January 14, 2000
3:30pm

Takashi Gomi
Applied AI Systems, Inc.

Non-Cartesian Robotics and Evolutionary Robotics

A new trend in intelligent robotics began with the appearance of the Behavior-Based Artificial Intelligence exemplified by Rodney Brooks' subsumption architecture (MIT 1986). Behavior-based AI offers the potential to create fast, flexible, robust, extremely efficient, animate, and economic robots using methods much simpler than those employed in conventional robot development. Robots developed using this methodology have been called non- or post-Cartesian because of their great divergence from the philosophical perspective underlying conventional robotics.

Debate between the two schools recently spilled over into general AI research in the United States, where behavior-based AI (more commonly called New AI in Europe) challenges the notion of intelligence advocated for the past 25 years by conventional AI researchers (now often termed GOFAI, or Good Old Fashioned AI).

While efforts to identify and formalize the origin of the desirable characteristics mentioned above are in general speculative and at best tentative, research and development in the new paradigm has progressed steadily for a decade and is on the verge of producing applications which can be used in the real world. Dr. Gomi will provide examples highlighting how behavior-based robotics achieves each of the listed characteristics.

A list of Dr. Gomi's recent publications on behavior-based AI is available on request.

Biography
Takashi Gomi was born in Tokyo in 1940. He obtained his M.Eng in 1964 from Waseda University in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and his D.Eng in 1997 from Hokkaido University in Complex System studies. After working at the University of Alberta, Bell Northern Research, and Atomic Energy of Canada, Dr. Gomi established Applied AI Systems, Inc. (AAI) in 1983 as a company dedicated to the research and development of intelligent system technology. The oldest speciality AI company in Canada and known widely in Japan, Europe, and USA, AAI conducts application research, intelligent system development including intelligent robotics, markets a wide range of AI and ALife products, and trains AI research engineers. Despite its small size of 18 people, the company is recognized as one of the top intelligent system R&D organizations in Canada. Since 1992 a series of projects has aimed at the transfer of behavior-based, or New, AI technology to government, business and industry. In October 1995 a Japanese branch was established. Dr. Gomi is a member of the IEEE's Service Robot Technical Committee.