Tele-autonomous systems: New methods for projecting and coordinating intelligent action at a distance

There is a growing need for humans to perform complex remote operations and to extend the intelligence and experience of experts to distant applications. It is asserted that a blending of human intelligence, modern information technology, remote control, and intelligent autonomous systems is required, and have coined the term tele-autonomous technology, or tele-automation, for methods producing intelligent action at a distance. Tele-automation goes beyond autonomous control by blending in human intelligence. It goes beyond tele-operation by incorporating as much autonomy as possible and/or reasonable. A new approach is discussed for solving one of the fundamental problems facing tele-autonomous systems: The need to overcome time delays due to telemetry and signal propagation. New concepts are introduced called time and position clutches, that allow the time and position frames between the local user control and the remote device being controlled, to be desynchronized respectively. The design and implementation of these mechanisms are described in detail. It is demonstrated that these mechanisms lead to substantial telemanipulation performance improvements, including the result of improvements even in the absence of time delays. The new controls also yield a simple protocol for control handoffs of manipulation tasks between local operators and remote systems

Relating Knowledge and Coordinated Action: The Knowledge of Preconditions Principle

The Knowledge of Preconditions principle (KoP) is proposed as a widely applicable connection between knowledge and action in multi-agent systems. Roughly speaking, it asserts that if some condition is a necessary condition for performing a given action A, then knowing that this condition holds is also a necessary condition for performing A. Since the specifications of tasks often involve necessary conditions for actions, the KoP principle shows that such specifications induce knowledge preconditions for the actions. Distributed protocols or multi-agent plans that satisfy the specifications must ensure that this knowledge be attained, and that it is detected by the agents as a condition for action. The knowledge of preconditions principle is formalised in the runs and systems framework, and is proven to hold in a wide class of settings. Well-known connections between knowledge and coordinated action are extended and shown to derive directly from the KoP principle: a "common knowledge of preconditions" principle is established showing that common knowledge is a necessary condition for performing simultaneous actions, and a "nested knowledge of preconditions" principle is proven, showing that coordinating actions to be performed in linear temporal order requires a corresponding form of nested knowledge.Comment: In Proceedings TARK 2015, arXiv:1606.0729

Strategic Executions of Choreographed Timed Normative Multi-Agent Systems

This paper proposes a combined mechanism for coordinating agents in timed normative multi-agent systems. Timing constraints in a multi-agent system make it possible to force action execution to happen before certain time invariants are violated. In such multiagent systems we achieve coordination at two orthogonal levels with respect to states and actions. On the one hand, the behaviour of individual agents is regulated by means of social and organisational inspired concepts like norms and sanctions. On the other hand, the behaviour of sets of agents is restricted according to action-based coordination mechanisms called choreographies. In both cases, the resulting behaviour is constrained by time

Industrial Districts and Economic Decline in Italy

� The paper argues that the so-called canonical view of the Italian industrial district (ID) depicts it as a system whose economic and social vitality requires the interaction between two major sub-systems: a community of people and a community of firms. A range of circumstances - including insufficient aggregate demand, competition from low-cost coun- tries and technological change - have determined inconsistencies between the rationales of these two sub-systems. As a result, lead firms have emerged that substitute the ID as coordinating instances. In the pursuit of their goals, they tend to prefer cost scrapping to quality enhancement, thereby determining a competition that further undermines the ID as a system. The paper contends that this outcome is not the only possible one. An alternative would require the regulatory - as opposed to merely permissive - action of pub- lic actors in that it would have to change the incentive system that leads firms to choose short-sighted strategies.

Distributed voltage control in electrical power systems

Voltage instability stems from the attempt of load dynamics to restore power consumption beyond the capability of the combined transmission and generation system. Discrete event controllers such as load tap changing transformers (LTCs), electronically controlled HVDC lines and switched capacitor banks can locally maintain the voltage but following a major disturbance that causes a strong decrease in the voltages, there are some interaction between LTCs action and up to now there has been relatively little attention paid to coordination between important components in voltage stability using message exchange between them and applying distributed control and taking discrete events into account. So, this study aims at voltage stability enhancement by using coordinated control of the discrete event controllers by using message exchange between the different local control agents. Various approaches for coordinating local controllers (e.g. distributed model predictive controllers) will be investigated. The influence of the discrete event driven local voltage controllers on remote locations of the network has to be investigated in a hybrid systems model framework

The ERP System as a Part of an Organization\u27s Administrative Paradox

This paper argues that ERP systems take the part of an organization’s administrative paradox. An administrative paradox is two sides of the same coin when coordinating organizations – the concurrent striving for flexibility and stability. The analysis of the ERP system is based on an interpretative and qualitative case study of an engineering firm. The theoretical lens used in this paper is structuration theory. One important point in this paper is that information systems can be viewed as a means to formalise coordination from an interpersonal level to a systemic one. This can, for instance, be realised through demands of input, process, and results of actions. In this way information systems can make a contribution to organizing ideals such as reliability and the achievement of sensible outcomes. On the other hand (as part of the administrative paradox) the use of information systems can institutionalize operating procedures and certain patterns of communication and coordination, restrain reorganizing activities and changes in control- and power structures. The information system’s constitutive role (consisting of a set of rules and resources, facilitating and constraining, coordinating, human action) is definitely an important issue when implementing, using, and improving ERP systems in organizations

On contextual perception of workers in complex production environments

In this work we focus on the challenges of perceiving and coordinating spatial actions between humans and robots in production systems. We address the fundamental questions of how the affective states of individuals in the production process can be visually captured and interpreted in order to facilitate intuitive interactions without explicit commands. Additionally, we investigate methods to analyze the environment and action context in a semantic scene to anticipate user and action intentions. Lastly, we formulate decision approaches to derive appropriate interaction strategies based on affective user states and intentions in the scene context to improve productive collaboration between humans and robots in production environments. By addressing these challenges, this work aims to improve the efficiency of productive teaming processes in production systems

Neuroethology, Computational

Over the past decade, a number of neural network researchers have used the term computational neuroethology to describe a specific approach to neuroethology. Neuroethology is the study of the neural mechanisms underlying the generation of behavior in animals, and hence it lies at the intersection of neuroscience (the study of nervous systems) and ethology (the study of animal behavior); for an introduction to neuroethology, see Simmons and Young (1999). The definition of computational neuroethology is very similar, but is not quite so dependent on studying animals: animals just happen to be biological autonomous agents. But there are also non-biological autonomous agents such as some types of robots, and some types of simulated embodied agents operating in virtual worlds. In this context, autonomous agents are self-governing entities capable of operating (i.e., coordinating perception and action) for extended periods of time in environments that are complex, uncertain, and dynamic. Thus, computational neuroethology can be characterised as the attempt to analyze the computational principles underlying the generation of behavior in animals and in artificial autonomous agents

A rule-based framework for heterogeneous subsystems management in smart home environment

Recent advancements in computing and communication technologies have increased the growth of heterogeneous subsystems in smart home environment. However, many of these heterogeneous systems are standalone and do not adapt towards joint execution of tasks. Hence, it is rather difficult to perform interoperation especially to realize desired services preferred by home dwellers. In this paper, we propose a new rule-based framework for heterogeneous systems management as well as coordinating them by means of federated manner in smart home environment. The proposed framework is based on event-condition-action (ECA) rule mechanism with SOAP technology that provides interoperability among those systems. We have implemented the framework with several subsystems to demonstrate their effectiveness for interoperation using ECA rule mechanism. The performance of the framework was tested in LAN environment and proves to be reliable in smart home setting