Agent Behaviour Simulator (ABS):a platform for urban behaviour development

Computer Graphics have become important for many applicationsand the quality of the produced images have greatly improved. Oneof the interesting remaining problems is the representation of densedynamic environments such as populated cities. Although recentlywe saw some successfulwork on the rendering such environments,the real?time simulation of virtual cities populated by thousands ofintelligent animated agents is still very challenging.In this paperwe describe a platformthat aims to accelerate the developmentof agent behaviours. The platform makes it easy to enterlocal rules and callbacks which govern the individual behaviours.It automatically performs the routine tasks such as collision detectionallowing the user to concentrate on defining the more involvedtasks. The platform is based on a 2D-grid with a four-layered structure.The two first layers are used to compute the collision detectionagainst the environment and other agents and the last two are usedfor more complex behaviours.A set of visualisation tools is incorporated that allows the testingof the real?time simulation. The choices made for the visualisationallow the user to better understand the way agents move inside theworld and how they take decisions, so that the user can evaluate ifit simulates the expected behaviour.Experimentation with the system has shown that behaviours inenvironments with thousands of agents can be developed and visualisedin effortlessly

The Technologies of Isolation

In this investigation of the Japanese film Kairo, I contemplate how the horrors present in the film relate to the issue of self, by examining a number of interlocking motifs. These include thematic foci on disease and technology which are more intimately and inwardly focused that the film's conclusion first appears to suggest. The true horror here, I argue, is ontological: centred on the self and its divorcing from the exterior world, especially founded in an increased use of and reliance on communicative technologies. I contend that these concerns are manifested in Kairo by presenting the spread of technology as disease-like, infecting the city and the individuals who are isolated and imprisoned by their urban environment. Finally, I investigate the meanings of the apocalypse, expounding how it may be read as hopeful for the future rather than indicative of failure or doom

The technologies of isolation: apocalypse and self in Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Kairo

In this investigation of the Japanese film Kairo, I contemplate how the horrors present in the film relate to the issue of self, by examining a number of interlocking motifs. These include thematic foci on disease and technology which are more intimately and inwardly focused that the film's conclusion first appears to suggest. The true horror here, I argue, is ontological: centred on the self and its divorcing from the exterior world, especially founded in an increased use of and reliance on communicative technologies. I contend that these concerns are manifested in Kairo by presenting the spread of technology as disease-like, infecting the city and the individuals who are isolated and imprisoned by their urban environment. Finally, I investigate the meanings of the apocalypse, expounding how it may be read as hopeful for the future rather than indicative of failure or doom

Smart Firefighting Technologies in Urban China

As urbanization in China promotes rapid population growth, urban areas become increasingly densely populated. The distribution of citizens, the spatial organization of these cities, and the rate of development all present unique challenges to Chinese firefighters and disaster responders. In this report, Beijing, Wuhan, and Shanghai will be used as a case studies to represent densely populated urban areas in China. The goal of our project is to develop recommendations for our sponsor, the WPI-Tsinghua University Center for Global Public Safety, that integrate new smart technologies to make firefighting safer and more efficient in densely populated urban areas within China

Towards a cyberinfrastructure for enhanced scientific

Scientific and technological collaboration is more and more coming to be seen as critically dependent upon effective access to, and sharing of digital research data, and of the information tools that facilitate data being structured for efficient storage, search, retrieval, display and higher level analysis. A February 2003 report to the U.S. NSF Directorate of Computer and Information System Engineering urged that funding be provided for a major enhancement of computer and network technologies, thereby creating a cyberinfrastructure whose facilities would support and transform the conduct of scientific and engineering research. The argument of this paper is that engineering breakthroughs alone will not be enough to achieve such an outcome; success in realizing the cyberinfrastructure’s potential, if it is achieved, will more likely to be the resultant of a nexus of interrelated social, legal and technical transformations. The socio-institutional elements of a new infrastructure supporting collaboration that is to say, its supposedly “softer” parts -- are every bit as complicated as the hardware and computer software, and, indeed, may prove much harder to devise and implement. The roots of this latter class of challenges facing “e- Science” will be seen to lie in the micro- and meso-level incentive structures created by the existing legal and administrative regimes. Although a number of these same conditions and circumstances appear to be equally significant obstacles to commercial provision of Grid services in interorganizational contexts, the domain of publicly supported scientific collaboration is held to be the more hospitable environment in which to experiment with a variety of new approaches to solving these problems. The paper concludes by proposing several “solution modalities,” including some that also could be made applicable for fields of information-intensive collaboration in business and finance that must regularly transcends organizational boundaries.

Towards a cyberinfrastructure for enhanced scientific

A new generation of information and communication infrastructures, including advanced Internet computing and Grid technologies, promises to enable more direct and shared access to more widely distributed computing resources than was previously possible. Scientific and technological collaboration, consequently, is more and more coming to be seen as critically dependent upon effective access to, and sharing of digital research data, and of the information tools that facilitate data being structured for efficient storage, search, retrieval, display and higher level analysis. A recent (February 2003) report to the U.S. NSF Directorate of Computer and Information System Engineering urged that funding be provided for a major enhancement of computer and network technologies, thereby creating a cyberinfrastructure whose facilities would support and transform the conduct of scientific and engineering research. The articulation of this programmatic vision reflects a widely shared expectation that solving the technical engineering problems associated with the advanced hardware and software systems of the cyberinfrastructure will yield revolutionary payoffs by empowering individual researchers and increasing the scale, scope and flexibility of collective research enterprises. The argument of this paper, however, is that engineering breakthroughs alone will not be enough to achieve such an outcome; success in realizing the cyberinfrastructure’s potential, if it is achieved, will more likely to be the resultant of a nexus of interrelated social, legal and technical transformations. The socio-institutional elements of a new infrastructure supporting collaboration – that is to say, its supposedly “softer” parts -- are every bit as complicated as the hardware and computer software, and, indeed, may prove much harder to devise and implement. The roots of this latter class of challenges facing “e-Science” will be seen to lie in the micro- and meso-level incentive structures created by the existing legal and administrative regimes. Although a number of these same conditions and circumstances appear to be equally significant obstacles to commercial provision of Grid services in interorganizational contexts, the domain of publicly supported scientific collaboration is held to be the more hospitable environment in which to experiment with a variety of new approaches to solving these problems. The paper concludes by proposing several “solution modalities,” including some that also could be made applicable for fields of information-intensive collaboration in business and finance that must regularly transcends organizational boundaries.

Navegação em ambientes dinâmicos tirando partido de agentes móveis

Doutoramento em Engenharia MecânicaEsta tese propõe uma forma diferente de navegação de robôs em ambientes dinâmicos, onde o robô tira partido do movimento de pedestres, com o objetivo de melhorar as suas capacidades de navegação. A ideia principal é que, ao invés de tratar as pessoas como obstáculos dinâmicos que devem ser evitados, elas devem ser tratadas como agentes especiais com conhecimento avançado em navegação em ambientes dinâmicos. Para se beneficiar do movimento de pedestres, este trabalho propõe que um robô os selecione e siga, de modo que possa mover-se por caminhos ótimos, desviar-se de obstáculos não detetados, melhorar a navegação em ambientes densamente populados e aumentar a sua aceitação por outros humanos. Para atingir estes objetivos, novos métodos são desenvolvidos na área da seleção de líderes, onde duas técnicas são exploradas. A primeira usa métodos de previsão de movimento, enquanto a segunda usa técnicas de aprendizagem por máquina, para avaliar a qualidade de candidatos a líder, onde o treino é feito com exemplos reais. Os métodos de seleção de líder são integrados com algoritmos de planeamento de movimento e experiências são realizadas para validar as técnicas propostas.This thesis proposes a di erent form of robotic navigation in dynamic environments, where the robot takes advantage of the motion of pedestrians, in order to improve its own navigation capabilities. The main idea is that, instead of treating persons as dynamic obstacles that should be avoided, they should be treated as special agents with an expert knowledge of navigating in dynamic scenarios. To bene t from the motion of pedestrians, this work proposes that the robot selects and follows them, so it can move along optimal paths, deviate from undetected obstacles, improve navigation in densely populated areas and increase its acceptance by other humans. To accomplish this proposition, novel approaches are developed in the area of leader selection, where two methods are explored. The rst uses motion prediction approaches while the second uses a machine learning method, to evaluate the leader quality of subjects, which is trained with real examples. Finally, the leader selection methods are integrated with motion planning algorithms and experiments are conducted in order to validate the proposed techniques