Incorporating temporal-bounded CBR techniques in real-time agents

Nowadays, MAS paradigm tries to move Computation to a new level of abstraction: Computation as interaction, where large complex systems are seen in terms of the services they offer, and consequently in terms of the entities or agents providing or consuming services. However, MAS technology is found to be lacking in some critical environments as real-time environments. An interaction-based vision of a real-time system involves the purchase of a responsibility by any entity or agent for the accomplishment of a required service under possibly hard or soft temporal conditions. This vision notably increases the complexity of these kinds of systems. The main problem in the architecture development of agents in real-time environments is with the deliberation process where it is difficult to integrate complex bounded deliberative processes for decision-making in a simple and efficient way. According to this, this work presents a temporal-bounded deliberative case-based behaviour as an anytime solution. More specifically, the work proposes a new temporal-bounded CBR algorithm which facilitates deliberative processes for agents in real-time environments, which need both real-time and deliberative capabilities. The paper presents too an application example for the automated management simulation of internal and external mail in a department plant. This example has allowed to evaluate the proposal investigating the performance of the system and the temporal-bounded deliberative case-based behaviour. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work is supported by TIN2006-14630-C03-01 projects of the Spanish government, GVPRE/2008/070 project, FEDER funds and CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 under Grant CSD2007-00022.Navarro Llácer, M.; Heras Barberá, SM.; Julian Inglada, VJ.; Botti Navarro, VJ. (2011). Incorporating temporal-bounded CBR techniques in real-time agents. Expert Systems with Applications. 38(3):2783-2796. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2010.08.070S2783279638

Hybrid approaches for mobile robot navigation

The work described in this thesis contributes to the efficient solution of mobile robot navigation problems. A series of new evolutionary approaches is presented. Two novel evolutionary planners have been developed that reduce the computational overhead in generating plans of mobile robot movements. In comparison with the best-performing evolutionary scheme reported in the literature, the first of the planners significantly reduces the plan calculation time in static environments. The second planner was able to generate avoidance strategies in response to unexpected events arising from the presence of moving obstacles. To overcome limitations in responsiveness and the unrealistic assumptions regarding a priori knowledge that are inherent in planner-based and a vigation systems, subsequent work concentrated on hybrid approaches. These included a reactive component to identify rapidly and autonomously environmental features that were represented by a small number of critical waypoints. Not only is memory usage dramatically reduced by such a simplified representation, but also the calculation time to determine new plans is significantly reduced. Further significant enhancements of this work were firstly, dynamic avoidance to limit the likelihood of potential collisions with moving obstacles and secondly, exploration to identify statistically the dynamic characteristics of the environment. Finally, by retaining more extensive environmental knowledge gained during previous navigation activities, the capability of the hybrid navigation system was enhanced to allow planning to be performed for any start point and goal point

Mobile Robot Localization using Panoramic Vision and Combinations of Feature Region Detectors

IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2008, Pasadena, California, May 19-23, 2008), pp. 538-543.This paper presents a vision-based approach for mobile robot localization. The environmental model is topological. The new approach uses a constellation of different types of affine covariant regions to characterize a place. This type of representation permits a reliable and distinctive environment modeling. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated using a database of panoramic images from different rooms. Additionally, we compare different combinations of complementary feature region detectors to find the one that achieves the best results. Our experimental results show promising results for this new localization method. Additionally, similarly to what happens with single detectors, different combinations exhibit different strengths and weaknesses depending on the situation, suggesting that a context-aware method to combine the different detectors would improve the localization results.This work was partially supported by USC Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE), the FI grant from the Generalitat de Catalunya, the European Social Fund, and the MID-CBR project grant TIN2006-15140-C03-01 and FEDER funds and the grant 2005-SGR-00093

Fourth Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Space Applications

Proceedings of a conference held in Huntsville, Alabama, on November 15-16, 1988. The Fourth Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Space Applications brings together diverse technical and scientific work in order to help those who employ AI methods in space applications to identify common goals and to address issues of general interest in the AI community. Topics include the following: space applications of expert systems in fault diagnostics, in telemetry monitoring and data collection, in design and systems integration; and in planning and scheduling; knowledge representation, capture, verification, and management; robotics and vision; adaptive learning; and automatic programming

Stable Hybrid Fuzzy Controller-based Architecture for Robotic Telesurgery Systems

Robotic surgery and remotely controlled teleoperational systems are on the rise. However, serious limitations arise on both the hardware and software side when traditional modeling and control approaches are taken. These limitations include the incomplete modeling of robot dynamics, tool–tissue interaction, human– machine interfaces and the communication channel. Furthermore, the inherent latency of long-distance signal transmission may endanger the stability of a robot controller. All of these factors contribute to the very limited deployment of real robotic telesurgery. This paper describes a stable hybrid fuzzy controller-based architecture that is capable of handling the basic challenges. The aim is to establish high fidelity telepresence systems for medical applications by easily handled modern control solution

E-Learning

Technology development, mainly for telecommunications and computer systems, was a key factor for the interactivity and, thus, for the expansion of e-learning. This book is divided into two parts, presenting some proposals to deal with e-learning challenges, opening up a way of learning about and discussing new methodologies to increase the interaction level of classes and implementing technical tools for helping students to make better use of e-learning resources. In the first part, the reader may find chapters mentioning the required infrastructure for e-learning models and processes, organizational practices, suggestions, implementation of methods for assessing results, and case studies focused on pedagogical aspects that can be applied generically in different environments. The second part is related to tools that can be adopted by users such as graphical tools for engineering, mobile phone networks, and techniques to build robots, among others. Moreover, part two includes some chapters dedicated specifically to e-learning areas like engineering and architecture

Efficient PID Controller based Hexapod Wall Following Robot

This paper presents a design of wall following behaviour for hexapod robot based on PID controller. PID controller is proposed here because of its ability to control many cases of non-linear systems. In this case, we proposed a PID controller to improve the speed and stability of hexapod robot movement while following the wall. In this paper, PID controller is used to control the robot legs, by adjusting the value of swing angle during forward or backward movement to maintain the distance between the robot and the wall. The experimental result was verified by implementing the proposed control method into actual prototype of hexapod robot