6 research outputs found

    Counterexample Guided Abstraction Refinement with Non-Refined Abstractions for Multi-Agent Path Finding

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    Counterexample guided abstraction refinement (CEGAR) represents a powerful symbolic technique for various tasks such as model checking and reachability analysis. Recently, CEGAR combined with Boolean satisfiability (SAT) has been applied for multi-agent path finding (MAPF), a problem where the task is to navigate agents from their start positions to given individual goal positions so that the agents do not collide with each other. The recent CEGAR approach used the initial abstraction of the MAPF problem where collisions between agents were omitted and were eliminated in subsequent abstraction refinements. We propose in this work a novel CEGAR-style solver for MAPF based on SAT in which some abstractions are deliberately left non-refined. This adds the necessity to post-process the answers obtained from the underlying SAT solver as these answers slightly differ from the correct MAPF solutions. Non-refining however yields order-of-magnitude smaller SAT encodings than those of the previous approach and speeds up the overall solving process making the SAT-based solver for MAPF competitive again in relevant benchmarks

    Production Scheduling

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    Generally speaking, scheduling is the procedure of mapping a set of tasks or jobs (studied objects) to a set of target resources efficiently. More specifically, as a part of a larger planning and scheduling process, production scheduling is essential for the proper functioning of a manufacturing enterprise. This book presents ten chapters divided into five sections. Section 1 discusses rescheduling strategies, policies, and methods for production scheduling. Section 2 presents two chapters about flow shop scheduling. Section 3 describes heuristic and metaheuristic methods for treating the scheduling problem in an efficient manner. In addition, two test cases are presented in Section 4. The first uses simulation, while the second shows a real implementation of a production scheduling system. Finally, Section 5 presents some modeling strategies for building production scheduling systems. This book will be of interest to those working in the decision-making branches of production, in various operational research areas, as well as computational methods design. People from a diverse background ranging from academia and research to those working in industry, can take advantage of this volume

    How not to return to normal

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    In a March 2020 article published in Le Monde, Bruno Latour defined the Covid-19 emergency as "the big rehearsal" for the larger disaster to come: one that extends to all forms of life on Earth. The ongoing crisis, in his eyes, becomes both a risk and an opportunity to trial and develop new action plans necessary for the continuation of life. "The pandemic is a portal," wrote author Arundhati Roy a few days later, calling for a more equitable and sustainable post-pandemic future. The pandemic is an opportunity for un-learning and changing direction, particularly in how we approach risk and disaster. The dominant narrative for politicians and the media, however, is one of “returning to normal” as soon as possible, bouncing back, relying on established models of resilience based on the management of economic risk. They are also rehearsing, or modelling, worst- or best-case scenarios. Artists, designers, and institutions are shaping discourses around the growing extinguishment of our resources, but also performing, visualising, simulating and modelling responses to possible risks and imagining resilience differently. Design and art can foster new visions, pilot new modes of communication and knowledge sharing, and drive the interdisciplinary collaborations necessary to address common issues. This panel explores ways in which art and design practices can be mobilized to transform current approaches to risk and disaster in imaginative, sustainable and equitable ways. The papers selected for this session reflect a need to reassess, reframe, and reimagine the roles of museums, art and design, and thus contribute to a space for critical reflection to inform action, strategy, and practices. It is important to remember that our fields are far from immune from being complicit in the creation and reinforcement of the kinds of inequalities and injustices that have been made even more unmistakably clear in the last year: as Sasha Costanza-Shock, author of the book Design Justice, has pointed out, designers are ‘often unwittingly reproducing the existing structure of [...] who's going to benefit the most and who's going to be harmed the most by the tools or the objects or the systems or the buildings or spaces that we're designing.’ The urge to respond in an emergency, whether it's a design challenge in the context of COVID 19 or exhibition on climate change, requires space for critical thinking, inclusive conversation and production. This necessity comes across on the three papers brought together for this panel, and in the opening presentation by Emily Candela and Francesca Cavallo

    Políticas de Copyright de Publicações Científicas em Repositórios Institucionais: O Caso do INESC TEC

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    A progressiva transformação das práticas científicas, impulsionada pelo desenvolvimento das novas Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC), têm possibilitado aumentar o acesso à informação, caminhando gradualmente para uma abertura do ciclo de pesquisa. Isto permitirá resolver a longo prazo uma adversidade que se tem colocado aos investigadores, que passa pela existência de barreiras que limitam as condições de acesso, sejam estas geográficas ou financeiras. Apesar da produção científica ser dominada, maioritariamente, por grandes editoras comerciais, estando sujeita às regras por estas impostas, o Movimento do Acesso Aberto cuja primeira declaração pública, a Declaração de Budapeste (BOAI), é de 2002, vem propor alterações significativas que beneficiam os autores e os leitores. Este Movimento vem a ganhar importância em Portugal desde 2003, com a constituição do primeiro repositório institucional a nível nacional. Os repositórios institucionais surgiram como uma ferramenta de divulgação da produção científica de uma instituição, com o intuito de permitir abrir aos resultados da investigação, quer antes da publicação e do próprio processo de arbitragem (preprint), quer depois (postprint), e, consequentemente, aumentar a visibilidade do trabalho desenvolvido por um investigador e a respetiva instituição. O estudo apresentado, que passou por uma análise das políticas de copyright das publicações científicas mais relevantes do INESC TEC, permitiu não só perceber que as editoras adotam cada vez mais políticas que possibilitam o auto-arquivo das publicações em repositórios institucionais, como também que existe todo um trabalho de sensibilização a percorrer, não só para os investigadores, como para a instituição e toda a sociedade. A produção de um conjunto de recomendações, que passam pela implementação de uma política institucional que incentive o auto-arquivo das publicações desenvolvidas no âmbito institucional no repositório, serve como mote para uma maior valorização da produção científica do INESC TEC.The progressive transformation of scientific practices, driven by the development of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which made it possible to increase access to information, gradually moving towards an opening of the research cycle. This opening makes it possible to resolve, in the long term, the adversity that has been placed on researchers, which involves the existence of barriers that limit access conditions, whether geographical or financial. Although large commercial publishers predominantly dominate scientific production and subject it to the rules imposed by them, the Open Access movement whose first public declaration, the Budapest Declaration (BOAI), was in 2002, proposes significant changes that benefit the authors and the readers. This Movement has gained importance in Portugal since 2003, with the constitution of the first institutional repository at the national level. Institutional repositories have emerged as a tool for disseminating the scientific production of an institution to open the results of the research, both before publication and the preprint process and postprint, increase the visibility of work done by an investigator and his or her institution. The present study, which underwent an analysis of the copyright policies of INESC TEC most relevant scientific publications, allowed not only to realize that publishers are increasingly adopting policies that make it possible to self-archive publications in institutional repositories, all the work of raising awareness, not only for researchers but also for the institution and the whole society. The production of a set of recommendations, which go through the implementation of an institutional policy that encourages the self-archiving of the publications developed in the institutional scope in the repository, serves as a motto for a greater appreciation of the scientific production of INESC TEC

    Accelerating advanced preconditioning methods on hybrid architectures

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    Un gran número de problemas, en diversas áreas de la ciencia y la ingeniería, involucran la solución de sistemas dispersos de ecuaciones lineales de gran escala. En muchos de estos escenarios, son además un cuello de botella desde el punto de vista computacional, y por esa razón, su implementación eficiente ha motivado una cantidad enorme de trabajos científicos. Por muchos años, los métodos directos basados en el proceso de la Eliminación Gaussiana han sido la herramienta de referencia para resolver dichos sistemas, pero la dimensión de los problemas abordados actualmente impone serios desafíos a la mayoría de estos algoritmos, considerando sus requerimientos de memoria, su tiempo de cómputo y la complejidad de su implementación. Propulsados por los avances en las técnicas de precondicionado, los métodos iterativos se han vuelto más confiables, y por lo tanto emergen como alternativas a los métodos directos, ofreciendo soluciones de alta calidad a un menor costo computacional. Sin embargo, estos avances muchas veces son relativos a un problema específico, o dotan a los precondicionadores de una complejidad tal, que su aplicación en diversos problemas se vuelve poco práctica en términos de tiempo de ejecución y consumo de memoria. Como respuesta a esta situación, es común la utilización de estrategias de Computación de Alto Desempeño, ya que el desarrollo sostenido de las plataformas de hardware permite la ejecución simultánea de cada vez más operaciones. Un claro ejemplo de esta evolución son las plataformas compuestas por procesadores multi-núcleo y aceleradoras de hardware como las Unidades de Procesamiento Gráfico (GPU). Particularmente, las GPU se han convertido en poderosos procesadores paralelos, capaces de integrar miles de núcleos a precios y consumo energético razonables.Por estas razones, las GPU son ahora una plataforma de hardware de gran importancia para la ciencia y la ingeniería, y su uso eficiente es crucial para alcanzar un buen desempeño en la mayoría de las aplicaciones. Esta tesis se centra en el uso de GPUs para acelerar la solución de sistemas dispersos de ecuaciones lineales usando métodos iterativos precondicionados con técnicas modernas. En particular, se trabaja sobre ILUPACK, que ofrece implementaciones de los métodos iterativos más importantes, y presenta un interesante y moderno precondicionador de tipo ILU multinivel. En este trabajo, se desarrollan versiones del precondicionador y de los métodos incluidos en el paquete, capaces de explotar el paralelismo de datos mediante el uso de GPUs sin afectar las propiedades numéricas del precondicionador. Además, se habilita y analiza el uso de las GPU en versiones paralelas existentes, basadas en paralelismo de tareas para plataformas de memoria compartida y distribuida. Los resultados obtenidos muestran una sensible mejora en el tiempo de ejecución de los métodos abordados, así como la posibilidad de resolver problemas de gran escala de forma eficiente

    Aldo von Wangenheim

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