Planning with Information-Processing Constraints and Model Uncertainty in Markov Decision Processes

Information-theoretic principles for learning and acting have been proposed to solve particular classes of Markov Decision Problems. Mathematically, such approaches are governed by a variational free energy principle and allow solving MDP planning problems with information-processing constraints expressed in terms of a Kullback-Leibler divergence with respect to a reference distribution. Here we consider a generalization of such MDP planners by taking model uncertainty into account. As model uncertainty can also be formalized as an information-processing constraint, we can derive a unified solution from a single generalized variational principle. We provide a generalized value iteration scheme together with a convergence proof. As limit cases, this generalized scheme includes standard value iteration with a known model, Bayesian MDP planning, and robust planning. We demonstrate the benefits of this approach in a grid world simulation.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure

Från koja till plan

This thesis concerns questions regarding how children’s perspectives on the outdoor environment can be approached in a planning context. Attention is drawn to the general understanding of childhood and the definition of outdoor environment as variables in different planning contexts. Together these variables define in which way children become visible in the planning context. Children’s participation is emphasized in contemporary planning. This thesis argues that understanding and insights concerning children’s experiences and understanding of their own places can create complementary lines of communication. The first article provides the empirical and methodological point of departure. Through walkabouts with children, questions are developed concerning children’s use and experiences of outdoor environments. These questions are compared and related to problems, insights and experiences that planners have concerning environments for children. Parts of two perspectives are described in order to elucidate some of the problems that can arise due to differences between a child’s perspective and a planner’s perspective. In the second article children’s own places is the pivot. Through in depth studies of children’s dens it is shown that finding a suitable place, collecting, sorting and manipulating with environment and accessible materials are crucial parts of starting a den making process and appropriating a place as one’s own. Specific examples are put forward which show the close relationship between children’s experience and understanding of the outdoor environment and their construction and design of dens. Children’s dens are used to exemplify and clarify the difference between children’s perspectives and planner’s perspectives. The last article is concerned with the theoretical and practical analysis of these questions. Through interviews, studies of planning documents and reflections on my own planning experience an analysis is made of the importance of maps and plans as tools in the planning process. It is argued that the bias of these tools emphasizes and reinforces the visual point of departure to the physical environment and outdoor places, while children’s multi-sensuous and acting oriented point of departure is difficult to handle and process in maps and plans. A practical contribution is suggested on how to improve insights and understanding of children’s perspectives in planning contexts

Visual scoping operations for physical assembly

Planning is hard. The use of subgoals can make planning more tractable, but selecting these subgoals is computationally costly. What algorithms might enable us to reap the benefits of planning using subgoals while minimizing the computational overhead of selecting them? We propose visual scoping, a strategy that interleaves planning and acting by alternately defining a spatial region as the next subgoal and selecting actions to achieve it. We evaluated our visual scoping algorithm on a variety of physical assembly problems against two baselines: planning all subgoals in advance and planning without subgoals. We found that visual scoping achieves comparable task performance to the subgoal planner while requiring only a fraction of the total computational cost. Together, these results contribute to our understanding of how humans might make efficient use of cognitive resources to solve complex planning problems

A gender synchronized family planning intervention for married couples in rural India: study protocol for the CHARM2 cluster randomized controlled trial evaluation.

BackgroundPrior research from India demonstrates a need for family planning counseling that engages both women and men, offers complete family planning method mix, and focuses on gender equity and reduces marital sexual violence (MSV) to promote modern contraceptive use. Effectiveness of the three-session (two male-only sessions and one couple session) Counseling Husbands to Achieve Reproductive Health and Marital Equity (CHARM) intervention, which used male health providers to engage and counsel husbands on gender equity and family planning (GE + FP), was demonstrated by increased pill and condom use and a reduction in MSV. However, the intervention had limited reach to women and was therefore unable to expand access to highly effective long acting reversible contraceptives such as the intrauterine device (IUD). We developed a second iteration of the intervention, CHARM2, which retains the three sessions from the original CHARM but adds female provider- delivered counseling to women and offers a broader array of contraceptives including IUDs. This protocol describes the evaluation of CHARM2 in rural Maharashtra.MethodsA two-arm cluster randomized controlled trial will evaluate CHARM2, a gender synchronized GE + FP intervention. Eligible married couples (n = 1200) will be enrolled across 20 clusters in rural Maharashtra, India. Health providers will be gender-matched to deliver two GE + FP sessions to the married couples in parallel, and then a final session will be delivered to the couple together. We will conduct surveys on demographics as well as GE and FP indicators at baseline, 9-month, and 18-month follow-ups with both men and women, and pregnancy tests at each time point from women. In-depth interviews will be conducted with a subsample of couples (n = 50) and providers (n = 20). We will conduct several implementation and monitoring activities for purposes of assuring fidelity to intervention design and quality of implementation, including recruitment and tracking logs, provider evaluation forms, session observation forms, and participant satisfaction surveys.DiscussionWe will complete the recruitment of participants and collection of baseline data by July 2019. Findings from this work will offer important insight for the expansion of the national family planning program and improving quality of care for India and family planning interventions globally.Trial registrationClinicalTrial.gov, NCT03514914

Comparing the effectiveness and costs of alternative strategies for improving access to information and services for the IUD in Ghana

The Ghana Health Service (GHS) was prompted to explore ways of increasing interest in the IUD through increasing awareness of this and other long-acting and permanent methods via interpersonal channels and by intensifying campaigns to dispel rumors about the method. The Health Research Unit of the GHS, EngenderHealth’s Quality Health Partners project, and the Population Council’s Frontiers in Reproductive Health (FRONTIERS) project collaborated with the GHS to test innovative approaches to increase awareness of the IUD and to improve access to the method. The study examined the general and method-specific knowledge of long-acting family planning methods among clients and providers, as well as the level of contraceptive use by method in the intervention and comparison communities. In general, community health officers (CHOs) exhibited adequate knowledge of and a positive attitude toward the IUD. The report concludes that increases in the numbers of new IUD and implant users recorded by CHOs who undertook insertions at the community level, together with the much lower cost for this model, suggest that training CHOs to educate communities about long-acting methods and enabling them to provide them at the community level should be considered

Make me a sandwich! Intrinsic human identification from their course of action

In order to allow humans and robots to work closely together and as a team, we need to equip robots not only with a general understanding of joint action, but also with an understanding of the idiosyncratic differences in the ways humans perform certain tasks. This will allow robots to be better colleagues, by anticipating an individual's actions, and acting accordingly. In this paper, we present a way of encoding a human's course of action as a probabilistic sequence of qualitative states, and show that such a model can be employed to identify individual humans from their respective course of action, even when accomplishing the very same goal state. We conclude from our findings that there are significant variations in the ways humans accomplish the very same task, and that our representation could in future work inform robot (task) planning in collaborative settings

Manajemen Pembelajaran Pendidikan Agama Islam dalam Membentuk Akhlakul Karimah Siswa

This study aims to describe how planning, organizing, implementing and evaluating the learning management of Islamic Religious Education (PAI) in shaping the morals of students at SMPIT Khoiru Ummah Rejang Lebong. This research is a qualitative research in the form of developmental research, using interviews and observations to obtain data. The results of this study indicate that; First, learning management includes planning (Planning), organizing (organizing), implementation (actuating), evaluation (Controlling) in the good category, carried out on the basis of religious thinking and then developed at SMPIT by practicing religious values ​​that are believed and carried out in daily life. -day, and is carried out by utilizing additional hours in extracurricular activities. Second, the implementation pattern of PAI learning management is very unique, such as the application of religious culture at SMPIT Khoiru Ummah Rejang Lebong through the culture of greetings, excuses, sorry and thank you, and complete reading and writing of the Koran, dhuha prayer, dhuhur prayer in congregation, istighosah and joint prayer, commemoration of Islamic holidays, imtaq and tadarrus al-Qur'an activities, prayer together at the beginning and end of lessons, handshakes between school members, and the use of Muslim and Muslim clothing. In conclusion, PAI learning management in shaping the morals of students at SMPIT Khoiru Ummah starts from planning (planning), organizing (organizing), implementing (acting), and evaluating (Controlling) all of which are in the good category to shape the morals of students through planting activities. -activities and application of religious culture.   Keywords: Student Morals, Learning Managemen

Shared Agency Without Shared Intention

The leading reductive approaches to shared agency model that phenomenon in terms of complexes of individual intentions, understood as plan-laden commitments. Yet not all agents have such intentions, and non-planning agents such as small children and some non-human animals are clearly capable of sophisticated social interactions. But just how robust are their social capacities? Are non-planning agents capable of shared agency? Existing theories of shared agency have little to say about these important questions. I address this lacuna by developing a reductive account of the social capacities of non-planning agents, which I argue supports the conclusion that they can enjoy shared agency. The resulting discussion offers a fine-grained account of the psychological capacities that can underlie shared agency, and produces a recipe for generating novel hypotheses concerning why some agents do not engage in shared agency

Community Catalyst: How Community Foundations Are Acting as Agents for Local Change

Presents the experiences, successes, failures, and lessons learned from the work of several community foundations. Uses case studies, interviews, and evaluation analysis to identify approaches for doing, as well as supporting, catalyst work

Płodność działalności planowanej

As normal adult human agents we have a remarkable trio of capacities. First, we are capable of acting over time in ways that involve important forms of intentional cross-temporal organization and coordination. Second, we are capable of acting together with others in ways that go significantly beyond standard forms of strategic interaction. Third, we are capable of self-governance. A theory of human agency should include an understanding of these capacities for temporally extended, for shared, and for self-governed intentional agency. In each case we have interrelated concerns that are conceptual, metaphysical, and normative. The response to these concerns is to seek to understand these three capacities as grounded in a common, core capacity for planning agency. This is the conjecture of the fecundity of planning agency