James W. Tate

James W. Tate (born c. 1935) was an American computer scientist known for his work in automated planning and knowledge representation. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1975 and went on to become a prominent figure in the Artificial Intelligence research community.

Tate's research contributions focused on developing planning systems that could reason about actions, resources, and constraints to achieve complex goals. He is particularly recognized for his development of the Nonlin planner, a hierarchical task network (HTN) planning system. Nonlin allowed users to define planning operators as networks of tasks, providing a flexible and intuitive way to represent planning knowledge.

Beyond Nonlin, Tate made significant contributions to the development of plan libraries and knowledge-based planning techniques. His work explored how to capture and reuse planning knowledge to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of planning systems. He also contributed to the development of standards for plan representation and exchange.

Tate held research positions at the University of Edinburgh, including Director of the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (AIAI). He also played a key role in fostering collaboration between academia and industry in the field of AI. His work has had a lasting impact on the field of automated planning and continues to influence research in this area.