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Journal Papers

Mark Moll and Daniela Rus. Special Issue on Self-Reconfiguring Modular Robots (Guest Editorial). Intl. J. of Robotics Research, 27(3/4):277–278, March/April 2008.
bib pdf publisher 
Mark Yim, Wei-Min Shen, Benham Salemi, Daniela Rus, Mark Moll, Hod Lipson, and Eric Klavins. Modular Self-reconfigurable Robot Systems: Challenges and Opportunities for the Future. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 14(1):43–52, March 2007.
bib pdf publisher abstract The field of modular self-reconfigurable robotic systems addresses the design, fabrication, motion planning, and control of autonomous kinematic machines with variable morphology. Beyond conventional actuation, sensing, and control typically found in fixed-morphology robots, self-reconfigurable robots are also able to deliberately change their own shape by rearranging the connectivity of their parts in order to adapt to new circumstances, perform new tasks, or recover from damage. Over the last two decades, this field has advanced from proof-of-concept systems to elaborate physical implementations and simulations. The goal of this article is to outline some of this progress and identify key challenges and opportunities that lay ahead.
Payel Das, Mark Moll, Hernan Stamati, Lydia E. Kavraki, and Cecilia Clementi. Low-dimensional, free-energy landscapes of protein-folding reactions by nonlinear dimensionality reduction. Proc. Natl. Acad. of Science USA, 103(26):9885–9890, June 2006.
bib pdf publisher abstract The definition of reaction coordinates for the characterization of a protein-folding reaction has long been a controversial issue, even for the “simple” case in which one single free-energy barrier separates the folded and unfolded ensemble. We propose a general approach to this problem to obtain a few collective coordinates by using nonlinear dimensionality reduction. We validate the usefulness of this method by characterizing the folding landscape associated with a coarse-grained protein model of src homology 3 as sampled by molecular dynamics simulations. The folding free-energy landscape projected on the few relevant coordinates emerging from the dimensionality reduction can correctly identify the transition-state ensemble of the reaction. The first embedding dimension efficiently captures the evolution of the folding process along the main folding route. These results clearly show that the proposed method can efficiently find a low-dimensional representation of a complex process such as protein folding.
Mark Moll and Lydia E. Kavraki. Path Planning for Deformable Linear Objects. IEEE Trans. on Robotics, 22(4):625–636, August 2006.
bib pdf publisher abstract We present a new approach to path planning for deformable linear (one-dimensional) objects such as flexible wires. We introduce a method for efficiently computing stable configurations of a wire subject to manipulation constraints. These configurations correspond to minimal-energy curves. By restricting the planner to minimal-energy curves, the execution of a path becomes easier. Our curve representation is adaptive in the sense that the number of parameters automatically varies with the complexity of the underlying curve. We introduce a planner that computes paths from one minimal-energy curve to another such that all intermediate curves are also minimal-energy curves. This planner can be used as a powerful local planner in a sampling-based roadmap method. This makes it possible to compute a roadmap of the entire “shape space,” which is not possible with previous approaches. Using a simplified model for obstacles, we can find minimal-energy curves of fixed length that pass through specified tangents at given control points. Our work has applications in cable routing, and motion planning for surgical suturing and snake-like robots.
Mark Moll and Michael A. Erdmann. Manipulation of Pose Distributions. Intl. J. of Robotics Research, 21(3):277–292, March 2002.
bib pdf publisher abstract For assembly tasks parts often have to be oriented before they can be put in an assembly. The results presented in this paper are a component of the automated design of parts orienting devices. The focus is on orienting parts with minimal sensing and manipulation. We present a new approach to parts orienting through the manipulation of pose distributions. Through dynamic simulation we can determine the pose distribution for an object being dropped from an arbitrary height on an arbitrary surface. By varying the drop height and the shape of the support surface we can find the initial conditions that will result in a pose distribution with minimal entropy. We are trying to uniquely orient a part with high probability just by varying the initial conditions. We will derive a condition on the pose and velocity of a simple planar object in contact with a sloped surface that will allow us to quickly determine the final resting configuration of the object. This condition can then be used to quickly compute the pose distribution. We also present simulation and experimental results that show how dynamic simulation can be used to find optimal shapes and drop heights for a given part.
Mark Moll, Ken Goldberg, Michael A. Erdmann, and Ron Fearing. Aligning Parts for Micro Assemblies. Assembly Automation, 22(1):46–54, February 2002.
bib pdf publisher abstract Orienting parts that measure only a few micrometers in diameter introduces several challenges that need not be considered at the macro-scale. First, there are several kinds of sticking effects due to Van der Waals forces and static electricity which complicate hand-off motions and release of a part. Second, the degrees of freedom of micro-manipulators are limited. This paper proposes a pair of manipulation primitives and a complete algorithm that addresses these challenges. We will show that a sequence of these two manipulation primitives can uniquely orient any asymmetric part while maintaining contact without sensing. This allows us to apply the same plan to many (identical) parts simultaneously. For asymmetric parts we can find a plan of length O(n) in O(n) time that orients the part, where n is the number of vertices.
Mark Moll and Risto Miikkulainen. Convergence-Zone Episodic Memory: Analysis and Simulations. Neural Networks, 10(6):1017–1036, 1997.
bib pdf publisher abstract Human episodic memory provides a seemingly unlimited storage for everyday experiences, and a retrieval system that allows us to access the experiences with partial activation of their components. The system is believed to consist of a fast, temporary storage in the hippocampus, and a slow, long-term storage within the neocortex. This paper presents a neural network model of the hippocampal episodic memory inspired by Damasio's idea of Convergence Zones. The model consists of a layer of perceptual feature maps and a binding layer. A perceptual feature pattern is coarse coded in the binding layer, and stored on the weights between layers. A partial activation of the stored features activates the binding pattern, which in turn reactivates the entire stored pattern. For many configurations of the model, a theoretical lower bound for the memory capacity can be derived, and it can be an order of magnitude or higher than the number of all units in the model, and several orders of magnitude higher than the number of binding-layer units. Computational simulations further indicate that the average capacity is an order of magnitude larger than the theoretical lower bound, and making the connectivity between layers sparser causes an even further increase in capacity. Simulations also show that if more descriptive binding patterns are used, the errors tend to be more plausible (patterns are confused with other similar patterns), with a slight cost in capacity. The convergence-zone episodic memory therefore accounts for the immediate storage and associative retrieval capability and large capacity of the hippocampal memory, and shows why the memory encoding areas can be much smaller than the perceptual maps, consist of rather coarse computational units, and be only sparsely connected to the perceptual maps.

Book Chapters

Mark Moll, David Schwarz, and Lydia E. Kavraki. Roadmap Methods for Protein Folding. In Mohammed Zaki and Chris Bystroff, editors, Protein Structure Prediction: Methods and Protocols, Methods In Molecular Biology, Humana Press, October 2007. Second edition.
bib pdf publisher abstract Protein folding refers to the process whereby a protein assumes its intricate three-dimensional shape. Different aspects of this problem have attracted much attention in the last decade. Both experimental and computational methods have been used to study protein folding and there has been considerable progress This chapter reviews a class of methods for studying protein folding called roadmap methods. These methods are relatively new and are still under active development. Roadmap methods are computational methods that have been developed to understand the process or the mechanism by which a protein folds or unfolds. It is typically assumed that the folded state is already known. Note that this is not a comprehensive survey of all existing computational protein folding methods. In particular, it does not cover Molecular Dynamics (MD) methods, Monte Carlo methods (MC), the use of coarse grain models in simulations and many others.
Mark Moll and Michael A. Erdmann. Reconstructing the Shape and Motion of Unknown Objects with Active Tactile Sensors. In Jean-Daniel Boissonnat, Joel Burdick, Ken Goldberg, and Seth Hutchinson, editors, Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics V, pp. 293–310, Springer Verlag, 2003.
bib pdf publisher abstract We present a method to simultaneously reconstruct the shape and motion of an unknown smooth convex object. The object is manipulated by planar palms covered with tactile elements. The shape and dynamics of the object can be expressed as a function of the sensor values and the motion of the palms. We present a brief review of previous results for the planar case. In this paper we show that the 3D case is fundamentally different from the planar case, due to increased tangent dimensionality. The main contribution of this paper is a shape-dynamics analysis in 3D, and the synthesis of shape approximation methods via reconstructed contact point curves.
Mark Moll and Michael A. Erdmann. Manipulation of Pose Distributions. In Bruce R. Donald, Kevin M. Lynch, and Daniela Rus, editors, Algorithmic and Computational Robotics: New Directions, pp. 127–141, A. K. Peters, 2001.
bib pdf publisher abstract For assembly tasks parts often have to be oriented before they can be put in an assembly. The results presented in this paper are a component of the automated design of parts orienting devices. The focus is on orienting parts with minimal sensing and manipulation. We present a new approach to parts orienting through the manipulation of pose distributions. Through dynamic simulation we can determine the pose distribution for an object being dropped from an arbitrary height on an arbitrary surface. By varying the drop height and the shape of the support surface we can find the initial conditions that will result in a pose distribution with minimal entropy. We are trying to uniquely orient a part with high probability just by varying the initial conditions. We will derive a condition on the pose and velocity of an object in contact with a sloped surface that will allow us to quickly determine the final resting configuration of the object. This condition can then be used to quickly compute the pose distribution. We also present simulation and experimental results that show how dynamic simulation can be used to find optimal shapes and drop heights for a given part.

Conference Papers

Mark Moll and Lydia E. Kavraki. Matching of Structural Motifs Using Hashing on Residue Labels and Geometric Filtering for Protein Function Prediction. In The Seventh Annual International Conference on Computational Systems Bioinformatics (CSB2008), 2008. To appear.
bib pdf abstract There is an increasing number of proteins with known structure but unknown function. Determining their function would have a significant impact on understanding diseases and designing new therapeutics. However, experimental protein function determination is expensive and very time-consuming. Computational methods can facilitate function determination by identifying proteins that have high structural and chemical similarity. Our focus is on methods that determine binding site similarity. Although several such methods exist, it still remains a challenging problem to quickly find all functionally-related matches for structural motifs in large data sets with high specificity. In this context, a structural motif is a set of 3D points annotated with physicochemical information that characterize a molecular function. We propose a new method called LabelHash that creates hash tables of $n$-tuples of residues for a set of targets. Using these hash tables, we can quickly look up partial matches to a motif and expand those matches to complete matches. We show that by applying only very mild geometric constraints we can find statistically significant matches with extremely high specificity in very large data sets and for very general structural motifs. We demonstrate that our method requires a reasonable amount of storage when employing a simple geometric filter and further improves on the specificity of our previous work while maintaining very high sensitivity. Our algorithm is evaluated on 20 homolog classes and a non-redundant version of the Protein Data Bank as our background data set. We use cluster analysis to analyze why certain classes of homologs are more difficult to classify than others. The LabelHash algorithm is implemented on a web server at http://kavrakilab.org/labelhash/.
Mark Moll, Peter Will, Maks Krivokon, and Wei-Min Shen. Distributed Control of the Center of Mass of a Modular Robot. In Proc. 2006 IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 4710–4715, Beijing, China, October 2006.
bib pdf publisher abstract We present a distributed controller for the center of mass of a modular robot. This is useful for locomotion of a modular robot over uneven and unknown terrain. By controlling the center of mass, a robot can prevent itself from falling over. We present a distributed and decentralized algorithm that computes the mass properties of the robot. Additionally, each module also computes the mass properties of the modules that are directly or indirectly connected to each of its connectors. With this information, each module can independently steer the center of mass towards a desired position by adjusting its joint positions. We present simulation results that show the feasibility of the approach.
Behnam Salemi, Mark Moll, and Wei-Min Shen. SUPERBOT: A Deployable, Multi-Functional, and Modular Self-Reconfigurable Robotic System. In Proc. 2006 IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 3636–3641, Beijing, China, October 2006.
bib pdf publisher abstract Self-reconfigurable robots are modular robots that can autonomously change their shape and size to meet specific operational demands. Recently, there has been a great interest in using self-reconfigurable robots in applications such as reconnaissance, rescue missions, and space applications. Designing and controlling self-reconfigurable robots is a difficult task. Hence, the research has primarily been focused on developing systems that can function in a controlled environment. This paper presents a novel self-reconfigurable robotic system called SuperBot, which addresses the challenges of building and controlling deployable self-reconfigurable robots. Six prototype modules have been built and preliminary experimental results demonstrate that SuperBot is a flexible and powerful system that can be used in challenging real-world applications.
Mark Moll and Lydia E. Kavraki. Path Planning for Variable Resolution Minimal-Energy Curves of Constant Length. In Proc. 2005 IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp. 2142–2147, 2005.
bib pdf publisher abstract We present a new approach to path planning for flexible wires. We introduce a method for computing stable configurations of a wire subject to manipulation constraints. These configurations correspond to minimal-energy curves. The representation is adaptive in the sense that the number of parameters automatically varies with the complexity of the underlying curve. We introduce a planner that computes paths from one minimal-energy curve to another such that all intermediate curves are also minimal-energy curves. Using a simplified model for obstacles, we can find minimal-energy curves of fixed length that pass through specified tangents at given control points. Our work has applications in motion planning for surgical suturing and snake-like robots.
Mark Moll and Lydia E. Kavraki. Path Planning for Minimal Energy Curves of Constant Length. In Proc. 2004 IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp. 2826–2831, 2004.
bib pdf publisher abstract In this paper we present a new path planning technique for a flexible wire. We first introduce a new parametrization designed to represent low-energy configurations. Based on this parametrization we can find curves that satisfy endpoint constraints. Next, we present three different techniques for minimizing energy within the self-motion manifold of the curve. We introduce a local planner to find smooth minimal energy deformations for these curves that can be used by a general path planning algorithm. Using a simplified model for obstacles, we can find minimal energy curves of fixed length that pass through specified tangents at given control points. Finally, we show that the parametrization introduced in this paper is a good approximation of true minimal energy curves. Our work has applications in surgical suturing and snake-like robots.
Mark Moll and Michael A. Erdmann. Dynamic Shape Reconstruction Using Tactile Sensors. In Proc. 2002 IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp. 1636–1641, 2002.
bib pdf publisher abstract We present new results on reconstruction of the shape and motion of an unknown object using tactile sensors without requiring object immobilization. A robot manipulates the object with two flat palms covered with tactile sensors. We model the full dynamics and prove local observability of the shape, motion and center of mass of the object based on the motion of the contact points as measured by the tactile sensors.
Mark Moll, Ken Goldberg, Michael A. Erdmann, and Ron Fearing. Orienting Micro-Scale Parts with Squeeze and Roll Primitives. In Proc. 2002 IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp. 1931–1936, 2002.
bib pdf publisher abstract Orienting parts that measure only a few micrometers in diameter introduces several challenges that need not be considered at the macro-scale. First, there are several kinds of sticking effects due to Van der Waals forces and static electricity which complicate hand-off motions and release of a part. Second, the degrees of freedom of micro-manipulators are limited. This paper proposes a pair of manipulation primitives and a complete algorithm that addresses these challenges. We will show that a sequence of these two manipulation primitives can uniquely orient any asymmetric part while maintaining contact without sensing. This allows us to apply the same plan to many (identical) parts simultaneously. For asymmetric parts we can find a plan of length O(n) in O(n) time that orients the part, where n is the number of vertices.
Mark Moll and Michael A. Erdmann. Reconstructing Shape from Motion Using Tactile Sensors. In Proc. 2001 IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 691–700, Maui, HI, October/November 2001.
bib pdf publisher abstract We present a new method to reconstruct the shape of an unknown object using tactile sensors without requiring object immobilization. Instead, the robot manipulates the object without prehension. The robot infers the shape, motion and center of mass of the object based on the motion of the contact points as measured by tactile sensors. Our analysis is supported by simulation and experimental results.
Mark Moll and Michael A. Erdmann. Uncertainty Reduction Using Dynamics. In Proc. 2000 IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp. 3673–3680, San Francisco, California, 2000.
bib pdf publisher abstract For assembly tasks parts often have to be oriented before they can be put in an assembly. The results presented in this paper are a component of the automated design of parts orienting devices. The focus is on orienting parts with minimal sensing and manipulation. We present a new approach to parts orienting through the manipulation of pose distributions. Through dynamic simulation we can determine the pose distribution for an object being dropped from an arbitrary height on an arbitrary surface. By varying the drop height and the shape of the support surface we can find the initial conditions that will result in a pose distribution with minimal entropy. We are trying to uniquely orient a part with high probability just by varying the initial conditions. We will derive a condition on the pose and velocity of an object in contact with a sloped surface that will allow us to quickly determine the final resting configuration of the object. This condition can then be used to quickly compute the pose distribution. We also show simulation and experimental results that confirm that our dynamic simulator can be used to find the true pose distribution of an object.
Hugo Ter Doest, Mark Moll, René Bos, Stan Van de Burgt, and Anton Nijholt. Language Engineering in Dialogue Systems. In Computers in Engineering Symposium, pp. 68–79, Houston, TX, 1996.
bib abstract The analysis of natural language in the context of keyboard-driven dialogue systems is the central issue addressed in this paper. A module that corrects typing errors, performs domain-specific morphological analysis is developed. A parser for typed unification grammars has been designed and implemented in C++; for description of the lexicon and the grammar a suitable specification language has been developed. It is argued that typed unification grammars and especially the newly developed specification language are convenient formalisms for describing natural language use in dialogue systems. Finally we present a dialogue manager that is based on a finite state automaton; transitions in the automaton depend upon availability of information in utterances of the user. In order to keep track of the history of the dialogue, a context stack is constructed during the dialogue. The manager is implemented in Prolog.
Rieks Op den Akker, Hugo Ter Doest, Mark Moll, and Anton Nijholt. Parsing in Dialogue Systems using Typed Feature Structures. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Parsing Technologies, Prague/Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, 1995.
bib pdf abstract The analysis of natural language in the context of keyboard-driven dialogue systems is the central issue addressed in this paper. A module that corrects typing errors, performs domain-specific morphological analysis is developed. A parser for typed unification grammars is designed and implemented in C++; for description of the lexicon and the grammer a specialised specification language is developed. It is argued that typed unification grammars and especially the newly developed specification language are convenient formalisms for describing natural language use in dialogue systems. Research on these issues is carried out in the context of the Schisma project, a research project in linguistic engineering; participants in Schisma are KPN Research and the University of Twente.
Mark Moll, Risto Miikkulainen, and Jonathan Abbey. The Capacity of Convergence-Zone Episodic Memory. In Proc. 12th Natl. Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-94), pp. 68–73, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994.
bib pdf publisher abstract Human episodic memory provides a seemingly unlimited storage for everyday experiences, and a retrieval system that allows us to access the experiences with partial activation of their components. This paper presents a neural network model of episodic memory inspired by Damasio's idea of Convergence Zones. The model consists of a layer of perceptual feature maps and a binding layer. A perceptual feature pattern is coarse coded in the binding layer, and stored on the weights between layers. A partial activation of the stored features activates the binding pattern which in turn reactivates the entire stored pattern. A worst-case analysis shows that with realistic-size layers, the memory capacity of the model is several times larger than the number of units in the model, and could account for the large capacity of human episodic memory.

Other

Wei-Min Shen, Behnam Salemi, Mark Moll, Chi Ho Chiu, Jacob Everist, Feili Hou, Nadeesha Ranasinghe, and Michael Rubenstein. Multifunctional Behaviors of Reconfigurable SuperBot Modules. In Proc. 2007 IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2007. (video)
bib 
Mark Moll, David Schwarz, Allison Heath, and Lydia E. Kavraki. On Flexible Docking Using Expansive Search. Technical Report 04-443, Rice University, 2004.
bib pdf abstract The activity of most drugs is regulated by the binding of one molecule (the ligand) to a pocket of another, usually larger, molecule, which is commonly a protein. This report describes a new approach to creating low-energy structures of flexible proteins to which ligands can be docked. The flexibility of molecules is encoded with thousands of parameters making the search for valid complexes a formidable problem. Our method takes into account the flexibility of the protein as this can be encoded by its major modes of motion. The output of the program consists of low-energy protein conformations that can then be docked with a ligand using a traditional docking program. We employ a robotics-based approach for exploring the conformational space of the protein. Our long term goal is to develop an efficient, accurate, and automated algorithm that will be used to screen large databases of molecules for novel therapeutics.
Mark Moll. Shape Reconstruction Using Active Tactile Sensors. Ph.D. Thesis, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 2002.
bib pdf abstract We present a new method to reconstruct the shape of an unknown object using tactile sensors, without requiring object immobilization. Instead, sensing and nonprehensile manipulation occur simultaneously. The robot infers the shape, motion and center of mass of the object based on the motion of the contact points as measured by the tactile sensors. This allows for a natural, continuous interaction between manipulation and sensing. We analyze the planar case first by assuming quasistatic dynamics, and present simulation results and experimental results obtained using this analysis. We extend this analysis to the full dynamics and prove observability of the nonlinear system describing the shape and motion of the object being manipulated. In our simulations, a simple observer based on Newton's method for root finding performs really well. Using the same framework we can also describe the shape and dynamics of three-dimensional objects. However, there are some fundamental differences between the planar and three-dimensional case, due to increased tangent dimensionality. Also, perfect global shape reconstruction is impossible in the 3D case, but it is almost trivial to obtain upper and lower bounds on the shape. The 3D shape reconstruction method has also been implemented and we present some simulation results.
Mark Moll and Michael A. Erdmann. Shape Reconstruction in a Planar Dynamic Environment. Technical Report CMU-CS-01-107, Dept. of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, 2001.
bib pdf abstract We present a a new method to reconstruct the shape of an unknown object using tactile sensors, without requiring object immobilization. Instead, sensing and nonprehensile manipulation occur simultaneously. The robot infers the shape, motion and center of mass of the object based on the motion of the contact points as measured by the tactile sensors. We present analytic results and simulation results assuming quasistatic dynamics. We prove that the shape and motion are observable in both the quasistatic and the fully dynamic case.
Mark Moll. Mapping Science: Methods and Tools for the Automatic Creation of Semantic Maps of Large Corpora. Report CWTS 96-06, Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), 1996. Research report to the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), Foundation for Economic and Socio-Cultural Sciences (ESR)
bib 
Hugo Ter Doest, Mark Moll, René Bos, Stan Van de Burgt, and Anton Nijholt. Language Engineering in Dialogue Systems. Memoranda Informatica 96-2, Department of Computer Science, University of Twente, 1996.
bib pdf abstract The analysis of natural language in the context of keyboard-driven dialogue systems is the central issue addressed in this paper. A module that corrects typing errors, performs domain-specific morphological analysis is developed. A parser for typed unification grammars has been designed and implemented in C++; for description of the lexicon and the grammar a suitable specification language has been developed. It is argued that typed unification grammars and especially the newly developed specification language are convenient formalisms for describing natural language use in dialogue systems. Finally we present a dialogue manager that is based on a finite state automaton; transitions in the automaton depend upon availability of information in utterances of the user. In order to keep track of the history of the dialogue, a context stack is constructed during the dialogue. The manager is implemented in Prolog.
Mark Moll. Head-corner Parsing Using Typed Feature Structures. Master's Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Twente,1995.
bib pdf abstract In this report a description will be given of how typed feature structures can be specified. A specification language will be presented for the specification of types, words and grammar rules. An unification algorithm for typed feature structures as well as an algorithm to compute the least upper bound relation for a type lattice will be given. Finally, a head-corner parsing schema for typed feature structures will be presented.
Rieks Op den Akker, Hugo Ter Doest, Mark Moll, and Anton Nijholt. Parsing in Dialogue Systems using Typed Feature Structures. Memoranda Informatica 95-25, Department of Computer Science, University of Twente, 1995.
bib pdf abstract The analysis of natural language in the context of keyboard-driven dialogue systems is the central issue addressed in this paper. A module that corrects typing errors and performs domain-specific morphological analysis has been developed. A parser for typed unification grammars is designed and implemented in C++; for description of the lexicon and the grammer a specialised specification language has been developed. It is argued that typed unification grammars and especially the newly developed specification language are convenient formalisms for describing natural language use in dialogue systems. Research on these issues is carried out in the context of the Schisma project, a research project of the Parlevink group in linguistic engineering; participants in Schisma are KPN Research and the University of Twente. The aims of the Schisma project are twofold: both the accumulation of knowledge in the field of computational linguistics and the development of a natural language interfaced theatre information and booking system is envisaged. The Schisma project serves as a testbed for the development of the various language analysis modules necessary for dialogue systems.
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