Automated Deduction Systems

Coordinator's Report

The first area meeting of the Compulog Area on Automated Deduction Systems took place in conjunction with the Fourth Workshop on "Automated Reasoning--Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice", April 7-8, 1997, University of Manchester, England.

There were three Compulog related events at the workshop:

- firstly a Compulog-sponsored invited talk by Ray Reiter with the title: "Modeling Dynamical Systems in the Situation Calculus: Some Representational and Computational Issues for Automated Reasoning".

- secondly a Compulog-session, in which an invited talk of Uli Furbach on "Theorem Proving and Logic Programming" was planned. Unfortunately Uli has had an accident shortly before the meeting, so this talk could not take place. The session was filled by an overview on Compulog and the area and a talk of Laurent Vigneron on "Automated Deduction and Rough Information".

- thirdly a business meeting, which I want to describe in the rest of this report:

Present were Alan Bundy, Tony Cohn, Roy Dyckhoff, Alan Frisch, Manfred Kerber, Geert-Jan Kruijff, and Laurent Vigneron. Since this was the first meeting, the discussion was predominantly on the role the area wants to play. There was consensus that in a well-established field there is not much point in establishing just another workshop, nobody has the time to come anyway.

Different possibilities where discussed:

* To spot a distinctive gap and to play a distinctive role on a particular topic like bridging the gap between Automated Deduction and Logic Programming (with possible themes like unification, reasoning on LP) or bridging the gap between the CADE and KR communities (problems about knowledge representation and search)

* To devote activities to education (e.g. by participating in a summer school for graduates and/or the educational master degree programme of Compulog)

* To concentrate on industrial involvement (e.g. by a workshop on applications of automated reasoning on a practically oriented conference like PAC or a panel session on the next ECAI)

Furthermore we discussed matters of the area's web page (pointers to relevant conferences/workshops, the research of members, pointers to degree programmes). Further suggestions for the web page are welcome.

In particular, since the meeting was UK-dominated, we did not want to discuss the pros and cons of the different possible directions the area may go in great depth, but would like to invite everyone to participate in this discussion we want to have on our e-mail list ("compulog-deduction@cs.bham.ac.uk"). In particular the list should not be considered as a closed list, but more as initial proposals, any further proposals are welcomed.

As a result of these discussions we should generate a clear view what the area wants to achieve ("road-map"). The next meeting can then be organised according to these discussions (e.g. back-to-back to either CADE or KR, which both take place in Europe in 1998).

Manfred Kerber, School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, UK.

E-mail: M.Kerber@cs.bham.ac.uk