Oral history interview with Nils J. Nilsson

Abstract

Nilsson begins the interview with a brief historical overview of DARPA-sponsored AI research at SRI, including his own work in robotics, research on the Computer Based Consultant, and related research on natural language and speech understanding. He notes the impact of the Mansfield amendment on DARPA funding for these projects at SRI.

The major portion of the interview is concerned specifically with his work in robotics during the period 1966-1971. He describes the significance and relationship of this work to the larger field of AI, particularly the intellectual problems it addressed and the enabling technologies it helped develop.

In the last section of the interview he gives a general impression of changes over time (from the early 1960s to the early 1970s) in funding trends and research emphases at DARPA. He concludes with a short list of contributions to AI research that came out of DARPA-sponsored work during this period.