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The technical goal of the Fifth Generation Computer Systems (FGCS) project (1982–1993) was to develop Parallel Inference technologies, namely systematized technologies for realizing knowledge information processing on top of parallel computer architecture. The Logic Programming paradigm was adopted as the central working hypothesis of the project. At the same time, building a large-scale Parallel Inference Machine (PIM) meant to develop a novel form of general-purpose computing technologies that are powerful enough to express various parallel algorithms and to describe a full operating system of PIM. Accordingly, the research goal of the Kernel Language was set to designing a concurrent and parallel programming language under the working hypothesis of Logic Programming. The aim of this article is to describe the design process of the Kernel Language (KL1) in the context of related programming models in the 1980s, the essence of Concurrent Logic Programming and Constraint-Based Concurrency, and how the technologies we developed in those days evolved after their conception.

Data mining is known as data, which promotes the growth of knowledge discovery. It is the process of analyzing descriptive data from divergent perspectives and summarizing it into valuable information, which is high-level music processing out of which a machine intends to decipher the Raaga of a frequency or the pitch of the music. One of the ways to approach the task is by comparing selected music features from the spectrum and a Raaga database. Recognizing emotion from music has become one of the active research themes in image processing and applications based on human-computer interaction. This research conducts an experimental study on recognizing facial emotions. The flow of the emotion recognition system includes the basic process in the singular value decomposition system. These include music acquisition, pre-processing of a spectrum, feature detection, feature extraction, classification, and when the emotions are classified, the system assigns the particular user music according to his emotion. The proposed system focuses on live images taken from the music database. This research aims to develop an automatic music recognition system for innovative manufacturing through the additive manufacturing route. The emotions considered for the experiments include happiness, Sadness, Surprise, Fear, Disgust, and Anger that are universally accepted. This paper overviews the progress of applying Additive manufacturing in Applied Machine learning which sustains the capability of disruptive digital manufacturing.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the current emerging technologies. In the history of computing AI has been in the similar role earlier - almost every decade since the 1950s, when the programming language Lisp was invented and used to implement self-modifying applications. The second time that AI was described as one of the frontier technologies was in the 1970s, when Expert Systems (ES) were developed. A decade later AI was again at the forefront when the Japanese government initiated its research and development effort to develop an AI-based computer architecture called the Fifth Generation Computer System (FGCS). Currently in the 2010s, AI is again on the frontier in the form of (self-)learning systems manifesting in robot applications, smart hubs, intelligent data analytics, etc. What is the reason for the cyclic reincarnation of AI? This paper gives a brief description of the history of AI and also answers the question above. The current AI “cycle” has the capability to change the world in many ways. In the context of the CE conference, it is important to understand the changes it will cause in education, the skills expected in different professions, and in society at large. acceptedVersion

In the last two decades, researchers have found many advantages related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the performance of both service and manufacturing systems. It includes alternate methods to conventional techniques and there are mechanisms of integrated systems. Currently, many researches related to artificial intelligence are under process. At present, artificial intelligence has been used to solve various problems in several fields and has become more popular around the world. This field is extremely difficult to review either chronologically or thematically. AI has a long history of growing constantly and changing tremendously. Connected with the history of computers, artificial intelligence is the main concept behind the fifth generation computers. This review paper deals with the framework of artificial intelligence and focuses on fields related to artificial intelligence. Particularly this paper describes about the recent growth in the field of artificial intelligence and its applications. Several issues of artificial intelligence are analysed. It is concluded that still many researches are yet to be conducted for further growth in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Since the first formal specifications of modern computing machinery as laid out by Alan Turing and his contemporary fellows, we have been witnessing, during the last three decades, an evolutionary path in computing towards more personalized and contextualized data and knowledge artifacts. Information sharing, co-ordination, co-operation and, to some extent, collaboration among machines has been envisioned for complex problem solving. A prominent example of this problem solving approach has been the Fifth Generation Computer Systems (FGCS) project as launched in Japan in the 1980s and based on the concept of calculation using massive parallelism in logic and hardware. Grid and Distributed Computing, also known as Future Generation Computer Systems, is another similar attempt to exploit massive parallelism in order to solve complex problems. In this article, we explore the notion of Collective Intelligence (CI) in the realm of the Social Web and its potential to become a new computing paradigm for creating solutions or strategies to tackle wicked problems where the synergistic interactions of a group of people with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds are requested.

The rapid development of computer-based communication technologies, typified by the advent of the Internet, is said to be giving rise to a novel form of community, a global electronic community.The paper considers, primarily in reference to the Japanese context, whether such an electronic community can really claim universality, allowing individuals to communicate with each other across the existing boundaries of nation-states, corporations, and the family, and how it will affect the existing socio-political structure. One focus of discussion is a government-funded Japanese project, the 'Fifth Generation Computer System Project' (FGCSP), which was carried out over a decade beginning in 1982. A critical assessment of the project bears out that its failure should not be ascribed, as is often done, to its having concentrated on developing hardware technologies with limited applicability, but rather to a serious flaw in its basic design, namely, its misperception about 'universal language'. In the electronic community as it exists now, English is essentially accorded the status of the 'universal language', the one indispensable for access to the Internet. It is argued here, however, that such a state of things, if allowed to continue, is bound to hinder fruitful communications among various societies with diverse natural languages and social and cultural values peculiar to them, and to create, for the non-English world, a problem of'language discrimination' by driving a wedge between the elite few proficient in English and the non-English-speaking majority

One of the successful outcomes of the Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project is the development of Model Generation Theorem Provers (MGTPs). MGTPs have solved previously open problems in finite algebra, produced rapid proofs of condensed detachment problems, and are providing an inferential infrastructure for knowledge-processing research at ICOT. They successfully exploit the Fifth Generation Project's KLl logic programming language and parallel inference machines to achieve high performance and parallel speedup. This paper describes some of the key properties of MGTPs, reasons for their successes, and possible areas for future improvement.

Projecting a great vision of intelligent systems in the service of the economy and society, the Japanese government in 1982 launched the national Fifth Generation Computer Systems (FGCS) project. The project was carried out by a central research institute, ICOT, with personnel from its member-owners, the Japanese computer manufacturers (JCMs) and other electronics industry firms. The project was planned for ten years, but continues through year eleven and beyond. ICOT chose to focus its efforts on language issues and programming methods for logic programming, supported by special hardware. Sequential ‘inference machines’ (PSI) and parallel ‘inference machines’ (PIM) were built. Performances of the hardware-software hybrid was measured in the range planned (150 million logical inferences per second). An excellent system for logic programming on parallel machines was constructed (KL1). However, applications were done in demonstration form only (not deployed). The lack of a stream of applications that computer customers found effective, and the sole use of a language outside the mainstream, Prolog, led to disenchantment among the JCMs.

An overview will be given in this paper of the original plans of the Japanese Fifth Generation Computer Systems project and they will be compared with what has actually been achieved in the project's ten years of work. This is done by looking at the results demonstrated at the 1992 FGCS Conference, in the form of some 20 application programs all running on the PIM (Parallel Inference Machine) hardware and written in (systems written on top of) KL1. KL1 is the language developed for the FGCS project for the operating system controlling hundreds of processors, as well as for applications. It is derived from Prolog and could be called a Logic Programming language. Also the results of a team of international experts, asked by ICOT to evaluate the success of the FGCS project, will be given in a condensed form.

Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry's (MITI's) Superspeed project, which investigated high-speed devices and computer architecture, algorithms, and languages for parallel computing, is reviewed. The supercomputing industries in Japan and the United States are compared. The architecture and performance of current supercomputers and the current states of supercomputer technology and supercomputer software are discussed. >

Changes in the large computer market during 1992 are discussed. Competition for supercomputers from workstation networks is noted. New machines that debuted, despite the continuing mainframe decline, are described. Also examined are the push by massively parallel processors for larger market share, Cray's announced three-year collaboration with the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the conclusion of Japan's Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project, popularly branded a spectacular failure, and Japan's first massively parallel processor. >

The Real World Computing (RWC) program (also called the New Information Processing Technology program), a 10-year program sponsored by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), is described. The goal of the program is to lay the technological foundations for the information society that Japan anticipates in the next century. The RWC program replaces the Fifth Generation project. The author presents a summary of the draft prepared by the RWC program's Feasibility Study Committee as presented in Tokyo, March 2-3, 1992, at what was called RWC92, the Second NIPT Workshop. MITI expects future information systems to be based on a flexible integration of massively parallel computing, optical computing, neural computing, and logic programming. The Real World Computing program aims to establish theoretical foundations for these technologies, explore applications, and study how they can be integrated. >

Research consortia in the United States have proliferated over the past decade. By the beginning of 1992, over 250 consortia had registered with the U.S. Government under the National Cooperative Research Act (NCRA) of 1984. The Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) in Austin, Texas, was one of the first consortia to register under the Act. This article describes my first-hand experience in heading up the technology transfer function in the Computer Aided Design (CAD) Program--one of MCC's original four technology programs. While much has been written about MCC in the general and business press (1,2,3,4), and researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and the IC2 Institute have postulated several theories based on their extensive surveys and interviews with MCC staff and shareholders(5), this is one of the few papers describing MCC from an insider's perspective. In a recent article in Issues in Science and Technology (6), my associate Jack Bremer and I described five lessons that consortia must learn in the 1990s if they are to be successful. Those lessons are: 1. Maintain a coherent strategic vision. 2. Choose research problems that have significant payoffs. 3. Optimize communication with members. 4. Make technology transfer a continual process. 5. Strengthen membership commitment. While all five lessons are vital to consortium management and members, lessons 3 and 4 are particularly important if consortia are to realize the potential leverage that their supporters often cite. As I shall explain later, understanding these two challenges may lead to a new model of research consortia for the 1990s that overcomes the shortcomings of earlier collaborative efforts. PREDICTED VS REAL PROBLEMS I have been involved with U.S. research consortia (as a consultant, technology transfer manager, strategic planner, or journalist) for over a decade, and have visited with officials of Japanese consortia, including the former director of the VLSI Program and administrators of the Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project, on three occasions. During this period, I have discussed the merits and drawbacks of consortia with technologists and managers in many organizations who were already members of consortia or considering participation. Originally, many observers predicted that research consortia in the U.S. would fail for three reasons: 1. Competitors in domestic markets would not cooperate, even in the face of foreign competition supported by foreign-government-sponsored research consortia. 2. The concept of "pre-competitive research" was too ill-defined, and would not result in meaningful research results. 3. Consortia participants would not assign their best people to the venture, so the resulting research would not be first-rate. While there is some truth to each of the above predictions, numerous examples from personal experience contradict those predictions. By and large, the "competitor cooperation" syndrome is a non-issue. Only when a participant's particular product line or manufacturing process comes into play, do competitive stresses emerge, and several successful mechanisms have been used to diffuse those pressures. Pre-competitive research, often called generic research, has been well understood for many years, and does not limit the usefulness of research results so long as the research is at least taken to the prototype stage. Finally, while it has been true that companies usually and understandably assign non-critical researchers to a consortium, company "assignees" in MCC's case made up only a small percentage of the overall staff (less than 15 percent as of mid-1990). If the above-postulated problems with research consortia in the U.S. are red herrings, then what are the real problems? There are three: 1. The consortium, and especially its members, may treat "technology transfer" in too narrow a sense, leading to a situation in which the technology lies fallow after it becomes available to participants. …

The fifth generation computer project was launched in 1982, aiming at developing parallel computers dedicated for knowledge information processing. It was commonly believed that knowledge processing based on symbolic computation is very difficult to parallelize. We made a conjecture that logic programming technology will solve the difficulty. During the project, we succeeded in inventing a parallel logic programming language, GHC, and its realistic extention, KL1. We devoted our effort in developing parallel hardware called PIM, dedicated for KL1. We are now developing software technology on top of KL1 and PIM. We succeeded in developing PIM's operating system totally in KL1, which runs on Multi-PSI, a current experimental parallel hardware for developing KL1 programming. We are now concentrating our effort on developing mapping techniques, such as load balancing and priority control, for deriving real spead up in parallel execution. We are also trying to develop more realistic and complicated application programs such as VLSI-CAD systems, case based reasoning systems and parallel theorem provers which, we hope, will run efficiently on PIM.

Japanese supercomputers (e.g. Hitac S-3800, NEC SX-3R, Fujitsu VP2000) are described and compared with US machines. The Japanese approach has been to develop high-speed single processor systems with vector processing functions which are driven by the fastest technologies. Ease of programming and of use are taken into account. The result has been first-rate applications for supercomputers, but software, in general, lags behind that of the US. Academic access to supercomputers is also behind that in the US. The ambitious Real-World Computing Program (RWC), a 10-year Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) program with a budget of about 60 billion yen (almost US $500 million), focuses on R&D for what is called flexible or intuitive information processing-the way human beings absorb information and make decisions. >

The FGCS project, aiming at developing a new generation of general purpose computers, began in 1982 and is now almost half way through the ten years of the project. The project was established to explore a qualitatively new approach to computer science in order to solve many difficult problems which have accumulated in the field. We considered that the two single most important and difficult problems are opening up a new market for computers to keep the computer industry growing, and overcoming the low productivity of software compared with hardware. We spent three years developing the target of a new broad market for next generation computers, and concluded that knowledge information processing will be the answer.

Consider the serial emulation of a parallel algorithm. The thesis presented in this informal paper is rather broad. It suggests that such a serial emulation has the potential advantage of running on a serial machine faster than a standard serial algorithm for the same problem.The main concrete observation is very simple: just before the serial emulation of a round of the parallel algorithm begins, the whole list of memory addresses needed during this round is readily available; and, we can start fetching these addresses from secondary memories .This enables to prefetch the data that will be needed in the next "time window", perhaps by means of pipelining and have them ready at the fast memories when requested by the CPU. Thereby, utilization of commonly used memory management systems will be theoretically enhanced. Another (considerably less orthodox) implementation approach will result in abandoning locality of references , in favor of a drastically different approach: distribute memory addresses at random over memory modules, as has been proposed in the context of implementing the parallel-random-access machine (PRAM) design space.It is too early to reach conclusions regarding the significance of the thesis of this paper. Serious attempts to follow it up are needed to determine its usefulness. Parts of this paper are intentionally written in an informal way, suppressing issues that will have to be resolved in the context of a concrete implementation. My general intention is to encourage colleagues to: (i) suggest other specific approaches, and (ii) explore opportunities for taking advantage of the fine structure of parallel programs well beyond concrete suggestions made in the paper. The full paper is available as UMIACS TR 91-145, from the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742--3251 .

Japan has a long history of AI research, in fact, research on computer vision and natural language processing was already in progress in the early seventies. However, two events that started Japan's wave of AI research were the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Tokyo in 1979 and the Fifth Generation Computer System Project which the Ministry of International Trade and Industries started in 1982. Both events greatly impacted Japanese AI research-especially the FGCS project, a 10-year national project to build an inference machine based on logic programming. Japan established its Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence in 1986. JSAI has about 3,500 members and several special-interest groups. It publishes bimonthly online journals and transactions. JSAI recently established a new technical paper category called AI Frontier. This category has distinct evaluation criteria: papers must deeply impress the six expert evaluators. JSAI established the Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in 1990 to complement IJCAI and the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

This symposium was planned to introduce research activities on AI and Law in Japan. It includes five papers. Research into AI and Law in Japan began in 1980, when Hajime Yoshino (Meiji Gakuin University) started the A-project. Since then, he has recruited several lawyers and computer scientists, and developed some legal reasoning systems which handle the civil code. His research activities gained a high evaluation rating, with the result that the Ministry of Education and Science decided to support his ‘Legal Expert’ project for five years (1993–1998). Currently, about 30 lawyers and 10 computer scientists have joined the project and have developed legal reasoning systems. The main research objective has been to develop logic-based legal knowledge bases. Yoshino selected the United Nations Convention for International Sales of Goods (CISG) as the target domain, to maximise the possibilities for international collaboration. Further research arose from the Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project (1982–1995), which developed a wide range of logic-based parallel processing technologies from hardware to application software. While working for the FGCS project, Katsuma Nitta (Electrotechnical Laboratory and Tokyo Institute of Technology) identified legal reasoning systems as a promising application domain. He organized a Legal Reasoning Research Group consisting of eight researchers, and developed legal reasoning systems. Since the FGCS project ended in 1995, Nitta has been continuing the development of these systems in the Electrotechnical Laboratory and Tokyo Institute of Technology. The papers of this collection were selected from the Legal Reasoning System Workshop held during the International Symposium of FGCS 1994, and revised by appending recent research results. All papers are research results of Yoshino’s ‘Legal Expert’ project or of the FGCS project. Yoshino introduces a logic-based knowledge representation language – Compound Predicate Formula (CPF). He investigated the necessary functions of legal knowledge representation languages and formulated a CPF which has been used in legal reasoning systems. The CPF is a conservative extension of the standard 1st

Ever since computers were invented, one of their main applications has been scientific computing. Before the Pascal/C era, numerical programs dominated, and they still have a place in scientific computing. The computer architectures on which they depend have changed from sequential to parallel to networks/clusters to ubiquitous. If you're looking for solutions for numerical programming on networks of computers, then Parallel Computing on Heterogeneous Networks by Alexy L. Lastovetsky is the book for you.

Most Western Governments (USA, Japan, EEC, etc.) have now launched national programmes to develop computer systems for use in the 1990s. These so-called Fifth Generation computers are viewed as “knowledge” processing systems which support the symbolic computation underlying Artificial Intelligence applications. The major driving force in Fifth Generation computer design is to efficiently support very high level programming languages (i.e. VHLL architecture). Historycally, however, commercial VHLL architectures have been largely unsuccesful. The driving force in computer designs has principally been advances in hardware which at the present time means architectures to exploit very large scale integration (i.e. VLSI architecture). This paper examines VHLL architectures and VLSI architectures and their probable influences on Fifth Generation computers. Interestingly the major problem for both architecture classes is parallelism; how to orchestrate a single parallel computation so that it can be distributed across an ensemble of processors.

The Fifth Generation project is a large Japanese research project aiming at producing a new kind of computer by 1991. It was originally started after much debate about the necessity for significantly more usable computers which should proliferate "like air" throughout society and among other things take care of the ageing population and lifelong learning. The people in MITI 1 who sponsored the project must have had a good marketing consultant to pick the name of the project, for just its very name has inspired a lot of interest around the world.

An executive workstation is an integrated hardware/ software system that can provide business executives with powerful capabilities for making and implementing decisions. In this paper, relevant and sometimes controversial, issues and workstation requirements are discussed in the context of a scenario that portrays an executive using a workstation. The scenario anticipates fifth generation computer technology and it guides a specification of features and functions. The goal is to clarify what is possible and desirable in an executive workstation design.

The Institute for New Generation Computer Technology in Tokyo, known as the ICOT, has been conducting studies related to the development of fifth-generation computer systems since 1982. The FGCS project is concerned with the implementation of a prototype for new computer systems which are able to support and improve various activities of human intelligence, taking into account activities related to production. As these activities depend on human knowledge and human reasoning capabilities, questions arise regarding the approaches which can be used to endow computers with these human-specific powers. The major research problem of the FGCS project is concerned with these questions. Attention is given to the study of four mechanisms for the inference machine, and the development of a knowledge base machine. 23 references.

Fortified by Japan's fifth generation computer project, many researchers are vigorously pursuing parallel processing projects. Much of this work is a result of the desire to apply artificial intelligence techniques in a real-time environment such as manufacturing. Parallel processing increases both processing speed and programmer productivity. True concurrency in parallel processing increases to execute multiple segments of a program simultaneously on different processors. In order for real-time manufacturing systems to use the memory intensive and relatively slow artificial intelligence languages, such as LISP or Prolog, they will have to utilize concurrent programming on parallel processors.

Speech recognition, which remained on the fringes of commercial interest for many years, came into prominence recently due to the support extended to this research area by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of theusa. More recently, this area of research has received added impetus due to the priority assigned to the development of fifth generation computers by Japan and several other countries of the world and the importance of speech input/output systems therein. India has a long tradition of good quality work in this area. In this paper, we present a brief overview of different aspects of automatic speech recognition research and present the state-of-the art in this area. We cover the world trends in this area of research, with special attention to work done in India.

Though somewhat handicapped by relatively late entry into the computer age, serious attempts are now being made by several Asian countries to take a more active role in the development and export of computer technology, long dominated by the United States and West European countries. Japan, for one, embarked on all-out efforts in the early 1980s to develop the powerful fifth generation computer; it ranks second in the world in the number of computers in use, and has accumulated considerable knowledge and knowhow in the design and use of computer-based Management Information Systems (MIS). This article presents findings from a study conducted in Japan and Hong Kong on the transferability of computer technology, specifically its behavioural aspect, across Oriental cultures.

A new problem-solving methodology, based on fifth generation computer programming languages, is presented for use in forestry or other technically-oriented fields. It is based on the integration of exposition, data, and computer programs into a single document that is processed by the computer to produce a report. With this methodology the report, a text file, provides a central focus for the problem-solving process as it happens rather than being a reconstruction after the fact. The methodology exploits the capability of a fifth generation language, the Nested Interactive Array Language (Nial), to interpret programs and expressions written in a form close to natural language. Nial's powerful general-purpose analysis capabilities facilitate better understanding of the solution process rather than obscuring it, and the ease with which new operations can be defined in a problem-oriented context allows the casual programmer access to powerful tools for solving new problems.

The FGCS programme has shown since its inception a gradual development through several stages of planning

In knowledge information processing, the structuring of knowledge and algorithms is one of the key issues. The goal of this work is to introduce the concepts and mechanisms of abstraction, modularization and parameterization into logic programming, which is one of the preliminary steps toward creating a kernel language for fifth generation computer systems.

It is well-known that one of the goals of research for the last two decades or so in pattern recognition and its sub-areas, such as processing, analysis and understanding of image, speech and natural language, and computer vision techniques etc., has always been to develop fundamental techniques for flexible interactive intelligent man-machine interfaces for computers. In this paper, the author tries to argue that for the evolution of fifth generation computer systems (FGCS) as defined by Japanese scientists, some of the things required are realisation and implementation of the advances in pattern recognition and its sub-areas, not only to achieve the man-machine interface with a natural mode of communication, but also for the realisation of the basic mechanisms of inference, association and learning, which are inherent both in pattern recognition and in the core functions of FGCS. The next generation computers will be knowledge-based systems, which form a subdomain of artificial intelligence (a1) techniques, and soa1 provides the essential link between pattern recognition domains and different application systems. No attempt is made to discuss other essential conceptual building blocks, such as software engineering, computer architecture and very large scale integration technology unless these become very relevant in the discussions of concerned topics of the paper. A section on limitations of perception, learning and knowledge for computing machines is also included.

This article presents an introduction to the fifth generation computer systems. Fifth generation computers are under development to meet the knowledge information processing needs for the advanced information-oriented society of the 1990s. This clearly requires overcoming the technical limitations of conventional computers. A fifth generation computer requires problem solving and inference functions for inference of solutions to problems from accumulated knowledge, knowledge base management functions for acquirement and retrieval of knowledge, intelligent interface functions for fluent conversations using natural language, drawings, images, etc., and intelligent programming functions for automatic conversion of problem specifications submitted in natural language, drawing etc., into efficient programs. Fifth generation computers with these functions will have far-reaching impact finding applications in all areas of industry and society. However, research and development (R&D) of these computers requires an extremely wide variety of leading-edge technology, and the risks are high. Accordingly, a long-term R&D plan was established for this project that extends over ten years with the initial stage lasting from 1982 to 1984, the intermediate stage from 1985 to 1988, and the final stage will begin in 1989 and the project will end in 1991.

The development of concurrent, fifth-generation computer architectures is discussed. The vital role of MIMD machines is established, and the main issues of concurrent architectures are considered. VLSI, communication, and task allocation are also examined. Finally, the non-Von-1 machine is described.

One of the goals of research for the last two decades or so in pattern recognition and its subareas (such as image processing, analysis and understanding, speech processing, analysis and understanding, natural-language processing and understanding, computer vision techniques, etc.) has been to develop fundamental techniques for flexible interactive intelligent man-machine interfaces for computers. The author argues that the evolution to the fifth-generation computer systems (FGCS), as defined by Japanese scientists, will require, among other things, advances in pattern recognition and its subareas, not only to achieve man-machine interfaces with a natural mode of communication, but also to implement the basic mechanisms of inference, association and learning, which are inherent in pattern recognition and therefore essential to the core functions of FGCS. The next-generation computers will be knowledge-based systems, which constitute a subdomain of artificial-intelligence (AI) techniques and so AI provides the essential link between the abovementioned pattern-recognition domains and different application systems. After introducing a natural and intrinsic link between the evolving subjects of AI and computer-vision research, particularly in the context of the next generation of computer-system research, the paper presents an overview of the framework of current image-understanding research from the points of view of knowledge level, information level, and complexity. Because a general-purpose computer-vision system must be capable of recognizing 3-D objects, the paper attempts to define the 3-D object-recognition problem and discusses basic concepts associated with this problem. The major application areas often are industrial vision systems and scene analysis in aerial photography. No attempt is made to discuss other essential conceptual building blocks, such as software engineering, computer architecture, and VLSI technology, unless these become especially relevant to the topics of the paper. There is a section on limitations of perception, learning and knowledge for computing machines.

“Fifth generation computers” are expected to capitalize on the dramatic progress of VLSI technology, in order to offer an improved performance/cost figure. An even more important requirement, however, is that they will support by architectural means the generation, execution, and maintenance of “quality software,” as a way out of the “software crisis.” One approach towards the design and implementation of quality software is programming with abstract data types, in connection with elaborate type consistency checking. The objection raised against the abstract data type based programming style is poor run time efficiency when such programs are executed on a conventional machine. In this paper adata type architecture is described that offers efficient and convenient mechanism for constructing arbitrary data structures and encapsulating them into abstract data types, thus avoiding the inefficiency penalty mentioned above. Through a process of hierarchical decomposition, user-defined abstract data types are mapped on representations given in terms of a basicstructured machine data type. This approach combines high performance with generality and completeness. The hardware structure of the data type architecture can be classified as a strongly coupled, asymmetric multicomputer system with hierarchical function distribution among the computers. The system includes a pipeline for numerical and nonnumerical operations, performed on the vector-structured basic machine data type in the SIMD mode of operation. Software reliability and data security is enhanced through elaborate run time consistency checking. The computer, which was designed and built at the Technical University of Berlin, has recently become operational. This paper outlines the operational principle, the mechanisms, and the hardware and software structure of this innovative, fifth generation computer architecture.

As part of Japan's effort to become a leader in the computer industry, the Institute for New Generation Computer Technology has launched a revolutionary ten-year plan for the development of large computer systems which will be applicable to knowledge information processing systems. These Fifth Generation computers will be built around the concepts of logic programming. In order to refute the accusation that Japan exploits knowledge from abroad without contributing any of its own, this project will stimulate original research and will make its results available to the international research community.

This paper examines the emerging relationship between the US and Japan with respect to artificial intelligence and the significant trend towards US-Japan cooperative AI research and development. This trend is underscored by the increasing investment by both nations to develop massive fifth generation computer technology. The importance of the US and Japan's relationship is amplified by these two nations being the world's largest high technology producers and trading partners. One must fully appreciate the future course of events as the two nations open up new markets, estimated at tens of billions of dollars in AI hardware, software and related services by the 1990s. AI has greater implications for collaboration versus ruthless competition, than in other markets, due to the uniqueness of opportunity AI offers the US and Japan for mutual growth. AI will offer unique ways for the US and Japan to grow closer with greater understanding of two otherwise extremely different social and economic systems. This does not diminish the importance of other countries growing closer through AI in this way, but rather demonstrates the greatest example of cooperation with the greatest total economic rewards.

In October 1981, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) sponsored a conference to announce a new national project. Alongside national projects in supercomputing and robotics, there would be an effort to develop a new generation (the fifth, by their reckoning) of computers.