AI Space Odyssey

Dramatic advances have been made in intelligent systems from 1980 to 2010. The Web has created an environment in which some of the basic problems identified in the 1970s are emerging in new, often more concrete and practical forms. Correspondingly, the opportunities for space exploration to benefit from intelligent systems are evolving in unexpected directions, but with certain invariants in regard to knowledge representation and process modeling. This special issue covers semantic technologies, including natural language processing, sophisticated on-board fault management, human-robotic interaction, and agent-based simulation architectures.