Artificial Intelligence offers many possibilities for developing data processing systems that are more precise and robust. That is one of the main conclusions drawn from an international encounter of experts in this scientific area, recently held at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M).

In the course of the meeting, speakers tackled issues ranging from the more theoretical such as algorithms capable of solving combinatorial problems to robots that can reason about emotions, systems that use vision to monitor activities, and automated players that learn how to win in a given situation.

One group of participants from the AVIRES (The Artificial Vision and Real Time Systems) research group at the University of Udine gave a seminar on the introduction of data fusion techniques and distributed artificial vision, a field with potential applications within networked robotics and intelligent systems. In particular, AVIRES group dealt with automated surveillance systems linked to visual sensor networks, from basic techniques for image processing and object recognition to Bayesian reasoning for understanding activities and automated learning and data fusion to make high performance system.

The seminar also included a talk on the promising future of AI. AI will allow advances in the development of systems capable of automatically understanding a situation and its context with the use of sensor data and information systems as well as establishing plans of action, from support applications to decision making within dynamic situations. According to the researchers, this is due to the rapid advances and the availability of sensor technology which provides a continuous flow of data about the environment, information that must be dealt with appropriately in a node of data fusion and information. Likewise, the development of sophisticated techniques for task planning allow plans of action to be composed, executed, checked for correct execution, and rectified in case of some failure, and finally to learn from mistakes made.

This technology has allowed a wide range of applications such as integrated systems for surveillance, monitoring and detecting anomalies, activity recognition, tele-assistence systems, transport logistic planning, etc.

Notably, more and more emphasis is being placed on developing systems capable of learning and demonstrating intelligent behavior without being tied to replicating a human model.

According to Antonio Chella, Full Professor at the University of Palermo and expert in Artificial Consciousness, the future of AI will imply discovering a new meaning of the word "intelligence." Until now, it has been equated with automated reasoning in software systems, but in the future AI will tackle more daring concepts such as the incarnation of intelligence in robots, as well as emotions, and above all consciousness.