AI 2001: Advances in Artificial Intelligence

This volume contains the proceedings ofAI 2001, the 14thAustralian Joint Conference on Arti?cial Intelligence. The aim of this conference series is to support the Australian arti?cialintelligencecommunitywithaforumfordiscussionandpresentation.Asbefore, this conference not only brought together a great deal ofAustralianAI research, but also attracted widespread international interest. Theconferencethisyearsawanimpressivearrayofabout110submittedpapersfromno fewerthan16countries.Full-lengthversionsofallsubmittedpaperswererefereedbythe international program committee. As a result, these proceedings contain 55 papers not just fromAustralia, but also Canada, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, and the UK and USA. The conference also comprised a tutorial program and several workshops, and featured ?ve invited speakers on theoretical, philosophical, and applied topics: Didier Dubois of the Universite ´ Paul Sabatier, James Hendler of the University of Maryland, Liz Son- berg of the University of Melbourne, Peter Struss of OCC'M Software and TU Munich, andAlex Zelinsky of theAustralian National University. We extend our thanks to the members of the program committee who processed a large review workload under tight time constraints. We especially thank our host, Professor Robin King, Pro Vice Chancellor of the Division of Information Technology, Engin- ring, and the Environment at UniSA, for providing infrastructure and ?nancial support. We are also grateful to the US Air Force Of?ce of Scienti?c Research, Asian Of?ce of Aerospace Research and Development, and the Commonwealth Defence Science and Technology Organisation for their ?nancial support. Finally we would like to thank all those who contributed to the conference organization, without their help the conference could not have taken place.