EXPECT research areas

EXPECT Research Areas

EXPECT is an environment for developing knowledge-based systems that includes knowledge acquisition (KA) tools to extend and modify knowledge bases. Current research topics include knowledge-acquisition, knowledge modeling, problem solving and reasoning, ontologies and problem solving method repositories, and multi-agent coordination and communication. We have used EXPECT to develop several applications in knowledge-rich planning domains, including air campaign planning, workarounds for target damage, transportation planning, and course of action analysis.

We have used EXPECT to develop several applications in knowledge-rich planning domains, including air campaign planning, workarounds for target damage, transportation planning, and course of aciton analysis.

The EXPECT project is funded under the DARPA/Rome Laboratory Planning Initiative (ARPI), DARPA's High-Performance Knowledge Bases program (HPKB), and DARPA's JFACC program.

EXPECT in a Nutshell

Research in Knowledge Acquisition

We are working on several areas to enhance and extend EXPECT's current knowledge acquisition capabilities.

Research in Developing and Reusing Ontologies and Problem Solving Method Repositories

We are interested in new approaches to knowledge based system development that exploit knowledge repositories in order to develop new knowledge bases more quickly.

Research in Planning

A main focus of the knowledge bases that we have built with EXPECT are planning tools, inparticular tools for evaluating and critiquing plans. The application domains include: air campaign planning, transportation planning, enemy workarounds to damaged targets, and course of action critiquing.

Research in Multi-Agent Communication and Coordination

The main goal of our work in this area is to investigate how ontologies help in agent coordination and communicaton. In the EXPECT framework, agents can be viewed as entities with some problem-solving capability that need to be brought together in order to solve more complex problems. This work is joint with ISI's Loom/Powerloom project.

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