Nils Nilsson

American computer scientist at SRI International (then the Stanford Research Institute) and later Stanford University, a pioneer of search and robot planning. His 'Learning Machines' (1965) was an early text on trainable pattern classifiers. At SRI he co-led Shakey the robotShakey the robot, prop. n.: A wheeled robot built at a California research institute between 1966 and 1972 that could look around, make a plan and carry it out: the first mobile robot to work out its own steps toward a goal. (1966–1972), the first mobile robot that planned its own moves by logical reasoning, for which he, Peter Hart and Bertram Raphael devised A* searchA* search, n.: A method for finding the shortest route on a map or network that weighs both how far you have already come and a smart guess of how far is left, so it tries the most promising paths first. (1968) and he and Richard Fikes created the STRIPSSTRIPS, prop. n.: An early AI planning program, and the simple action language it introduced, in which each action lists what must be true beforehand, what becomes true and what stops being true. planner (1971), whose description of actions by preconditions and effects remains the basis of automated planningautomated planning, n.: The branch of AI that works out a sequence of actions to reach a goal, such as the steps a robot must take to assemble a part, from descriptions of what each action needs and what it changes.. His textbooks 'Principles of Artificial Intelligence' (1980) and 'Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis' (1998) trained generations of students, and 'The Quest for Artificial Intelligence' (2009) is a standard history of the field. He chaired Stanford's computer science department (1985–1990) and was president of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (1982–83).