Explainable and Advisable Learning for Self-driving Vehicles

Deep neural perception and control networks are likely to be a key component of self-driving vehicles. These models need to be explainable - they should provide easy-to-interpret rationales for their behavior - so that passengers, insurance companies, law enforcement, developers, etc., can understand what triggered a particular behavior. Explanations may be triggered by the neural controller, namely introspective explanations, or informed by the neural controller's output, namely rationalizations. Our work has focused on the challenge of generating introspective explanations of deep models for self-driving vehicles. In Chapter 3, we begin by exploring the use of visual explanations. These explanations take the form of real-time highlighted regions of an image that causally influence the network's output (steering control). In the first stage, we use a visual attention model to train a convolution network end-to-end from images to steering angle. The attention model highlights image regions that potentially influence the network's output. Some of these are true influences, but some are spurious. We then apply a causal filtering step to determine which input regions actually influence the output. This produces more succinct visual explanations and more accurately exposes the network's behavior. In Chapter 4, we add an attention-based video-to-text model to produce textual explanations of model actions, e.g. "the car slows down because the road is wet". The attention maps of controller and explanation model are aligned so that explanations are grounded in the parts of the scene that mattered to the controller. We explore two approaches to attention alignment, strong- and weak-alignment. These explainable systems represent an externalization of tacit knowledge. The network's opaque reasoning is simplified to a situation-specific dependence on a visible object in the image. This makes them brittle and potentially unsafe in situations that do not match training data. In Chapter 5, we propose to address this issue by augmenting training data with natural language advice from a human. Advice includes guidance about what to do and where to attend. We present the first step toward advice-giving, where we train an end-to-end vehicle controller that accepts advice. The controller adapts the way it attends to the scene (visual attention) and the control (steering and speed). Further, in Chapter 6, we propose a new approach that learns vehicle control with the help of long-term (global) human advice. Specifically, our system learns to summarize its visual observations in natural language, predict an appropriate action response (e.g. "I see a pedestrian crossing, so I stop"), and predict the controls, accordingly

2022-2023 Program and Abstracts: Celebration of Student Scholarship

The 2022-2023 Program and Abstracts for the Celebration of Student Scholarship at Morehead State University held on April 19, 2023. A Showcase of Student Research, Scholarship, Creative Work, and Performance Arts.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/celebration_posters_2023/1046/thumbnail.jp

Digital Peacekeepers, Drone Surveillance and Information Fusion: A Philosophical Analysis of New Peacekeeping

In June 2014 an Expert Panel on Technology and Innovation in UN Peacekeeping was commissioned to examine how technology and innovation could strengthen peacekeeping missions. The panel\u27s report argues for wider deployment of advanced technologies, including greater use of ground and airborne sensors and other technical sources of data, advanced data analytics and information fusion to assist in data integration. This article explores the emerging intelligence-led, informationist conception of UN peacekeeping against the backdrop of increasingly complex peacekeeping mandates and precarious security conditions. New peacekeeping with its heightened commitment to information as a political resource and the endorsement of offensive military action within robust mandates reflects the multiple and conflicting trajectories generated by asymmetric conflicts, the responsibility to protect and a technology-driven information revolution. We argue that the idea of peacekeeping is being revised (and has been revised) by realities beyond peacekeeping itself that require rethinking the morality of peacekeeping in light of the emergence of \u27digital peacekeeping\u27 and the knowledge revolution engendered by new technologies

When the wildebeest gets your berries : adolescent anger management

This study presents a review of literature regarding adolescent anger management. Problematic anger is defined as externalizing or internalizing behaviors that occur frequently enough and at a high enough level of intensity to: (1) disrupt one\u27s everyday functioning at school, home, and/or in the community; and (2) impair one\u27s relationships with others and one\u27s own self-concept. The causes can be traced to a myriad of possible sources: cognitive problems; developmental problems; chronic irritability, agitation, volatility, or mood instability; or environmental stressors. This review of studies regarding adolescent anger management programs leads to the following suggestions for school psychologists: (1) understand the comprehensive nature of the student\u27s anger; (2) carefully match the method of intervention to the nature of the student\u27s anger; and (3) become an agent of change within the school to create more user-friendly environments

Product ban versus risk management by setting emission and technology requirements: The effect of different regulatory schemes taking the use of trichloroethylene in Sweden and Germany as an example

This report highlights the opportunities inherent in smart regulatory measures to effectively reduce risks related to hazardous substance emissions and exposure, and underscores the danger of simplistic and ineffective policy. The example of different regulatory approaches used in Germany and Sweden to regulate the use of trichloroethylene was taken as the basis for the study. During the 1990s, due to environmental, health and safety considerations, the use of trichloroethylene in Europe was a subject of broad concern. As a consequence, the use of trichloroethylene became regulated through multiple approaches, such as labelling, handling regulations and performance standards. Since that time the absolute emissions of trichloroethylene in Europe have been decreasing consistently in all member states. These results were achieved by various regulatory measures governing the use of trichloroethylene in industrial applications that have been introduced by individual Member States. However, given the implementation responsibility at Member State level not all member States have implemented the same set of regulatory measures. In Germany, for example, the use of trichloroethylene is regulated through strict technical standards for equipment and emissions that has required companies to replace existing old machines with the state-of-the-art equipment. In Sweden a general ban on trichloroethylene use was introduced in 1996, which however eventually evolved into an exemption permit system for companies that found no alternative to degreasing with trichloroethylene. --

Normative Emotional Agents: a viewpoint paper

[EN] Human social relationships imply conforming to the norms, behaviors and cultural values of the society, but also socialization of emotions, to learn how to interpret and show them. In multiagent systems, much progress has been made in the analysis and interpretation of both emotions and norms. Nonetheless, the relationship between emotions and norms has hardly been considered and most normative agents do not consider emotions, or vice-versa. In this article, we provide an overview of relevant aspects within the area of normative agents and emotional agents. First we focus on the concept of norm, the different types of norms, its life cycle and a review of multiagent normative systems. Secondly, we present the most relevant theories of emotions, the life cycle of an agent¿s emotions, and how emotions have been included through computational models in multiagent systems. Next, we present an analysis of proposals that integrate emotions and norms in multiagent systems. From this analysis, four relationships are detected between norms and emotions, which we analyze in detail and discuss how these relationships have been tackled in the reviewed proposals. Finally, we present a proposal for an abstract architecture of a Normative Emotional Agent that covers these four norm-emotion relationships.This work was supported by the Spanish Government project TIN2017-89156- R, the Generalitat Valenciana project PROMETEO/2018/002 and the Spanish Goverment PhD Grant PRE2018-084940.Argente, E.; Del Val, E.; Pérez-García, D.; Botti Navarro, VJ. (2022). Normative Emotional Agents: a viewpoint paper. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing. 13(3):1254-1273. https://doi.org/10.1109/TAFFC.2020.3028512S1254127313

Eyewear Computing \u2013 Augmenting the Human with Head-Mounted Wearable Assistants

The seminar was composed of workshops and tutorials on head-mounted eye tracking, egocentric vision, optics, and head-mounted displays. The seminar welcomed 30 academic and industry researchers from Europe, the US, and Asia with a diverse background, including wearable and ubiquitous computing, computer vision, developmental psychology, optics, and human-computer interaction. In contrast to several previous Dagstuhl seminars, we used an ignite talk format to reduce the time of talks to one half-day and to leave the rest of the week for hands-on sessions, group work, general discussions, and socialising. The key results of this seminar are 1) the identification of key research challenges and summaries of breakout groups on multimodal eyewear computing, egocentric vision, security and privacy issues, skill augmentation and task guidance, eyewear computing for gaming, as well as prototyping of VR applications, 2) a list of datasets and research tools for eyewear computing, 3) three small-scale datasets recorded during the seminar, 4) an article in ACM Interactions entitled \u201cEyewear Computers for Human-Computer Interaction\u201d, as well as 5) two follow-up workshops on \u201cEgocentric Perception, Interaction, and Computing\u201d at the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) as well as \u201cEyewear Computing\u201d at the ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp)

Sustainability Standards and Stakeholder Engagement: Lessons From Carbon Markets

Stakeholders play an increasingly active role in private governance, including development of standards for measuring sustainability. Building on prior studies focused on standards and stakeholder engagement, we use an innovation management theoretical lens to compare stakeholder engagement and standards developed in two carbon markets: the Climate Action Reserve and the U.N.’s Clean Development Mechanism. We develop and test hypotheses regarding how different processes of stakeholder engagement in standard development affect the number, identity, and age of stakeholders involved, as well as the variation and quality of the resulting standards. In doing so, we contribute to the growing literature on stakeholder engagement in developing sustainability standards

The relationship between Theory of Mind, Inhibitory Control and Children's Behavioral Problems: a multi-informant approach

Die Beziehung zwischen Theory of Mind (ToM), inhibitorischer Kontrolle (IK) und Verhaltensproblemen von Kindern im Vorschulalter wurde bisher empirisch wenig untersucht und zeigt zudem uneinheitliche Ergebnisse. Eine Erklärung für diese Ergebnisse könnte darin begründet sein, dass der Fokus meist auf einer einzelnen Dimension der ToM lag, dem Verstehen falscher Überzeugungen. Die alleinige Untersuchung dieser Dimension reicht jedoch nicht aus, um ein umfassendes Profil der ToM im Vorschulalter abzubilden. Zudem blieb IK, welche häufig einen positiven Zusammenhang zur ToM zeigt, oftmals unbeachtet. Die Mehrheit der Studien verwendete verbale Aufgaben und untersuchte daher Kinder ab 4 Jahren. Die Frage nach einem früheren Zeitpunkt eines Zusammenhangs bleibt damit ebenfalls offen. Um umfassende Informationen über die Zusammenhänge zwischen ToM, IK und Verhaltensproblemen in der frühen Kindheit zu liefern, wurden Kinder im Alter von 2, 3 und 4 Jahren (N= 252) mit einer umfangreichen Batterie von ToM- und IK-Aufgaben untersucht. Zudem wurde ihr Sprachverständnis, Verhalten und Temperament mit einem Multi-Informanten Ansatz erfasst. Das Sprachverständnis steht ab dem Alter von 2 Jahren in positivem Zusammenhang zur IK, sowie ab 4 Jahren in positivem Zusammenhang zur ToM. Zudem zeigte sich, dass 4-jähirige Kinder mit hohen IK-Werten wenige Verhaltensprobleme zeigten. Gegensätzlich dazu zeigten 4-jähirige Kinder mit hohen ToM-Werten mehr Verhaltensprobleme. Das Temperament zeigte keinen einzigartigen Zusammenhang zu IK und ToM. Die Ergebnisse weisen drauf hin, dass sich ein direkter Zusammenhang zwischen ToM, IK und Verhaltensproblemen erst ab einem Alter von 4 Jahren entwickelt. Des Weiteren werden mögliche Erklärungen für die Beziehung von ToM, IK und Verhaltensproblemen unterschiedlicher Erscheinungsform diskutiert.The relationship between Theory of Mind (ToM), inhibitory control (IC) and behavioral problems has attracted little empirical investigation to date and delivered mixed findings. An explanation for these mixed findings might lie in focusing on a single mental state (i.e., false-belief understanding), which might not account for a comprehensive profile of children’s ToM. Furthermore, IC, often positively correlated to ToM, remained unattended by the majority of studies. Due to the use of verbal tests, investigations mostly focused on children from 4 years of age onwards. Thus, the time of emergence of a relationship also remains an open question. To provide comprehensive information on possible correlations between ToM, IC and behavioral problems in children’s early years, 2- , 3- and 4-year-old children (N= 252) were presented with a broad battery of ToM and IC tasks, and tested for receptive language abilities, complemented by comparable multi-informant assessment of their behavior and temperament. Language was positively correlated to IC from 2 years onwards, and to ToM only at 4 years of age. With regard to caregiver ratings, I found that for 4-year-old children higher scores in IC were associated with fewer behavioral problems. In contrast, higher scores in ToM were associated with more behavioral problems. No such associations were found for 2- and 3-year-old children. Considering temperament dimensions, only the measure of activity was negatively correlated to IC at the age of 2 years. However, taking language abilities into account the unique contribution disappeared. The results suggest that robust relationships between ToM, IC and behavioral problems start to develop at the age of 4 years. Different explanations for the patterns of association will be discussed, especially for the contribution of ToM and IC to the development of different manifestations of behavioral problems