Preferences in Case-Based Reasoning

Case-based reasoning (CBR) is a well-established problem solving paradigm that has been used in a wide range of real-world applications. Despite its great practical success, work on the theoretical foundations of CBR is still under way, and a coherent and universally applicable methodological framework is yet missing. The absence of such a framework inspired the motivation for the work developed in this thesis. Drawing on recent research on preference handling in Artificial Intelligence and related fields, the goal of this work is to develop a well theoretically-founded framework on the basis of formal concepts and methods for knowledge representation and reasoning with preferences

Goal Reasoning: Papers from the ACS workshop

This technical report contains the 11 accepted papers presented at the Workshop on Goal Reasoning, which was held as part of the 2013 Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems (ACS-13) in Baltimore, Maryland on 14 December 2013. This is the third in a series of workshops related to this topic, the first of which was the AAAI-10 Workshop on Goal-Directed Autonomy while the second was the Self-Motivated Agents (SeMoA) Workshop, held at Lehigh University in November 2012. Our objective for holding this meeting was to encourage researchers to share information on the study, development, integration, evaluation, and application of techniques related to goal reasoning, which concerns the ability of an intelligent agent to reason about, formulate, select, and manage its goals/objectives. Goal reasoning differs from frameworks in which agents are told what goals to achieve, and possibly how goals can be decomposed into subgoals, but not how to dynamically and autonomously decide what goals they should pursue. This constraint can be limiting for agents that solve tasks in complex environments when it is not feasible to manually engineer/encode complete knowledge of what goal(s) should be pursued for every conceivable state. Yet, in such environments, states can be reached in which actions can fail, opportunities can arise, and events can otherwise take place that strongly motivate changing the goal(s) that the agent is currently trying to achieve. This topic is not new; researchers in several areas have studied goal reasoning (e.g., in the context of cognitive architectures, automated planning, game AI, and robotics). However, it has infrequently been the focus of intensive study, and (to our knowledge) no other series of meetings has focused specifically on goal reasoning. As shown in these papers, providing an agent with the ability to reason about its goals can increase performance measures for some tasks. Recent advances in hardware and software platforms (involving the availability of interesting/complex simulators or databases) have increasingly permitted the application of intelligent agents to tasks that involve partially observable and dynamically-updated states (e.g., due to unpredictable exogenous events), stochastic actions, multiple (cooperating, neutral, or adversarial) agents, and other complexities. Thus, this is an appropriate time to foster dialogue among researchers with interests in goal reasoning. Research on goal reasoning is still in its early stages; no mature application of it yet exists (e.g., for controlling autonomous unmanned vehicles or in a deployed decision aid). However, it appears to have a bright future. For example, leaders in the automated planning community have specifically acknowledged that goal reasoning has a prominent role among intelligent agents that act on their own plans, and it is gathering increasing attention from roboticists and cognitive systems researchers. In addition to a survey, the papers in this workshop relate to, among other topics, cognitive architectures and models, environment modeling, game AI, machine learning, meta-reasoning, planning, selfmotivated systems, simulation, and vehicle control. The authors discuss a wide range of issues pertaining to goal reasoning, including representations and reasoning methods for dynamically revising goal priorities. We hope that readers will find that this theme for enhancing agent autonomy to be appealing and relevant to their own interests, and that these papers will spur further investigations on this important yet (mostly) understudied topic

Goal Reasoning: Papers from the ACS Workshop

This technical report contains the 14 accepted papers presented at the Workshop on Goal Reasoning, which was held as part of the 2015 Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems (ACS-15) in Atlanta, Georgia on 28 May 2015. This is the fourth in a series of workshops related to this topic, the first of which was the AAAI-10 Workshop on Goal-Directed Autonomy; the second was the Self-Motivated Agents (SeMoA) Workshop, held at Lehigh University in November 2012; and the third was the Goal Reasoning Workshop at ACS-13 in Baltimore, Maryland in December 2013

Método e repositório BIOsign : sistematização biomimética para aplicação dos princípios de solução da natureza no processo de desenvolvimento de produtos

No contexto do processo de desenvolvimento de produto, a etapa conceitual comporta o uso de diferentes métodos criativos, dentre os quais, a analogia com a natureza, ou biomimética. A biologia, por sua vez, oferece um extenso campo de informações potenciais, as quais, se sistematizadas, podem facilitar o acesso aos seus princípios de solução para aplicação no projeto de produto. A partir da investigação aprofundada da literatura sobre os métodos bio-inspirados existentes, foram identificadas as suas lacunas e pontos fracos, culminando com uma lista de requisitos a serem atendidos. A metodologia proposta para o desenvolvimento da pesquisa foi a Design Science Research, cuja abordagem é orientada ao desenvolvimento de projetos de artefatos, pois tem como objetivo prescrever e desenvolver conhecimentos para a concepção e elaboração de sistemas com foco em solucionar problemas. A partir do conhecimento gerado ao longo do trabalho, foi possível projetar e desenvolver os artefatos: um artefato-método e um artefato-instanciação, denominados Método e Repositório BIOsign, respectivamente. Os artefatos propostos estimulam e facilitam o uso dos princípios de solução da natureza na concepção de novos produtos, reduzindo o tempo e o esforço dos projetistas em assimilar e transpor as soluções naturais para os sistemas técnicos. Através do processo de decomposição funcional e da analogia com a natureza, o método BIOsign propõe o exercício de abstração, o que tende a minimizar as barreiras à criatividade, possibilitando a geração de soluções alternativas inovadoras. Por outro lado, a sistematização através do uso de um banco de dados de princípios de solução (Repositório BIOsign), tende a reduzir a subjetividade e a imprecisão na busca pelo conhecimento dos sistemas naturais. A quantidade e detalhamento das informações contidas no repositório faz dele uma ferramenta ampla e robusta, capaz de conduzir os usuários a soluções de projeto mais precisas. Os resultados obtidos com o desenvolvimento dos artefatos indicam que o objetivo geral foi atingido, pois, conforme apurado no processo de avaliação, os mesmos satisfazem as necessidades de projeto e os requisitos dos usuários.In the context of the Product Development Process, the conceptual stage involves the use of different creative methods, among which, the analogy with nature, or biomimetics. Biology, in turn, offers an extensive field of potential information, which, if systematized, can facilitate access to its solution principles for application in product design. From the in-depth investigation of the literature on existing bio-inspired methods, their gaps and weaknesses were identified, culminating in a list of requirements. The proposed methodology for the development of the research was Design Science Research, whose approach is oriented to the development of artifact projects, as it aims to prescribe and develop knowledge for the conception and elaboration of systems focused on solving problems. From the knowledge generated throughout the research, it was possible to design and develop the artifacts: an artifact-method and an artifact-instantiation, called BIOsign Method and Repository, respectively. The proposed artifacts stimulate and facilitate the use of nature's solution principles in the design of new products, reducing the time and effort of designers to assimilate and “translate” natural solutions into technical systems. Through the functional decomposition process and the analogy with nature, the BIOsign method proposes the exercise of abstraction, which minimizes barriers to creativity, enabling the generation of innovative alternative solutions. On the other hand, the systematization through the use of a filled of solution principles database (BIOsign Repository), minimizes subjectivity and imprecision in the search for knowledge of natural systems. The amount and detail of the information contained in the repository makes it a broad and robust tool, capable of leading users to more qualified design solutions. The results obtained with the development of the artifacts indicate that the general objective was achieved, because, as determined in the evaluation process, they satisfy the design needs and the requirements of the users