On the Future of Information and Knowledge Systems Research

Prof. dr. J.M. Akkermans

The development of the Semantic Web intends to provide intelligent Web infrastructure for new advanced IKS applications. I will discuss some practical examples, as well as industrial field experiments and case studies recently carried out, especially in knowledge management and e-business innovation. Based on such experiences, I will present some personal views (perhaps sometimes slightly provocative) on issues in future IKS research, how it relates to other scientific disciplines as well as to society at large.

Activities and Prospects of SIKS, or APS.

Prof. dr. R.P.van de Riet

In this presentation a definite answer will be given to the question: "Does 3 exist ?" or "Bestaat 3?" using some remarks on:

1. Security and Privacy within SIKS,
2. the SIKS evaluation process and
3. application of the theory to APS

Verbal and Nonverbal Agent Interaction in Virtual Worlds

Prof. dr. A. Nijholt

In this talk we survey our approaches to verbal and nonverbal interaction with agents in virtual worlds. In the virtual worlds we have designed various agents have been introduced, each emphasizing a specific task or interaction behavior. Among them are agents that take care of information services, pedagogical agents, adviser agents and navigation agents that guide visitors of an environment. Speech and language capabilities are modest, the interesting points are the integration of these modalities with other interaction modalities, especially those that can be offered when these agents inhabit virtual worlds, and the introduction of new application areas for agents having these capabilities. Some ideas about modelling intelligence and emotions and displaying emotions - e.g., in facial expressions of embodied agents - will also be presented.

A Overview of the WITAS Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Project

Prof dr. P. Doherty

The WITAS (vee-tas) UAV project is an ambitious research project with a focus on the development of information technology for unmanned aerial vehicles and it's combination with low-level control and hardware platforms. The long term goal of the project is the development of a fully autonomous unmanned helicopter which can be used in applications involving photogrammetry, surveillance and monitoring of traffic, and emergency services assistance. The project encompasses a variety of core functionalities and techniques such as prediction, planning, modeling scenes and events on the ground, use of those models for autonomous decisions, active vision, the design of deliberative/reactive architectures, GIS, simulation tools, multi-modal ground operator interfaces to the UAV and much more. In the talk, I will provide an overview of some of this work and the current state of the project. Emphasis will be placed on uses of knowledge representation in the onboard system. Recent progress will be demonstrated with a number of video sequences and simulation runs.

Patrick Doherty is a Professor in Computer Science at the Department of Computer and Information Science (IDA), Linköping University, Sweden. He is the head of the Artificial Intelligence and Integrated Computer Systems Division at IDA and also of the Knowledge Processing Laboratory. He is President of the Swedish Artificial Intelligence Society.