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<Paper uid="H86-1006">
  <Title>Text Generation for Strategic Computing</Title>
  <Section position="1" start_page="0" end_page="37" type="abstr">
    <SectionTitle>
1 Objectives
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The US military is an information-rich, computer intensive organization. It needs to have easy, understandable access to a wide variety of information. Currently, information is often in obscure computer notations that are only understood after extensive training and practice. Although easy discourse between users and machines is an important objective for any situation, this issue is particularly critical in regards to automated decision aids such as expert system based battle management systems that have to carry on a dialog with a force commander. A commander cain not afford to miss important information, nor is it reasonable to expect force commanders to undergo highly specialized training to understand obscure computer dialects which differ from machine to machine.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The great deal of work that has been done in the area of natural language understanding is starting to pay off with the delivery of functional interfaces that interact naturally with the user. Comparatively little, however, has been done in the area of natural language generation. Currently. there is no effective technology for expressing complex computer notations in ordinary English. If there were.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> computer-based military information could be made more accessible and understandable in a manner less subject to personnel changes.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> The Text Generation for Strategic Computing project is creating and demonstrating new technology to provide an English-in, English-out interface to computer data to be embodied in a system called Janus. ISI is developing the English-out (text generation) portion of this overall system, a module named Penman. It's initial capability will be demonstrated on a naval database, but most of the techniques are more .general and will be able to be reapplied to other military problems. The end result will be an exciting new capability for the military that produces answers to queries and commands in the form of text that is understandable to any user who understands English.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> This project was put in place at the beginning of FY85 in order to develop the first natural language generation capability robust and capable enough to be used in DARPA's Strategic Computing Program. It is intended that this interface be coupled to the battle management system being developed under DARPA's Fleet Command Center Battle Management Program(FCCBMP). In the first 1.5 years of the effort, we were able to demonstrate the first generation system to produce English from output demands in formal mathematical logic using a broad coverage grammar and an artificial intelligence knowledge base. We have developed the basic technology that will permit the realization of a full text generation system. In the next phase of the work, we will extend text generation from sentences to paragraphs, increase the power of the grammar, dictionary, and planner, expand the knowledge base to cover more fully the battle management problem, optimize  and increase the robustness of the software, and tune the resulting system to the Navy problem.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> Finally, we will deliver our generation system to BBN, Inc, who will combine it with an understanding system for delivery to DARPA and subsequent integration with FCCBMP.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> This report details our approach, Penman's current status, and our plans for future work.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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