covered include: the choice of cost function and robustness; numerical optimization including sparse Newton methods, linearly convergent approximations, updating and recursive methods; gauge (datum) invariance; and quality control. The theory is developed for general robust cost functions rather than

Many AI researchers are today striving to build agent teams for complex, dynamic multi-agent domains, with intended applications in arenas such as education, training, entertainment, information integration, and collective robotics. Unfortunately, uncertainties in these complex, dynamic domains obstruct coherent teamwork. In particular, team members often encounter differing, incomplete, and possibly inconsistent views of their environment. Furthermore, team members can unexpectedly fail in fulfilling responsibilities or discover unexpected opportunities. Highly flexible coordination and communication is key in addressing such uncertainties. Simply tting individual agents with precomputed coordination plans will not do, for their in flexibility can cause severe failures in teamwork, and their domain-specificity hinders reusability. Our central hypothesis is that the key to such flexibility and reusability isproviding agents with general models of teamwork. Agents exploit such models to autonomously reason about coordination and communication, providing requisite flexibility. Furthermore, the models enable reuse across domains, both saving implementation effort and enforcing consistency. This article presents one general, implemented model of teamwork, called STEAM. The basic building block of teamwork in STEAM is joint intentions (Cohen & Levesque, 1991b); teamwork in STEAM is based on agents' building up a (partial) hierarchy of joint intentions (this hierarchy is seen to parallel Grosz & Kraus's partial Shared-Plans, 1996). Furthermore, in STEAM, team members monitor the team's and individual members' performance, reorganizing the team as necessary. Finally, decision-theoretic communication selectivity in STEAM ensures reduction in communication overheads of teamwork, with appropriate sensitivity to the environmental conditions. This article describes STEAM's application in three different complex domains, and presents detailed empirical results.

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El Salvador, Guatemala is a, study in black and white. On the left is a collection of extreme Marxist-Leninist groups led by what one diplomat calls “a pretty faceless bunch of people.’ ’ On the right is an entrenched elite that has dominated Central America’s most populous country since a CIA-backed coup deposed the reformist government of Col. Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954. Moderates of the political center. embattled but alive in E1 Salvador, have virtually disappeared in Guatemala-joining more than 30.000 victims of terror over the last tifteen vears. “The situation in Guatemala is much more serious than in EI Salvador, ” declares one Latin American diplomat. “The oligarchy is that much more reactionary. and the choices are far fewer. “ ‘Zero’: The Guatemalan oligarchs hated Jimmy Carter for cutting off U.S. military aid in 1977 to protest human-rights abuses-and the right-wingers hired marimba bands and set off firecrackers on the night Ronald Reagan was elected. They considered Reagan an ideological kinsman and believed they had a special

This book presents a unified treatment of many different kinds of planning algorithms. The subject lies at the crossroads between robotics, control theory, artificial intelligence, algorithms, and computer graphics. The particular subjects covered include motion planning, discrete planning, planning under uncertainty, sensor-based planning, visibility, decision-theoretic planning, game theory, information spaces, reinforcement learning, nonlinear systems, trajectory planning, nonholonomic planning, and kinodynamic planning.

A revision of the land use classification system as presented in U.S. Geological Survey Circular 671

NoteCards is a general hypermedia environment designed to help people work with ideas. Its intended users are authors, designers, and other intellectual laborers engaged in analyzing information, designing artifacts, and generally processing ideas. The system provides these users with a variety of hypermedia-based tools for collecting, representing, managing, interrelating, and communicating ideas. This paper presents the NoteCards system as a foil against which to explore some of the major limitations of the current generation of hypermedia systems. In doing so, this paper highlights seven of the major issues that must be addressed in the next generation of hypermedia systems. These seven issues are: search and query, composite nodes, virtual structures, computational engines, versioning, collaborative work, and tailorability. For each of these issues, the papers describes the limitations inherent in NoteCards and the prospects for doing improving the situation in future systems.