Intelligent Generation System Research Articles

Generating coherent presentations employing textual and visual material

The objective of the work described in this paper is the development of an intelligent generation system which is able to combine textual and visual material. As coherent presentations cannot be generated by simply merging verbalization and visualization results into multimedia output, the processes for content determination, medium selection and content realization in different media have to be carefully coordinated. We first show that multimedia presentations and pure text follow similar structuring principles. Based on this insight, we sketch how techniques for planning text and discourse can be generalized to allow the structure and contents of multimedia communications to be planned as well. In particular, we explain how our approach handles the crucial task of process coordination.

On modularity in integrated architectures

As computer scientists, most of us tend naturally to write modular systems. It is ingrained in our upbringing. The PRODIGY system (Minton et al. 1989, Carbonell et al. 1990) is an example of a highly modular system. PRODIGY has separate modules for planning, explanation-based learning, abstraction creation, experimentation and analogy, to name just a few. The system is rather traditional, in that it reflects the organization of the field of AI itself. Of course, an intelligent system need not be based on such a highly modular design. A system might be highly uniform throughout, with no obvious breakdown according to function, like some neural net models might suggest. Or a system might be very modular, but the functional breakdown might not look anything like that in the PRODIGY system, where each module corresponds to a different method for analysis or learning. In this brief paper, I speculate about the role of modularity in general intelligent systems and review the reasons why modularity might be an appropriate organizing principle.

Growth, crisis and future of the factory

The process of industrialization in the 19th century was coupled with the existence of the factory. The organization of the work within factories through the combination of manual and mechanical activities led to a substantial productivity increase and a significant improvement in living standards. The satisfaction of basic needs and consumer demands led initially to the refinement of products and production processes; while at a later stage they contributed to the crisis of the factory. Presumably a new period of growth for the factory starts due to the thrust of innovation in the information technology. The key element of the future production renewal is the computer integrated and flexible automated factory of the future, which provides a continuous production flow and ties together energy, materials and information. Substantial parts of the computer integrated production are communication networks, intelligent generation systems, computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided planning (CAP), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), computer-aided quality control (CAQ) and stimulation systems. These combine intelligent machine-tools, intelligent robots, intelligent assembly machines, intelligent inspection machines and intelligent means of transportation within the factory of the future. The artificial intelligence and the possibility of remote control due to the developments in the information technology are the prerequisites for the setting-up of new production schemes. Next to the central organized factories, new decentralized production structures can be developed which would make possible drastic changes in the social life.