDroid, Texas Robotics and Automation Center Labs (TracLabs)
- Third Place Award: CRISbot, Colorado School of Mines
People’s Choice
- First Place Award: Benjamin, Mae, and Ullanta, Brandeis University
- Second Place Award: Coyote, Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence
- Third Place Award: CRISbot, Colorado School of Mines
Overall
- First Place Award: Benjamin, Maes, and Ullanta, Brandeis University
- Second Place Award: Coyote, Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence
- Third Place Award: CRISbot, Colorado School of Mines