75,825 research outputs found
Amorphous Fortress: Observing Emergent Behavior in Multi-Agent FSMs
We introduce a system called Amorphous Fortress -- an abstract, yet spatial,
open-ended artificial life simulation. In this environment, the agents are
represented as finite-state machines (FSMs) which allow for multi-agent
interaction within a constrained space. These agents are created by randomly
generating and evolving the FSMs; sampling from pre-defined states and
transitions. This environment was designed to explore the emergent AI behaviors
found implicitly in simulation games such as Dwarf Fortress or The Sims. We
apply the hill-climber evolutionary search algorithm to this environment to
explore the various levels of depth and interaction from the generated FSMs.Comment: 9 pages; Accepted to the 1st ALIFE for and from video games Workshop
202
Beyond Generalized Multiplicities: Register Machines over Groups
Register machines are a classic model of computing, often seen as a canonical
example of a device manipulating natural numbers. In this paper, we de ne register
machines operating on general groups instead. This generalization follows the research
direction started in multiple previous works. We study the expressive power of register
machines as a function of the underlying groups, as well as of allowed ingredients (zero
test, partial blindness, forbidden regions). We put forward a fundamental connection
between register machines and vector addition systems. Finally, we show how registers
over free groups can be used to store and manipulate strings
On the Algorithmic Nature of the World
We propose a test based on the theory of algorithmic complexity and an
experimental evaluation of Levin's universal distribution to identify evidence
in support of or in contravention of the claim that the world is algorithmic in
nature. To this end we have undertaken a statistical comparison of the
frequency distributions of data from physical sources on the one
hand--repositories of information such as images, data stored in a hard drive,
computer programs and DNA sequences--and the frequency distributions generated
by purely algorithmic means on the other--by running abstract computing devices
such as Turing machines, cellular automata and Post Tag systems. Statistical
correlations were found and their significance measured.Comment: Book chapter in Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic and Mark Burgin (eds.)
Information and Computation by World Scientific, 2010.
(http://www.idt.mdh.se/ECAP-2005/INFOCOMPBOOK/). Paper website:
http://www.mathrix.org/experimentalAIT
Discovery and Selection of Certified Web Services Through Registry-Based Testing and Verification
Reliability and trust are fundamental prerequisites for the establishment of functional relationships among peers in a Collaborative Networked Organisation (CNO), especially in the context of Virtual Enterprises where economic benefits can be directly at stake. This paper presents a novel approach towards effective service discovery and selection that is no longer based on informal, ambiguous and potentially unreliable service descriptions, but on formal specifications that can be used to verify and certify the actual Web service implementations. We propose the use of Stream X-machines (SXMs) as a powerful modelling formalism for constructing the behavioural specification of a Web service, for performing verification through the generation of exhaustive test cases, and for performing validation through animation or model checking during service selection
Checking experiments for stream X-machines
This article is a post-print version of the published article which may be accessed at the link below. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Stream X-machines are a state based formalism that has associated with it a particular development process in which a system is built from trusted components. Testing thus essentially checks that these components have been combined in a correct manner and that the orders in which they can occur are consistent with the specification. Importantly, there are test generation methods that return a checking experiment: a test that is guaranteed to determine correctness as long as the implementation under test (IUT) is functionally equivalent to an unknown element of a given fault domain Ψ. Previous work has show how three methods for generating checking experiments from a finite state machine (FSM) can be adapted to testing from a stream X-machine. However, there are many other methods for generating checking experiments from an
FSM and these have a variety of benefits that correspond to different testing scenarios. This paper shows how any method for generating a checking experiment from an FSM can be adapted to generate a checking experiment for testing an implementation against a stream X-machine. This is the case whether we are testing to check that the IUT is functionally equivalent to a specification or we are testing to check that every trace (input/output sequence) of the IUT is also a trace of a nondeterministic specification. Interestingly, this holds even if the fault domain Ψ used is not that traditionally associated with testing from a stream
X-machine. The results also apply for both deterministic and nondeterministic implementations
Universality and programmability of quantum computers
Manin, Feynman, and Deutsch have viewed quantum computing as a kind of
universal physical simulation procedure. Much of the writing about quantum
logic circuits and quantum Turing machines has shown how these machines can
simulate an arbitrary unitary transformation on a finite number of qubits. The
problem of universality has been addressed most famously in a paper by Deutsch,
and later by Bernstein and Vazirani as well as Kitaev and Solovay. The quantum
logic circuit model, developed by Feynman and Deutsch, has been more prominent
in the research literature than Deutsch's quantum Turing machines. Quantum
Turing machines form a class closely related to deterministic and probabilistic
Turing machines and one might hope to find a universal machine in this class. A
universal machine is the basis of a notion of programmability. The extent to
which universality has in fact been established by the pioneers in the field is
examined and this key notion in theoretical computer science is scrutinised in
quantum computing by distinguishing various connotations and concomitant
results and problems.Comment: 17 pages, expands on arXiv:0705.3077v1 [quant-ph
Hairdressing in groups: a survey of combings and formal languages
A group is combable if it can be represented by a language of words
satisfying a fellow traveller property; an automatic group has a synchronous
combing which is a regular language. This article surveys results for combable
groups, in particular in the case where the combing is a formal language.Comment: 17 pages. Published copy, also available at
http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/GTMon1/paper24.abs.htm
Leveraging Semantic Web Service Descriptions for Validation by Automated Functional Testing
Recent years have seen the utilisation of Semantic Web Service descriptions for automating a wide range of service-related activities, with a primary focus on service discovery, composition, execution and mediation. An important area which so far has received less attention is service validation, whereby advertised services are proven to conform to required behavioural specifications. This paper proposes a method for validation of service-oriented systems through automated functional testing. The method leverages ontology-based and rule-based descriptions of service inputs, outputs, preconditions and effects (IOPE) for constructing a stateful EFSM specification. The specification is subsequently utilised for functional testing and validation using the proven Stream X-machine (SXM) testing methodology. Complete functional test sets are generated automatically at an abstract level and are then applied to concrete Web services, using test drivers created from the Web service descriptions. The testing method comes with completeness guarantees and provides a strong method for validating the behaviour of Web services
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