50 Years Of Artificial Intelligence: Essays Dedicated To The 50th Anniversary Of Artificial Intelligence

Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence Edited by J. G. Carbonell and J. Siekmann Subseries of Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4850 Max Lungarella Fumiya Iida Josh Bongard Rolf Pfeifer (Eds.) 50 Years of Artificial Intelligence Essays Dedicated to the 50th Anniversary of Artificial Intelligence 13 Series Editors Jaime G. Carbonell, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Jörg Siekmann, University of Saarland, Saarbrücken, Germany Volume Editors Max Lungarella Rolf Pfeifer University of Zurich Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Andreasstrasse 15, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland E-mail: {lunga,pfeifer}@ifi.uzh.ch Fumiya Iida Massachusetts Institute of Technology Robot Locomotion Group Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA E-mail: [email protected] Josh Bongard University of Vermont Department of Computer Science 329 Votey Hall, Burlington, VT 05405, USA E-mail: [email protected] The illustration appearing on the cover of this book is the work of Daniel Rozenberg (DADARA). Library of Congress Control Number: 2007941079 CR Subject Classification (1998): I.2, H.3-5, H.2.8, F.2.2, I.6 LNCS Sublibrary: SL 7 – Artificial Intelligence ISSN ISBN-10 ISBN-13 0302-9743 3-540-77295-2 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York 978-3-540-77295-8 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Violations are liable to prosecution under the German Copyright Law. Springer is a part of Springer Science+Business Media springer.com © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007 Printed in Germany Typesetting: Camera-ready by author, data conversion by Scientific Publishing Services, Chennai, India Printed on acid-free paper SPIN: 12204854 06/3180 543210 Preface Half a century ago, at the now famous 1956 Dartmouth Conference, the “fathers” of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – among them John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, Claude Shannon, Herbert Simon, Oliver Selfridge, and Ray Solomonoff – convened under the premise “that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.” Fifty years have passed, and AI has turned into an important field whose influence on our daily lives can hardly be overestimated. Many specialized AI systems exist that are at work in our cars, in our laptop computers, and in our personal and commercial technologies. There is no doubt that the impact of AI on our lives in the future will become even more general and ubiquitous. In this book we provide a representative collection of papers written by the leading researchers in the field of Artificial Intelligence. All of the authors of papers in this volume attended the 50th Anniversary Summit of AI (http://www. ai50.org), held at the Centro Stefano Franscini, Monte Verit`a, Ascona, Switzerland, July 9–14, 2006. The objective of the summit was fourfold: (1) to celebrate the 50th anniversary of AI as a discipline; (2) to look back and assess the field of AI (what has been done, and where we are); (3) to bring together people with different bac