Artificial in its own right

Artificial Cells, , Artificial Ecologies, Artificial Intelligence, Bio-Inspired Hardware Systems, Computational Autopoiesis, Computational Biology, Computational Embryology, Computational Evolution, Morphogenesis, Cyborgization, Digital Evolution, Evolvable Hardware, Cyborgs, Mathematical Biology, Nanotechnology, Posthuman, Transhuman

Coevolution of active vision and feature selection

Abstract.: We show that complex visual tasks, such as position- and size-invariant shape recognition and navigation in the environment, can be tackled with simple architectures generated by a coevolutionary process of active vision and feature selection. Behavioral machines equipped with primitive vision systems and direct pathways between visual and motor neurons are evolved while they freely interact with their environments. We describe the application of this methodology in three sets of experiments, namely, shape discrimination, car driving, and robot navigation. We show that these systems develop sensitivity to a number of oriented, retinotopic, visual-feature-oriented edges, corners, height, and a behavioral repertoire to locate, bring, and keep these features in sensitive regions of the vision system, resembling strategies observed in simple insect

Metadata Extraction from Scientific Papers

Tato práce se zabývá extrakcí metadat z vědeckých článků. Je zde obecně popsán problém extrakce informací se zaměřením na zpracování textových dokumentů. Dále je představen autorem vytvořený program clanky2meta.py určený k vyhledávání potřebných informací ve vědeckých publikacích. V závěru práce je provedeno srovnání toho programu s jinými systémy, především se systémem CiteSeerX.This work deals with the Metadata Extraction from Scienti c Papers. There is generally described issue of information extraction, focusing on the processing of text documents. There is also presented programme clanky2meta.py designed to search for relevant  information in scienti c publication, created by the author. At the end of this work is a comparsion of systems dealing with the same issue, especially with the CiteSeerX system.

Algoritmo de vergencia para o controle de atenção de humanos virtuais

Orientador: Luiz Marcos Garcia GonçalvesDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: Os problemas de pesquisa mais comuns abordados na literatura sobre Humanos Virtuais são mais relacionados com a inserção e representação destes agentes gráficos no computador. Com o avanço das tecnologias e pesquisas nas áreas de computação gráfica e realidade virtual, novos problemas podem ser tratados, em relação as funcionalidades destes agentes virtuais. Atualmente, um dos principais desafios está associado ao desenvolvimento de humanos virtuais dotados de percepção visual realística. Um problema específico, referente a visão sintética destes agentes, é o controle da atenção, ou seja, definir e prover uma maneira eficiente e natural para que ele mude seu foco de atenção de uma posição corrente para outra no seu ambiente virtual. A coordenação dos movimentos da cabeça do agente, fazendo com que os olhos sejam fixados no objeto desejado, não é considerada uma tarefa trivial e está relacionada com a percepção de profundidade do ambiente. Neste trabalho, propomos um algoritmo de vergência, usado para o controle da atenção de humanos virtuais, onde o parâmetro de profundidade é obtido do Z-buffer. O controle dos movimentos da cabeça do humano virtual é executado com a realização de simples cálculos geométricos e no final do processo de vergência, os olhos são fixados corretamente em qualquer região de interesse do ambiente, passada previamente para o agente virtualAbstract: Common research problems treated in literature about Virtual Humans are most related with insertion and representation of these graphic agents in computers. With techological advance and new researches in Computer Graphics and Virtual Reality, new problems can have place, related to the funcionality of the virtual agents. Currently, one of the main challenges is associated to development of virtual humans with realistic virtual perception and a specific problem that appears, related to synthetic vision in these agents, is the proper control of attention. That is, to define and provide an efficient and natural manner for it to change attentional focus from a current position to another one in its virtual environrnent. Coordination of head movements by way of fixation of eyes in a desired object is not considered a trivial task, being related to depth perception. In this work, we propose an algorithm for vergence, used for attention control in virtual humans, where the depth parameter is obtained from Z-buffer. Control of virtual human head movements is preformed with simple geometric calculations and at the end of vergence process the eyes are correctly fixed in any interest region of the environment, previously given to the virtual agentMestradoCiência da ComputaçãoMestre em Ciência da Computaçã

Modeling, Evaluation, and Scale on Artificial Pedestrians: A Literature Review

Modeling pedestrian dynamics and their implementation in a computer are challenging and important issues in the knowledge areas of transportation and computer simulation. The aim of this article is to provide a bibliographic outlook so that the reader may have quick access to the most relevant works related to this problem. We have used three main axes to organize the article's contents: pedestrian models, validation techniques, and multiscale approaches. The backbone of this work is the classification of existing pedestrian models; we have organized the works in the literature under five categories, according to the techniques used for implementing the operational level in each pedestrian model. Then the main existing validation methods, oriented to evaluate the behavioral quality of the simulation systems, are reviewed. Furthermore, we review the key issues that arise when facing multiscale pedestrian modeling, where we first focus on the behavioral scale (combinations of micro and macro pedestrian models) and second on the scale size (from individuals to crowds). The article begins by introducing the main characteristics of walking dynamics and its analysis tools and concludes with a discussion about the contributions that different knowledge fields can make in the near future to this exciting area

Coevolution of active vision and feature selection

We show that complex visual tasks, such as position- and size-invariant shape recognition and navigation in the environment, can be tackled with simple architectures generated by a coevolutionary process of active vision and feature selection. Behavioral machines equipped with primitive vision systems and direct pathways between visual and motor neurons are evolved while they freely interact with their environments. We describe the application of this methodology in three sets of experiments, namely, shape discrimination, car driving, and robot navigation. We show that these systems develop sensitivity to a number of oriented, retinotopic, visual-feature-oriented edges, corners, height, and a behavioral repertoire to locate, bring, and keep these features in sensitive regions of the vision system, resembling strategies observed in simple insects