51,332 research outputs found
Dealing with Drift of Adaptation Spaces in Learning-based Self-Adaptive Systems using Lifelong Self-Adaptation
Recently, machine learning (ML) has become a popular approach to support
self-adaptation. ML has been used to deal with several problems in
self-adaptation, such as maintaining an up-to-date runtime model under
uncertainty and scalable decision-making. Yet, exploiting ML comes with
inherent challenges. In this paper, we focus on a particularly important
challenge for learning-based self-adaptive systems: drift in adaptation spaces.
With adaptation space we refer to the set of adaptation options a self-adaptive
system can select from at a given time to adapt based on the estimated quality
properties of the adaptation options. Drift of adaptation spaces originates
from uncertainties, affecting the quality properties of the adaptation options.
Such drift may imply that eventually no adaptation option can satisfy the
initial set of the adaptation goals, deteriorating the quality of the system,
or adaptation options may emerge that allow enhancing the adaptation goals. In
ML, such shift corresponds to novel class appearance, a type of concept drift
in target data that common ML techniques have problems dealing with. To tackle
this problem, we present a novel approach to self-adaptation that enhances
learning-based self-adaptive systems with a lifelong ML layer. We refer to this
approach as lifelong self-adaptation. The lifelong ML layer tracks the system
and its environment, associates this knowledge with the current tasks,
identifies new tasks based on differences, and updates the learning models of
the self-adaptive system accordingly. A human stakeholder may be involved to
support the learning process and adjust the learning and goal models. We
present a reusable architecture for lifelong self-adaptation and apply it to
the case of drift of adaptation spaces that affects the decision-making in
self-adaptation. We validate the approach for a series of scenarios using the
DeltaIoT exemplar
Towards a competency model for adaptive assessment to support lifelong learning
Adaptive assessment provides efficient and personalised routes to establishing the proficiencies of learners. We can envisage a future in which learners are able to maintain and expose their competency profile to multiple services, throughout their life, which will use the competency information in the model to personalise assessment. Current competency standards tend to over simplify the representation of competency and the knowledge domain. This paper presents a competency model for evaluating learned capability by considering achieved competencies to support adaptive assessment for lifelong learning. This model provides a multidimensional view of competencies and provides for interoperability between systems as the learner progresses through life. The proposed competency model is being developed and implemented in the JISC-funded Placement Learning and Assessment Toolkit (mPLAT) project at the University of Southampton. This project which takes a Service-Oriented approach will contribute to the JISC community by adding mobile assessment tools to the E-framework
Metadata for describing learning scenarios under European Higher Education Area paradigm
In this paper we identify the requirements for creating formal descriptions of learning scenarios designed under the European Higher
Education Area paradigm, using competences and learning activities as the basic pieces of the learning process, instead of contents and learning resources, pursuing personalization. Classical arrangements of content based courses are no longer enough to describe all the richness of this new learning process, where user profiles, competences and complex hierarchical itineraries need to be properly combined. We study the intersection with the current IMS Learning Design specification and the
additional metadata required for describing such learning scenarios. This new approach involves the use of case based learning and collaborative
learning in order to acquire and develop competences, following adaptive learning paths in two structured levels
Lifelong Federated Reinforcement Learning: A Learning Architecture for Navigation in Cloud Robotic Systems
This paper was motivated by the problem of how to make robots fuse and
transfer their experience so that they can effectively use prior knowledge and
quickly adapt to new environments. To address the problem, we present a
learning architecture for navigation in cloud robotic systems: Lifelong
Federated Reinforcement Learning (LFRL). In the work, We propose a knowledge
fusion algorithm for upgrading a shared model deployed on the cloud. Then,
effective transfer learning methods in LFRL are introduced. LFRL is consistent
with human cognitive science and fits well in cloud robotic systems.
Experiments show that LFRL greatly improves the efficiency of reinforcement
learning for robot navigation. The cloud robotic system deployment also shows
that LFRL is capable of fusing prior knowledge. In addition, we release a cloud
robotic navigation-learning website based on LFRL
Learning Deep Visual Object Models From Noisy Web Data: How to Make it Work
Deep networks thrive when trained on large scale data collections. This has
given ImageNet a central role in the development of deep architectures for
visual object classification. However, ImageNet was created during a specific
period in time, and as such it is prone to aging, as well as dataset bias
issues. Moving beyond fixed training datasets will lead to more robust visual
systems, especially when deployed on robots in new environments which must
train on the objects they encounter there. To make this possible, it is
important to break free from the need for manual annotators. Recent work has
begun to investigate how to use the massive amount of images available on the
Web in place of manual image annotations. We contribute to this research thread
with two findings: (1) a study correlating a given level of noisily labels to
the expected drop in accuracy, for two deep architectures, on two different
types of noise, that clearly identifies GoogLeNet as a suitable architecture
for learning from Web data; (2) a recipe for the creation of Web datasets with
minimal noise and maximum visual variability, based on a visual and natural
language processing concept expansion strategy. By combining these two results,
we obtain a method for learning powerful deep object models automatically from
the Web. We confirm the effectiveness of our approach through object
categorization experiments using our Web-derived version of ImageNet on a
popular robot vision benchmark database, and on a lifelong object discovery
task on a mobile robot.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, 3 table
Lifelong Generative Modeling
Lifelong learning is the problem of learning multiple consecutive tasks in a
sequential manner, where knowledge gained from previous tasks is retained and
used to aid future learning over the lifetime of the learner. It is essential
towards the development of intelligent machines that can adapt to their
surroundings. In this work we focus on a lifelong learning approach to
unsupervised generative modeling, where we continuously incorporate newly
observed distributions into a learned model. We do so through a student-teacher
Variational Autoencoder architecture which allows us to learn and preserve all
the distributions seen so far, without the need to retain the past data nor the
past models. Through the introduction of a novel cross-model regularizer,
inspired by a Bayesian update rule, the student model leverages the information
learned by the teacher, which acts as a probabilistic knowledge store. The
regularizer reduces the effect of catastrophic interference that appears when
we learn over sequences of distributions. We validate our model's performance
on sequential variants of MNIST, FashionMNIST, PermutedMNIST, SVHN and Celeb-A
and demonstrate that our model mitigates the effects of catastrophic
interference faced by neural networks in sequential learning scenarios.Comment: 32 page
Learning architectures and negotiation of meaning in European trade unions
As networked learning becomes familiar at all levels and in all sectors of education, cross-fertilisation of innovative methods can usefully inform the lifelong learning agenda. Development of the pedagogical architectures and social processes, which afford learning, is a major challenge for educators as they strive to address the varied needs of a wide range of learners. One area in which this challenge is taken very seriously is that of trade unions, where recent large-scale projects have aimed to address many of these issues at a European level. This paper describes one such project, which targeted not only online courses, but also the wider political potential of virtual communities of practice. By analysing findings in relation to Wengers learning architecture, the paper investigates further the relationships between communities of practice and communities of learners in the trade union context. The findings suggest that a focus on these relationships rather than on the technologies that support them should inform future developments
PDP4Life: personal development planning for lifelong learning. Final Report.
Many HEIs have developed electronic Personal Development Planning (e-PDP) systems that support the learner through the processes of personal development planning, however, little attention appeared to have been paid to developing frameworks within these systems to enable learners to merge formal and informal records of learning into a single database, to transfer records from one institutional learning environment to another, and to access and manipulate their learner records when not registered within a place of study. PDP4Life attempted to address these issues. This final project report outlines the outcomes of this JISC project
Promarc: An Online Skills and Projects Marketplace
Technical projects can vary greatly in terms of cost, complexity, and time. Project leads spend a lot of valuable time and energy making sure that their teams are organized and on-task. A major part of their responsibilities includes putting together a team with the right skills in order to maximize efficiency. Having a platform where project leads can quickly find team members with the right skills would save them a lot of stress and trouble. The goal of this project is to deliver such a platform, where users can make posts about their projects and the technical skills that they require, and be connected to an entire network of potential viable team members. Our system consists of a web application connected to a database backend, accessible through different interfaces depending on the credentials of the user. This report will also provide an in-depth analysis on the systems requirements specifications, use cases, data flow, involved actors, architecture, testing procedures, risk analysis, development timeline, final results, and societal impact
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