Some Applications of Artificial Intelligence

AI techniques have improved the performance and efficiency of systems in many areas. From small systems to complex mission-critical systems, AI techniques are used to tackle difficult tasks and solve problems. Automation is convenient and is becoming commonly used for dangerous or repetitive tasks. These applications have become so efficient that preceding human input/control is becoming irrelevant. Some of the areas in which AI techniques have been applied include: 

• Business Process Modelling [110, 111] 

• Electronic Commerce [36, 145] 

• Information Management [48, 109, 148] 

• Manufacturing [107, 108, 172, 202, 216] 

• Health Care [104, 132, 159] 

• Medicine [113, 117, 150, 163]

• Mission Planning and Security [75, 131, 204, 236] 

• Space Exploration [65] 

• Network Management [77] 

• System Fault Diagnosis [4, 216] 

• Telecommunication [67, 77, 91] 

• Aviation, Traffic Control and Transportation Systems [7, 35, 55, 141, 220– 222] 

• Teaching and Learning [1, 84, 200] 

• Computer Games [69, 88, 134, 135, 143] 

• Decision Support Systems [7, 75, 83, 142, 205, 229, 248], and many other commercial applications. 

Business Process Management 

MASs help organisations with complex business processes, which involve large numbers of contracts to operate more efficiently [109]. These MASs also help manage teams of individuals located in different departments that require coordination to get tasks done. With large numbers of people and departments involved in organisations, this makes for a large, complex, and dynamic environment that requires autonomous agents to keep track of changes and act accordingly to achieve everything necessary. 

Electronic Commerce 

With the growth of the World Wide Web (WWW), many companies and businesses are now able to offer their services via the Internet. People can explore and examine hundreds of items virtually, compare features and prices, and order on-line to receive goods at their doorstep a few days later. In many ways it has become more convenient for people to use on-line services than those in the physical world, and with such advancements in technology it also is becoming safer and more secure to conduct on-line transactions. Due to the growing number of websites, it is becoming a more and more tedious and time-consuming task for people to search for required information. IA can be used to search for information and items based on user preferences. 

The technology of MAS is becoming popular in the field of E-Commerce. An electronic marketplace can be considered as a large-scale, and open MAS where agents interact and negotiate to make on-line deals [109]. In such an environment, user agents act on behalf of customers to find required items according to individual customer preferences. The user agent then searches the content of available items, makes enquiries of business agents that represent suppliers to find items matching user preferences, and even negotiates for reduced prices. 

Robotics 

The field of AI is closely related to robotics. Robots need intelligence to perform human-like tasks including image recognition, speech recognition, motion planning, and navigation. Much research has been conducted to create intelligent behaviours for robots and vehicles. AI has had an important role in creating machines that can perform various tasks on behalf of human beings, including industrial machines, humanoid robots, space rovers, and automated cars. Some examples of humanoid robots include ASIMO, TOPIO, and Hanson. Hanson is a humanoid robot developed by Hanson Robotics that speaks, learns and interacts with people and environments. 

ASIMO stands for Advanced Step in Innovative MObility. It was developed at Honda’s Research and Development Wako Fundamental Technical Research Centre in Japan. ASIMO has been programmed to perform a number of human-like activities including running, moving objects, avoiding collisions, and recognising human individuals. Below Figure (left) shows ASIMO robots in the act of bringing coffee and putting it on the table. The new versions of ASIMO have been improved to perform more complex human-like tasks including dancing, going up and downstairs, playing the violin, and conducting an orchestra. TOPIO stands for TOSY Ping Pong Playing Robot. It is also a humanoid robot developed by TOSY Robotics that played table tennis against a human at Tokyo International Robot Exhibition (IREX) in 2009. Below Figure (right) displays a TOPIO 3.0 robot playing tennis. 

Entertainment 

AI and MAS theories have been used to create sophisticated behaviour and realistic simulation in films and computer games. MAS theories have been used to create visual effects in film-making. An implementation of this is the Massive software package. 

Massive was initially developed by Stephen Regelous to simulate large-scale battle scenes in the movie ‘The Lord of the Rings’. It uses agent-based technology and Fuzzy Logic theory to generate crowd-related visual effects. It is software for creating 3D animated crowds of AI-enabled individuals (agents), as shown in the Figure below. 

It enables agents to make decisions and react to environmental factors. Agents’ reactions may even include simulation of emotions, including bravery,

excitement, and fear. By building variation in the reactions of agents and populating a scene with a number of agents, an environment can be simulated with multiple individuals that have unique appearances and act and respond uniquely to their surroundings. This technology has been used particularly in the movie industry for developing scenes that show large crowds of individual characters or creatures. Some examples of movies taking advantage of this technology include ‘Avatar’, ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’, ‘I, Robot’, and ‘Happy Feet’. 

Many AIs have been used in computer games to enhance the behaviour of game characters and create smarter opponents and entities. AI techniques have been implemented in a variety of games, as with the characters in the classic arcade game of Pac-Man and those in the Black & White game. AI techniques used in games are most often GOFAI techniques with the exception of a few games including Black & White, Creatures, and Battlecruiser [18]. 

Black & White is a simulation game (also known as God Game) designed by LionHead Studios that took a creative approach in game design by implementing an innovative AI engine to embed learning. Each player is given a virtual creature that can be trained to act on behalf of him or her in the game. At first, the creature wanders around the virtual island curiously, and randomly tries different things from eating villagers to helping them cut down trees or move stones. The player can then punish or reward the creature for its actions based on the kind of characteristics desired or expected from it. The creature can then become anything from a caring virtual pet to an aggressive war machine. The mind of a trained and seasoned creature can take more than 1M byte of hard-disk memory, which makes it one of the most complex characters developed in a computer game. Hybrid AI systems have been progressively developed and are being implemented continually with ongoing research. Advanced AI techniques are used in conjunction with traditional AI techniques to enable specific tasks. Implementing more advanced AI techniques has provided challenges because they are more difficult to understand, develop and debug. A lack of game-developer expertise in advanced AI techniques has created an invisible barrier to the inclusion of these techniques in games.

References and Credits

Checkout the Bibliography and Acronyms pages for details of the references, and acronyms.