Paving the Way for Temporal Grounding

In this paper we consider the problem of introducing variables in temporal logic programs under the formalism of Temporal Equilibrium Logic (TEL), an extension of Answer Set Programming (ASP) for dealing with linear-time modal operators. We provide several fundamental contributions that pave the way for the implementation of a grounding process, that is, a method that allows replacing variables by ground instances in all the possible (or better, relevant) ways

Introduction to the 28th International Conference on Logic Programming Special Issue

We are proud to introduce this special issue of the Journal of Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP), dedicated to the full papers accepted for the 28th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP). The ICLP meetings started in Marseille in 1982 and since then constitute the main venue for presenting and discussing work in the area of logic programming

Smoke Test Planning using Answer Set Programming

Smoke testing is an important method to increase stability and reliability of hardware- gramming, Testing depending systems. Due to concurrent access to the same physical resource and the impracticality of the use of virtualization, smoke testing requires some form of planning. In this paper, we propose to decompose test cases in terms of atomic actions consisting of preconditions and effects. We present a solution based on answer set programming with multi-shot solving that automatically generates short parallel test plans. Experiments suggest that the approach is feasible for non-inherently sequential test cases and scales up to thousands of test cases

Temporal Answer Set Programming

Answer Set Programming (ASP) has become a popular way for representing different kinds of scenarios from knowledge representation in Artificial Intelligence. Frequently, these scenarios involve a temporal component which must be considered. In ASP, time is usually represented as a variable whose values are defined by an extensional predicate with a finite domain. Dealing with a finite temporal interval has some disadvantages. First, checking the existence of a plan is not possible and second, it also makes difficult to decide whether two programs are strongly equivalent. If we extend the syntax of Answer Set Programming by using temporal operators from temporal modal logics, then infinite time can be considered, so the aforementioned disadvantages can be overcome. This extension constitutes, in fact, a formalism called Temporal Equilibrium Logic, which is based on Equilibrium Logic (a logical characterisation of ASP). Although recent contributions have shown promising results, Temporal Equilibrium Logic is still a novel paradigm and there are many gaps to fill. Our goal is to keep developing this paradigm, filling those gaps and turning it into a suitable framework for temporal reasoning

Poetic Witness in a Networked Age

When online videos mobilize protestors to occupy public spaces, and those protestors incorporate hashtags in their chants and markered placards, deliberative democratic theory must no longer dismiss technology and peoples historically excluded from the arena of politics. Specifically, political models must account for the role of repetition in paving the way for unheard and unseen messages and people to appear in the political arena. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of the Performative and Hannah Arendt’s Space of Appearance, this paper assesses that critical and generative role of iteration. Repeating unheeded acts performs the capacity for those acts to be entered into discourse. The World Wide Web evidently augments such performativity with features such as accessibility, potential for ‘viral’ proliferation, and an endurance unlike non-networked acts. This paper eventually grapples with the hazards and risks of networked repetition (e.g. desensitization, trivialization, etc.) in order to propose a poetics of repetition to mitigate those dangers. Such poetics ultimately distinguishes the witness from the spectator

A Review of Verbal and Non-Verbal Human-Robot Interactive Communication

In this paper, an overview of human-robot interactive communication is presented, covering verbal as well as non-verbal aspects of human-robot interaction. Following a historical introduction, and motivation towards fluid human-robot communication, ten desiderata are proposed, which provide an organizational axis both of recent as well as of future research on human-robot communication. Then, the ten desiderata are examined in detail, culminating to a unifying discussion, and a forward-looking conclusion

Integration of Action and Language Knowledge: A Roadmap for Developmental Robotics

“This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder." “Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.”This position paper proposes that the study of embodied cognitive agents, such as humanoid robots, can advance our understanding of the cognitive development of complex sensorimotor, linguistic, and social learning skills. This in turn will benefit the design of cognitive robots capable of learning to handle and manipulate objects and tools autonomously, to cooperate and communicate with other robots and humans, and to adapt their abilities to changing internal, environmental, and social conditions. Four key areas of research challenges are discussed, specifically for the issues related to the understanding of: 1) how agents learn and represent compositional actions; 2) how agents learn and represent compositional lexica; 3) the dynamics of social interaction and learning; and 4) how compositional action and language representations are integrated to bootstrap the cognitive system. The review of specific issues and progress in these areas is then translated into a practical roadmap based on a series of milestones. These milestones provide a possible set of cognitive robotics goals and test scenarios, thus acting as a research roadmap for future work on cognitive developmental robotics.Peer reviewe

Temporal Sentence Grounding in Streaming Videos

This paper aims to tackle a novel task - Temporal Sentence Grounding in Streaming Videos (TSGSV). The goal of TSGSV is to evaluate the relevance between a video stream and a given sentence query. Unlike regular videos, streaming videos are acquired continuously from a particular source, and are always desired to be processed on-the-fly in many applications such as surveillance and live-stream analysis. Thus, TSGSV is challenging since it requires the model to infer without future frames and process long historical frames effectively, which is untouched in the early methods. To specifically address the above challenges, we propose two novel methods: (1) a TwinNet structure that enables the model to learn about upcoming events; and (2) a language-guided feature compressor that eliminates redundant visual frames and reinforces the frames that are relevant to the query. We conduct extensive experiments using ActivityNet Captions, TACoS, and MAD datasets. The results demonstrate the superiority of our proposed methods. A systematic ablation study also confirms their effectiveness.Comment: Accepted by ACM MM 202