Area B: Architecture

Project Area B comprises four projects, each of which constructs an integrated system that operates under realistic resource constraints within a particular domain. Since each system tackles a specific complex task, in each case it is necessary to model not just a single cognitive function but several interrelated functions. An example is the project "OMEGA, a Mathematical Assistant" (Prof. Joerg Siekmann, Dr. Michael Kohlhase). OMEGA integrates fully automatic search for proofs with search for proof plans within an interactive environment. In the project "Performance Modeling for Declarative Grammar Models" (Prof. Hans Uszkoreit), procedures for syntactic processing are realized and tested which make possible the use of declarative constraint-based grammars under realistic time limitations.

But in addition to theories and techniques of artificial intelligence, empirical psychological research plays an important role in this area. An example is the project "User-Oriented Resource-Adaptation" (Prof. Wolfgang Wahlster, Dr. Anthony Jameson). The central issue in this project is that of how a dialog system can recognize and adapt to the resource limitations of a human dialog partner. In the project "Acquisition of Structural Knowledge" (Prof. Werner H. Tack), both the acquisition of knowledge about a complex technical system and the subsequent use of this knowledge for the controlling of the system are modeled, with attention in both cases to the role of time constraints.