Narrative Generation in Entertainment: Using Artificial Intelligence Planning

From the field of artificial intelligence (AI) there is a growing stream of technology capable of being embedded in software that will reshape the way we interact with our environment in our everyday lives. This ‘AI software’ is often used to tackle more mundane tasks that are otherwise dangerous or meticulous for a human to accomplish. One particular area, explored in this paper, is for AI software to assist in supporting the enjoyable aspects of the lives of humans. Entertainment is one of these aspects, and often includes storytelling in some form no matter what the type of media, including television, films, video games, etc. This paper aims to explore the ability of AI software to automate the story-creation and story-telling process. This is part of the field of Automatic Narrative Generator (ANG), which aims to produce intuitive interfaces to support people (without any previous programming experience) to use tools to generate stories, based on their ideas of the kind of characters, intentions, events and spaces they want to be in the story. The paper includes details of such AI software created by the author that can be downloaded and used by the reader for this purpose. Applications of this kind of technology include the automatic generation of story lines for ‘soap operas’

Proof-Pattern Recognition and Lemma Discovery in ACL2

We present a novel technique for combining statistical machine learning for proof-pattern recognition with symbolic methods for lemma discovery. The resulting tool, ACL2(ml), gathers proof statistics and uses statistical pattern-recognition to pre-processes data from libraries, and then suggests auxiliary lemmas in new proofs by analogy with already seen examples. This paper presents the implementation of ACL2(ml) alongside theoretical descriptions of the proof-pattern recognition and lemma discovery methods involved in it

Demonstration-based help for interactive systems

The usability of day-to-day applications is of utmost importance. The lack of usability of these is one of the causes of frustration at work, as it creates barriers to the execution of tasks. The Change of applications by third parties, to increase usability, is difficult because it requires, usually, access to source codes and an increase on its complexity. This work proposes and implements a demonstration help tool that allows the improvement of tasks completion, decreases the time spent, and reduces the cost of learning. An analysis of work on aid tools is presented identifying positive aspects and research opportunities. The help tool developed allows the creation of automation through picture-driven computing, which makes it possible to develop help mechanisms independent from application source codes. Since the tool is image oriented, and tasks can involve multiple applications, it is also possible to develop help scripts that are not restricted to just one application. User studies were done with the objectives of validating the work developed and identifying platforms and tasks with usability problems in the business world. It was concluded that the work has positive effects in the accomplishment of tasks.A usabilidade das aplicações utilizadas no dia-a-dia é de extrema importância. A falta de usabilidade destas é um dos causadores de frustração no trabalho, pois cria barreiras à execução de tarefas. A alteração das aplicações por terceiros de forma a aumentar a usabilidade é difícil pois requer, usualmente, acesso aos códigos fonte e incremento da sua complexidade. Este trabalho propõe e implementa uma ferramenta de ajuda por demonstração que visa melhorar o sucesso na realização de tarefas, reduzir o tempo despendido, e diminuir o esforço de aprendizagem. Uma análise a trabalhos sobre ferramentas de ajuda é apresentada identificando aspetos positivos e oportunidades de investigação. A ferramenta de ajuda desenvolvida permite a criação de automações através de computação por imagem, que tornam possível o desenvolvimento de mecanismos de ajuda independentes dos códigos fonte das aplicações. Sendo que a ferramenta é orientada a imagem, e que as tarefas podem envolver múltiplas aplicações, torna-se também possível o desenvolvimento de scripts de ajuda não restringidos a apenas uma aplicação. Foram realizados estudos com utilizadores com os objetivos de validar o trabalho desenvolvido e identificar plataformas e tarefas com problemas de usabilidade no meio empresarial. Deste modo, concluiu-se que o trabalho tem efeitos positivos na realização de tarefas

Supporting Live Development of SOAP and CORBA Servers

We present middleware for a Server Development Environment that facilitates live development of SOAP and CORBA servers. As the underlying implementation platform, we use JPie, a tightly integrated programming environment for live software construction of Java applications. JPie provides dynamic classes whose signature and implementation can be modified at run time, with changes taking effect immediately upon existing instances of the class. We extend this model by automating the server deployment process, allowing developers to devote their full attention to the implementation of server logic. Moreover, the live development model enables the construction of server applications while they are running, connected, and communicating with clients. Combined with our Client Development Environment [1], these features facilitate the live, simultaneous construction of both the client and server applications

Monitoring extensions for component-based distributed software

This paper defines a generic class of monitoring extensions to component-based distributed enterprise software. Introducing a monitoring extension to a legacy application system can be very costly. In this paper, we identify the minimum support for application monitoring within the generic components of a distributed system, necessary for rapid development of new monitoring extensions. Furthermore, this paper offers an approach for design and implementation of monitoring extensions at reduced cost. A framework of basic facilities supporting the monitoring extensions is presented. These facilities handle different aspects critical to the monitoring process, such as ordering of the generated monitoring events, decoupling of the application components from the components of the monitoring extensions, delivery of the monitoring events to multiple consumers, etc.\ud The work presented in this paper is being validated in the prototype of a large distributed system, where a specific monitoring extension is built as a tool for debugging and testing the application behaviour.\u