Artificiality in Social Sciences

This text provides with an introduction to the modern approach of artificiality and simulation in social sciences. It presents the relationship between complexity and artificiality, before introducing the field of artificial societies which greatly benefited from the computer power fast increase, gifting social sciences with formalization and experimentation tools previously owned by "hard" sciences alone. It shows that as "a new way of doing social sciences", artificial societies should undoubtedly contribute to a renewed approach in the study of sociality and should play a significant part in the elaboration of original theories of social phenomena.artificial societies; multi-agent systems; distributed artificial intelligence; complexity

An "All Hands" Call to the Social Science Community: Establishing a Community Framework for Complexity Modeling Using Agent Based Models and Cyberinfrastructure

To date, many communities of practice (COP) in the social sciences have been struggling with how to deal with rapidly growing bodies of information. Many CoPs across broad disciplines have turned to community frameworks for complexity modeling (CFCMs) but this strategy has been slow to be discussed let alone adopted by the social sciences communities of practice (SS-CoPs). In this paper we urge the SS-CoPs that it is timely to develop and establish a CBCF for the social sciences for two major reasons: the rapid acquisition of data and the emergence of critical cybertools which can facilitate agent-based, spatially-explicit models. The goal of this paper is not to prescribe how a CFCM might be set up but to suggest of what components it might consist and what its advantages would be. Agent based models serve the establishment of a CFCM because they allow robust and diverse inputs and are amenable to output-driven modifications. In other words, as phenomena are resolved by a SS-CoP it is possible to adjust and refine ABMs (and their predictive ability) as a recursive and collective process. Existing and emerging cybertools such as computer networks, digital data collections and advances in programming languages mean the SS-CoP must now carefully consider committing the human organization to enabling a cyberinfrastructure tool. The combination of technologies with human interfaces can allow scenarios to be incorporated through 'if' 'then' rules and provide a powerful basis for addressing the dynamics of coupled and complex social ecological systems (cSESs). The need for social scientists to be more engaged participants in the growing challenges of characterizing chaotic, self-organizing social systems and predicting emergent patterns makes the application of ABMs timely. The enabling of a SS-CoP CFCM human-cyberinfrastructure represents an unprecedented opportunity to synthesize, compare and evaluate diverse sociological phenomena as a cohesive and recursive community-driven process.Community-Based Complex Models, Mathematics, Social Sciences

Optimization of swarm robotic constellation communication for object detection and event recognition

Swarm robotics research describes the study of how a group of relatively simple physically embodied agents can, through their interaction collectively accomplish tasks which are far beyond the capabilities of a single agent. This self organizing but decentralized form of intelligence requires that all members are autonomous and act upon their available information. From this information they are able to decide their behavior and take the appropriate action. A global behavior can then be witnessed that is derived from the local behaviors of each agent. The presented research introduces the novel method for optimizing the communication and the processing of communicated data for the purpose of detecting large scale meta object or event, denoted as meta event, which are unquantifiable through a single robotic agent. The ability of a swarm of robotic agents to cover a relatively large physical environment and their ability to detect changes or anomalies within the environment is especially advantageous for the detection of objects and the recognition of events such as oil spills, hurricanes, and large scale security monitoring. In contrast a single robot, even with much greater capabilities, could not explore or cover multiple areas of the same environment simultaneously. Many previous swarm behaviors have been developed focusing on the rules governing the local agent to agent behaviors of separation, alignment, and cohesion. By effectively optimizing these simple behaviors in coordination, through cooperative and competitive actions based on a chosen local behavior, it is possible to achieve an optimized global emergent behavior of locating a meta object or event. From the local to global relationship an optimized control algorithm was developed following the basic rules of swarm behavior for the purpose of meta event detection and recognition. Results of this optimized control algorithm are presented and compared with other work in the field of swarm robotics

Trust Repair in Human-Swarm Teams+

Swarm robots are coordinated via simple control laws to generate emergent behaviors such as flocking, rendezvous, and deployment. Human-swarm teaming has been widely proposed for scenarios, such as human-supervised teams of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for disaster rescue, UAV and ground vehicle cooperation for building security, and soldier-UAV teaming in combat. Effective cooperation requires an appropriate level of trust, between a human and a swarm. When an UAV swarm is deployed in a real-world environment, its performance is subject to real-world factors, such as system reliability and wind disturbances. Degraded performance of a robot can cause undesired swarm behaviors, decreasing human trust. This loss of trust, in turn, can trigger human intervention in UAVs' task executions, decreasing cooperation effectiveness if inappropriate. Therefore, to promote effective cooperation we propose and test a trust-repairing method (Trust-repair) restoring performance and human trust in the swarm to an appropriate level by correcting undesired swarm behaviors. Faulty swarms caused by both external and internal factors were simulated to evaluate the performance of the Trust-repair algorithm in repairing swarm performance and restoring human trust. Results show that Trust-repair is effective in restoring trust to a level intermediate between normal and faulty conditions

A computational model of human trust in supervisory control of robotic swarms

Trust is an important factor in the interaction between humans and automation to mediate the reliance action of human operators. In this work, we study human factors in supervisory control of robotic swarms and develop a computational model of human trust on swarm systems with varied levels of autonomy (LOA). We extend the classic trust theory by adding an intermediate feedback loop to the trust model, which formulates the human trust evolution as a combination of both open-loop trust anticipation and closed-loop trust feedback. A Kalman filter model is implemented to apply the above structure. We conducted a human experiment to collect user data of supervisory control of robotic swarms. Participants were requested to direct the swarm in a simulated environment to finish a foraging task using control systems with varied LOA. We implement three LOAs: manual, mixed-initiative (MI), and fully autonomous LOA. In the manual and autonomous LOA, swarms are controlled by a human or a search algorithm exclusively, while in the MI LOA, the human operator and algorithm collaboratively control the swarm. We train a personalized model for each participant and evaluate the model performance on a separate data set. Evaluation results show that our Kalman model outperforms existing models including inverse reinforcement learning and dynamic Bayesian network methods. In summary, the proposed work is novel in the following aspects: 1) This Kalman estimator is the first to model the complete trust evolution process with both closed-loop feedback and open-loop trust anticipation. 2) The proposed model analyzes time-series data to reveal the influence of events that occur during the course of an interaction; namely, a user’s intervention and report of levels of trust. 3) The proposed model considers the operator’s cognitive time lag between perceiving and processing the system display. 4) The proposed model uses the Kalman filter structure to fuse information from different sources to estimate a human operator's mental states. 5) The proposed model provides a personalized model for each individual