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The Information Processing Techniques Office is an agency of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency whose stated mission is:

[To] create a new generation of computational and information systems that possess capabilities far beyond those of current systems. These cognitive systems - systems that know what they're doing:

• will be able to reason, using substantial amounts of appropriately represented knowledge;
• will learn from their experiences and improve their performance over time;
• will be capable of explaining themselves and taking naturally expressed direction from humans;
• will be aware of themselves and able to reflect on their own behavior;
• will be able to respond robustly to surprises, in a very general way.

IPTO Research Projects

• BICA, an IPTO project attempting to create 'Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures".
• Bootstrapped Learning, a project attempting to bring about "instructable computing" by driving the creation of machine learning algorithms that are responsive to models of human-to-human instruction.
• LifeLog, an IPTO project "to trace the 'threads' of an individual's life in terms of events, states, and relationships" by creating "an ontology-based (sub)system that captures, stores, and makes accessible the flow of one person’s experience in and interactions with the world in order to support a broad spectrum of associates/assistants and other system capabilities."
• FORESTER, a program to develop a helicopter-borne radar system that can detect soldiers and vehicles moving underneath folliage cover.
• VIRAT -- analysis and storage of video surveillance data
• Deep Green -- U.S. Army battlefield decision-making support system
• Heterogenous Urban RSTA Team -- aerial surveillance program designed to monitor cities with self-directed UAVs
• High Productivity Computing Systems -- project for developing a new generation of economically viable high productivity computing systems for national security and industry in the 2007-2010 timeframe.

External links

• Oral history interview with J. C. R. Licklider at Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Licklider was the first director of IPTO.
• Oral history interview with Jack P. Ruina Charles Babbage Institute - interview is mainly concerned with the beginning of the Information Processing Techniques Office within ARPA: the initial goals, how the idea of an information processing program was initiated, the selection of the first director. Ruina was Director of ARPA from 1961-1963.
• Oral-history interview with Ivan Sutherland at Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Sutherland headed the IPTO in the mid-1960s and oversaw computer projects in graphics and networking, the ILLIAC IV, and the Macromodule program.
• Oral history interview with Lawrence G. Roberts Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Roberts directed IPTO during 1968-1973
• Official IPTO Homepage