Advances in Human-Robot Interaction

Rapid advances in the field of robotics have made it possible to use robots not just in industrial automation but also in entertainment, rehabilitation, and home service. Since robots will likely affect many aspects of human existence, fundamental questions of human-robot interaction must be formulated and, if at all possible, resolved. Some of these questions are addressed in this collection of papers by leading HRI researchers

Discrete Event Simulations

Considered by many authors as a technique for modelling stochastic, dynamic and discretely evolving systems, this technique has gained widespread acceptance among the practitioners who want to represent and improve complex systems. Since DES is a technique applied in incredibly different areas, this book reflects many different points of view about DES, thus, all authors describe how it is understood and applied within their context of work, providing an extensive understanding of what DES is. It can be said that the name of the book itself reflects the plurality that these points of view represent. The book embraces a number of topics covering theory, methods and applications to a wide range of sectors and problem areas that have been categorised into five groups. As well as the previously explained variety of points of view concerning DES, there is one additional thing to remark about this book: its richness when talking about actual data or actual data based analysis. When most academic areas are lacking application cases, roughly the half part of the chapters included in this book deal with actual problems or at least are based on actual data. Thus, the editor firmly believes that this book will be interesting for both beginners and practitioners in the area of DES

Intelligent techniques for context-aware systems

Nowadays, with advances in communication technologies, researches are focused in the fields of designing new devices with increasing capabilities, implanting software frameworks or middleware to make these devices interoperable. Building better human interfaces is a challenging task and the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to the process help associating semantic meaning to devices which makes possible the gesture recognition and voice recognition. This thesis is mainly concerned with the open problem in context-aware systems: the evaluation of these systems in Ambient Intelligence (AmI) environments. With regard to this issue, we argue that due to highly dynamic properties of the AmI environments, it should exist a methodology for evaluating these systems taking into account the type of scenarios. However in order to support with a solid ground for that discussion, some elements are to be discussed as well. In particular, we: • use a commercial platform that allows us to design and manage the contextual information of context- aware systems by means of a context manager included in the architecture; • analyze the formal representation of this contextual information by means of a knowledge based system (KBS); • discuss the possible methodologies to be used for modelling knowledge in KBS and our approach; • give reasons why intelligent agents is a valid technique to be applied to systems in AmI environments; • propose a generic multi-agent system (MAS) architecture that can be applied to a large class of envisaged AmI applications; • propose a multimodal user interface and its integration with our MAS; • propose an evaluation methodology for context-aware systems in AmI scenarios. The formulation of the above mentioned elements became necessary as this thesis was developed. The lack of an evaluation methodology for context-aware systems in AmI environments, where so many issues to be covered, took us to the main objective of this thesis. In this regard: • we provide an updated and exhaustive state-of-the-art of this matter; • examine the properties and characteristics of AmI scenarios; • put forward an evaluation methodology and experimentally test our methodology in AmI scenarios. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------La Inteligencia Ambiental y los entornos inteligentes hacen hincapié en una mayor facilidad de uso, soporte de servicios más eficientes, el apoderamiento de los usuarios, y el apoyo a las interacciones humanas. En esta visión, las personas estarán rodeadas de interfaces inteligentes e intuitivas incrustados en objetos cotidianos que nos rodean y los sistemas desarrollados para este ambiente deberán reconocer y responder a la presencia de individuos de una manera invisible y transparente a ellos. Esta tesis se centra principalmente en el problema abierto en los sistemas sensibles al contexto: la evaluación de estos sistemas en los entornos de Inteligencia Ambiental. Con respecto a este tema, se argumenta que debido a las propiedades altamente dinámica de los entornos de inteligencia ambiental, debería existir una metodología para la evaluación de estos sistemas, teniendo en cuenta el tipo de escenarios. Sin embargo, con el fin de apoyar con una base sólida para la discusión, algunos elementos deben ser discutidos también. En particular, nosotros: • Usamos una plataforma comercial que nos permite diseñar y gestionar la información contextual de los sistemas sensibles al contexto a través de un gestor de contexto incluido en la arquitectura; • Analizamos la representación formal de esta información contextual a través de un sistema basado en el conocimiento (SBC); • Discutimos las posibles metodologías que se utilizarán para el modelado del conocimiento en SBC y nuestra aproximación y propuesta; • Discutimos las razones del por qué los agentes inteligentes son una técnica válida para ser aplicada a los sistemas en entornos inteligencia ambiental; • Proponemos un sistema multi-agente (SMA), con una arquitectura genérica que se puede aplicar a una gran clase de aplicaciones de inteligencia ambiental; • Proponemos una interfaz de usuario multimodales y su integración con nuestro SMA; • Proponemos una metodología de evaluación de los sistemas sensibles al contexto en los escenarios de inteligencia ambiental. La formulación de los elementos antes mencionados se hizo necesaria en la medida que esta tesis se ha desarrollado. La falta de una metodología de evaluación de los sistemas sensibles al contexto en entornos de inteligencia ambiental, donde existen tantos temas a tratar, nos llevó al objetivo principal de esta tesis. En este sentido, en esta tesis: • Proporcionamos un estado del arte actualizado y exhaustivo de este asunto; • Examinamos las propiedades y características de los escenarios de inteligencia ambiental; • Proponemos una metodología de evaluación para este tipo de sistemas y experimentalmente probamos nuestra metodología en diversos escenarios de inteligencia ambiental