Artificial Intelligence offers many possibilities for developing data processing systems which are more precise and robust. That is one of the main conclusions drawn from an international encounter of experts in this scientific area, recently held at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M).
Within this framework, five leading scientists presented the latest advances in their research work on different aspects of AI. The speakers tackled issues ranging from the more theoretical such as algorithms capable of solving combinatorial problems to robots that can reason about emotions, systems that use vision to monitor activities, and automated players that learn how to win in a given situation. "Inviting speakers from groups of references allows us to offer a panoramic view of the main problems and the techniques open in the area, including advances in video and multi-sensor systems, task planning, automated learning, games, and artificial consciousness or reasoning," the experts noted.
The participants from the AVIRES (The Artificial Vision and Real Time Systems) research group at the University of Udine gave a seminar on the introduction of data fusion techniques and distributed artificial vision. In particular, they dealt with automated surveillance systems with visual sensor networks, from basic techniques for image processing and object recognition to Bayesian reasoning for understanding activities and automated learning and data fusion to make high performance system. Dr.Simon Lucas, professor at the Essex University and editor in chief of IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games and a researcher focusing on the application of AI techniques on games, presented the latest trends in generation algorithms for game strategies. During his presentation, he pointed out the strength of UC3M in this area, citing its victory in two of the competitions held at the international level during the most recent edition of the Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games.
In addition, Enrico Giunchiglia, professor at the University of Genoa and former president of the Council of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), described the most recent work in the area of logic satisfaction, which is rapidly growing due to its applications in circuit design and in task planning
Artificial Intelligence (IA) is as old as computer science and has generated ideas, techniques and applications that permit it to solve difficult problems. The field is very active and offers solutions to very diverse sectors. The number of industrial applications that have an AI technique is very high, and from the scientific point of view, there are many specialized journals and congresses. Furthermore, new lines of research are constantly being open and there is a still great room for improvement in knowledge transfer between researchers and industry. These are some of the main ideas gathered at the 4th International Seminar on New Issues on Artificial Intelligence), organized by the SCALAB group in the UC3M Computer Engineering Department at the Leganés campus of this Madrid university.
The future of Artificial Intelligence
This seminar also included a talk on the promising future of AI. "The tremendous surge in the number of devices capable of capturing and processing information, together with the growth of the computing capacity and the advances in algorithms enormously boost the possibilities for practical application," the researchers from the SCALAB group pointed out. Among them we can cite the construction of computer programs that make life easier, which take decisions in complex environments or which allow problems to be solved in environments which are difficult to access for people," he noted. From the point of view of these research trends, more and more emphasis is being placed on developing systems capable of learning and demonstrating intelligent behavior without being tied to replicating a human model.
AI will allow advances in the development of systems capable of automatically understanding a situation and its context with the use of sensor data and information systems as well as establishing plans of action, from support applications to decision making within dynamic situations. According to the researchers, this is due to the rapid advances and the availability of sensor technology which provides a continuous flow of data about the environment, information that must be dealt with appropriately in a node of data fusion and information. Likewise, the development of sophisticated techniques for task planning allow plans of action to be composed, executed, checked for correct execution, and rectified in case of some failure, and finally to learn from mistakes made.
This technology has allowed a wide range of applications such as integrated systems for surveillance, monitoring and detecting anomalies, activity recognition, teleassistence systems, transport logistic planning, etc. According to Antonio Chella, Full Professor at the University of Palermo and expert in Artificial Consciousness, the future of AI will imply discovering a new meaning of the word "intelligence." Until now, it has been equated with automated reasoning in software systems, but in the future AI will tackle more daring concepts such as the incarnation of intelligence in robots, as well as emotions, and above all consciousness.
The above story is based on materials provided by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid - Oficina de Información Científica. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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