(August 23, 2006)--College of Computing Associate Professor Ashok Goel (PI) and Senior Research Scientist Spencer Rugaber (Co-PI) have recently won a highly competitive grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Science of Design Program. Their proposal titled "Telelogical Reasoning in Adaptive Software Design" is awarded $640,000 over four years, and will enable fundamental contributions toward the design of intelligent software agents.

Goel and Rugaber will explore core issues as to how software artifacts evolve, and how a software agent adapts itself as its environment changes. Based on Goel's earlier work in artificial intelligence, their central hypothesis is that a representation of its own teleology may enable an agent to diagnose, repair, and correct itself to meet incremental changes in its environment.

Goel and Rugaber will investigate these issues in the context of game-playing software agents that include: strategy games (Freeciv and C-evo), real-time games (Unreal Tournament and HalfLife 2), and role-playing games (NeverWinter Nights). The net results will be a general knowledge representation language for capturing an agent's teleological self-model; a general automated reasoning technique for the agent's self-adaptation; and a mixed-initiative, interactive environment for enabling better and faster changes to the designs of game-playing software agents.

For more information about the NSF Science of Design Program, click here.