The Foundation for Knowledge Based Systems (SKBS) continued their policy of awarding the SKBS prize to the best demonstration of the Demo-session of the BNAIC 2019.

The 2019 referee committee consisted of Arnoud Visser (UvA), Bart Verheij (University of Groningen), Celine Vens (KU Leuven-campus Kortrijk), Robin Manhaeve (KU Leuven), Guillaume Derval (UC Louvain).

The referee committee had to consider ten submissions which were eligible for the SKBS prize. In Table 1 we list them by topic (in the order of their publication in the Conference Program BNAIC 2019).

Denis Steckelmacher, Hélène Plisnier and Ann Nowé A Motorized Wheelchair that Learns to Make its Way through a Crowd
Youri Coppens, Eugenio Bargiacchi and Ann Nowé A Virtual Maze Game to Explain Reinforcement Learning
Pierre Carbonnelle, Bram Aerts, Marjolein Deryck, Joost Vennekens and Marc Denecker An Interactive Consultant
Tom Vander Aa, Tom Ashby and Roel Wuyts Virtual Screening on FPGA
Willem Röpke, Roxana Radulescu, Kyriakos Efthymiadis and Ann Nowe DuStt – a Speech-to-Text Engine for Dutch
Habib-Ur-Rehman Khalid, Sofie Pollin, Thomas Gielen, Hans Cappelle, Miguel Glassee, Andre Bourdoux and Hichem Sahli Gesture Recognition with an FMCW Radar
Jessica Coto Palacio, Yailen Martínez Jiménez and Ann Nowe Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Tool for Job Shop Scheduling Problems
Jens Nevens, Paul Van Eecke and Katrien Beuls Interactive Learning of Grounded Concepts
Selma Yilmazyildiz Kayaarma, Sherik Lehal and Hichem Sahli Politeness Detection in Speech for Human-Computer Interaction
Jens Claes, Bart Bogaerts, Rocsildes Canoy, Emilio Gamba and Tias Guns ZebraTutor: Explaining How to Solve Logic Grid Puzzles (Demo)

Table 1: The 2019 candidates of the SKBS prize.

In 2019, ten submissions were exhibited in the “Halle aux Fûts” (Ateliers des Tanneurs) for the SKBS prize. All demos were of a high quality, but varying in type, ranging from educational demonstrations that were aimed at explaining AI techniques to the general public, through hardware-oriented demonstrations, to AI research demonstrations covering a multitude of AI methodologies and techniques. The jury (referee committee) was given the task to take the following items into consideration by scoring them between 1 and 5: (a) relation to AI, (b) originality, (c) applicability (or is it already a (full-fledged) application?), (d) does it contribute to the further development of AI?, (e) the generalisability to other AI applications/domains, and (f) the contribution to Society (Valorisation).

All in all, the referee committee had a difficult task. There were three demonstrations that stood out for the five jury members. We then calculated the average scores they gave to all demonstrations, and indeed the same three demonstrations made up the top 3 in the overall ranking. The final scores were very close to each other.

The first prize was assigned to Dennis Steckelmacher, Hélène Plisnier and Ann Nowé for the demo A Motorized Wheelchair that Learns to Make its Way through a Crowd.

The prize is €500,- and has been awarded to the Reinforcement Learning team of the AI Lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

In Table 2 we provide an overview of the winners of the SKBS prize so far.

1999 Maastricht

M. van Wezel, J. Sprenger, R. van Stee, and H. La Poutré

Neural Vision 2.0 – Exploratory Data Analysis with Neural Networks
2000 Kaatsheuvel (shared prize)

E. Zopfi

HKT

G. Schram

LubeSelect
2001 Amsterdam

Alexander Ypma, Rob Kleiman, Jan Valk, and Bob Duin

MINISOM – A System for Machine Health Monitoring with Neural Networks
2002 Leuven

F. Brazier, D. Mobach, and B. Overeinder

AgentScape Demonstration
2003 Nijmegen

Bert Kappen, Wim Wiegerinck, Ender Akay, Marcel Nijman, Jan Neijt, and André van Beek

Promedas: A Diagnostic Decision Support System
2004 Groningen

Wouter Teepe

The Secret Prover: Proving Possession of Arbitrary Files While not Giving Them Away
2005 Brussels

Gerald de Jong

Fluidiom: The Evolution of Locomotion
2006 Namur

Marion Verduijn, Niels Peek, Peter Rosseel, Evert de Jonge, and Bas de Mol

Procarsur: A System for Prognostic Reasoning in Cardiac Surgery
2007 Utrecht

Tim Harbers, Rob van der Veen, Marten den Uyl

Sentient Demonstration BNAIC 07: Vicavision
2008 Enschede (shared prize)

Joris Maervoet, Patrick De Causmaecker, and Greet Vanden Berghe

A Generic Rule Miner for Geographic Data

and

Dennis Reidsma and Anton Nijholt

Temporal Interaction between an Artificial Orchestra Conductor and Human Musicians

2009 Eindhoven

Tom van Bergen, Maarten Brugmans, Bart Dohmen and Niels Molenaar

Cobes: The clean, safe and hospitable metro
2010 Luxembourg

Willem Burgers, Wim Wiegerinck, and Bert Kappen

Disaster Victim Identification System
2011 Ghent

Wim Vancroonenburg, Jannes Verstichel, Greet Vanden Berghe, and Wouter Souffriau

Efficient aircraft loading: a mixed integer programming approach for the aircraft weight and balance problem
2012 Maastricht

Michel Klein, Nataliya Mogles, and Arlette van Wissen

Demonstration of eMate – Stimulating Behaviour Change via Mobile Phone
2013 Delft

Sjriek Alers, Daniel Claes, Joscha Fossel, Daniel Hennes, and Karl Tuyls

Applied Robotics: Precision Placement in RoboCup@Work
2014 Nijmegen

Steffen Michels, Marina Velikova, Bas Huijbrechts, Peter Novak, Jesper Hoeksma, Roeland Scheepens, Jan Laarhuis, and André Bonhof

Enhancing Operational Work in Maritime Safety-and-Security Tasks. 

2015 Hasselt

Wiebe van Ranst and Joost Vennekes

Ultra-low-latency Endoscopic Image Stabilisation
2016 Amsterdam

Caitlin Lagrand, Patrick M. de Kok, Sébastien Negrijn, Michiel van der Meer and Arnoud Visser

Autonomous robot soccer matches
2017 Groningen
Dennis Steckelmacher, Hélène Plisnier, Diederik M. Roijers and Ann Nowé
Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for a Robotic Partially Observable Task


Table 2: Overview of SKBS prizes.