Artificial intelligence (AI) is the area of computer science that focuses on getting computers to do truly difficult things, either those things that are hard for computers (e.g., vision, understanding natural language) or those that require human-like intelligence (e.g., planning, medical diagnosis).<br>AI research at UMaine<br>The School's AI laboratory is MaineSAIL, the Maine Software Agents and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. As the name suggests, MaineSAIL takes and agent-based approach to AI, dealing with hardware/software systems that perceive their environment, make decisions about how to behave, and take action. Many of MaineSAIL's projects have as their domain the intelligent control of autonomous vehicles, for instance autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) or multi-AUV systems, such as autonomous oceanographic sampling networks (AOSNs). A wide variety of research projects have been or are the focus of effort at MaineSAIL.