A multi-modelS based approach for the modelling and the analysis of usable and resilient partly autonomous interactive systems

La croissance prévisionnelle du trafic aérien est telle que les moyens de gestion actuels doivent évoluer et être améliorés et l'automatisation de certains aspects de cette gestion semble être un moyen pour gérer cet accroissement du trafic tout en gardant comme invariant un niveau de sécurité constant. Toutefois, cette augmentation du trafic pourrait entraîner un accroissement de la variabilité de la performance de l'ensemble des moyens de gestion du trafic aérien, en particulier dans le cas de dégradation de cette automatisation. Les systèmes de gestion du trafic aérien sont considérés comme complexes car ils impliquent de nombreuses interactions entre humains et systèmes, et peuvent être profondément influencés par les aspects environnementaux (météorologie, organisation, stress ...) et tombent, de fait, dans la catégorie des Systèmes Sociotechniques (STS) (Emery & Trist, 1960). A cause de leur complexité, les interactions entre les différents éléments (humains, systèmes et organisations) de ces STS peuvent être linéaires et partiellement non linéaires, ce qui rend l'évolution de leur performance difficilement prévisible. Au sein de ces STS, les systèmes interactifs doivent être utilisables, i.e. permettre à leurs utilisateurs d'accomplir leurs tâches de manière efficace et efficiente. Un STS doit aussi être résilient aux perturbations telles que les défaillances logicielles et matérielles, les potentielles dégradations de l'automatisation ou les problèmes d'interaction entre les systèmes et leurs opérateurs. Ces problèmes peuvent affecter plusieurs aspects des systèmes sociotechniques comme les ressources, le temps d'exécution d'une tâche, la capacité à d'adaptation à l'environnement... Afin de pouvoir analyser l'impact de ces perturbations et d'évaluer la variabilité de la performance d'un STS, des techniques et méthodes dédiées sont requises. Elles doivent fournir un support à la modélisation et à l'analyse systématique de l'utilisabilité et de la résilience de systèmes interactifs aux comportements partiellement autonomes. Elles doivent aussi permettre de décrire et de structurer un grand nombre d'informations, ainsi que de traiter la variabilité de chaque élément du STS et la variabilité liée à leurs interrelations. Les techniques et méthodes existantes ne permettent actuellement ni de modéliser un STS dans son ensemble, ni d'en analyser les propriétés d'utilisabilité et de résilience (ou alors se focalisent sur un sous-ensemble du STS perdant, de fait, la vision systémique). Enfin, elles ne fournissent pas les moyens d'analyser la migration de tâches suite à l'introduction d'une nouvelle technologie ou d'analyser la variabilité de la performance en cas de dégradation de fonctions récemment automatisées. Ces arguments sont développés dans la thèse et appuyés par une analyse détaillée des techniques de modélisation existantes et des méthodes qui leurs sont associées. La contribution présentée est basée sur l'identification d'un ensemble d'exigences requises pour pouvoir modéliser et analyser chacun des éléments d'un STS. Certaines de ces exigences ont été remplies grâce à l'utilisation de techniques de modélisation existantes, les autres grâce à l'extension et au raffinement d'autres techniques. Cette thèse propose une approche qui intègre 3 techniques en particulier : FRAM (centrée sur les fonctions organisationnelles), HAMSTERS (centrée les objectifs et activités humaines) et ICO (dédiée à la modélisation du comportement des systèmes interactifs). Cette approche est illustrée par un exemple mettant en œuvre les extensions proposées et l'intégration des modèles. Une étude de cas plus complexe sur la gestion du trafic aérien (changement de route d'un avion en cas de mauvaises conditions météorologiques) est ensuite présentée pour montrer le passage à l'échelle de l'approche. Elle met en avant les bénéfices de l'intégration des modèles pour la prise en compte de la variabilité de la performance des différents éléments d'un STSThe current European Air Traffic Management (ATM) System needs to be improved for coping with the growth in air traffic forecasted for next years. It has been broadly recognised that the future ATM capacity and safety objectives can only be achieved by an intense enhancement of integrated automation support. However, increase of automation might come along with an increase of performance variability of the whole ATM System especially in case of automation degradation. ATM systems are considered complex as they encompass interactions involving humans and machines deeply influenced by environmental aspects (i.e. weather, organizational structure) making them belong to the class of Socio-Technical Systems (STS) (Emery & Trist, 1960). Due to this complexity, the interactions between the STS elements (human, system and organisational) can be partly linear and partly non-linear making its performance evolution complex and hardly predictable. Within such STS, interactive systems have to be usable i.e. enabling users to perform their tasks efficiently and effectively while ensuring a certain level of operator satisfaction. Besides, the STS has to be resilient to adverse events including potential automation degradation issues but also interaction problems between their interactive systems and the operators. These issues may affect several STS aspects such as resources, time in tasks performance, ability to adjust to environment, etc. In order to be able to analyse the impact of these perturbations and to assess the potential performance variability of a STS, dedicated techniques and methods are required. These techniques and methods have to provide support for modelling and analysing in a systematic way usability and resilience of interactive systems featuring partly autonomous behaviours. They also have to provide support for describing and structuring a large amount of information and to be able to address the variability of each of STS elements as well as the variability related to their interrelations. Current techniques, methods and processes do not enable to model a STS as a whole and to analyse both usability and resilience properties. Also, they do not embed all the elements that are required to describe and analyse each part of the STS (such as knowledge of different types which is needed by a user for accomplishing tasks or for interacting with dedicated technologies). Lastly, they do not provide means for analysing task migrations when a new technology is introduced or for analysing performance variability in case of degradation of the newly introduced automation. Such statements are argued in this thesis by a detailed analysis of existing modelling techniques and associated methods highlighting their advantages and limitations. This thesis proposes a multi-models based approach for the modelling and the analysis of partly-autonomous interactive systems for assessing their resilience and usability. The contribution is based on the identification of a set of requirements needed being able to model and analyse each of the STS elements. Some of these requirements were met by existing modelling techniques, others were reachable by extending and refining existing ones. This thesis proposes an approach which integrates 3 modelling techniques: FRAM (focused on organisational functions), HAMSTERS (centred on human goals and activities) and ICO (dedicated to the modelling of interactive systems). The principles of the multi-models approach is illustrated on an example for carefully showing the extensions proposed to the selected modelling techniques and how they integrate together. A more complex case study from the ATM World is then presented to demonstrate the scalability of the approach. This case study, dealing with aircraft route change due to bad weather conditions, highlights the ability of the integration of models to cope with performance variability of the various parts of the ST

Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks

In this chapter, we present a literature survey of an emerging, cutting-edge, and multi-disciplinary field of research at the intersection of Robotics and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which we refer to as Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks (RWSN). We define a RWSN as an autonomous networked multi-robot system that aims to achieve certain sensing goals while meeting and maintaining certain communication performance requirements, through cooperative control, learning and adaptation. While both of the component areas, i.e., Robotics and WSN, are very well-known and well-explored, there exist a whole set of new opportunities and research directions at the intersection of these two fields which are relatively or even completely unexplored. One such example would be the use of a set of robotic routers to set up a temporary communication path between a sender and a receiver that uses the controlled mobility to the advantage of packet routing. We find that there exist only a limited number of articles to be directly categorized as RWSN related works whereas there exist a range of articles in the robotics and the WSN literature that are also relevant to this new field of research. To connect the dots, we first identify the core problems and research trends related to RWSN such as connectivity, localization, routing, and robust flow of information. Next, we classify the existing research on RWSN as well as the relevant state-of-the-arts from robotics and WSN community according to the problems and trends identified in the first step. Lastly, we analyze what is missing in the existing literature, and identify topics that require more research attention in the future

Geospatial Information Research: State of the Art, Case Studies and Future Perspectives

Geospatial information science (GI science) is concerned with the development and application of geodetic and information science methods for modeling, acquiring, sharing, managing, exploring, analyzing, synthesizing, visualizing, and evaluating data on spatio-temporal phenomena related to the Earth. As an interdisciplinary scientific discipline, it focuses on developing and adapting information technologies to understand processes on the Earth and human-place interactions, to detect and predict trends and patterns in the observed data, and to support decision making. The authors – members of DGK, the Geoinformatics division, as part of the Committee on Geodesy of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, representing geodetic research and university teaching in Germany – have prepared this paper as a means to point out future research questions and directions in geospatial information science. For the different facets of geospatial information science, the state of art is presented and underlined with mostly own case studies. The paper thus illustrates which contributions the German GI community makes and which research perspectives arise in geospatial information science. The paper further demonstrates that GI science, with its expertise in data acquisition and interpretation, information modeling and management, integration, decision support, visualization, and dissemination, can help solve many of the grand challenges facing society today and in the future

Agents for educational games and simulations

This book consists mainly of revised papers that were presented at the Agents for Educational Games and Simulation (AEGS) workshop held on May 2, 2011, as part of the Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized topical sections on middleware applications, dialogues and learning, adaption and convergence, and agent applications

Human Motion Trajectory Prediction: A Survey

With growing numbers of intelligent autonomous systems in human environments, the ability of such systems to perceive, understand and anticipate human behavior becomes increasingly important. Specifically, predicting future positions of dynamic agents and planning considering such predictions are key tasks for self-driving vehicles, service robots and advanced surveillance systems. This paper provides a survey of human motion trajectory prediction. We review, analyze and structure a large selection of work from different communities and propose a taxonomy that categorizes existing methods based on the motion modeling approach and level of contextual information used. We provide an overview of the existing datasets and performance metrics. We discuss limitations of the state of the art and outline directions for further research.Comment: Submitted to the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 37 page