"One ant alone is a disappointment; it is really no ant at all. The colony is the organism." The Superorganism, B. Holldobler and E.O. Wilson, Journey to the Ants, 1994.

Latest News Items

Cyc-ed Up for Open Source -- A story on cyc's (still) planned release of an open source version of it's knowledge base. (12/9)

Robot bugs to invade Mars -- Scientists are looking to insects in developing a flying robot that could greatly enhance any exploratory missions on Mars. With support from NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts, a team of researchers that includes Georgia Institute of Technology engineers is conducting a comprehensive feasibility study designed to show whether a fleet of scaled-up Entomopters could one day help explore the Red Planet. (12/4)

Agentcities European Projects meeting, Lausanne, Feb 2002 -- An Agentcities information day will be held in Lausanne, Switzerland on the 7th and 8th of February 2002 just before the 24th FIPA meeting. The meeting will provide and introduction to the Agentcities initiative, providing: (1) an overview of Agentcities activities worldwide; (2) details of the support available in Europe through Agentcities.NET (IST2000-28384); (3) tutorials and support for getting started in the network; and (4) opportunities to meet, share interests and establish collaborative work plans. Participation is free and open to anybody interested in participating in the project. A limited number of travel support grants are available for Agentcities.NET project members. (12/4)

Berkley's bionic bug -- For three and a half years, Ron Fearing has been working in his lab at the University of California at Berkeley, trying to create something that most people consider a nuisance. "What we're trying to do here is build a small robotic fly," says Fearing. "This will be a fly with a wingspan of about 25 millimeters, just one inch. And our long-term goal is that this fly will be as capable as a housefly in buzzing around and maneuvering." (12/1)

Verbmobile wins German Future Prize -- This year's prestigious German Future Prize has been awarded to Wolfgang Wahlster et. al. from DFKI for the VerbMobile electronic translating device. (12/1)

Robots Learn Soccer (and the Game of Life) -- "...On the computer, the robots learn to play soccer by executing a random sequence of basic moves — running toward the ball, kicking it, moving behind the ball, blocking it. For every sequence, a computer program either rewards or punishes the robot with a digital signal telling it whether the sequence made sense and whether it should be repeated. ..." (11/27)

24th FIPA agents standards meeting -- The 24th FIPA meeting will be held in Lausanne Switzerland area during 11-15 February, 2002. The quarterly FIPA meetings are free and open to FIPA members and interested non-members who are willing to actively contribute to the FIPA process. More information on how to participate in FIPA can be found at http://fipa.org/. (11/24)

Rover's Just a Robot, but a Great Pal for All That -- A NYT story on how Aibo's are gaining acceptance in Japan. (11/23)

The Web's Next Incarnation: Intelligent Talk -- The latest effort to organize the Web's vast store of information is called the "Semantic Web," and while it remains to be seen whether it can live up to its billing, it is promising enough to have attracted scientists from a variety of disciplines, including Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (11/14)

Latest Directory Additions

Colony -- Colony is a "knowledge management" system based on "the theory of self-organizing systems" and is available for evaluation. (12/9)

TranscomSoft -- AI for business applications -- Transcomsoft develops AI related products for business applications, including colony -- an ant-inspired agent based knowledge management system. (12/9)

Jade+Jess+Protege = Agent platform -- This is an open sourced integration of the Jade FIPA platform with the Jess rule engine and the Protege KB editor/browser. (12/9)

ISWC2002 -- Semantic Web Conference -- The International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2002), will be held June 10-12th, 2002 in Sardinia, Italia. (12/9)

Description logic tutorial -- Slides from a tutorial on Description Logis by Ian Horrocks and Ulrike Sattler given at IJCAR-2001, Siena, Italy, June 19, 2001. (12/9)

IBM Systems Journal - Vol. 40, No. 4, 2001 - Knowledge Management -- IBM Systems Journal - Knowledge Management Volume 40, Issue 4 of the IBM Systems Journal contains 12 papers about knowledge management, focusing on supporting technologies, products, and social aspects. (El.pub) (12/7)

XML in 10 points -- "XML, XLink, Namespace, DTD, Schema, CSS, XHTML ... If you are new to XML, it may be hard to know where to begin. This summary in 10 points attempts to capture enough of the basic concepts to enable a beginner to see the forest through the trees. And if you are giving a presentation on XML, why not start with these 10 points?" (12/7)

Wikipedia: Larrys Text -- This is a series of introductory philosophy lectures Larry Sanger has used for undergraduates at Ohio State. (12/1)

Automated Theorem Proving - Theory -- High Level History and Overview of Mathematical and Logic Techniques Used in Mechanical Theorem Proving, Elita Cheung, Stanford (12/1)

Living with CLASSIC: When and How to Use a KL-ONE-Like Language. -- This is a good introduction to knowledge representation languages in the description logic family, which is the basis for semantic web languages like DAML and OIL. Ronald J. Brachman , Deborah L. McGuinness , Peter F. Patel-Schneider , Lori Alperin Resnick , and Alex Borgida. ``Living with CLASSIC: When and How to Use a KL-ONE-Like Language,'' in John Sowa, ed., Principles of Semantic Networks: Explorations in the representation of knowledge , Morgan-Kaufmann: San Mateo, California, 1991, pages 401--456. (12/1)

Sowa on "Foundations for Ontology" -- Signs, Processes, and Language Games -- Foundations for Ontology, John F. Sowa (2001) is a paper presented at ICCS'2001. "Any system of ontology that is adequate for defining the concepts used in natural languages must be at least as flexible as the languages themselves: it must be able to accommodate all the categories of thought that are humanly conceivable and relate them to all possible experiences, either directly by human senses or indirectly by whatever instrumentation any scientist or engineer may invent. As a foundation for such an ontology, this paper proposes the philosophies of three logicians who understood the limitations of logic in dealing with the both the flux and the logos: Charles Sanders Peirce, Alfred North Whitehead, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. " (12/1)

Anthill P2P project -- Anthill is a framework being developed at University of Bologna to support the design, implementation and evaluation of P2P applications, viewing them as instances of Complex Adaptive Systems, typically found in biological and social sciences. In Anthill, desired properties such as resilience, adaptation and self-organization correspond to the "emergent behavior" of the underlying CA system. An Anthill system consists of a dynamic network of peer nodes; societies of adaptive agents (ants) travel through this network, interacting with nodes and cooperating with other agents in order to solve complex problems. (12/1)

Netsurfer Robotics -- Netsurfer Robotics is a monthly e-zine about all things robotic which began publishing in November 2001. "We bring you stories about robots and links to online resources about robots all in our trademark Netsurfer style." (12/1)

Can computers be creative? -- A BBC article on Aaron, the painting agent. (11/24)

Thinking robots in business -- This somewhat dated article from the Economist talks about how "those thinking robots, the electronic brains", are being used in business. (11/24)

Are mental phenomena computational? -- The Edge talks with Danniel Dennett and Lee Smolin on mental processes, information and computation. (11/24)

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