Soar is a computational theory of the mind that has had an impact in both artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Begun by John E. Laird, Allen Newell, and Paul S. Rosenbloom at Carnegie Mellon in the early 1980s, the Soar Project is an investigation into the architecture underlying intelligent behaviour with the goal of developing and applying a unified theory of natural and artificial intelligence. "The Soar Papers" - sixty-three article in all - provide in one place the important ideas that have emerged from this project. The book is organized chronologically, with an introduction that provides multiple organizations according to major topics. Readers interested in the entire effort can read the articles in publication order, while readers interested only in a specific topic can go directly to a logical sequence of papers to read on that topic.
John E. Laird is John L. Tishman Professor of Engineering in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Michigan.
The late Allen Newell was U.A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Paul S. Rosenbloom is Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California and Project Leader at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies.
Daniel G. Bobrow is a Research Fellow in the Intelligent Systems Laboratory, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, editor-in-chief of the
Journal of Artificial Intelligence, and Chair of the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society.
Michael Brady is Senior Research Scientist at MIT's Artifical Intelligence Laboratory.