University of Leeds
This document is available online as http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/ajh/psygnosis.html.
The aim of this 3-day seminar is to cover some of the most popular and widely-used AI techniques, describe what they do, how they work and where they can be used. The other main goal is to explain the jargon and dispell the myths. In this way we hope to be able to focus on what is practicable and what is infeasible.
For each topic there will be an `expert' from the School of Computer Studies at the University of Leeds who is either teaching or researching (or both) in the field, and who will give a talk on the key issues and in some cases give demonstrations of applications they have developed. Following this there will be discussions to try to draw out any potential uses within Psygnosis and to stimulate any ideas people have. The talks and discussions will be `round the table' and the atmosphere will be as informal as possible.
To round off the event we have invited Dave Cliff from Sussex University to give a talk on Artificial Life (a-life) and how it can be used in the computer entertainment industry. Dave is the UK's leading researcher into a-life and his talk promises to be really rather excellent.
| Day 1 (19th Nov) - Merrion Hotel | ||
|---|---|---|
| 9.00 | General Welcome | Sam Brown |
| 9.10 | Introduction to AI | David Hogg |
| 10.30 | Coffee | |
| 10.45 | Expert Systems | Dave Ranyard |
| 1.00 | Lunch | |
| 2.00 | Genetic Algorithms | Tony Heap |
| 3.00 | Coffee | |
| 3.15 | Genetic Algorithms (continued) | Tony Heap |
| 5.00 | Close | |
| 7.30 | Beer | |
| Day 2 (20th Nov) - Beech Grove Room | ||
|---|---|---|
| 9.00 | Natural Language Processing | Gavin Churcher |
| 11.15 | Coffee | |
| 11.30 | Fuzzy Logic | Dave Ranyard |
| 1.15 | Lunch | |
| 2.15 | Neural Nets | Neil Johnson |
| 3.15 | Coffee | |
| 3.30 | Neural Nets (continued) | Neil Johnson |
| 5.00 | Close | |
| 7.30 | More Beer | |
| Day 3 (21st Nov) - Active Learning Lab | ||
|---|---|---|
| 9.00 | Hidden Markov Models | Roger Boyle |
| 10.00 | Coffee | |
| 10.15 | Hidden Markov Models (continued) | Roger Boyle |
| 12.00 | Lunch | |
| 1.00 | Artificial Life in Entertainment Software | Dave Cliff |
| 3.15 | Coffee | |
| 3.30 | Wrap Up | Sam Brown |
| 4.00 | Close | |
| 7.30 | Stalwarts' Beer Session | |
In particular, we will review classical approaches based on various flavours of logic, constraint satisfaction, pattern recognition, neural networks, evolutionary approaches, and artificial life. The aim is to provide an overall context for the presentation of most of these topics in greater depth during the seminar.
Examples of working systems based on these different approaches to the construction of intelligent systems will be used by way of illustration throughout.
This overview will cover the basic concepts behind expert systems, in particular:
In this session we will be discussing:
Natural Language Processing covers many aspects of language used by humans. In my talk I shall be giving an overview of the following areas:
Research into (Artificial) Neural Networks has been motivated by the recognition of this different approach to computation, resulting in the development of many different artificial neural structures, all based around the idea of large interconnected networks of relatively simple processing units where information is stored by virtue of the strengths of the interconnections.
This tutorial will cover the basic ideas behind neural networks, highlighting the types of tasks for which they can be used, the benefits of the neural network approach, and some of the problems involved in their use. Finally, as an example, some current research with possible applications in the development of computer games will be discussed and demonstrated.
In this tutorial, we will explore the need for hidden models of sequential real world events, and concentrate on the Markov approach. The theory will be introduced via a simple example, and then delivered in detail. A `real world' application will then be explained that generalises the approach to cope with some of its shortcomings.
[God willing] a software demonstration will also be given.
Suitable references and supporting documentation will be available.
Roger Boyle has a BA and DPhil in mathematics from the Universty of York. After a year in the civil service he joined the systems staff at the School of COmputer Studies in 1979, and became a lecturer in 1984, with interests in comms and PR. Since then he has developed interests in low level vision and neural networks - application areas of special interest are OCR and OMR. He is now a senior lecturer in AI and head of teaching.
Roger is 1.99m tall and weighs about 85kg. He was once a competitive swimmer but now restricts himself to casual exercise. He likes beer very much.
Gavin Churcher is currently studying for a PhD with the Natural Language Processing Group at Leeds University. He has been working on building language models suitable for speech recognition and has recently moved into the field of dialogue management systems as a means to improve both the performance of speech recognition and to produce more natural ways of interacting with computers.
Dave Cliff is a Lecturer in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Sussex. He has been involved in Artificial Life research since 1988, has published about 50 papers on his work, and has performed consultancy work for companies including Warner Interactive Entertainment, Inscape, and Hewlett-Packard. Over the last two years he has been actively involved in developing entertainment applications of artificial life: he attended the E3 Trade Show in Los Angeles in May, and has co-authored a paper on artificial life entertainment software to be presented at the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents, California, February 1997.
Tony Heap is currently studying towards his PhD in the Computer Vision Group. He is investigating robust, model-based methods for tracking deformable objects. He is particularly interested in tracking human hands with a view to recognising gestures. Possible applications are computer-assisted sign language and human-computer interaction.
David Hogg is Head of the School of Computer Studies at the University of Leeds. His research is broadly in the area of computer vision with emphasis on the analysis of motion in relation to non-rigid objects and generic shape classes (e.g. the human body).
David currently teaches an Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, available to first year students from any department. In the 1995/96 Session, around 250 students enrolled on this module.
Neil Johnson is currently studying for his PhD in the Computer Vision Group. He is researching the modelling of `object behaviours' using detailed, learnt statistical models. The techniques being developed will allow models of characteristic object behaviours to be learnt from the continuous observation of long image sequences.
Dave Ranyard's interests centre on the development of RODOS, a decision support system for response to nuclear accidents. RODOS is a large software project being built by a consortium of European institutes and universities. It is being designed to work on a European wide scale, supporting decisions from the moment an accident threatens to months and even years later.
Dave is also lecturer in an Expert Systems course. In charge of a course with approximately 130 undergraduate and MSc students; responsible for all aspects of the course.
This page written by Tony Heap - ajh@comp.leeds.ac.uk