A Developmental Organization for Robot Behavior

This paper focuses on exploring how learning and development can be structured in synthetic (robot) systems. We present a developmental assembler for constructing reusable and temporally extended actions in a sequence. The discussion adopts the traditions of dynamic pattern theory in which behavior is an artifact of coupled dynamical systems with a number of controllable degrees of freedom. In our model, the events that delineate control decisions are derived from the pattern of (dis)equilibria on a working subset of sensorimotor policies. We show how this architecture can be used to accomplish sequential knowledge gathering and representation tasks and provide examples of the kind of developmental milestones that this approach has already produced in our lab

Simulation verification techniques study

Results are summarized of the simulation verification techniques study which consisted of two tasks: to develop techniques for simulator hardware checkout and to develop techniques for simulation performance verification (validation). The hardware verification task involved definition of simulation hardware (hardware units and integrated simulator configurations), survey of current hardware self-test techniques, and definition of hardware and software techniques for checkout of simulator subsystems. The performance verification task included definition of simulation performance parameters (and critical performance parameters), definition of methods for establishing standards of performance (sources of reference data or validation), and definition of methods for validating performance. Both major tasks included definition of verification software and assessment of verification data base impact. An annotated bibliography of all documents generated during this study is provided

Optimising airline maintenance scheduling decisions

Airline maintenance scheduling (AMS) studies how plans or schedules are constructed to ensure that a fleet is efficiently maintained and that airline operational demands are met. Additionally, such schedules must take into consideration the different regulations airlines are subject to, while minimising maintenance costs. In this thesis, we study different formulations, solution methods, and modelling considerations, for the AMS and related problems to propose two main contributions. First, we present a new type of multi-objective mixed integer linear programming formulation which challenges traditional time discretisation. Employing the concept of time intervals, we efficiently model the airline maintenance scheduling problem with tail assignment considerations. With a focus on workshop resource allocation and individual aircraft flight operations, and the use of a custom iterative algorithm, we solve large and long-term real-world instances (16000 flights, 529 aircraft, 8 maintenance workshops) in reasonable computational time. Moreover, we provide evidence to suggest, that our framework provides near-optimal solutions, and that inter-airline cooperation is beneficial for workshops. Second, we propose a new hybrid solution procedure to solve the aircraft recovery problem. Here, we study how to re-schedule flights and re-assign aircraft to these, to resume airline operations after an unforeseen disruption. We do so while taking operational restrictions into account. Specifically, restrictions on aircraft, maintenance, crew duty, and passenger delay are accounted for. The flexibility of the approach allows for further operational restrictions to be easily introduced. The hybrid solution procedure involves the combination of column generation with learning-based hyperheuristics. The latter, adaptively selects exact or metaheuristic algorithms to generate columns. The five different algorithms implemented, two of which we developed, were collected and released as a Python package (Torres Sanchez, 2020). Findings suggest that the framework produces fast and insightful recovery solutions

Manufacturing Processes Management with Usage of Simulation Tools

Simulace výrobních procesů pomáhá optimalizovat výrobu, logistiku a další systémy, díky čemuž dochází ke snižování nákladů a racionalizaci vnitropodnikových procesů. Využitím diskrétní simulace programu Witness Power with Ease se v diplomové práci optimalizuje logistický tok materiálu ve společnosti Hella Autotechnik, s.r.o. Práce přibližuje metody a jednotlivé fáze tvorby modelu včetně jeho validace a navrhuje vylepšení, díky kterému by mělo dojít ke snížení nákladů na dopravní služby o 24 400 Kč měsíčně.By optimizing the logistics, production and other systems the simulation can reduce costs and rationalise business processes. By use of discrete simulation in software Witness Power with Ease is in this diploma thesis optimised logistical flow of material in the company Hella Autotechnik, s.r.o. The thesis introduces methods and particular phases of creating the model including its validation. The proposal in the diploma work suggests the improvement to lower the costs for the transportation services by 24,400 CZK per month.

Expert Elicitation for Reliable System Design

This paper reviews the role of expert judgement to support reliability assessments within the systems engineering design process. Generic design processes are described to give the context and a discussion is given about the nature of the reliability assessments required in the different systems engineering phases. It is argued that, as far as meeting reliability requirements is concerned, the whole design process is more akin to a statistical control process than to a straightforward statistical problem of assessing an unknown distribution. This leads to features of the expert judgement problem in the design context which are substantially different from those seen, for example, in risk assessment. In particular, the role of experts in problem structuring and in developing failure mitigation options is much more prominent, and there is a need to take into account the reliability potential for future mitigation measures downstream in the system life cycle. An overview is given of the stakeholders typically involved in large scale systems engineering design projects, and this is used to argue the need for methods that expose potential judgemental biases in order to generate analyses that can be said to provide rational consensus about uncertainties. Finally, a number of key points are developed with the aim of moving toward a framework that provides a holistic method for tracking reliability assessment through the design process.Comment: This paper commented in: [arXiv:0708.0285], [arXiv:0708.0287], [arXiv:0708.0288]. Rejoinder in [arXiv:0708.0293]. Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000510 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 314)

This bibliography lists 139 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in August, 1988

Warranty Data Analysis: A Review

Warranty claims and supplementary data contain useful information about product quality and reliability. Analysing such data can therefore be of benefit to manufacturers in identifying early warnings of abnormalities in their products, providing useful information about failure modes to aid design modification, estimating product reliability for deciding on warranty policy and forecasting future warranty claims needed for preparing fiscal plans. In the last two decades, considerable research has been conducted in warranty data analysis (WDA) from several different perspectives. This article attempts to summarise and review the research and developments in WDA with emphasis on models, methods and applications. It concludes with a brief discussion on current practices and possible future trends in WDA

Controller synthesis for parameterized discrete event systems

Les systèmes à événements discrets sont des systèmes dynamiques particuliers. Ils changent d’état de fa¸con discrète et le terme événement est utilisé afin de représenter l’occurrence de changements discontinus. Ces systèmes sont principalement construits par l’homme et on les retrouve surtout dans les secteurs manufacturier, de la circu- lation automobile, des bases de données et des protocoles de communication. Cette thèse s’intéresse au contrôle des systèmes paramétrés à événements discrets où les spécifications sont exprimées à l’aide de prédicats et satisfont une condition de similarité. Des conditions sont données afin de déduire des propriétés, en observation partielle ou totale, pour un système composé de n processus similaires à partir d’un système com- posé de n0 processus, avec n ≥ n0. De plus, il est montré comment inférer des politiques de contrôle en présence de relations d’interconnexion entre les processus. Cette étude est principalement motivée par la faiblesse des méthodes actuelles de synthèse pour le traitement des problèmes industriels de taille réelle.Discrete event systems are a special type of dynamic systems. The state of these systems changes only at discrete instants of time and the term event is used to represent the occurrence of discontinuous changes. These systems are mostly man-made and arise in the domains of manufacturing systems, traffic systems, database management systems and communication protocols. This thesis investigates the control of parameterized discrete event systems when specifications are given in terms of predicates and satisfy a similarity assumption. For systems consisting of similar processes under total or partial observation, conditions are given to deduce properties of a system of n processes from properties of a system of n0 processes, with n ≥ n0. Furthermore, it is shown how to infer a control policy for the former from the latter’s, while taking into account interconnections between processes. This study is motivated by a weakness in current synthesis methods that do not scale well to huge systems