Preface. Thom Frühwirth Günther Palm

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1 Preface KI 2004 was the 27th edition of the annual German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, which traditionally brings together academic and industrial researchers from all areas of AI and which enjoys increasing international attendance. KI 2004 received 103 submissions from 26 countries. This volume contains the 30 papers that were finally selected for presentation at the conference. The papers cover quite a broad spectrum of classical subareas of AI, like natural language processing, neural networks, knowledge representation, reasoning, planning, and search. When looking at this year s contributions, it was exciting to observe that there was a strong trend towards actual real-world applications of AI technology. A majority of contributions resulted from or were motivated by applications in a variety of areas. Examples include applications of planning, where the technology is being exploited for taxiway traffic control and game playing; natural language processing and knowledge representation are enabling advanced Web-based information processing; and the integration of results from automated reasoning, neural networks and machine perception into robotics leads to significantly improved capabilities of autonomous systems. The technical programme of KI 2004 was highlighted by invited talks from outstanding researchers in the areas of automated reasoning, robot planning, constraint reasoning, machine learning, and semantic Web: Jörg Siekmann (DFKI anduniversity ofsaarland, Saarbrücken), Malik Ghallab (LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse), François Fages (INRIA Rocquencourt), Martin Riedmiller (University of Osnabrück), and Wolfgang Wahlster (DFKI and University of Saarland, Saarbrücken). Their invited papers are also presented in this volume. This year KI was held in co-location with INFORMATIK 2004, the German Conference on Computer Science, organized under the auspices of the German Informatics Society (GI). KI and INFORMATIK shared a joint day of invited presentations. The talks by Wolfgang Wahlster and Malik Ghallab were part of this joint programme. A conference like KI 2004 involves the dedication of many people. First of all, there are the authors, who submitted their papers to the conference; there are the members of the program committee and the many additional reviewers, who worked hard on providing high-quality reviews in time and participated in the paper discussion process; and there is the highly supportive KI 2004 local arrangements committee. We are most grateful to all of them. July 2004

2 Organization General Chairs Friedrich von Henke Program Chairs Workshop Chair Michael Beetz Local Arrangements Chair Program Committee Slim Abdennadher Elisabeth André Roman Bartak Michael Beetz Hans-Georg Beyer Gerhard Brewka Hans-Dieter Burkhard Thomas Christaller Henning Christiansen François Fages Ulrich Furbach Enrico Giunchiglia Günther Goerz Andreas Günter Joachim Hertzberg Otthein Herzog German University in Cairo, Egypt University of Augsburg, Germany Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic University of Dortmund, Germany University of Ulm (co-chair), Germany University of Leipzig, Germany Humboldt University Berlin, Germany Fraunhofer AIS, Bonn, Germany Roskilde Universitym, Denmark INRIA, Rocquencourt, France University of Ulm (co-chair), Germany University Koblenz-Landau, Germany Genoa University, Italy Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen, Germany Fraunhofer AIS, Bonn, Germany TZI, University of Bremen, Germany

3 Organization VII Program Commitee (cont.) Steffen Hölldobler Werner Horn Stefan Kirn Jana Koehler Gerhard Kraetzschmar Rudolf Kruse Franz Kurfess Gerhard Lakemeyer Bärbel Mertsching Hans-Hellmut Nagel Bernhard Nebel Bernd Neumann Heiko Neumann Frank Puppe Martin Riedmiller Helge Ritter Ulrike Sattler Friedhelm Schwenker Jörg Siekmann Rudi Studer Sylvie Thiébaux Michael Thielscher Paolo Traverso Wolfgang Wahlster Toby Walsh Gerhard Weiss Stefan Wermter Herbert Wiklicky Stefan Wrobel University of Dresden, Germany University of Vienna, Austriy University of Hohenheim, Germany IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, Austria Otto-von-Guericke-University of Magdeburg, Germany California Polytechnic State University, USA University of Aachen, Germany University of Karlsruhe, Germany University of Freiburg, Germany (co-chair) University of Würzburg, Germany Osnabrück University, Germany University of Bielefeld, Germany University of Manchester, UK DFKI, Saarbrücken, Germany University of Karlsruhe, Germany The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia University of Dresden, Germany IRST, Trento, Italy DFKI, Saarbrücken, Germany University College Cork, UK University of Sunderland, UK Imperial College London, UK Fraunhofer AIS and University of Bonn, Germany Additional Reviewers Sebastian Bader Volker Baier Peter Baumgartner Berhard Beckert Marco Benedetti Massimo Benerecetti Piergiorgio Bertoli Christian Borgelt Olivier Bouissou Paolo Bouquet Marco Bozzano Henrik Bulskov Philipp Cimiano Hendrik Decker Jürgen Dix Mark Elshaw Marc Ehrig Harry Erwin Felix Fischer Christian Fritz Tom Gedeon

4 VIII Organization Axel Grossmann Volker Haarslev Rémy Haemmerlé Pascal Hitzler Frank Hoeppner Somboon Hongeng Tamas Horvath Andreas Hotho Lothar Hotz Gero Iwan Lars Karlsson Joerg Kindermann Alexander Kleiner Thorsten Krebs Kai Lingemann Yves Martin Davide Martinenghi Marc Meister Matthias Nickles Gerd Paass Maurice Pagnucco Yannick Pencole Erich Rome Michael Rovatsos Frank Rügheimer Wolfgang Schmidle Olga Skvortsova Sylvain Soliman Nenad Stojanovic Bernd Thomas Sven Utcke Raphael Volz Stefan Wölfl Jianwei Zhang Local Arrangements Committee Martin Clauß Roland Holzer Hartmut Jungholt Marc Meister (chair) Sponsoring Institutions Microsoft Deutschland GmbH sd&m AG Systems, Messe München GmbH Continental Temic Speech Dialog Systems Projektentwicklungsgesellschaft Ulm mbh Dresdner Bank DaimlerChrysler IBM Deutschland Siemens AG

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