The Fourteenth Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference ( IAAI - 2001 )

breadth of applications. This continuing stream of applications serves as proof of the vitality and innovation in the field of AI. Deployed application areas included load layout for military rapid deployment ships, land management, assistance for online sales, synthetic agents for military training, and automation of space mission operations. Emerging applications included an even broader range of applications, including protein crystal analysis, text correction, web search, analysis of interoperability, taskable software agents, aircraft flight path planning, and information extraction. In addition, the conference included several invited talks. Maurice Hurley gave an intriguing talk on AI in science fiction entitled “Imagining the Sentient Machine.” Harold Cohen presented an enlightening perspective in his talk “Decoupling Art and Affluence.” Rodney Brooks entertained us all with a talk entitled “Mass Market Intelligent Robots.” Finally, John Riedl led a panel on personalization, an area where quite a few companies are developing the next generation in marketing and sales. In this special issue, we selected six papers: one emerging application and five deployed applications. We asked the authors to expand on their conference papers to provide deeper The Thirteenth Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference (IAAI-2001) was held on 7 to 9 August 2001 in Seattle, Washington, in conjunction with the Seventeenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. As in past years, papers were solicited in two categories: (1) deployed applications and (2) emerging applications and technologies. Deployed applications are systems that have been in use for at least several months by individuals or organizations other than their developers, have measurable benefits, and incorporate AI technologies. Emerging applications are technologies and systems that are close to deployment and clearly show an innovative implementation of AI technologies. All these case studies are of value not only to other application developers looking for guidance in applying various techniques to their own applications but also to researchers who need to understand the myriad of technical challenges provided by real-world problems. At IAAI-2001, five deployed applications and seven emerging application papers were presented. In addition, IAAI hosted three invited talks and one panel discussion. The papers from IAAI-2001 display a remarkable insight into the problems being solved. These articles provide an excellent snapshot into the innovative applications being deployed that leverage AI technologies. The first paper, ELECTRIC ELVES: Agent Technology for Supporting Human Organizations by Hans Chalupsky, Yolanda Gil, Craig Knoblock, Kristina Lerman, Jean Oh, David Pynadath, Thomas Russ, and Milind Tambe, describes an emerging application. The authors explain how software agents can be used to facilitate meetings, track individuals, gather and disseminate information, and assist other organizational efforts. The ELECTRIC ELVES Project uses workstations, fax machines, cell phones, and palm pilots to integrate information to support human operations.1 The ELECTRIC ELVES use several AI technologies, including multiagent and teamwork technologies to coordinate the many assets, information integration agents to find and assimilate many information sources, and knowledge representation and reasoning techniques to describe the agents and the knowledge they use. This article provides an excellent view into how AI technologies and ubiquitous computing will revolutionize everyday lives of high-tech workers and organizations. The RADARSAT-MAMM Automated Mission Planner by Benjamin Smith, Barbara Engelhardt, and Darren Mutz2 describes the deployment of the Automated Scheduling and Planning Environment at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to automate mission planning for the Modified Antarctic Mapping Mission (MAMM)3 in fall 2000. This deployment had a number of significant impacts. First, automating mission planning for this mission enabled a reduction in effort to generate mission plans from 52 work weeks for the first Antarctic Mapping Mission in 1997 to 8 work weeks for MAMM, which was a more complex mission. Automation also enabled generation of many contingency plans that could not be generated for the first mission because of work force limitations. Generation of these contingencies reduced the mission replanning team by fourfold. Editorial Introduction