Implementation of context-aware workflows with Multi-agent Systems

Systems in Ambient Intelligence (AmI) need to manage workflows that represent users’ activities. These workflows can be quite complex, as they may involve multiple participants, both physical and computational, playing different roles. Their execution implies monitoring the development of the activities in the environment, and taking the necessary actions for them and the workflow to reach a certain end. The context-aware approach supports the development of these applications to cope with event processing and regarding information issues. Modeling the actors in these context-aware workflows, where complex decisions and interactions must be considered, can be achieved with multi-agent systems. Agents are autonomous entities with sophisticated and flexible behaviors, which are able to adapt to complex and evolving environments, and to collaborate to reach common goals. This work presents architectural patterns to integrate agents on top of an existing context-aware architecture. This allows an additional abstraction layer on top of context-aware systems, where knowledge management is performed by agents.This approach improves the flexibility of AmI systems and facilitates their design. A case study on guiding users in buildings to their meetings illustrates this approach

Context-aware Knowledge-based Systems: A Literature Review

Context awareness systems, a subcategory of intelligent systems, are concerned with suggesting relevant products/services to users' situations as smart services. One key element for improving smart services’ quality is to organize and manipulate contextual data in an appropriate manner to facilitate knowledge generation from these data. In this light, a knowledge-based approach, can be used as a key component in context-aware systems. Context awareness and knowledge-based systems, in fact, have been gaining prominence in their respective domains for decades. However, few studies have focused on how to reconcile the two fields to maximize the benefits of each field. For this reason, the objective of this paper is to present a literature review of how context-aware systems, with a focus on the knowledge-based approach, have recently been conceptualized to promote further research in this area. In the end, the implications and current challenges of the study will be discussed

FROM ISOLATION TO COLLABORATION - HOW THE INCREASING DIFFUSION OF MOBILE DEVICES HAS CHANGED PRACTICES OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING IN NON-OFFICE SETTINGS

The increasing diffusion of mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets has not only revolutionized how people communicate with each other, but has also changed work practices and the way employ-ees share knowledge. Knowledge management studies have to date mainly focused on office settings but paid little attention to non-office workplace settings. However, the use of mobile devices also changes the way employees can be supported and support each other in non-office settings and thus create new application areas for knowledge management. In this research, we applied a three step qualitative inquiry with 36 experts in the construction sector to investigate how the increasing diffu-sion of mobile devices has affected existing work practices that are associated with knowledge sharing in non-office settings. We found that the use of mobile devices helped to transform isolated work prac-tices into collaborative work practices, thereby reducing the spatial, temporal, contextual, and social barriers to knowledge sharing. As such, an increase in connectivity can be seen as an indicator for potential development of increased collaboration across work sites. We conclude the paper with a dis-cussion of implications for organizations concerning the support of knowledge sharing in such settings and an outlook on future work

Multi-scale modelling for knowledge capitalization and Design For Manufacturability

The development of analytical technologies and simulation tools used in the PLM increase day by day. There is a lot of data, information and knowledge associated to the product and its manufacturing plan. Precisely, during the process of design for manufacturing, the extensive number of solutions contains a lot of behaviours, associations, aspects and inputs to consider. For this reason, this paper aims at proposing a new multi-scale model as a way to provide a better structuring, better perception and better description of the many aspects involved in a product design and its manufacturing plan. The product and manufacturing plan models are based on different scale representations, characterized through “representation axes”, where the knowledge is decomposed and commit. At the same time, manufacturing knowledge is implemented to bring and evaluate the coherency among the model features

Multi-scale modeling and knowledge capitalization for analysis and development of DFM

The analytical technologies development and simulation tools use increases day by day; leading to an increment of the data, information and knowledge associated to a product. Due to this, a wide spectrum of approaches (based in different contexts) during the study of the product are required. As well, during the process of design for manufacturing, an extensive number of uses cases are generated; where are contained a lot of behaviors, associations, aspects and inputs to consider. In consequence, this paper aims to propose a multi-scale modelling method to provide a better structure, better perception and better description regarding to the aspects implicated on a product and its manufacturing process. The model proposed is based on different scales representations, characterized through “representation axes”. In this the product data is decomposed and commit at different representation views or ranges. The use of manufacturing knowledge can be implemented on to the analysis and evaluation of the data (input values); providing new information based in the coherence among the inputs. In this way, its capitalization and coherences among the information can be used in product design. For this reason, different models are defined to represent the data and the knowledge during the evolution and structure of the project to develop

Monitoring and Detection Platform to Prevent Anomalous Situations in Home Care

Monitoring and tracking people at home usually requires high cost hardware installations, which implies they are not affordable in many situations. This study/paper proposes a monitoring and tracking system for people with medical problems. A virtual organization of agents based on the PANGEA platform, which allows the easy integration of different devices, was created for this study. In this case, a virtual organization was implemented to track and monitor patients carrying a Holter monitor. The system includes the hardware and software required to perform: ECG measurements, monitoring through accelerometers and WiFi networks. Furthermore, the use of interactive television can moderate interactivity with the user. The system makes it possible to merge the information and facilitates patient tracking efficiently with low cost

New platform for intelligent context-based distributed information fusion

Tesis por compendio de publicaciones[ES]Durante las últimas décadas, las redes de sensores se han vuelto cada vez más importantes y hoy en día están presentes en prácticamente todos los sectores de nuestra sociedad. Su gran capacidad para adquirir datos y actuar sobre el entorno, puede facilitar la construcción de sistemas sensibles al contexto, que permitan un análisis detallado y flexible de los procesos que ocurren y los servicios que se pueden proporcionar a los usuarios. Esta tesis doctoral se presenta en el formato de “Compendio de Artículos”, de tal forma que las principales características de la arquitectura multi-agente distribuida propuesta para facilitar la interconexión de redes de sensores se presentan en tres artículos bien diferenciados. Se ha planteado una arquitectura modular y ligera para dispositivos limitados computacionalmente, diseñando un mecanismo de comunicación flexible que permite la interacción entre diferentes agentes embebidos, desplegados en dispositivos de tamaño reducido. Se propone un nuevo modelo de agente embebido, como mecanismo de extensión para la plataforma PANGEA. Además, se diseña un nuevo modelo de organización virtual de agentes especializada en la fusión de información. De esta forma, los agentes inteligentes tienen en cuenta las características de las organizaciones existentes en el entorno a la hora de proporcionar servicios. El modelo de fusión de información presenta una arquitectura claramente diferenciada en 4 niveles, siendo capaz de obtener la información proporcionada por las redes de sensores (capas inferiores) para ser integrada con organizaciones virtuales de agentes (capas superiores). El filtrado de señales, minería de datos, sistemas de razonamiento basados en casos y otras técnicas de Inteligencia Artificial han sido aplicadas para la consecución exitosa de esta investigación. Una de las principales innovaciones que pretendo con mi estudio, es investigar acerca de nuevos mecanismos que permitan la adición dinámica de redes de sensores combinando diferentes tecnologías con el propósito final de exponer un conjunto de servicios de usuario de forma distribuida. En este sentido, se propondrá una arquitectura multiagente basada en organizaciones virtuales que gestione de forma autónoma la infraestructura subyacente constituida por el hardware y los diferentes sensores

Du modèle de processus d’affaires à la spécification des exigences en contexte de systèmes intelligents : application de la méthode CommonKADS

De plus en plus d’organisations se tournent vers l’intelligence artificielle (IA) ces dernières années, principalement en raison de l'accès important à de grandes quantités de données ainsi qu’aux profits qu’elle apporte aux entreprises qui l’utilisent. Afin de concevoir un système intelligent, il est primordial de définir les exigences, c’est-à-dire la capacité qu’un système doit fournir ou une condition qu'il doit remplir pour satisfaire à un besoin d’un utilisateur. La spécification des exigences est l’étape permettant de produire un document qui définit de manière complète les exigences. Cette étape s'avère donc très cruciale, car les exigences incomplètes ou erronées sont souvent citées comme cause d’échec des projets informatiques. Les exigences sont généralement dérivées des processus d’affaires. Les approches traditionnelles de définition des exigences, comme les cas d’utilisation, ne se prêtent pas aux caractéristiques des systèmes intelligents du fait que ces derniers impliquent des tâches plus complexes et des exécutions dynamiques qui évoluent en fonction de l’expérience acquise par l’exécuteur de la tâche. Ainsi, il est important de savoir comment définir les exigences dans un contexte de systèmes intelligents. L’approche CommonKADS (Schreiber et al., 2000) semble être un candidat intéressant pour ce faire. Cette approche offre un ensemble complet et structuré de six modèles à différents niveaux : contexte, concepts, artéfacts. Cette recherche consiste à savoir comment spécifier les exigences dans un contexte de système intelligent en partant du processus d’affaires. Le premier objectif de ce mémoire est d’abord d’effectuer une revue systématique de littérature décrivant l’état de l’art de la méthode CommonKADS. Un autre objectif poursuivi par cette recherche est de valider la méthode CommonKADS en l’appliquant à une situation réelle du Fonds d’investissement étudiant de l’Université de Sherbrooke (FIEUS). La méthode de recherche utilisée pour ce mémoire est la recherche en science de la conception basée sur Peffers et al. (2007) qui a permis de créer trois artéfacts : le concept d’intensivité de connaissance, la méthode de spécification des exigences et l’instance d’application au FIEUS. L’application de l’approche CommonKADS au FIEUS a permis de définir trois modèles de processus d'affaires : processus de sélection de titres admissibles, processus de suivi du portefeuille et processus de suivi de titres. Ces modèles correspondent au niveau du contexte de l’approche CommonKADS. En tout, quatre tâches provenant des processus ont été identifiées comme tâches cognitives ou intensives en connaissances : sélectionner les titres à analyser, analyser les paires de titres, analyser les titres et configurer le portefeuille. Le modèle de connaissances de CommonKADS a permis de représenter leur structure d’inférence à partir d’une typologie de tâches intensives en connaissances. Une structure d’inférence représente le raisonnement pour réaliser une tâche. La méthode CommonKADS a permis de définir les exigences dans des situations plus complexes qui ne peuvent pas être définies par des approches traditionnelles comme les cas d’utilisation. Cette recherche a démontré que l’approche CommonKADS permet de définir des situations d’affaires en gestion de portefeuille pour lesquelles les règles ne sont pas rigoureusement définies et pour lesquelles l’intelligence artificielle pourrait être une technologie candidate. Une piste de recherche future consiste à élaborer des mécanismes permettant la sélection de technologies intelligentes une fois les exigences définies

A knowledge-based system approach for a context-aware system

Knowledge-based systems (KBS) are advanced systems for representing complex problems. Their architecture and representation formalisms are the groundwork of today's systems. The knowledge is usually derived from expertise in specific areas and has to be validated according to a different methodology than is used in conventional systems because the knowledge is symbolic. This paper describes the design, definition and evaluation of a knowledge-based system using the CommonKADS (CKADS) methodology to formally represent contextual information for the Appear platform. We also evaluate the context-aware information system from the user's point of view using a U2E system and also validate it through a simulated example in a realistic environment: an airport domain, which is a significant step towards formally building KBS applications.This work was supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI,CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/TIC-1485) and DPS2008-07029-C02-02.Publicad