This volume contains the texts of papers presented at the Second Irish
Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, held at
Dublin City University in September 1989. This Conference has now become
the major annual forum in Ireland for the presentation and discussion of
current research work in the multi-disciplinary area of Artificial
Intelligence. Papers in this volume have been divided into seven
sections which vary in their subject matter. Image processing,
human-computer interaction, planning, applications and theory of expert
systems, learn- ing, speech, and natural language processing and
semantics repre- sents as broad a spectrum of AI and AI-related topics
as can be found in current AI research. This harmonises quite well with
the aims and scope of the AICS'89 conference which were to provide a
forum for industry and academic research to discuss AI and AI-related
topics and we were delighted that such a broad coverage of topics was
achieved. Despite the broad nature, however, none of the papers are
primarily review articles; each paper presents new research results
within its own specific area.