Design and Analysis of a Multi-Agent E-Learning System Using Prometheus Design Tool

Agent unified modeling languages (AUML) are agent-oriented approaches that supports the specification, design, visualization and documentation of an agent-based system. This paper presents the use of Prometheus AUML approach for the modeling of a Pre-assessment System of five interactive agents. The Pre-assessment System, as previously reported, is a multi-agent based e-learning system that is developed to support the assessment of prior learning skills in students so as to classify their skills and make recommendation for their learning. This paper discusses the detailed design approach of the system in a step-by-step manner; and domain knowledge abstraction and organization in the system. In addition, the analysis of the data collated and models of prediction for future pre-assessment results are also presented.Comment: 17 figures, 3 table

FC Portugal - High-Level Skills Within A Multi-Agent Environment

Ao longo dos anos a RoboCup, uma competição internacional de robótica e da inteligência artificia, foi palco de muitos desenvolvimentos e melhorias nestes duas áreas científicas. Esta competição tem diferentes desafios, incluindo uma liga de simulação 3D (Simulation 3D League). Anualmente, ocorre um torneio de jogos de futebol simulados entre as várias equipas participantes na Simulation 3D League, todas estas equipas deveram ser compostas por 11 robôs humanoides. Esta simulação obedece às leis da física de modo a se aproximar das circunstâncias dos jogos reais. Além disso, as regras da competição são semelhantes às regras originais do futebol com algumas alterações e adaptações. A equipa portuguesa, o FC Portugal 3D é um participante assíduo nos torneios desta liga e chegou até a ser vitoriosa várias vezes nos últimos anos, no entanto, para participar nesta competição é necessário que as equipas tenham os seus agentes capazes de executar skills (ou habilidades) de baixo nível como andar, chutar e levantar-se. O bom registo da equipa FC Portugal 3D advém do facto de os métodos utilizados para treinar os seus jogadores serem continuamente melhorados resultando em melhores habilidades. De facto, considera-se que estes comportamentos de baixo nível estão num ponto em que é possível mudar o foco das implementações para competências de alto nível que deveram ser baseadas nestas competências fundamentais de baixo nível. O futebol pode ser visto como um jogo cooperativo onde jogadores da mesma equipa têm de trabalhar em conjunto para vencer os seus adversários, consequentemente, este jogo é considerado como um bom ambiente para desenvolver, testar e aplicar implementações relativas a cooperações multi-agente. Com isto em mente, o objetivo desta dissertação é construir uma setplay multi-agente baseada nas skills de baixo nível previamente implementadas pela FC Portugal para serem usadas em situações de jogo específicas em que a intenção principal é marcar um golo. Recentemente, muitos participantes da 3D League (incluindo a equipa portuguesa) têm desenvolvido competências utilizando métodos de Deep Reinforcement Learning obtendo resultados satisfatórios num tempo razoável. A abordagem adotada neste projeto foi a de utilizar o algoritmo de Reinforcement Learning, PPO, para treinar todos os ambientes criados com o intuito de desenvolver a setplay pretendida, os resultados dos treinos estão presentes no penúltimo capítulo deste documento seguidos de sugestões para implementações futuras.Throughout the years the RoboCup, an international competition of robotics and artificial intelligence, saw many developments and improvements in these scientific fields. This competition has different types of challenges including a 3D Simulation League that has an annual tournament of simulated soccer games played between several teams each composed of 11 simulated humanoid robots. The simulation obeys the laws of physics in order to approximate the games as much as possible to real circumstances, in addition, the rules are similar to the original soccer rules with a few alterations and adaptations. The Portuguese team, FC Portugal 3D has been an assiduous participant in this league tournaments and was even victorious several times in the past years, nonetheless, to participate in this competition is necessary for teams to have their agents able to execute low-level skills such as walk, kick and get up. The good record of the FC Portugal 3D team comes from the fact that the methods used to train the robots keep being improved, resulting in better skills. As a manner of fact, it is considered that these low-level behaviors are at a point that is possible to shift the implementations' focus to high-level skills based on these fundamental low-level skills. Soccer can be seen as a cooperative game where players from the same team have to work together to beat their opponents, consequently, this game is considered to be a good environment to develop, test, and apply cooperative multi-agent implementations. With this in mind, the objective of this dissertation is to construct a multi-agent setplay based on FC Portugal's low-level skills to be used in certain game situations where the main intent is to score a goal. Recently, many 3D League participants (including the Portuguese team) have been developing skills using Deep Learning methods and obtaining successful results in a reasonable time. The approach taken on this project was to use the Reinforcement Learning algorithm PPO to train all the environments that were created to develop the intended setplay, the results of the training are present in the second-to-last chapter of this document followed by suggestions for future implementations

Seventh Annual Workshop on Space Operations Applications and Research (SOAR 1993), volume 1

This document contains papers presented at the Space Operations, Applications and Research Symposium (SOAR) Symposium hosted by NASA/Johnson Space Center (JSC) on August 3-5, 1993, and held at JSC Gilruth Recreation Center. SOAR included NASA and USAF programmatic overview, plenary session, panel discussions, panel sessions, and exhibits. It invited technical papers in support of U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, Department of Energy, NASA, and USAF programs in the following areas: robotics and telepresence, automation and intelligent systems, human factors, life support, and space maintenance and servicing. SOAR was concerned with Government-sponsored research and development relevant to aerospace operations. More than 100 technical papers, 17 exhibits, a plenary session, several panel discussions, and several keynote speeches were included in SOAR '93

Design and implementation of an automated battery management platform

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2012.Cataloged from department-submitted PDF version of thesis. This electronic version was submitted and approved by the author's academic department as part of an electronic thesis pilot project. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (p. 95-99).This thesis describes the design and the implementation of the hardware platform for automated battery management with battery changing/charging capability for autonomous UAV missions with persistency requirement that extends the mission duration beyond the life of a single UAV battery. The platform is tested through a series of missions lasting at least 3 hours to prove it meets design requirements and to show its feasibility. This thesis also provides a method to modify existing scenarios to proactively plan for the battery maintenance so that the overall system performance is increased. The modifications made to the problem definition increased the state-space significantly, and means of solving a problem of that scale needed to be developed. To address this challenge, this thesis extends a previously developed approach called Incremental Feature Dependency Discovery (iFDD) by allowing to use caches from computer science literature to make conversion from basic features to extended features faster. By doing so, this method significantly reduces the computational complexity.by Tuna Toksoz.S.M

Fintech in financial reporting and audit for fraud prevention and safeguarding equity investments

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the audit-related causes of financial scandals and advice on how emerging technologies can provide solutions thereto. Specifically, this study seeks to look at the facilitators of financial statement fraud and explain specific fintech advancements that contribute to financial information reliability for equity investments. Design/methodology/approach The study uses the case studies of Enron and Arthur Andersen to document the evidence of audit-related issues in historical financial scandals. Then, a comprehensive and interdisciplinary literature review at the intersection of business, accounting and engineering, provides a foundation to propose technology advancements that can solve identified problems in accounting and auditing. Findings The findings show that blockchain, internet of things, smart contracts and artificial intelligence solutions have different functionality and can effectively solve various financial reporting and audit-related problems. Jointly, they have a strong potential to enhance the reliability of the information in financial statements and generally change how companies operate. Practical implications The proposed and explained technology advancements should be of interest to all publicly listed companies and investors, as they can help safeguard equity investments, thus build investors’ trust towards the company. Social implications Aside from implications for capital markets participants, the study findings can materially benefit various stakeholder groups, the broader company environment and the economy. Originality/value This is the first paper that seeks solutions to financial fraud and audit-related financial scandals in technology and not in implementing yet another regulation. Given the recent technology advancements, the study findings provide insights into how the role of an external auditor might evolve in the future

Architecture for intelligent power systems management, optimization, and storage.

The management of power and the optimization of systems generating and using power are critical technologies. A new architecture is developed to advance the current state of the art by providing an intelligent and autonomous solution for power systems management. The architecture is two-layered and implements a decentralized approach by defining software objects, similar to software agents, which provide for local optimization of power devices such as power generating, storage, and load devices. These software device objects also provide an interface to a higher level of optimization. This higher level of optimization implements the second layer in a centralized approach by coordinating the individual software device objects with an intelligent expert system thus resulting in architecture for total system power management. In this way, the architecture acquires the benefits of both the decentralized and centralized approaches. The architecture is designed to be portable, scalable, simple, and autonomous, with respect to devices and missions. Metrics for evaluating these characteristics are also defined. Decentralization achieves scalability and simplicity through modularization using software device objects that can be added and deleted as modules based on the devices of the power system are being optimized. Centralization coordinates these software device objects to bring autonomy and intelligence of the whole power system and mission to the architecture. The centralization approach is generic since it always coordinates software device objects; therefore it becomes another modular component of the architecture. Three example implementations illustrate the evolution of this power management system architecture. The first implementation is a coal-fired power generating station that utilized a neural network optimization for the reduction of nitrogen oxide emissions. This illustrates the limitations of this type of black-box optimization and serves as a motivation for developing a more functional architecture. The second implementation is of a hydro-generating power station where a white-box, software agent approach illustrates some of the benefits and provides initial justification of moving towards the proposed architecture. The third implementation applies the architecture to a vehicle to grid application where the previous hydro-generating application is ported and a new hybrid vehicle application is defined. This demonstrates portability and scalability in the architecture, and linking these two applications demonstrates autonomy. The simplicity of building this application is also evaluated

The Sixth Annual Workshop on Space Operations Applications and Research (SOAR 1992)

This document contains papers presented at the Space Operations, Applications, and Research Symposium (SOAR) hosted by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) on 4-6 Aug. 1992 and held at the JSC Gilruth Recreation Center. The symposium was cosponsored by the Air Force Material Command and by NASA/JSC. Key technical areas covered during the symposium were robotic and telepresence, automation and intelligent systems, human factors, life sciences, and space maintenance and servicing. The SOAR differed from most other conferences in that it was concerned with Government-sponsored research and development relevant to aerospace operations. The symposium's proceedings include papers covering various disciplines presented by experts from NASA, the USAF, universities, and industry

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 405)

This bibliography lists 225 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during Sep. 1995. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and physiology, life support systems and man/system technology, protective clothing, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, planetary biology, and flight crew behavior and performance

Columbia Chronicle (05/19/1997)

Student newspaper from May 19, 1996 entitled The Chronicle of Columbia College Chicago. This issue is 22 pages and is listed as Volume XXX, Number 27. Cover story: Seminar struggles for relevancehttps://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cadc_chronicle/1383/thumbnail.jp