Incremental learning in autonomous systems: evolving connectionist systems for on-line image and speech recognition

The paper presents an integrated approach to incremental learning in autonomous systems, that includes both pattern recognition and feature selection. The approach utilizes evolving connectionist systems (ECoS) and is applied on on-line image and speech pattern learning and recognition tasks. The experiments show that ECoS are a suitable paradigm for building autonomous systems for learning and navigation in a new environment using both image and speech modalities. © 2005 IEEE

Agent-Based Computational Economics

Agent-based computational economics (ACE) is the computational study of economies modeled as evolving systems of autonomous interacting agents. Starting from initial conditions, specified by the modeler, the computational economy evolves over time as its constituent agents repeatedly interact with each other and learn from these interactions. ACE is therefore a bottom-up culture-dish approach to the study of economic systems. This study discusses the key characteristics and goals of the ACE methodology. Eight currently active research areas are highlighted for concrete illustration. Potential advantages and disadvantages of the ACE methodology are considered, along with open questions and possible directions for future research.Agent-based computational economics; Autonomous agents; Interaction networks; Learning; Evolution; Mechanism design; Computational economics; Object-oriented programming.

Autonomics: In Search of a Foundation for Next Generation Autonomous Systems

The potential benefits of autonomous systems have been driving intensive development of such systems, and of supporting tools and methodologies. However, there are still major issues to be dealt with before such development becomes commonplace engineering practice, with accepted and trustworthy deliverables. We argue that a solid, evolving, publicly available, community-controlled foundation for developing next generation autonomous systems is a must. We discuss what is needed for such a foundation, identify a central aspect thereof, namely, decision-making, and focus on three main challenges: (i) how to specify autonomous system behavior and the associated decisions in the face of unpredictability of future events and conditions and the inadequacy of current languages for describing these; (ii) how to carry out faithful simulation and analysis of system behavior with respect to rich environments that include humans, physical artifacts, and other systems,; and (iii) how to engineer systems that combine executable model-driven techniques and data-driven machine learning techniques. We argue that autonomics, i.e., the study of unique challenges presented by next generation autonomous systems, and research towards resolving them, can introduce substantial contributions and innovations in system engineering and computer science

Context-aware learning for robot-assisted endovascular catheterization

Endovascular intervention has become a mainstream treatment of cardiovascular diseases. However, multiple challenges remain such as unwanted radiation exposures, limited two-dimensional image guidance, insufficient force perception and haptic cues. Fast evolving robot-assisted platforms improve the stability and accuracy of instrument manipulation. The master-slave system also removes radiation to the operator. However, the integration of robotic systems into the current surgical workflow is still debatable since repetitive, easy tasks have little value to be executed by the robotic teleoperation. Current systems offer very low autonomy, potential autonomous features could bring more benefits such as reduced cognitive workloads and human error, safer and more consistent instrument manipulation, ability to incorporate various medical imaging and sensing modalities. This research proposes frameworks for automated catheterisation with different machine learning-based algorithms, includes Learning-from-Demonstration, Reinforcement Learning, and Imitation Learning. Those frameworks focused on integrating context for tasks in the process of skill learning, hence achieving better adaptation to different situations and safer tool-tissue interactions. Furthermore, the autonomous feature was applied to next-generation, MR-safe robotic catheterisation platform. The results provide important insights into improving catheter navigation in the form of autonomous task planning, self-optimization with clinical relevant factors, and motivate the design of intelligent, intuitive, and collaborative robots under non-ionizing image modalities.Open Acces

Editorial note: Robotics and industrial automation technology

There is no doubt that robotics and industrial automation technology is evolving quiet fast. However, the end user expectation of the technology realisation is still far from what expected. This is due to the limited development of intelligence, typical human brain cells, 3-Dimensional (3D) visual, audible and dynamic movement systems that have the same abilities and self-learning as human, to help in decision making in various environment. There are number of applied research programmes underdevelopment around the world that addresses some of these aforementioned developments. Vision is one of the most important sense and the future robot/autonomous systems proficiency will significantly depend on the ability to see, recognise, distinguish objects and estimate distances. Most jobs depend on the talent of visual perception and it must acknowledge that today's manufacture technologies and applications more and more often broaden well beyond the limits of human visual capacities. This is where robot and autonomous machine vision technology comes in. It is one of the constantly growing areas of applied research that dealing with processing and analysing of visual digital data capture. It plays a key role in the development of intellectual systems and empowers decision making for some of the future robot, autonomous systems, industrial process and manufacturing

Learning to Control Autonomous Fleets from Observation via Offline Reinforcement Learning

Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand (AMoD) systems are an evolving mode of transportation in which a centrally coordinated fleet of self-driving vehicles dynamically serves travel requests. The control of these systems is typically formulated as a large network optimization problem, and reinforcement learning (RL) has recently emerged as a promising approach to solve the open challenges in this space. Recent centralized RL approaches focus on learning from online data, ignoring the per-sample-cost of interactions within real-world transportation systems. To address these limitations, we propose to formalize the control of AMoD systems through the lens of offline reinforcement learning and learn effective control strategies using solely offline data, which is readily available to current mobility operators. We further investigate design decisions and provide empirical evidence based on data from real-world mobility systems showing how offline learning allows to recover AMoD control policies that (i) exhibit performance on par with online methods, (ii) allow for sample-efficient online fine-tuning and (iii) eliminate the need for complex simulation environments. Crucially, this paper demonstrates that offline RL is a promising paradigm for the application of RL-based solutions within economically-critical systems, such as mobility systems

National Conference on COMPUTING 4.0 EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION OF TECHNOLOGY (Era of Computing 4.0 and its impact on technology and intelligent systems)

As we enter the era of Computing 4.0, the landscape of technology and intelligent systems is rapidly evolving, with groundbreaking advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, and beyond. The theme of this conference revolves around exploring and shaping the future of these intelligent systems that will revolutionize industries and transform the way we live, work, and interact with technology. Conference Topics Quantum Computing and Quantum Information Edge Computing and Fog Computing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Computing 4.0 Internet of Things (IOT) and Smart Cities Block chain and Distributed Ledger Technologies Cybersecurity and Privacy in the Computing 4.0 Era High-Performance Computing and Parallel Processing Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) Applications Cognitive Computing and Natural Language Processing Neuromorphic Computing and Brain-Inspired Architectures Autonomous Systems and Robotics Big Data Analytics and Data Science in Computing 4.0https://www.interscience.in/conf_proc_volumes/1088/thumbnail.jp

Embodied Evolution in Collective Robotics: A Review

This paper provides an overview of evolutionary robotics techniques applied to on-line distributed evolution for robot collectives -- namely, embodied evolution. It provides a definition of embodied evolution as well as a thorough description of the underlying concepts and mechanisms. The paper also presents a comprehensive summary of research published in the field since its inception (1999-2017), providing various perspectives to identify the major trends. In particular, we identify a shift from considering embodied evolution as a parallel search method within small robot collectives (fewer than 10 robots) to embodied evolution as an on-line distributed learning method for designing collective behaviours in swarm-like collectives. The paper concludes with a discussion of applications and open questions, providing a milestone for past and an inspiration for future research.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure, 1 tabl

Learning to solve planning problems efficiently by means of genetic programming

Declarative problem solving, such as planning, poses interesting challenges for Genetic Programming (GP). There have been recent attempts to apply GP to planning that fit two approaches: (a) using GP to search in plan space or (b) to evolve a planner. In this article, we propose to evolve only the heuristics to make a particular planner more efficient. This approach is more feasible than (b) because it does not have to build a planner from scratch but can take advantage of already existing planning systems. It is also more efficient than (a) because once the heuristics have been evolved, they can be used to solve a whole class of different planning problems in a planning domain, instead of running GP for every new planning problem. Empirical results show that our approach (EVOCK) is able to evolve heuristics in two planning domains (the blocks world and the logistics domain) that improve PRODIGY4.0 performance. Additionally, we experiment with a new genetic operator - Instance-Based Crossover - that is able to use traces of the base planner as raw genetic material to be injected into the evolving population.Publicad