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{{Short description|Scottish artificial intelligence laboratory}}{{About|the institute based in Glasgow 1983–1994|the initiative announced in the 2014 UK budget|Alan Turing Institute|the impact initiative at the University of Cambridge|Turing Gateway to Mathematics}}{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2017}}{{Use British English|date=August 2017}}

factoids

The Turing Institute was an artificial intelligence laboratory in Glasgow, Scotland, between 1983 and 1994. The company undertook basic and applied research, working directly with large companies across Europe, the United States and Japan developing software as well as providing training, consultancy and information services.BOOK, Lamb, John, Making Friends with Intelligence,weblink The New Scientist, 10 December 2013, August 1985, Google Books,

Formation

(File:Turing Institute Board Meeting 1984.jpg|thumb|Turing Institute Board Meeting 1984. Left to right: Peter Mowforth, Tim Niblett, Lord Balfour, Donald Michie, Jim Alty.)The Institute was formed in June 1983 by Donald Michie, Peter Mowforth and Tim Niblett. It was named after Alan Turing with whom Donald Michie had worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.The organisation grew out of the Machine Intelligence Research Unit at Edinburgh UniversityWEB, Howe, Jim, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AT EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY: A PERSPECTIVE,weblink 4 December 2013, with a plan to combine research in artificial intelligence with technology transfer to industry. In 1983, Sir Graham Hills was instrumental in the institute moving to Glasgow where, with support from the Scottish Development Agency, it formed a close working relationship with Strathclyde University.WEB, The Turing Institute,weblink 10 December 2013, Lord Balfour of Burleigh{{clarify|date=May 2019}} (chairman) and Shirley Williams joined the board along with a growing team of researchers and AI specialists. Notable amongst these was Stephen Muggleton who was responsible for work developing inductive logic programming.Professor Jim AltyWEB, Professor Jim Alty,weblink Debretts, 20 December 2013, moved his Man Machine Interaction (HCI) group (later the Scottish HCI Centre) to the Turing Institute in 1984. The move included a significant expansion of the postgraduate school at the institute. Alty joined the Turing Institute Board and became chief executive. The HCI Centre and the institute collaborated on a wide range of projects.

Training and resource centre

(File:Turing Institute Library.jpg|thumb|The Turing Institute Library with chief librarian Julia Wilkinson and Colin Lindsay)In 1984, following the UK Government Alvey Report on AI, the institute became an Alvey Journeyman centreJOURNAL, Cooperation creates products for profit, New Scientist, 2 July 1987, 47,weblink 5 December 2013, Oakley, Brian, Google Books, for the UK. Under the guidance of Judith Richards, companies such as IBM (see: John Roycroft), Burroughs, British Airways, Shell and UnileverBOOK, McKee, Sean, Mathematical Methods for Industrial Problems,weblink 11 December 2013, 70, 978-90-6764-122-7, 1990, Google Books, seconded researchers to develop new industrial AI applications.NEWS, World First for Scotland in Computer Intelligence,weblink Glasgow Herald, 10 December 2013, 8 May 1984, Google News, - WEB, LinkedIn, Peter Butcher,weblink 10 December 2013, The Turing Institute Library was formed in 1983 and grew by selling access by subscription to its information services.JOURNAL, Wilkinson, Julia, Database in Artificial Intelligence, Online Information Review, 1986, 10, 5, 307–315, 10.1108/eb024224, The library developed a large searchable electronic database of content from most of the main AI research and development centres around the world. Library affiliates logged into the system by dial-up and received weekly summaries of newly added items that could be ordered or downloaded as abstracts.NEWS, Watson, Ian, New AI Information Service,weblink Computer-Aided Engineering Journal, August 1989, The publisher Addison-Wesley developed a close working relationship and published the Turing Institute Press series of books.BOOK, Tyugu, Enn, Knowledge Based Programming, Turing Institute Press, {{ASIN, 020117815X, uk, }}- BOOK, Alen, Shapiro, Structured Induction in Expert Systems, Turing Institute Press, {{ASIN, 0201178133, uk, }}- BOOK, Muggleton, Stephen, Inductive Acquisition of Expert Knowledge,weblink Turing Institute Press, 978-0-201-17561-5, 1990, Google Books, BOOK, Muggleton, Stephen, Inductive Logic Programming,weblink Turing Institute Press, 10 December 2013, 978-0-12-509715-4, 1992, A.P.I.C. Studies in data processing, In 1984, Alty wrote a text bookBOOK, Alty, J.L., M.J., Coombs, 1984, Expert Systems: Concepts and Examples, NCC Publications, Manchester, UK, 0-85012-399-2, which was adopted by many universities and a much-cited paper on expert systems (with Mike Coombs).JOURNAL, Alty, J.L., M.J., Coombs, amp, 1984, Expert Systems: An Alternative Paradigm, International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 20, 21–44, 10.1016/S0020-7373(84)80004-8, Throughout its existence, the institute organised a wide range of workshops and international conferences. Notable among these were the Turing Memorial Lecture Series whose speakers included Tony Hoare, Herbert Simon,WEB, Letter to Professor H.A. Simon,weblink Turing Institute, 18 December 2013, 22 February 2014,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140222204911weblink">weblink dead, and John McCarthy. Major conferences included The British Association's 147th conference in 1985, BMVC'91,BOOK, Mowforth, Peter, BMVC 91,weblink Springer - Verlag, 10 December 2013, 978-3-540-19715-7, 1991-10-07, Google Books, IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control (1992)BOOK, Proceedings of the 1992 IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control,weblink Computer Society Press of the IEEE, 20 December 2013, 978-0-7803-0546-5, July 1992, Google Books, and the Machine Intelligence Series.WEB, Michie, Donald, Machine Intelligence Series,weblink Turing Institute Press, 10 December 2013,

Research and development

The institute won research funding from the Westinghouse Corporation after it developed a machine learned rule-based system to improve the efficiency of a nuclear power plant.WEB, Clark, Peter, Applications of Machine Learning,weblink EWSL, 16 December 2013, 1, October 1994, 23 September 2015,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20150923223139weblink">weblink dead, The research funding was used to launch the Freddy 3 advanced robotics projectJOURNAL, Blackburn, J. F., The Turing Institute,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140107045628weblink">weblink 7 January 2014, European Science Notes, Defence Technical Information Center, US Office of Naval Research, 11 December 2013, 327, 1986, aimed at studying robot learning and robot social interaction. Barry Shepherd developed much of the Freddy 3 software infrastructure.BOOK, Kaynak, Okyay, Developing hypermedia front-ends for robot teleoperation tasks,weblink NATA ASI, 16 December 2013, 74–94, August 1992, 978-3-540-56993-0, Google Books, Tatjana Zrimec used the system to investigate how playing robots could develop structured knowledge about their worldBOOK, Zrimec, Tatjana, Learning by an autonomous agent in the pushing domain, 19–29,weblink ACM, 16 December 2013, 1993, 978-0-262-72017-5, while Claude Sammut used the system to investigate machine learning and controlWEB, Sammut, Claude, Controlling a black-box simulation of a spacecraft,weblink AI Magazine, 16 December 2013, 1991, and helped develop reinforcement learning.WEB, Sammut, Claude, Reinforcement Learning,weblink University of New South Wales, 16 December 2013, Ivan Bratko made several visits to the Turing Institute undertaking research in machine learning and advanced robotics.JOURNAL, Mowforth, Peter, AI and Robotics; Flexibility and Integration, Robotica, 5, 2, 93–98, 1987, 10.1017/S0263574700015058, 34964990, (File:Donald Michie teaching.jpg|thumb|Professor Donald Michie teaching a group of industrial students, 1986) (File:Freddy 2.jpg|thumb|Peter Mowforth with the Freddy 3 Advanced Robotics Facility, 1987) (File:Danny Pearce with Hyperlook.jpg|thumb|Danny Pearce using HyperLook to help develop a satellite simulation for the European Space Agency in 1988)The institute undertook several projects for the US military (e.g. personnel allocation for the US Office of Naval Research), credit card scoring for a South African bankWEB, Applications of Machine Learning and Rule Induction,weblink Proceedings of the ACM, ACM, 16 December 2013, Pat Langley, Herbert A. Simon, 59, November 1995, 7 January 2014,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140107020114weblink">weblink dead, and seed sorting for the Scottish Agricultural Sciences Agency.WEB, Machine vision for statutory seed certification,weblink UK Government (DEFRA), 16 December 2013, Other large projects included the ESPRIT Machine Learning Toolbox developing CN2JOURNAL, Clark, Peter, Robin, Boswell, Rule induction with CN2: some recent improvements, Proceedings of the Fifth European Conference (EWSL-91), 1991, 151–163,weblink 20 December 2013, 8 January 2014,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140108015426weblink">weblink dead, - WEB, Graner, Nicolas, The Machine Learning Toolbox Consultant,weblink Robert Gordon University, 19 December 2013,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140107035415weblink">weblink 7 January 2014, and electrophoretic gel analysis with Unilever.WEB, van Hoff, Arthur, Semi-automatic analysis of two-dimensional electrophoretic gels,weblink The Turing Institute, 19 December 2013, In 1984, the institute worked under contract from Radian CorpCITESEERX, Muggleton, Stephen, Machine intelligibility and the duality principle, 10.1.1.45.4007, 8, 1996, to develop code for the Space Shuttle auto-lander.BOOK, Donald Michie, The Superarticulacy Phenomenon,weblink University of Cambridge, 16 December 2013, 427, 978-0-521-35944-3, 1990-04-26, Google Books, The code was developed with an inductive rule generator, Rulemaster,BOOK, Sadagopan, S., Management Information Systems,weblink PHI, 18 December 2013, 169, pdf, 978-81-203-1180-0, 1997-01-01, Google Books, using training examples from a NASA simulator.BOOK, Michie, Donald, The fifth Generation's Ubridged Gap, 1994, Springer-Verlag, 978-3-211-82637-9, 434–435,weblink Rolf Herken, Google Books, A similar approach was later used by Danny Pearce to develop qualitative models to control and diagnose satellites for ESA as well as optimising gas flow in the North Sea for Enterprise Oil.WEB, Pearce, Danny, Knowledge Base Validation,weblink IEEE, 17 December 2013, PDF, 1991, 3/1–3/4, - BOOK, Pearce, Danny, Induction of on-board fault management for remote and autonomous systems, IEEE, 1992, 10.1109/ISIC.1992.225135, Proceedings of the 1992 IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control, 458–462, 978-0-7803-0546-5, 61707575, Similar approaches based on pole-balancing automata CITESEERX, Michie, Donald, Building Symbolic Representations of Intuitive Real-time Skills from Performance Data, 385–418, 10.1.1.47.5673, 1994, were used to control submersible vehiclesWEB, Annual Review of Activities,weblink GEC Avionics, 1985, 5,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140226172846weblink">weblink 26 February 2014, and develop a control system for helicopters carrying sling loads.JOURNAL, Hayes-Michie, Jean, Simulator-mediated acquisition of a dynamic control skill, AI & Society, 12, 1–2, 71–77, 1998, 10.1007/BF01179779, Michie, Donald, 43593522, Stephen Muggleton and his group developed inductive logic programming and was involved in the practical use of machine learning for the generation of expert knowledge.BOOK, Muggleton, Stephen, Inductive Acquisition of Expert Knowledge, 1990, Turing Institute Press, 978-0-201-17561-5, Applications included the discovery of rules for protein folding (with Ross King)JOURNAL, Muggleton, Stephen, King, R. D., Sternberg, M. J. E., Protein Secondary Structure Prediction using logic-based machine learning, Protein Engineering, 1992, 5, 647–657, 10.1093/protein/5.7.647, 1480619, 7, and drug designJOURNAL, King, R. D., Muggleton, S., Lewis, R. A., Sternberg, R.J.E., Drug Design by Machine Learning, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 1992, 89, 11322–11326, 10.1073/pnas.89.23.11322, 1454814, 23, 50542, free, as well as systems such as CIGOL that were capable of discovering new concepts and hypotheses.WEB, Muggleton, Stephen, A strategy for constructing new predicates in first order logic,weblink Imperial College, London, 19 December 2013, In 1986, Alty's HCI group won a major ESPRIT 1 contract to investigate the use of knowledge based systems in process control interfaces called GRADIENT (Graphical Intelligent Dialogues, P600),BOOK, The Project Synopses Advanced Information Processing, 1988, European Strategic Programme for Research and Development in Information Technology, Directorate General XIll Telecommunications, Information Industries and Innovation Commission of the European Communities, 4, 38–39,weblink (with Gunnar Johannsen of Kassel University, Peter Elzer of Clausthal University and Asea Brown Boveri) to create intelligent interfaces for process control operators. This work had a major impact on process control interface design. The initial pilot phase report (Alty, Elzer et al., 1985) was widely used and cited. Many research papers were produced.JOURNAL, Alty, J., Johannsen, 1989, Knowledge Based Dialogue for Dynamic Systems, Automatica, 25, 6, 829–840, 10.1016/0005-1098(89)90051-4, - JOURNAL, Johannsen, J.L., Alty, amp, 1991, Knowledge Engineering for Industrial Expert Systems, Automatica, 27, 1, 97–114, 10.1016/0005-1098(91)90009-Q, A follow-on large ESPRIT research project was PROMISE (Process Operators Multimedia Intelligent Support Environment) working with DOW Benelux (Netherlands), Tecsiel (Italy) and Scottish Power (Scotland).JOURNAL, Alty, J.L., Bergan, M., Craufurd, P., Dolphin, C, 1993, Experiments using multimedia interfaces in process control: some initial results, Computers and Graphics, 17, 3, 205–218,weblink 0097-8493, 4 January 2014, 10.1016/0097-8493(93)90069-L, {{Dead link|date=May 2019 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}In 1987, the Turing Institute won a project to build a large, scalable, network-available user-manual for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). The worldwide-web-like system was launched in 1988.JOURNAL, Niblett, Tim, Van Hoff A., Programmed Hypertext and SGML, The Turing Institute, September 1989,weblink 18 December 2013, Its success as a global hypertext resource for its users led to SWIFT sponsoring the Turing Memorial Series of Lectures.WEB, Turings Legacy: even bigger than you think; a brief history,weblink British Computer Society, 18 December 2013, The close working relationship came to an end, in part, when a key member of the SWIFT team, Arnaud Rubin, was killed by a terrorist bomb on Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie.One of the strongest business relationships the institute had was with Sun Microsystems. Sun funded a series of projects where the key institute personnel were Tim Niblett and Arthur van Hoff. Several projects concerned the development of new user-interface tools and environments (e.g. GoodNews, HyperNews and HyperLook).WEB, Pearce, Danny, HyperNeWS: an interactive interface design tool,weblink IEEE, 19 December 2013, November 1989, 5/1–5/3, - WEB, Dion, Marc, Evaluation of HardSys/HardDraw.,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140107042651weblink">weblink 7 January 2014, Defence Research Establishment, Ottawa, 19 December 2013, 7, May 1993, - WEB, HyperLook Manual Collection,weblink HyperLook was written in PostScript and PDB,{{clarify|date=May 2016}} an ANSI C to PostScript compiler developed at the institute,WEB, PDB – ANSI-C to PostScript compiler,weblink and it ran on Sun's NeWS Windowing System.WEB, Hopkins, Don, HyperLook (aka HyperNeWS (aka GoodNeWS)),weblink ART, 19 December 2013, Don Hopkins, while studying at the Turing Institute, ported SimCity to Unix with HyperLook as its front-end.WEB, Hopkins, Don, HyperLook SimCity Manual,weblink DUX Software, 19 December 2013, Arthur van Hoff left the institute in 1992 and joined Sun Microsystems where he authored the Java 1.0 compiler, the beta version of the HotJava browser and helped with the design of the Java language.WEB, van Hoff, Arthur, JAOO,weblink 19 December 2013, Throughout the 1980s, the Turing Institute Vision Group developed multi-scale tools and applications.JOURNAL, Mowforth, Peter, Jan Jelinek, Jin Zhengping, An appropriate representation for early vision, Pattern Recognition Letters, February 1987, 5, 2, 175–182,weblink 20 December 2013, 10.1016/0167-8655(87)90038-9, 1987PaReL...5..175M, - JOURNAL, Mowforth, Peter, Jin Zhengping, Implementation for noise suppression in images, Image and Vision Computing, February 1986, 4, 1, 29–37,weblink 10.1016/0262-8856(86)90005-3, A series of 3D industrial applications was developed and deployed using the multi-scale signal matching (MSSM) technology, specifically:

• 3D head modellingJOURNAL, Jin, Zhengping, Peter Mowforth, A discrete approach to signal matching, Research Memo TIRM-89-036, January 1989,weblink 20 December 2013,
• Robot navigationBOOK, Shapiro, Jonathan, Peter Mowforth, Proceedings of the third international conference on Industrial and engineering applications of artificial intelligence and expert systems - IEA/AIE '90, Data fusion in 3D through surface tracking, 1990, 1, 163–168, 10.1145/98784.98815, 978-0-89791-372-0, 15633227,
• Real time robot camera stereo vergenceBOOK, Undbekken, Ketil, Design of an anthropomorphic robot head, 1991, Springer, Glasgow, 978-3-540-19715-7, 387–391,weblink
• Terrain modellingWEB, Mowforth, Peter, Data Conversion for GIS,weblink IAPR Workshop 1992, Machine Vision Association, 20 December 2013, December 1992,
• Scene of crime capture of 3D footprints for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
• Maxillofacial reconstruction and denture cast digital archiving with Glasgow Dental SchoolWEB, Mowforth, Peter, Ashraf Ayoub, Joseph Jin, Kersheed Moos, Tim Niblett, Paul Siebert, Colin Urquhart, David Wray, A Three-Dimensional Imaging System for Clinical Applications, University of Glasgow, July 1995,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140107032123weblink">weblink 2014-01-07, 20 December 2013,
• Brain model labelling with Guy's HospitalJOURNAL, Mowforth, Peter, Jin Zhengping, Model Based Tissue Differentiation in MR Brain Images, Alvey Vision Conference, 1989, 5244c, 67–71,weblink 20 December 2013,
• Hyper-resolution methods to improve CCTV image quality for Strathclyde Police
• High-speed target tracking for the UK Ministry of Defence
• Virtual backgrounds and camera photogrammetry for BBC broadcast TV.WEB, Thomas, Graham, A versatile camera position measurement systems for virtual reality TV production,weblink BBC, 20 December 2013,
• 3D car body shape reconstruction from wax models; Ford Motor Company, Dearbourn, USA
• With Sun Microsystems using a stereo pair of miniature cameras to create and re-project a normalised straight-on view for teleconferencing.WEB, Cockshot, Paul, Parallel Vision Stereo Algorithm,weblink Glasgow University, 20 December 2013, 1,

Various other robot projects were undertaken at the Turing Institute where key researchers included Paul Siebert, Eddie Grant, Paul Grant, David Wilson, Bing Zhang and Colin Urquhart.For example:- JOURNAL, Mowforth, Peter, Paul Siebert, Jin Zhengping, Colin Urquhart, A head called Richard, Proceedings of the British Machine Vision Conference, September 1990, 361–365,weblink 20 December 2013, - JOURNAL, Grant, Paul, Peter Mowforth, Economical and Cautious Approaches to Local Path Planning for a Mobile Robot, Proceedings of the Alvey Vision Conference, 1989, 297–300,weblink 20 December 2013, - BOOK, Grant, Edward, Array tactile sensing: integration, calibration and application, The Turing Institute, 17425044, In 1990, the Turing Institute organised and ran the First Robot Olympics with the venue at the University of Strathclyde.NEWS, Willard, Tim, No Relay Race on This Olympic Field,weblink 20 December 2013, Los Angeles Times, 1991-07-17,

Closure

From 1989 onwards, the company faced financial difficulties that caused it to close in 1994.WEB, Column 467-468: The Turing Institute,weblink UK Parliament, 11 December 2013,

References

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