Artificial Intelligence Activities in Spain R. Lopez de Mantaras Centre d’Estudis Avancats, Consejo Superior de lnvestigaciones Cientificas, Blanes, Girona, Spain

Artificial Intelligence activities in Spain started less than 10 years ago and have been developed mainly in Barcelona and Madrid. Until recently, the interest of the industry and the administration in Artificial Intelligence was very small. However in the last 3 years interest has continuously increased due mainly to the following factors:

The creation of AEPIA (Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence), that held its second annual meeting at the end of 1986 and has over ten industrial partners among its institutional members.

The recent announcement by the Spanish Ministry of Industry of the launch- ing of the second phase of the PEIN (National Plan for Electronics and Informat- ics) which includes Artificial Intelligence as one of the main activities. The goals of the PEIN are the promotion of the electronics and informatics sectors in Spain, decreasing foreign technological dependency and increasing internal production and demand.

The inclusion of Artificial Intelligence as one of the priority areas of the CAICYT (Advisory Committee for Scientific and Technical Research) of the Ministry of Education and Science.

The decision of the CSIC (Spanish Council for Scientific Research) to set up a special research programme on Information Technologies that includes Artificial Intelligence.

The establishment, by several strong international computer industries, of research centres including A1 activities in Barcelona and Madrid.

The increasing collaboration of Spanish computer and software companies with the universities and the CSIC to carry out research projects.

PRESENT SITUATION

We can identify four main types of activities in Spain: -Speech recognition where A1 takes place at the interpretation stage. -Robotics, where A1 takes place in planning and vision. -Expert systems. -Fundamental research (natural language processing, learning and know-

ledge acquisition, automated reasoning, knowledge representation). The situation in 1987 is as follows: The estimated number of PhDs involved,

some partially, in A1 research in Universitites and public Research Centers in Spain is around 70 and the number of graduate students is approximately 150

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distributed in 22 research groups. The highest concentration of these researchers is in the areas of Catalonia and Madrid. In Catalonia, the groups are in the Centre of Advanced Studies of the CSIC in Blanes (40 miles north of Barcelona), in the Institute of Cybernetics in Barcelona and in the Polytechnical University of Catalonia in Barcelona. In Madrid the groups are in the Polytechnical University, the Complutense University, and in the Institute of Automatica Industrial. The Polytechnical University of Las Palmas, the University of Zaragoza and the University of Valencia also have strong A1 research activities. Several universities such as Deusto, Granada, Malaga, Palma de Mallorca, Santiago, and the Autono- mous Universities of Barcelona and Madrid also have recently initiated A1 activities.

What follows is a brief description of the activities of the stronger groups. This description is mainly based on a report on Artificial Intelligence elaborated by Fundesco in collaboration with the CSIC (Spanish Council for Scientific Research). Additional information concerning some groups is given by the author of this article whenever possible.

The Blanes Centre of Advanced Studies

Recently opened, it is the first Centre of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research that includes research on Artificial Intelligence among its activities. The Group of Research on Artificial Intelligence and Logics (GRAIL) consists of 16 researchers, including graduate students, and is involved in several aspects of fundamental research and especially in Approximate Reasoning, Learning, Knowledge Acquisition and Logic Programming. They are developing their re- search in collaboration with the industry (DEC external research agreement, ITT-Standard Electrica, XEROX and SIEMENS) and with a medical centre (Hospital del Mar of Barcelona) in the development of an expert system for diagnosis and treatment of pneumonias funded by the Spanish Ministry of Health.

The fundamental research is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and by the European Community, and is carried out in collaboration with the department of Mathematics and Statistics of the Polytechnical University of Catalonia and with the department of Mathematics of the University of Palma de Mallorca.

The GRAIL has strong connections with the Laboratorio di Cibernetica of the CNR in NAPLES (Italy) through the CSIC-CNR cooperation programme, with the LAFORIA laboratory of the Paris VI University through an European Community Project, with the Centre of Computer Science Research of Montpel- lier and with the Laboratoire d’Automatique et d’Analyse des Systemes of the CNRS in Toulouse (France) through the CSIC-CNRS cooperation programme. The GRAIL is establishing collaborations with other groups in several countries, in particular in the USA, England, Germany, Mexico and Argentina.

The Institute of Cybernetics of Barcelona

This institute is associated with the Polytechnical University of Catalonia and with the Spanish Council for Scientific Research. The A1 activities are related to

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knowledge based vision and planning for robotics applications. The A1 group is composed of 12 researchers including graduate students, and has many interna- tional contacts in particular with the USA.

The Polytechnical University of Catalonia

There are three groups working in Artificial Intelligence in this university. A group of 14 researchers, including graduate students, in the Facultat

d’lnformatica (Computer Science Dept.) working in Intelligent Computer Assisted Instruction applied to programming in collaboration with the Computer Science School of San Sebastian; they also work in the development of an Object Oriented Programming Environment in the framework of an European Community project and in Natural language processing.

This group is also developing expert systems applications, in particular in the area of software engineering and has many international contacts and an external research agreement with DEC.

A second group of 8 researchers, including graduate students, in the Computer Science department is involved in Knowledge representation and in the develop- ment of a LISP environment in collaboration with the Laboratorio di Cibernetica of Naples and with the GRAIL of the Center of Advanced Studies of Blanes. This group has a collaboration grant with the research center of SIEMENS in Barcelona.

Another group with 6 researchers (including Ph.D. students) in the depart- ment of Mathematics and Statistics is working on fundamental aspects of Artificial Intelligence and especially in non-classical logics and their application to uncer- tain reasoning and knowledge representation. This group is closely collaborating with the GRAIL of the Centre of Advanced Studies in Blanes and with the department of Mathematics of the University of Palma de Mallorca.

The Complutense University of Madrid

In the department of Psychology of this university there is a group of 8 researchers, including graduate students, working on human and artificial vision with applications to robotics in collaboration with the artificial vision group of the school of telecommunication of the Polytechnical University of Madrid.

The Institute of Automatica Industrial of Madrid

This institute belongs to the Spanish Council for Scientific Research and is involved in many research projects in the area of Control and Industrial Informat- ics. They also have several projects in Kobotics and Advanced Automation carried out by a group of 10 researchers including graduate students.

The Polytechnical University of Madrid

In the Facultad de Informatics (Computer Science Dept.) there are two groups working in Artificial Intelligence and particularly in Expert Systems. One

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of the groups has 8 researchers including graduate students and specializes in Logic Programming and collaborates in a project with the GRAIL of the Centre of Advanced Studies in Blanes and the Research Centre of In-Standard Electrica in Madrid. This group is also developing expert systems for flood prevention, and for financial applications.

The other group of 14 researchers including graduate students is working mainly in the application of expert systems to personnel management and has a strong collaboration with the University of Carnegie-Mellon.

In the School of Engineering there is also a group working on the applications of Robotics Vision and Flexible Manufacturing Systems.

In the School of Telecommunications Engineering there are also two groups working in Knowledge Engineering. One group of 15 researchers including stu- dents is developing expert systems in medicine and the other one is involved in robotics vision and has 6 researchers. Both groups have several international contacts.

The Polytechnical University Las Palmas

In the Computer Science department of this university there is a group of 12 researchers, including graduate students, working on natural and artificial vision with applications to robotics for assembly tasks. This group also has strong international contacts.

The University of Valencia

In the Computer Science department of this university there is a group of 8 researchers, including graduate students, working on Knowledge Based Speech Processing. This group has several international contacts and in particular with the University of Nancy in France and the University of Torino in Italy.

The School of Engineering of Zaragoza

In this school there are two groups, one composed of 4 researchers, including graduate students, involved in robotics research and industrial applications and the other one also with 4 researchers, including graduate students, involved in vision applications. Both groups have contacts with French and Italian groups.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

From the previous brief description we can see that A1 is still a very modest discipline in Spain (around 30 PhD theses and 400 papers published so far) and that it is, however, undergoing a fast and exciting developmental phase since the last three years. The main reason for this modest situation is the very late establishment of Computer Science curricula in the universities (the first com-

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puter science graduates in Spain obtained their degrees in 19Sl), the consequence of which is the lack of well trained computer scientists necessary to improve the quantity and quality of A1 research groups in universities and public as well as private research centers. In the coming years we are going to see an important advancement of A1 in Spain as a result of the factors alluded to in the introduction of this article together with the rapidly growing number of Computer Science graduating classes.