Peter Friedland
Peter Friedland worked on knowledge-based experiment design in Stanford’s MOLGEN project. Friedland completed his PhD in 1979 and stayed at Stanford as a senior research associate. His planning method refined abstract skeletal plans using a knowledge base of laboratory operations. With Yumi Iwasaki, he described SPEX in 1982, combining that method with Mark Stefik’s layered planning control. Friedland joined NASA in January 1987. He later described NASA research on shuttle processing schedules and expert support for experiments.
Timeline
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1979
Expert knowledge for molecular experiments
Friedland earned a Stanford PhD in 1979 and continued his MOLGEN work as a senior research associate. His experiment planning method used expert knowledge to refine abstract sequences of steps into laboratory operations suited to a particular goal.
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1982
SPEX combines two planning ideas
Yumi Iwasaki and Friedland published SPEX in the 1982 AAAI proceedings. The system combined skeletal-plan refinement with Mark Stefik’s layered control structure. Its frame-based knowledge representation also recorded the planning process and changes in the experimental world.
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January 1987
Applied AI at NASA Ames
Friedland began work at NASA in January 1987. He directed the Ames AI laboratory and helped lead an agency research effort. His NASA work included basic research and applications in planning, robotics and classification.
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NASA research
Scheduling and expert support for experiments
Friedland credited Monte Zweben with constraint-based scheduling for shuttle orbiter processing. PI-in-a-Box captured scientist expertise to support experiments in flight. These were team projects within the NASA research program.
Sources and credits
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