Ulrich Furbach



More About Me?

Ulrich Furbach is a retired Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Koblenz and Adjunct Professor at Vellore Institute of Technology in India. He is co-owner of wizAI solutions GmbH. His research interests include knowledge management, automated reasoning, multiagent systems, and cognitive science.

After his officer training in the German Federal Armed Forces he served as an lieutenant in the tank forces. Ulrich Furbach obtained his Diploma and Habilitation in informatics from the Technical University of Munich and his PhD from the University of Bundeswehr.

He directed the Automated Reasoning Group at the TU Munich from 1987 to 1990 and the Institute for Knowledge Media in Koblenz from 2000 to 2003. He was president of CADE Inc., he was a board member of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence and he was speaker of the German AI Society.

He is co-founder and co-owner of the spin-off company wizAI (www.wizai.com), which develops knowledge management systems, information systems and solutions for digital signage.

He is also teaching yoga in the tradition of Prof. Rocque Lobo as a sort of Marma-Yoga.
Ulrich Furbach is ECCAI- and GI-Fellow and former Chair of IFIP TC 12 on Artificial Intelligence.

Projects

Cognitive Reasoning (CoRg)
The DFG-project CoRg addresses problems characterized by ambiguity and uncertainty, meaning that it is used to handle problems humans are confronted with in everyday life. When developing a cognitive computing system which is supposed to act human-like one cannot rely on automated theorem proving techniques alone, since humans performing commonsense reasoning do not obey the rules of classical logics.
Operational time: März 2018 - Feburar 2022
Projectpage
#vortanz
The three-year (2021-2024) BMBF collaborative project "#vortanz – Automatisierte Vorannotation in der digitalen Hochschultanzausbildung" will integrate methods from the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for university level dance education. I am the PI within wizAI solutions GmbH.
Projectpage
BallroomDance
The developement of BallroomDance, an Intelligent and Interactive App for Beginners is founded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. I am the PI within wizAI solutions GmbH.

Teaching

Computer Science and AI
only at special events.
Yoga
Ulrich Furbach is teaching Yoga. He follows the school of Prof. Rocque Lobo for Marma Yoga.

Sports

Ballroom dancing
Together with Ulrike Barthelmeß he participates in ballroom dancing competitions in the class Master IV C Standard
Squash
He is an enthusiastic recreational player at the Schängel Squash Club Koblenz.

Activities

Organisation
  • Advisory Board KI-Zeitschrift
  • Vice-president of Association of Automated Reasoning (AAR)
  • Board of IFCoLog
  • Co-founder and shareholder of wizAI solutions GmbH
  • Editorial Boards
  • LNAI
  • DISKI
  • IEEE Intelligent Systems
  • Journal of Applied Logics
  • Guest Editor of Informatik Spektrum
  • Guest editor of Journal of Automated Reasoning
  • AICOM
  • Latest Works

    What keeps me busy


    My main interest in research is in automated reasoning and knowledge representation. Since many years my focus is on applying dedution systems to real world problems.

    Within my activities with wizAI solutions GmbH I am directing some AI projects, which are using AI and in particular Machine Learning.

    Together with my partner Ulrike Barthelmess I am working on combining Humanities and AI - see list of publications.

    Ulrike and I have discovered our love for ballroom dancing. We are dancing tournaments in Master IV Standard.

    Writings

    Download pdf
    Download pdf
    Springer Website


    For a full list of publications please visit DBLP via this Link or Google Scholar via this Link.

    Some reports from conference and research trips are here.

    U. Furbach et al.(Hrsg.) Künstliche Intelligenz für Lehrkräfte. Springer, 2024 to appear.

    U. Furbach. On Reasoning, Commonsense Knowledge, and Consciousness. Existenz Vol.17/1, Spring 2022.

    U. Barthelmess, U. Furbach. A Different Look at Artificial Intelligence. On Tour with Bergson, Proust and Nabokov. Springer Vieweg, 2023.

    U. Barthelmess, U. Furbach. Lernen, Verstehen und Bewusstsein. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Künstlichen Intelligenz. Forschung und Lehre. Mai 2022.pdf

    U. Barthelmess, U. Furbach.Künstliche Intelligenz, quo vadis? CoRR abs/2104.11067, 2021.

    U. Barthelmess, U. Furbach. Consciousness: Just Another Technique? KI - Künstliche Itelligenz, Volume 35, issue 3-4, Springer, 2021.

    U. Barthelmess, U. Furbach.Computer auf dem Weg zum Bewusstsein. FAZ, 5. Juli 2021.

    A. Kumar M., A. Chandrabose, A. Ghosh, U. Furbach. Computational Intelligence in Data Science: Third IFIP TC 12 International Conference, ICCIDS 2020, Chennai, India, February 20–22, 2020, Revised Selected Papers. (2020). Deutschland: Springer International Publishing.

    U. Barthelmess, U. Furbach. Consciousness and Automated Reasoning. CoRR abs/2001.09442, 2020.

    U. Barthelmess, U. Furbach. Robotik. Das Staatslexikon, 8. Auflage, Herder, 2019.

    W. Bibel, U. Furbach. Formation of a Research Discipline Artificial Intelligence and Intellectics at the Technical University of Munich. KI 34(1), Springer, 2020

    U.Furbach, C. Hölldobler, M. Ragni, F. Stolzenburg (eds). Cognitive Reasoning. Special Issue KI 33(3), Springer, 2019.

    U. Furbach. Interview with Professor Hector Levesque, University of Toronto. KI 33(3) Springer, 2019.

    U. Furbach, T. Krämer, C. Schon. Names are not just Sound and Smoke: Word Embeddings for Axiom Selection. Proc. CADE 27, Springer, 2019

    U.Furbach, C. Hölldobler, M. Ragni, C. Schon. Cognitive Reasoning. A Personal View. KI 33(3). Springer. 2019.

    U. Barthelmess, U. Furbach. Künstliche Intelligenz aus ungewohnten Perspektiven. Ein Rundgang mit Bergson, Proust und Nabokov. Springer Vieweg, 2019.

    U. Furbach, C. Schon. Reasoning and Consciousness. Teaching a Theorem Prover to let its Mind Wander. In The Third Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Theorem Proving, AITP2018. http://aitp- conference.org/2018/aitp18-proceedings.pdf, 2018.

    W. Bibel, U. Furbach. Formierung einer Forschungsdisziplin — Künstliche Intelligenz und Intellektik an der Technischen Universität München Deutsches Museum Preprint 15, 2018

    U. Barthelmess, U. Furbach. Körper, Geist und Künstlich Intelligenz, Eulenfisch, Limburger Magazin für Religion und Bildung, 19, 2017

    U. Furbach, A. Gordon, C. Schon. Tackling Benchmarks for Common Sense Reasoning.In:

    U. Furbach, C. Schon. Proceedings of the Workshop on Bridging the Gap between Human and Automated Reasoning A workshop of the 25th International Conference on Automated Deduction (CADE-25). CEUR Vol-1412

    U. Furbach, B. Pelzer, C. Schon. Automated Reasoning in the Wild. In: A.P. Felty, A. Middeldorp ( eds): Automated Deduction - CADE-25 - 25th International Conference on Automated Deduction, Berlin, Germany, August 1-7, 2015, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 9195, Springer 2015,

    U. Furbach, C. Schon, F. Stolzenburg, K-H. Weis, C-P. Wirth. The RatioLog Project: Rational Extensions of Logical Reasoning. KI 29(3): 271-277 (2015). Arxiv

    U. Furbach, C. Schon, F. Stolzenburg. Automated Reasoning for Robot Ethics.2015. Arxiv

    M. P. Bonacina, U. Furbach, V. Sofronie-Stokkermans. On First-Order Model-Based Reasoning. 2015. Arxiv

    U. Furbach, C. Schon, F.Stolzenburg. Automated Reasoning in Deontic Logic. MIWAI 2014, Springer LNCS 8875, 57-68. Arxiv

    U. Furbach, C. Schon, F.Stolzenburg. Cognitive Systems and Question Answering. In: Industriemanagement 2.2015. Arxiv

    U. Furbach (ed.) Representation and Reasoning. [Guest editor's introduction]. IEEE Intelligent Systems 29(1): 2-3 (2014)

    U. Furbach, C. Schon. Deontic Logic for Human Reasoning. In: Advances in Knowledge Representation, Logic Programming, and Abstract Argumentation - Essays Dedicated to Gerhard Brewka on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 9060, Springer 2015 Springer LNAI. Arxiv

    U. Barthelmess, U. Furbach. Do we need Asimov’s laws? In Matthias Horbach, editor, Proc. INFORMATIK 2013, volume P-220 of Lecture Notes in Informatics. Köllen Verlag, 2013. Arxiv

    U.Furbach, C. Schon. Semantically guided Evolution of SHI Aboxes. In Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods - 22th International Conference, TABLEAUX 2013, volume 8123 of LNAI. Springer, 2013. Arxiv

    U. Barthelmeß, U. Furbach. IRobot– uMan. Springer, 2011.

    Contact Me

    Get in touch


    Prof. Dr. Ulrich Furbach

    uli@'nachname'.de | +49 15154723896 | www.furbach.de



    Project Overview

    Ratiolog and his predecessor Loganswer are finished projects about deep question answering based on Computer Linguistic and Automated Deduction. In Rationlog the main goal was to incorporate models for human rationality.

    For more see:The RatioLog Project



    Project Overview

    This is an approach to model human reasoning as it is investigated in cognitive psychology by means of symbolic logic and automated deduction. A very typical example for this is the well researched Wason selection task. There are publication to this topic and there is workshop series:

    Bridging the Gap between Human and Automated Reasoning



    Project Overview

    In this book project we are aiming at a combination of cultural and literary treatments of knowledge and remembering with modern computer science and artificial intelligence work. An example is the depicted cookie, a Madelaine, about which Marcel Proust wrote, that the taste of it triggered the memories about a certain episode of his life.

    Finished! Currently in print with Springer.