In this paper, we propose a new framework of knowledge revision, Similarity-Driven Knowledge Revision. For an object-oriented knowledge base KB, our revision is triggered when a similarity between sort concepts detected from KB does not fit a user's intuition. We revise KB into a knowledge base from which such an undesirable similarity is not detected and in which the logical semantics of KB is still preserved. An observation of undesirable similarity is due to an over-general typing of variable in KB. In order to modify the typing, we introduce a notion of extended sorts that can be viewed as a sort concept not appearing explicitly in the original knowledge base. If a variable typing with some sort is considered over-general, the typing is modified by replacing it with more specific extended sort. Such an extended sort can be efficiently identified by forward reasoning with SOL-resolution from the original knowledge base. Some experimental results show that the use of SOL-resolution can drastically improve the computational efficiency.

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We develop a new strategy-proof double auction protocol characterized as average-case budget-non-negative. It is well-known that there is no strategy-proof double auction protocol that satisfies Pareto efficiency, individual rationality, and budget-balance simultaneously. The existing approach is to give up Pareto efficiency or strategy-proofness by enforcing budget-balance or budget-positive as a hard constraint. We propose a new direction to relax the budget-non-negative condition slightly. Although this protocol might take loss or profit for some cases, it it guaranteed not to exceed the predetermined amount of loss. Simulation results show that this protocol can be budget-non-negative on average and achieve social surplus that is very close to being Pareto efficient by setting parameters appropriately.

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Design is one of the typical tasks which are realized with both intelligence and sense. When demands for contents are increasing in this decade, design assistance with computers is one of the most important information technology services. The design assistance method known as Kansei Engineering, which combines multivariate analysis of impression and media technology, is not always applicable to productive design tasks. In the practical productive design, concrete cases are sometimes picked up in advance of design processing. This paper, focusing on this design, describes the style of case-based design, assistance by computers, the range of application, and the evaluation of generated contents.

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This is the third paper of Robotic Communication Terminals(RCT) which was selected as a theme of Challenge for Realizing Early Profits (CREP) in 2002 anuual conference of JSAI. RCT is a mobility support system for the elderly and disabled people, which assists for their impaired elements of mobility--- recognition, actuation, and information access. The RCT consist of three types of terminals: ``environment-embedded terminal'', ``user-carried mobile terminal'', and ``user-carrying mobile terminal''. These terminals communicate with one another to provide the users with a comfortable means of mobility. This paper introduces our recent research progress in three parts: developing RCT prototypes in section 3, interfaces and servers for users navigation in section 4, and user surveys about daily mobility problems with 3,503 responses in section 5.

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Decision Support for Internet Users, called DSIU, is an area of research, we proposed, for decision support systems using two technologies: automated knowledge acquisition from information on the Internet and automated reasoning about the acquired knowledge. This paper describes our research progress and a new research on mathematical models for designing decision support systems in DSIU with respect to realizing the systems and giving contributions to society in the near future. The research progress is described in terms of four automated technologies: (1) judging relevance between words from their meaning, (2) acquiring knowledge from text, (3) handling incomplete and uncertain knowledge, (4) gathering Web-pages using layers of Web-sites, and of two confirmations of the technologies: (5) making check on knowledge in various types of Web-pages and (6) developing prototype systems. The research on mathematical models is described in terms of modeling decision making processes where the knowledge for the decision is constructed automatically from information on the Internet. This paper also describes a new challenge in terms of building an online shopping mall using some technologies in DSIU.

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The a Everyday language computing (ELC) is a new computational paradigm that all people, from small children to aged persons, can access and use computing systems with his/her own everyday language. As a way to realize ELC, we proposed a framework of language-based operating system (LOS), and we are now working intensively to develop the fundamental part of it. In this paper, we report our status of research on LOS. One of the main components of LOS is the semiotic base, which is a database of linguistic knowledge based on Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory. We explain the architecture of the semiotic base and corpus experiments conducted to determine the contents of it. A client's secretary agent is a user interface of LOS which realizes everyday language communication between a user and the system. We explain a client model that realizes personalized communication and the plan module that manages the structure of dialogue. In LOS, all kinds of information processing are done through everyday language. Language protocol is a computer protocol based on everyday language, and language-based application is a kind of agent software that provides services through language. We explain the characteristics of language protocol, the structure of language-based application programming interface (LAPI), and text interpretation process of language-based applications. Finally, we discuss prospects of this project and mention future work that remains to be done. We argue that by processing meaning of language rather than processing numbers, we attempt to provide a more human-like computer system and an intelligent computational environment to all people.

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