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<Paper uid="H86-1007">
  <Title>Out of the Laboratory: A Case Study with the IRUS Natural Language Interface I</Title>
  <Section position="2" start_page="44" end_page="45" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
1 Introduction
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    <Section position="1" start_page="44" end_page="45" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
DARPA's Strategic Computing Program in the application area of Navy Battle
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> Management has provided us several challenges and opportunities in natural language processing research and development. At the beginning of the effort, a set of domain-independent software components, developed through fundamental research efforts dating back as much as seven years, existed. The IRUS software \[1\] consists of two subsystems: one for linguistic processing and one for adding specifics of the back end. The first subsystem is linguistic in nature, while the second subsystem is not.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> Linguistic processing includes morphological, syntactic, semantic, and discourse analysis to generate a formula in logic corresponding to the meaning of an English input. The linguistic subsystem is application-independent and also independent of data base interfaces. (This is achieved by factoring all application specifics into the back end processor or into knowledge bases such as dictionary entries and case frame rules, that are domain-specific.) The non-linguistic components convert the logical form to the code necessary for a given underlying system, such as a relational data base.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> The IRUS system, or its components, had been used extensively in the laboratory, not just at BBN, but also in research projects at USC/Information Sciences Institute, the University of Delaware, GTE Research, and General Motors Research. However, it had not been exercised thoroughly outside of a research environment.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> Our goals in participating in the Strategic Computing Program are manifold: o To test the collection of state-of-the-art heuristics for natural language processing with a user community trying to solve their problems on a daffy basis.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> o To test the heuristics on a broad, extensive domain.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5"> o To incorporate research ideas (which are often developed in relative isolation in the laboratory) into a complete system so that effective evaluation and refinement can occur.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="6"> o To continue the feedback loop of incorporating new research ideas, testing them in a complete system with real users, evaluating the results, and refining the research accordingly on a repeated basis for several years.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="7"> There are several accomplishments in the first year and a half of this work.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="8"> First, the IRUS software has been delivered to the Naval Ocean Systems Center (NOSC) so that their team may encode the dictionary information, case frame rules, and transformation rules for generating queries appropriate for the underlying systems. The NOSC staff involves a linguist plus individuals trained in computer science, but  does not involve experts in natural language processing nor in artificial intelligence. Second, the natural language interface software has been delivered to Texas Instruments (TI), which has integrated it into the Force Requirements Expert System (FRESH). Demonstrations of the natural language interface are being given at several conferences this year as well as to the navy personnel at the Pacific Fleet Command Center. Testing and evaluation of IRUS, both its software and the knowledge bases defined by NOSC for the FCCBMP, will be carried out in the spring of 1956, by the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="9"> In this section and section two we present evidence that this is one of the most ambitious applications and tests of natural language processing ever attempted.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="10"> Section two provides more background regarding the technical challenges inherent in the application environment and in the goals of the Strategic Computing Program. Section three describes what was changed in each system component to support the technology transfer. Section four presents and illustrates the principles that have been underscored in moving this substantial AI system from the laboratory to use; while some principles may appear like common sense, reporting on all the experience should be valuable to future efforts. Section five briefly discusses possible future directions, while section six states our conclusions.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
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