Università degli studi di Udine Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica

Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory

General Information

The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the University of Udine was founded in 1984 within the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. It has been very active in several research areas of artificial intelligence, robotics and other traditional fields of computer science. The main areas of research include (in alphabetical order):

diagnosis

• functional diagnosis
• diagnosis based on multiple models
• diagnostic reasoning about qualitative deviations
• model based diagnosis of hydraulic systems
• prescription of measurements

• expert intermediary systems
• evalutation of intelligent interactive information retrieval systems
• information filtering
• cognitive-epistemic models
• relevance in information retrieval

• user modeling
• design methodology of user interfaces to KBSs and ITSs

• student modeling and diagnosis
• second language tutoring
• evaluation of ITS systems

• expert systems development
• knowledge representation
• automatic knowledge acquisition

• modeling of clinical and research medical data
• modeling of knowledge bases in medicine
• patient monitoring
• temporal reasoning and temporal databases in medicine
• multimedia databases in medicine
• compression techniques for medical images

• multi modeling of physical systems
• model-based diagnosis and design
• qualitative reasoning using structural, behavioral, functional and teleological knowledge
• design
• semi-qualitative reasoning

• natural language interfaces
• knowledge representation for natural language texts
• automatic summarizing and abstracting of natural language texts
• semantic-pragmatic computational models of utterances

• task-level robot programming
• autonomous robot navigation
• multi sensor data fusion and processing

• software metrics and automatic software testing
• definition of standard for KBS life cycle and quality

• event calculus
• temporal databases and knowledge bases
• temporal granularity, abstraction, and indeterminacy
• temporal reasoning for monitoring and control
• modal query languages
• temporal student modelling

Several experimental projects have been carried out over the years which have produced numerous experimental results:

• the IFT System: an expert interface to information retrieval systems;
• the UM-TOOL System: a shell for developing the User Modeling component of an interactive system, based on non monotonic reasoning techniques;
• the FIRE System: a flexible environment for developing and experimenting intelligent interfaces to information retrieval systems;
• The ET (English Tutor) System: the student modeling component of an intelligent tutor for teaching the usage of English tense to Italian students;
• the IF-WEB System: an information filtering and navigation interface to the WEB on the INTERNET.

Several members of the Department join the AI Laboratory for their research activities: 9 full members (one professor, six assistant professors, two PdH students, several students working for term projects and thesis and other external researchers).
The activities are carried out by specific research groups.
One major issue of the research activities in AI is experimentation, carried on through the implementation of prototype systems and suitable evaluation methodologies.
The experimental activities are carried out on the nomerous workstations of the artificial intelligence laboratory, which include Suns, Macs and PCs. The software tools used include LISP, Prolog, C++, Java and other internally developed tools.

Previous page