Human-in-the-loop simulation based system for more effective allocation and training of experimenters' groups in stimulation of biotechnological processes

In the case of biotechnological processes, a proper conduction of experiments requires particular attention and skills. This is due to possibilities of causing irreversible damages to living microorganisms when making wrong decisions. In the considered case, two experimenters are enough to conduct a single experiment, but when taking into account the maintenance of process continuity (there is no possibility of stopping the process), then it is necessary to involve more experimenters working in sequentially changing groups. Due to the need to eliminate possible errors, the choice of experimental groups is crucial. In this paper, it is proposed to use human-in-the-loop simulation procedure for selection of experimental groups and for their training before making experiments on real process. For simulation purposes, the process simulator and the collection of processing data were used. This allowed to perform the human-in-the-loop simulations, and then, based on the obtained simulation results, to choose the experimental groups including social conditioning of experimenters

Design and development of a hominid robot with local control in its adaptable feet to enhance locomotion capabilities

With increasing mechanization of our daily lives, the expectations and demands in robotic systems increase in the general public and in scientists alike. In recent events such as the Deepwater Horizon''-accident or the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, mobile robotic systems were used, e.g., to support local task forces by gaining visual material to allow an analysis of the situation. Especially the Fukushima example shows that the robotic systems not only have to face a variety of different tasks during operation but also have to deal with different demands regarding the robot's mobility characteristics. To be able to cope with future requirements, it seems necessary to develop kinematically complex systems that feature several different operating modes. That is where this thesis comes in: A robotic system is developed, whose morphology is oriented on chimpanzees and which has the possibility due to its electro-mechanical structure and the degrees of freedom in its arms and legs to walk with different gaits in different postures. For the proposed robot, the chimpanzee was chosen as a model, since these animals show a multitude of different gaits in nature. A quadrupedal gait like crawl allows the robot to traverse safely and stable over rough terrain. A change into the humanoid, bipedal posture enables the robot to move in man-made environments. The structures, which are necessary to ensure an effective and stable locomotion in these two poses, e.g., the feet, are presented in more detail within the thesis. This includes the biological model and an abstraction to allow a technical implementation. In addition, biological spines are analyzed and the development of an active, artificial spine for the robotic system is described. These additional degrees of freedom can increase the robot's locomotion and manipulation capabilities and even allow to show movements, which are not possible without a spine. Unfortunately, the benefits of using an artificial spine in robotic systems are nowadays still neglected, due to the increased complexity of system design and control. To be able to control such a kinematically complex system, a multitude of sensors is installed within the robot's structures. By placing evaluation electronics close by, a local and decentralized preprocessing is realized. Due to this preprocessing is it possible to realize behaviors on the lowest level of robot control: in this thesis it is exemplarily demonstrated by a local controller in the robot's lower leg. In addition to the development and evaluation of robot's structures, the functionality of the overall system is analyzed in different environments. This includes the presentation of detailed data to show the advantages and disadvantages of the local controller. The robot can change its posture independently from a quadrupedal into a bipedal stance and the other way around without external assistance. Once the robot stands upright, it is to investigate to what extent the quadrupedal walking pattern and control structures (like the local controller) have to be modified to contribute to the bipedal walking as well

Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud

Distributed software simulations are indispensable in the study of large-scale life models but often require the use of technically complex lower-level distributed computing frameworks, such as MPI. We propose to overcome the complexity challenge by applying the emerging MapReduce (MR) model to distributed life simulations and by running such simulations on the cloud. Technically, we design optimized MR streaming algorithms for discrete and continuous versions of Conway’s life according to a general MR streaming pattern. We chose life because it is simple enough as a testbed for MR’s applicability to a-life simulations and general enough to make our results applicable to various lattice-based a-life models. We implement and empirically evaluate our algorithms’ performance on Amazon’s Elastic MR cloud. Our experiments demonstrate that a single MR optimization technique called strip partitioning can reduce the execution time of continuous life simulations by 64%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose and evaluate MR streaming algorithms for lattice-based simulations. Our algorithms can serve as prototypes in the development of novel MR simulation algorithms for large-scale lattice-based a-life models.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_books/1014/thumbnail.jp

Bio-Inspired Robotics

Modern robotic technologies have enabled robots to operate in a variety of unstructured and dynamically-changing environments, in addition to traditional structured environments. Robots have, thus, become an important element in our everyday lives. One key approach to develop such intelligent and autonomous robots is to draw inspiration from biological systems. Biological structure, mechanisms, and underlying principles have the potential to provide new ideas to support the improvement of conventional robotic designs and control. Such biological principles usually originate from animal or even plant models, for robots, which can sense, think, walk, swim, crawl, jump or even fly. Thus, it is believed that these bio-inspired methods are becoming increasingly important in the face of complex applications. Bio-inspired robotics is leading to the study of innovative structures and computing with sensory–motor coordination and learning to achieve intelligence, flexibility, stability, and adaptation for emergent robotic applications, such as manipulation, learning, and control. This Special Issue invites original papers of innovative ideas and concepts, new discoveries and improvements, and novel applications and business models relevant to the selected topics of ``Bio-Inspired Robotics''. Bio-Inspired Robotics is a broad topic and an ongoing expanding field. This Special Issue collates 30 papers that address some of the important challenges and opportunities in this broad and expanding field

The Contemporary Relevance of Kant’s Transcendental Psychology

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Kant’s transcendental psychology against the orthodoxy of the dominant analytic school of philosophy, in an aim to salvage it from criticisms that resulted in the widespread view that Kant had little to say about the mind that was correct or useful. Historically, this had led to the near exclusion of Kant’s views of the mind from mainstream philosophical debate; those who acknowledged intellectually the psychological import of the work deemed as having transgressed the bounds of proper philosophy. It is argued that this was, and still is, an unfortunate and narrow view, since an interpretation which fully embraces the transcendental aspect can provide invaluable insights and direction for contemporary research in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience. A major focus of this work is to provide a rigorous conceptual analysis of the modern problem of consciousness and to show that every approach has become a response, positive or negative, to the Cartesian distinction between body and mind. Today, more than three hundred years after Descartes’ philosophical dualism, this powerful and persuasive argument still continues to hold fast. Cognitive neuroscientists have amassed a deep and detailed understanding of how our brains process information from the external world, but the question of how this information is transformed into conscious experience is deemed an unsolved problem. It is proposed that, although Kant never uses the concept of consciousness in the now dominant sense of phenomenal qualia, his theory of the transcendental subject is a valuable tool in unravelling the philosophical complexities that are commonplace in current theories

Advances in Computational Social Science and Social Simulation

Aquesta conferència és la celebració conjunta de la "10th Artificial Economics Conference AE", la "10th Conference of the European Social Simulation Association ESSA" i la "1st Simulating the Past to Understand Human History SPUHH".Conferència organitzada pel Laboratory for Socio­-Historical Dynamics Simulation (LSDS-­UAB) de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.Readers will find results of recent research on computational social science and social simulation economics, management, sociology,and history written by leading experts in the field. SOCIAL SIMULATION (former ESSA) conferences constitute annual events which serve as an international platform for the exchange of ideas and discussion of cutting edge research in the field of social simulations, both from the theoretical as well as applied perspective, and the 2014 edition benefits from the cross-fertilization of three different research communities into one single event. The volume consists of 122 articles, corresponding to most of the contributions to the conferences, in three different formats: short abstracts (presentation of work-in-progress research), posters (presentation of models and results), and full papers (presentation of social simulation research including results and discussion). The compilation is completed with indexing lists to help finding articles by title, author and thematic content. We are convinced that this book will serve interested readers as a useful compendium which presents in a nutshell the most recent advances at the frontiers of computational social sciences and social simulation researc

Evaluación y desarrollo de la conciencia en sistemas cognitivos artificiales

Históricamente el fenómeno de la conciencia humana ha sido en buena medida apartado del debate científico, siendo su estudio relegado casi exclusivamente al ámbito de la filosofía. Sin embargo, durante las últimas tres décadas se ha producido un interés creciente por el problema de la conciencia en diferentes disciplinas como la filosofía de la mente y la psicología cognitiva. Esta tendencia también se ha producido paralelamente en el ámbito multidisciplinar de las neurociencias. De hecho, la aparición de nuevas técnicas de diagnóstico por imagen ha propiciado que actualmente la mayoría de investigadores considere que la conciencia es susceptible de estudio científico. La formulación de nuevas teorías, tanto biológicas como psicológicas, acerca de la producción de la conciencia en los humanos, ha dado lugar a que se retomen algunos de los objetivos originales de la Inteligencia Artificial. Concretamente, se ha empezado a reconocer el campo de la Conciencia Artificial como una disciplina científica seria que se encarga del estudio y la posible construcción de máquinas con diferentes tipos y niveles de conciencia. En el ámbito de la Conciencia Artificial, la presente tesis pretende contribuir al conocimiento científico de la conciencia por medio de dos líneas de investigación relacionadas: la primera consiste en la concepción y aplicación de un método inédito para la medición y caracterización del nivel de desarrollo de la conciencia en un agente artificial, la segunda se basa en una arquitectura cognitiva artificial cuyo diseño se ha inspirado en diversas teorías de la conciencia. La utilización del método de medición propuesto permitirá analizar en detalle cuál es el nivel de desarrollo actual de máquinas conscientes y establecer cuáles son los aspectos que no se ha conseguido explicar o implementar hasta la fecha. Además, la escala propuesta se podrá utilizar como hoja de ruta para identificar cuáles son las habilidades cognitivas cuya implementación es necesaria para construir máquinas que muestren comportamientos equivalentes a los típicamente humanos. La aplicación de la arquitectura cognitiva propuesta como parte fundamental de los sistemas de control autónomo de agentes artificiales permitirá la experimentación con diferentes funciones cognitivas asociadas a la conciencia. Se estudiarán por tanto las interacciones entre diferentes capacidades como la atención, las emociones o la predicción sensorial, intentando descubrir las sinergias que potencialmente dan lugar a comportamientos complejos y adaptativos. Adicionalmente, usando el modelo computacional de conciencia implementado, se aplicará un enfoque de fenomenología sintética, que consiste en el modelado del contenido de la experiencia consciente. Se comparará la experiencia consciente descrita por un ser humano expuesto a ciertos estímulos perceptivos con el contenido explícito que la arquitectura cognitiva es capaz de generar al enfrentarse a los mismos estímulos. Los resultados de estas líneas de investigación proporcionarán información valiosa acerca de la validez de las teorías de la conciencia analizadas y de las diferencias encontradas entre los procesos cognitivos naturales y los generados artificialmente. Asimismo, se explorarán posibles áreas de aplicación práctica de la arquitectura cognitiva implementada, como por ejemplo, la creación de agentes artificiales cuyo comportamiento sea percibido por los usuarios como comportamiento humano. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Historically human consciousness has been rather excluded from the scientific debates, being philosphy the most important perspective for its study. However, over the last three decades different research disciplines such as philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology have shown a growing interest on the problem of consciousness. This trend has taken place also in the multidisciplinary context of neuroscience. In fact, recent advances in neuroimaging techniques have led most researchers to consider consciousness as a subject for scientific study. The development of new biological and psychological theories on the production of consciousness in humans has revived the original challenges of Artificial Intelligence. Specifically, the field of Machine Consciousness is becoming a rigorous scientific discipline aimed at studying and potentially creating machines with different types and levels of consciousness. In the context of Machine Consciousness, this thesis aims at contributing to the scientific knowledge about consciousness by means of two interrelated research lines: the first one consists of the conception and application of a novel method for the measurement and characterization of the level of development of consciousness of an artificial agent; the second one is based on an artificial cognitive architecture inspired on several theories of consciousness. The application of the proposed measuring technique will permit the detailed analysis of the current level of development of conscious machines and to identify what are the aspects that have not yet been achieved. Furthermore, the proposed scale will be used as a roadmap to identify what are the key cognitive skills that need to be implemented in order to create human-like machines. The application of the proposed cognitive architecture as a fundamental component of the control system of different artificial agents will permit the experimentation with different cognitive functions associated to consciousness. The interaction between different capabilities like attention, emotions or sensory prediction will be analyzed, looking for potential synergies that produce complex and adaptive behaviors. Additionally, using the proposed computational model of consciousness, a synthetic phenomenology approach will be adopted based on the modeling of the contents of conscious experience. The conscious experience reported by a human subject when confronted to certain stimuli will be compared with the explicit content that the cognitive architecture is able to generate when confronted to the same stimuli. The results obtained from these research lines will provide valuable information about the validity of the theories of consciousness that have been analyzed as well as the differences between natural and artificial cognitive processes. Besides, possible areas of application of the proposed cognitive architecture will be explored, such us the creation of artificial agents able to develop believable human-like behaviors