Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
The VUB AI-Lab, or the AI Laboratory at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, is part of the school’s Computer Science Department and was established by Professor Dr. Luc Steels in 1983. During his time, the lab worked with hundreds of researchers building several artificial systems to study aspects of intelligence, knowledge systems, autonomous robots, machine learning systems, natural language processing components, and design and implementation tools, among other things.
Currently, the lab is comprised of two main research groups - the Robotics and Language Evolution Group and the Computational Modeling Group. The former is responsible for studying the evolution of language and grounded communication systems. Several core technologies such as the FCG, or Fluid Construction Grammar, and Babel2 were developed under this group.
The latter was the result of a merger between the Lab and the Computational Modeling Lab, or COMO, spear-headed by Professor Dr. Ann Nowe and Professor Dr. Bernard Manderick, and is geared towards the research of multi-agent reinforcement learning, data mining, and computational biology. With the Computational Modeling Group, researchers managed to apply machine learning methods to a wide range of application domains such as telecom, medicine, supply chain management, and the likes.
Among the projects they have undertaken are the personalized products emerging from Tailored User Adapting Logic, whose goal is to develop and create methods and algorithms that achieve automatic, user-oriented functional demand profiling in support of developing product service performance, while using little resources through boosted efficiency as a result of well-optimized manipulation policies for a wide range of applications.
Several other projects such as multi-agent reinforcement learning of coordination and problem structures, the Learning Control for Product Machines (Lecopro), the INSLICO, and the Language Games have all helped the lab accomplish its vision and mission. Older projects that were shelved are also being studied for enhancement and future usage.
