PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Philip Klahr

Philip Klahr’s early AI work applied knowledge engineering to simulation. His 1980 paper with William Faught described ROSS, which encoded expert decision rules for military air battles and supported inspection and explanation of simulated events. In 1982, Klahr, David McArthur and Sanjai Narain described the SWIRL air battle simulator. Its object-oriented design connected actors, messages and behaviors, with tools for tracing simulation runs. Klahr also contributed to TWIRL, a ground combat simulation documented in a 1984 report cited by his later paper. In 1986, he and Donald Waterman reviewed RAND’s AI research; Klahr’s affiliation was Inference Corporation.

Works
51
Citations
862
h-index
13

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1980

    Expert rules inside a simulator

    Klahr and William Faught published Knowledge-Based Simulation at AAAI in 1980. They described implementing ROSS for military air battles, with decision-making behaviors obtained from experts and encoded as object-oriented rules. Users could inspect knowledge and explanations at different levels of abstraction.

  2. 1982

    SWIRL and interacting objects

    Klahr, David McArthur and Sanjai Narain described SWIRL at AAAI in 1982. The system used ROSS to model interacting air battle objects. Its graphics, browsing and history tools helped users examine runs and change strategies. The original paper discusses design limits as well as capabilities.

  3. 1984

    From air battles to ground combat

    Klahr’s 1986 coauthored article cites the 1984 TWIRL report by Klahr and collaborators. It describes a ground combat simulation built in ROSS, with troop deployment, artillery, air interdiction and communications. The TWIRL simulator was a research prototype.

  4. 1986

    RAND’s AI research

    Klahr and Donald Waterman published Artificial Intelligence: A Rand Perspective in June 1986. It explains RAND’s expert system and simulation work and names Klahr as the leader of the simulation research group. He was affiliated with Inference Corporation and had earlier worked at RAND.

Sources and credits

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  1. Knowledge-Based Simulation — Klahr and Faught, AAAI 1980 cdn.aaai.org. Checked 13 October 2026.
  2. SWIRL: An Object-Oriented Air Battle Simulator — Klahr, McArthur and Narain, AAAI 1982 cdn.aaai.org. Checked 13 October 2026.
  3. Artificial Intelligence: A Rand Perspective — Klahr and Waterman, AI Magazine 1986, original PDF ojs.aaai.org. Checked 13 October 2026.
  4. Artificial Intelligence: A Rand Perspective — AI Magazine publication record ojs.aaai.org. Checked 13 October 2026.