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For Immediate Release:
LookAhead Decisions Incorporated (LDI)
For more details, screenshots, FAQs, data sheet, brochure, and a 15-day fully- functional trial version, see our website at http://www.lookaheaddecisions.com/products/oasysscheduler.htm. About LookAheadDecisions Founded in 2001, LookAheadDecisions (LDI) is a leading provider of intelligent decision making software for design as well as real-time applications. The U.S. Government has recognized LDI's revolutionary technology through a $2 Million advanced technology program award from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. LDI's patent-pending award-winning general-purpose technology, Oasys, has already been customized for applications in materials handling, manufacturing, project scheduling, electronic games, and health care. For more information about LDI, please visit the company website at www.LookAheadDecisions.com. About NIST's ATP The Advanced Technology Program (ATP) bridges the gap between the research lab and the marketplace, stimulating prosperity through innovation. Through partnerships with the private sector, ATP's early stage investment is accelerating the development of innovative technologies that promise significant commercial payoffs and widespread benefits for the nation. As part of the highly regarded National Institute of Standards and Technology, the ATP is changing the way industry approaches R&D, providing a mechanism for industry to extend its technological reach and push the envelope of what can be attempted. In sharing the relatively high development risks of promising early stage technologies, the ATP fosters projects with a high payoff for the nation as a whole - in addition to a direct return to the innovators. ATP awards are selected through open, peer-reviewed, competitions. For further information, see NIST's ATP web site at http://www.atp.nist.gov. CONTACT: Dr. Armand Prieditis LDI Offers Service Based On ActiveMotion Davis, CA - April 21, 2006 - LookAhead Decisions Incorporated (LDI) has announced a new service for automatically generating motion for 3D characters based on its ActiveMotion software, which offers an alternative to motion capture for producing realistic motion for animated characters. Based upon motion generation software for robotic systems developed by LDI, ActiveMotion is an automated tool used to generate arbitrary and realistic motions for any multi-articulated character in any environment. Using ActiveMotion, a game developer or animator can cut their motion generation costs and time by as much as 90 percent. Rather than using cumbersome motion capture equipment and paying for expensive studio time, ActiveMotion automatically generates files in standard motion capture formats by harnessing the power of the CPU. It couples a physics simulator with proprietary Artificial Intelligence technology similar to world championship chess programs to sift through billions of possible motion sequences in order to find those that are the most realistic and that meet the intended motion targets. “The ActiveMotion service can be used to generate basic human and animal motions such as walking, running, tackling, and jumping, but it is especially good for generating realistic motion for complex terrains, dangerous or specialized stunts, non-humans, or imaginary multi-limbed characters—-all difficult or impossible to do with motion capture,” said Dr. Mukesh Dalal, President and Co-Founder of LDI. In addition, LDI is offering the service at a flat rate of $500 to generate or modify up to ten seconds of a specified animation for 1-2 characters for the first 10 customers. For these customers, LDI is also including a free one-year subscription to its software, when released. LookAhead Decisions Applies Robotics Control Technology to Decision-Making in Video-Games and Animation Davis, CA - September 6, 2005 - LookAhead Decisions Incorporated (LDI), the provider of intelligent decision making software for robotics, logistics, manufacturing, and networks, today announced a new release of its breakthrough software product for video games and animation. The new product, Locust (TM), uses proprietary simulation-based look-ahead methods similar to those used by world-championship chess programs, except it handles in real-time aspects such as uncertainty, complex time/cost tradeoffs, and dozens of parallel decision-makers. Unlike standard rule-based approaches, which are expensive to develop and maintain and often result in poor performance and unstable code, Locust reduces the cost of adding Artificial Intelligence (AI) to a game 10-fold while resulting in completely stable code and behavior that is more intelligent. During actual game play, Locust rapidly responds to unexpected real-time events and anticipates and avoids future problems such as congestion and enemy threats and anticipates and exploits future opportunities such as energy recharging and weapons gathering. "For the end user, imagine multiple characters finding efficient paths to their destination without colliding with each other; imagine characters teaming together to efficiently search through a set of rooms; imagine intelligent assistants that can suggest which weapon to fire and what direction to move," said Dr Armand Prieditis, CEO and Founder of Lookahead Decisions and Locust Games. "Imagine being able to purchase a game add-on that can turbo-charge the intelligence of all game characters to increase enjoyment and immersion." "For the game developer, your AI development nightmares are over," Prieditis continued, "no more patching broken rules, no more spaghetti code, and no more late delivery of a buggy product with poor performance." "For the animator, imagine being able to instantly generate natural-looking motion across any terrain for any jointed character without expensive key-framing or motion capture." "Locust does all these in one package with an easy-to-use interface," concluded Prieditis. Previously, LDI received a grant award from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST's) Advanced Technology Program (ATP) and startup funding from Siemens Technology-to-Business (TTB) Center to develop a real-time intelligent decision making system for robotics, logistics, and manufacturing. Deployments in these areas have provided up to 83% performance gain while massively reducing development costs. According to Jack Boudreaux of NIST, "we expect that [LDI's software] will continue to help organizations in increasing their customer satisfaction while reducing their costs and delivery times." LDI has ported this award-winning robotics software to games and animation in the form of a new software package called Locust, which is described on their website www.locustpower.com. About LookAheadDecisions Founded in 2001, LookAheadDecisions (LDI) is a leading provider of intelligent decision making software for design as well as real-time applications. The U.S. Government has recognized LDI's revolutionary technology through a $2 Million advanced technology program award from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. LDI's patent-pending award-winning general-purpose technology, Oasys, has already been customized for applications in materials handling, manufacturing, project scheduling, electronic games, and health care. For more information about LDI, please visit the company website at www.LookAheadDecisions.com; for more information about Locust, please visit the company website at www.locustpower.com. About NIST's ATP The Advanced Technology Program (ATP) bridges the gap between the research lab and the marketplace, stimulating prosperity through innovation. Through partnerships with the private sector, ATP's early stage investment is accelerating the development of innovative technologies that promise significant commercial payoffs and widespread benefits for the nation. As part of the highly regarded National Institute of Standards and Technology, the ATP is changing the way industry approaches R&D, providing a mechanism for industry to extend its technological reach and push the envelope of what can be attempted. In sharing the relatively high development risks of promising early stage technologies, the ATP fosters projects with a high payoff for the nation as a whole - in addition to a direct return to the innovators. ATP awards are selected through open, peer-reviewed, competitions. For further information, see NIST's ATP web site at http://www.atp.nist.gov. About Siemens Technology-To-Business Center Siemens Technology-To-Business Center LLC, a subsidiary of Siemens Corporate Research located in Berkeley, California, identifies and develops disruptive technologies through partnerships with universities and entrepreneurs, converting those enterprises into viable Siemens businesses or independent start-up companies. Siemens Technology to Business Center is part of a greater network at Siemens whose mission is to drive technological innovation by supporting start-up companies. In addition to Siemens Technology to Business, also Siemens Technology Accelerator, Siemens Acceleration in Communications and Siemens Venture Capital contribute to the innovation strategy of Siemens. Their individual mandates are defined according to financing stages and industry focus. More: www.ttb.siemens.com. About Siemens Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) is one of the largest global electronics and engineering companies with reported worldwide sales of $91.5 billion in fiscal 2004. Founded more than 155 years ago, the company is a leader in the areas of Medical, Power, Automation and Control, Transportation, Information and Communications, Lighting, Building Technologies, Water Technologies and Services and Home Appliances. With its U.S. corporate headquarters in New York City, Siemens in the USA has sales of $16.6 billion and employs 70,000 people throughout all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Thirteen of Siemens' worldwide businesses are based in the United States. With its global headquarters in Munich, Siemens AG and its subsidiaries employ 440,000 people in 190 countries. For more information on Siemens in the United States: www.usa.siemens.com. Siemens is a registered trademark. All other company, brand, product, and service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. This release contains forward-looking statements based on beliefs of Siemens management. The words "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "forecast," "expect," "intend," "plan," "should," and "project" are used to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the company's current views with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the actual results to be materially different, including, among others, changes in general economic and business conditions, changes in currency exchange rates and interest rates, introduction of competing products, lack of acceptance of new products or services and changes in business strategy. Actual results may vary materially from those projected here. Siemens does not intend or assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. New Oasys Scheduler Optimizes Down to the Nearest Second DAVIS, CA -- April 5, 2005 - LookAhead Decisions Incorporated (LDI), a leading provider of real-time decision-making software for business and industrial applications, has just released Oasys Scheduler 3.1, a powerful resource leveling add-in for Microsoft Project. Oasys Scheduler includes support for advanced Microsoft Project features, such as custom task, resource, and schedule calendars, lag and lead time, and support for all constraint types. The latest release optimizes schedules down to the nearest second, while handling fractional resources, leveling delays, and Project errors. "Oasys Scheduler is the first schedule optimizer designed to handle complex, real-world projects without a performance penalty," added Dr. Armand Prieditis, LDI's founder and CEO. "Oasys Scheduler's ability to reduce costs and save time by shortening a project's duration by as much as 50% makes it a valuable tool for project managers in any industry." A free full-feature trial version of Oasys Scheduler 3.1 is available for instant download at http://www.lookaheaddecisions.com/products/oasysscheduler.htm. LookAhead Decisions Releases New Real-Time Intelligent Decision-Making Software Davis, CA - October 14, 2004 - LookAhead Decisions Incorporated (LDI), the provider of intelligent decision making software, today announced a new release of its breakthrough software product for intelligent real-time decision making. Oasys Real-Time 5.0 (TM) supports decision makers in areas like logistics, manufacturing, health care and telecommunication networks to leverage all available real-time information in making quick decisions that optimize their customizable performance objectives. Deployments of the previous version of Oasys Real-Time have already provided up to 83% performance gain; this new version improves upon it in both speed and functionality. According to Jack Boudreaux of NIST, "Oasys Real-Time lowers operational costs through better real-time decisions. LDI's proven Oasys technology is already delivering significant operational and business benefits in the systems it has been deployed so far. We expect that Oasys will continue to help organizations in increasing their profits, compliance, quality of service and customer satisfaction, while reducing their costs and delivery times."
Armand Prieditis, LDI President and CEO, stated, "Oasys Real-Time optimizes user-customizable flexible business and performance objectives such as margin, cost, quality and throughput. It quickly responds to unexpected real-time events like equipment failure, anticipates and avoids future problems like traffic congestion, and anticipates and exploits future opportunities like demand spikes. Oasys Real-Time will deliver guaranteed benefits to customers in a short time period, or they pay nothing." According to Mukesh Dalal, LDI Executive Vice President, "Oasys Real-Time uses patent-pending multi-simulation technology that provides dramatic improvement over existing approaches including rule-based systems, heuristics, and mathematical programming. While allowing easy integration with control, execution and management systems, it provides a convenient web interface for supervisory exception-based control. Automatic learning allows it to improve its performance over time." Brett Groel, the lead developer of Oasys Real-Time said, "Oasys Real-Time 5.0 allows multiple agents in a distributed environment to coordinate by broadcasting and receiving decisions and messages." Oasys Real-Time 5.0 is available immediately from LDI. A fully-functional 30-day free trial version can be downloaded from the company website. About LDI Founded in 2001, LDI is a leading provider of intelligent decision making software for design as well as real-time applications. The U.S. Government has recognized LDI's revolutionary technology through a $2 Million advanced technology program award from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. LDI's patent-pending award-winning general-purpose technology, Oasys, has already been customized for applications in materials handling, manufacturing, project scheduling, electronic games, and health care. For more information about LDI, please visit the company website at www.LookAheadDecisions.com. NIST Commends LookAhead Decisions, Inc. for Oasys Innovation DAVIS, CA -- August 30, 2004 - During a site visit to LDI's offices, Jack Boudreaux, a program manager at NIST's Advanced Technology Program commended LDI for its innovation in Oasys. "We are very impressed by the innovative and disruptive Oasys technology developed by LookAhead Decisions Inc.," commented Mr. Boudreaux. He went on to say that he believes that Oasys software will dramatically improve the way commercial and industrial systems are designed, deployed and maintained: "while Oasys Design lowers design costs by creating optimal designs, Oasys Real-Time lowers operational costs through better real-time decisions. LDI's proven Oasys technology is already delivering significant operational and business benefits in the systems it has been deployed so far. We expect that Oasys will continue to help organizations in increasing their profits, compliance, quality of service and customer satisfaction, while reducing their costs and delivery times. " He congratulated CEO & President Dr. Armand Prieditis and the rest of his team on their recent accomplishments. LDI Releases Oasys Scheduler 3.0 DAVIS, CA -- August 23, 2004 - LookAhead Decisions Incorporated (LDI), a leading provider of real-time decision-making software for business and industrial applications, has just released Oasys Scheduler 3.0, a powerful resource leveling add-in for Microsoft Project. Oasys Scheduler 3.0 includes support for advanced Microsoft Project features, such as custom task, resource, and schedule calendars, lag and lead time, and support for all constraint types. "Oasys Scheduler 3.0 is the first schedule optimizer designed to handle complex, real-world projects without a performance penalty," added Dr. Armand Prieditis, LDI's founder and CEO. "Oasys Scheduler's ability to reduce costs and save time by shortening a project's duration by as much as 50% makes it a valuable tool for project managers in any industry." LDI Releases Oasys Scheduler 2.5 DAVIS, CA -- April 15, 2004 - LookAhead Decisions Incorporated (LDI), a leading provider of real-time decision-making software for business and industrial applications, has just released Oasys Scheduler 2.5, a powerful resource leveling add-in for Microsoft Project. With this release of Oasys Scheduler, LDI establishes itself as the leader in advanced scheduling technology. Oasys Scheduler 2.5 includes a new, more powerful scheduling engine which results in better schedules in less time. Oasys Scheduler 2.5 handles more Microsoft Project features, such as all link types, more constraints, and summary tasks with resources. Furthermore, Oasys Scheduler is capable of handling extremely complex schedules with hundreds of resources and thousands of tasks. For more information, please visit http://www.lookaheaddecisions.com. Michael Crichton On Why Standard Approaches Such As Rules Fail DAVIS, CA -- January 15, 2004 - "In the old days, programmers tried to write rules to cover every situation...The computer would make mistakes. New rules would be added to avoid the mistakes. Then more mistakes, and more rules. Eventually the programs were gigantic, millions of lines of code, and they began to fail out of sheer complexity. They were too large to debug. You couldn't figure out where the errors were coming from." Michael Crichton, Prey, Page 68, HarperCollins Publishers, 2002 LDI Releases Oasys Scheduler 2.0 DAVIS, CA -- January 9, 2004 - LookAhead Decisions Incorporated (LDI), a leading provider of real-time decision-making software for business and industrial applications, has just released Oasys Scheduler 2.0, a powerful resource leveling add-in for Microsoft Project. Oasys Scheduler helps project managers reduce costs and save time
by automatically assigning resources to tasks such that a project’s
duration is minimized. Typical improvements range from 20 to 50 percent
over Microsoft Project’s built-in resource leveling. “Oasys
Scheduler is the first product to make planning easier and more rewarding
for Project users by optimizing in situations with heavy resource
conflicts and numerous tasks,” added Dr. Armand Prieditis, LDI’s
Founder and CEO. In addition, Oasys Scheduler also provides detailed
feedback and functionality so that the project manager can easily
identify which tasks are contributing to a resource’s overallocation. Researcher At LDI Chosen As A Reviewer For The National Science Foundation DAVIS, CA -- October 15, 2003 -- The National Science Foundation (NSF), the Nation's most prestigious scientific research agency, has chosen a researcher at LDI to review grant proposals for its scientific endeavors. Dr. Armand Prieditis, the LDI researcher who was selected by NSF for this task, said that "the quality of the awards selected for support by NSF critically depends on the judgements of its reviewers, who are typically selected from among the top research institutions in the country." LDI is proud to have been chosen for this task by NSF and to be associated with the advancement of the Nation's science. LDI Listed As A Top 44 High-Tech Company In Greater Sacramento Region SACRAMENTO, CA -- September 30, 2003 -- LDI is listed in the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance's (SARTA) new Technology Index of the top 44 high-tech companies in the greater Sacramento region. "They represent the future of Sacramento's high-tech economy," says Dale Kasler of the Sacramento Bee. The SARTA Technology Index, which will be published quarterly in the Sacramento Bee, includes companies such as GenCorp, Inc., a $1.14 billion company. LDI Chosen As Finalist In Most Innovative New Product Awards (MIP) In The Software Category DAVIS, CA -- March, 2003 -- "The [UC Davis MIP] Awards presentation is one of the region's most prestigious business events, celebrating the achievement of local enterprises." The winners will be chosen soon. LDI Receives $2 Million NIST ATP Award Will develop software for real-time decision-making in automated manufacturing systems BERKELEY, Calif. -- October 15, 2001-- The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) awarded LookAhead Decisions Incorporated (LDI) a $2 million grant under the Advanced Technology Program (ATP). The funding is to develop and implement software based on a lookahead strategy - a strategy that builds a tree of possible events - in an automated manufacturing system. "Lookahead-based strategies work far better than anything else for making decisions in many applications," said LDI's founder and CEO, Dr. Armand Prieditis in receiving the award. "For example, chess playing programs using such strategies have achieved world-championship status. But these programs require extensive computational power because they need to enumerate and evaluate several billion potential move sequences." LDI has developed a smarter method to search the space of possibilities so that the lookahead can run on standard PCs. It has also developed a method to handle time, parallelism, and uncertainty - all of which occur in manufacturing. "Manufacturing is especially subject to uncertainty because of unscheduled events: customers create unexpected demands, machines break, workers become unavailable," added Dr. Prieditis. "We're excited that NIST agrees our approach will be key in reducing manufacturing costs while contributing to the Nation's science." Gerd Hoefner, Integration Officer of Siemens Automation & Drives (A&D), Software and Systems House, expressed his positive outlook on LDI's award. "As a major producer of automation equipment and software, Siemens A&D is very interested in LDI's technology, which will help manufacturers reduce their production cost and lead time. We are especially interested in how LDI's software could link into SIMATIC IT Framework, an integration platform for Manufacturing Execution Systems produced by Siemens. This highly competitive award validates LDI's approach and will help the company realize their technology in the marketplace." Dr. Arding Hsu, President and CEO of Siemens Technology-To-Business (TTB) Center, commented on LDI's good news. "We are proud to have worked closely with Dr. Prieditis from the beginning and helped to build LDI. We are excited about the opportunities that the ATP award will bring for LDI and will continue to work closely with LDI as they grow and help them make the connections they need to bring their product to market." About LDI LDI develops and markets intelligent decision-making systems that can make better real-time decisions in dynamic, uncertain environments through advanced lookahead methods. Benefits to manufacturers include better use of resources, greater throughput, less maintenance, fewer failures, reduction in inventory, and a reduction in lead, cycle and shipping times. About NIST's ATP The Advanced Technology Program (ATP) bridges the gap between the research lab and the marketplace, stimulating prosperity through innovation. Through partnerships with the private sector, ATP's early stage investment is accelerating the development of innovative technologies that promise significant commercial payoffs and widespread benefits for the nation. As part of the highly regarded National Institute of Standards and Technology, the ATP is changing the way industry approaches R&D, providing a mechanism for industry to extend its technological reach and push the envelope of what can be attempted. In sharing the relatively high development risks of promising early stage technologies, the ATP fosters projects with a high payoff for the nation as a whole - in addition to a direct return to the innovators. ATP awards are selected through open, peer-reviewed, competitions. For further information, see NIST's ATP web site at http://www.atp.nist.gov. About Siemens Technology-To-Business Center The aim of the Technology-To-Business (TTB) center is to convert innovative technologies into new Siemens businesses or start-up companies quickly. TTB's vision is to combine the strengths of Siemens, a global electronics and electrical engineering powerhouse, with the speed and flexibility of small companies. Since its founding, TTB has established a strong project portfolio through its working relationships with its sponsors, the University of California at Berkeley, and San Francisco Bay Area venture communities. Siemens, a $75 billion company with locations in 190 countries, is a significant resource to TTB projects. The company has rich technology components as well as a vast global network of businesses to help early stage companies in TTB's portfolio. For further information, see TTB's web site: http://www.ttb.siemens.com. |
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