Patrick Doherty

Timeline

1. 1991

   A Linköping doctorate

   He completes a Ph.D. at Linköping University in 1991 with the dissertation "NML3 - A Nonmonotonic Formalism with Explicit Defaults", advised by Erik Johan Sandewall.

2. 1997–2005

   Leading the WITAS project

   From 1997 to 2005, he is project leader of the WITAS UAV project, a long-term university project funded by the Wallenberg Foundation with over 20 researchers from different disciplines. One result is a fully deployed VTOL system that operates autonomously in urban areas.

3. 2001

   TALplanner and a planning award

   In 2001, he and Jonas Kvarnström publish an AI Magazine overview of TALplanner, a forward-chaining planner that uses domain-dependent control knowledge written in temporal logic. The planner is the winner of the Outstanding Performance Award in the Domain-Dependent Planning Competition at the Fifth International Artificial Intelligence Planning and Scheduling Conference.

4. 2004

   UASTech Lab and a KR keynote

   The Autonomous Unmanned Aircraft Systems Technologies Lab forms in January 2004 and grows out of the WITAS project. In 2004, he gives a keynote at the KR conference on knowledge representation techniques and the software architecture of Linköping's Yamaha RMAX helicopter platform.

5. 2006

   Named an ECCAI Fellow

   ECCAI, the European AI association now called EurAI, selects him as a Fellow in 2006, in a class with Sebastian Thrun, Malik Ghallab and Tom Eiter.

6. 2008–2010

   On the ECCAI board

   He joins the ECCAI board as a new member in 2008, and he continues as a board member in 2010.

7. 2017

   RED-UAS keynote on delegation

   In 2017, he is an invited keynote speaker at the RED-UAS drone conference in Linköping. He shows how AI lets robots and humans delegate tasks to each other, including an RMAX helicopter that maps an Alpine area in the European Sherpa project, in which his group takes part.

8. As of October 2026

   Heading AI at Linköping

   He is a professor at Linköping University and leads the Artificial Intelligence and Integrated Computer Systems Division in the Department of Computer and Information Science. His main areas of interest are knowledge representation, automated planning and intelligent autonomous systems, with unmanned aircraft in emergency rescue as a major application. He is also CEO of the start-up UAS Technologies Sweden AB, which focuses on AI, autonomy and UAV technologies.