Towards adaptive multi-robot systems: self-organization and self-adaptation

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.The development of complex systems ensembles that operate in uncertain environments is a major challenge. The reason for this is that system designers are not able to fully specify the system during specification and development and before it is being deployed. Natural swarm systems enjoy similar characteristics, yet, being self-adaptive and being able to self-organize, these systems show beneficial emergent behaviour. Similar concepts can be extremely helpful for artificial systems, especially when it comes to multi-robot scenarios, which require such solution in order to be applicable to highly uncertain real world application. In this article, we present a comprehensive overview over state-of-the-art solutions in emergent systems, self-organization, self-adaptation, and robotics. We discuss these approaches in the light of a framework for multi-robot systems and identify similarities, differences missing links and open gaps that have to be addressed in order to make this framework possible

Concept discovery innovations in law enforcement: a perspective.

In the past decades, the amount of information available to law enforcement agencies has increased significantly. Most of this information is in textual form, however analyses have mainly focused on the structured data. In this paper, we give an overview of the concept discovery projects at the Amsterdam-Amstelland police where Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is being used as text mining instrument. FCA is combined with statistical techniques such as Hidden Markov Models (HMM) and Emergent Self Organizing Maps (ESOM). The combination of this concept discovery and refinement technique with statistical techniques for analyzing high-dimensional data not only resulted in new insights but often in actual improvements of the investigation procedures.Formal concept analysis; Intelligence led policing; Knowledge discovery;

THE ROLE OF INTERDEPENDENCE IN THE MICRO-FOUNDATIONS OF ORGANIZATION DESIGN: TASK, GOAL, AND KNOWLEDGE INTERDEPENDENCE

Interdependence is a core concept in organization design, yet one that has remained consistently understudied. Current notions of interdependence remain rooted in seminal works, produced at a time when managers’ near-perfect understanding of the task at hand drove the organization design process. In this context, task interdependence was rightly assumed to be exogenously determined by characteristics of the work and the technology. We no longer live in that world, yet our view of interdependence has remained exceedingly task-centric and our treatment of interdependence overly deterministic. As organizations face increasingly unpredictable workstreams and workers co-design the organization alongside managers, our field requires a more comprehensive toolbox that incorporates aspects of agent-based interdependence. In this paper, we synthesize research in organization design, organizational behavior, and other related literatures to examine three types of interdependence that characterize organizations’ workflows: task, goal, and knowledge interdependence. We offer clear definitions for each construct, analyze how each arises endogenously in the design process, explore their interrelations, and pose questions to guide future research

A case of using formal concept analysis in combination with emergent self organizing maps for detecting domestic violence.

In this paper, we propose a framework for iterative knowledge discovery from unstructured text using Formal Concept Analysis and Emergent Self Organizing Maps. We apply the framework to a real life case study using data from the Amsterdam-Amstelland police. The case zooms in on the problem of distilling concepts for domestic violence from the unstructured text in police reports. Our human-centered framework facilitates the exploration of the data and allows for an efficient incorporation of prior expert knowledge to steer the discovery process. This exploration resulted in the discovery of faulty case labellings, common classification errors made by police officers, confusing situations, missing values in police reports, etc. The framework was also used for iteratively expanding a domain-specific thesaurus. Furthermore, we showed how the presented method was used to develop a highly accurate and comprehensible classification model that automatically assigns a domestic or non-domestic violence label to police reports.Formal concept analysis; Emergent self organizing map; Text mining; Actionable knowledge discovery; Domestic violence;

Curbing domestic violence: instantiating C-K theory with formal concept analysis and emergent self organizing maps.

In this paper we propose a human-centered process for knowledge discovery from unstructured text that makes use of Formal Concept Analysis and Emergent Self Organizing Maps. The knowledge discovery process is conceptualized and interpreted as successive iterations through the Concept-Knowledge (C-K) theory design square. To illustrate its effectiveness, we report on a real-life case study of using the process at the Amsterdam-Amstelland police in the Netherlands aimed at distilling concepts to identify domestic violence from the unstructured text in actual police reports. The case study allows us to show how the process was not only able to uncover the nature of a phenomenon such as domestic violence, but also enabled analysts to identify many types of anomalies in the practice of policing. We will illustrate how the insights obtained from this exercise resulted in major improvements in the management of domestic violence cases.Formal concept analysis; Emergent self organizing map; C-K theory; Text mining; Actionable knowledge discovery; Domestic violence;

Reusability in software engineering

This paper surveys recent work concerning reusability in software engineering. The current directions in software reusability are discussed, and the two major approaches of reusable building blocks and reusable patterns studied. An extensive bibliography, parts of which are annotated, is included

The Theory of the Firm and Its Critics A Stocktaking and Assessment

Ever since its emergence in the 1970s the modern economic or Coasian theory of the firm has been discussed and challenged by sociologists, heterodox economists, management scholars, and other critics. This chapter reviews and assesses these critiques, focusing on behavioral issues (bounded rationality and motivation), process (including path dependence and the selection argument), entrepreneurship, and the challenge from knowledge-based theories of the firm.

Organization of Multi-Agent Systems: An Overview

In complex, open, and heterogeneous environments, agents must be able to reorganize towards the most appropriate organizations to adapt unpredictable environment changes within Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). Types of reorganization can be seen from two different levels. The individual agents level (micro-level) in which an agent changes its behaviors and interactions with other agents to adapt its local environment. And the organizational level (macro-level) in which the whole system changes it structure by adding or removing agents. This chapter is dedicated to overview different aspects of what is called MAS Organization including its motivations, paradigms, models, and techniques adopted for statically or dynamically organizing agents in MAS.Comment: 12 page

Clarifying the Dominant Logic Construct by Disentangling and Reassembling its Dimensions

Since its introduction, Prahalad and Bettis's concept of dominant logic has informed a variety of scholarly conversations in management and strategy research. However, scholars have interpreted dominant logic in different ways, emphasizing different aspects, such as managerial mindsets, administrative tools and management functions, as defining elements. Similarly, empirical studies have captured various aspects, such as meanings of entrepreneurs, observable strategic decisions and business model similarity, as indicators of dominant logic. Consequently, the concept lacks analytical clarity, and it is difficult to compare or generalize findings from this diverse set of studies. The aim of this review is to improve conceptual clarity by analysing, comparing and evaluating the existing interpretations and assessments of dominant logic in 94 studies. In the first part of the review, by disentangling the interpretations of the concept, we show that dominant logic consists of four defining dimensions: (i) shared mental models; (ii) values and premises; (iii) organizational practices; and (iv) organizing structures. In the second part, we reassemble dominant logic into an integrative model and theorize about how these dimensions operate in concert to produce a firm's dominant logic. Thus, our main contribution is a clarification and synthesis of the literature, which comes with implications on how future research can conceptualize and operationalize dominant logic more consistently