1 Introduction 

Unlike many of the other participants in the Evaluation Workshop I do not feel 
competent to evaluate or comment in detail on the research activities of ICOT over 
the 10 years of the project though I will provide some general comments later in this 
report. ANU's position is different to that of many other organizations that have co-
operated and collaborated with ICOT in that our interaction is almost solely in an 
application area - theorem proving - and not at the level of the fundamental research 
that has been until recently ICOT's main focus. Further our interaction only really 
commenced in 1992 though it has grow quickly into a valuable collaboration that has 
rapidly yielded significant results. 

Thus I will restrict myself to describing this interaction and commenting on the 
quality of ICOT's work in theorem proving 

2 History 

ANU followed with great interest the MITI initiative that became ICOT from about 
1980 and followed in broad outline the activities of ICOT ever since. ANU has had 
a strong logic research group since the early 1970s and this group started working in 
theorem proving about 10 years ago. The announcement in the early 1980s that Japan 
was to initiate a major well funded initiative in logic-based computer systems was an 
enormously exciting one to members of this group and it is difficult to convey now 
just how galvanizing an effect it had on researchers in foreign countries who had been 
working on computing and logic for years in relative obscurity. ICOT was a major 
stimulus not just to their morale but also to the establishment of large, well funded 
programs and laboratories in many foreign countries such as Alvey, Esprit, MCC and 
SICS. 

These facts are well known and I will not dwell on them as others more knowledge-
able than I will certainly do so in their reports. However the involvement of research 
institutions in my country, Australia, with ICOT, is less well known and is worth briefly 
putting on the record since this report is being written at the last FGCS Conference. 


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