Knowledge, action, and the frame problem

AbstractThis paper proposes a method for handling the frame problem for knowledge-producing actions. An example of a knowledge-producing action is a sensing operation performed by a robot to determine whether or not there is an object of a particular shape within its grasp. The work is an extension of Reiter's approach to the frame problem for ordinary actions and Moore's work on knowledge and action. The properties of our specification are that knowledge-producing actions do not affect fluents other than the knowledge fluent, and actions that are not knowledge-producing only affect the knowledge fluent as appropriate. In addition, memory emerges as a side-effect: if something is known in a certain situation, it remains known at successor situations, unless something relevant has changed. Also, it will be shown that a form of regression examined by Reiter for reducing reasoning about future situations to reasoning about the initial situation now also applies to knowledge-producing actions

The Role of Ideas in the Emergence of Convergent Higher Education Policies in Europe: The Case of France. CES Working Paper, no. 73

How do ideas influence public policy ? French higher education is a good case in point. It seems reasonable to think that the recent evolution French universities underwent resulted from the diffusion of the convergent discourse held by most European countries on the need for increased university autonomy and more self regulation. But no empirical evidence proves that this diffusion process occured in the French case. Nevertheless, if the recent contractual policy in France can not be understood as the product of the emergence of new beliefs, of a new vision of the (European higher education) world, it certainly gave rise to the development of a new or paradigm. This leads us to revisit the relation of ideas and public policy in two ways. First in arguing that the causal link between them is not as unidirectional as generally stated. Second that change does not always happen through a paradigmatic revolution, but rather through an incremental process

Toward a computational theory for motion understanding: The expert animators model

Artificial intelligence researchers claim to understand some aspect of human intelligence when their model is able to emulate it. In the context of computer graphics, the ability to go from motion representation to convincing animation should accordingly be treated not simply as a trick for computer graphics programmers but as important epistemological and methodological goal. In this paper we investigate a unifying model for animating a group of articulated bodies such as humans and robots in a three-dimensional environment. The proposed model is considered in the framework of knowledge representation and processing, with special reference to motion knowledge. The model is meant to help setting the basis for a computational theory for motion understanding applied to articulated bodies

Engineering Agent Systems for Decision Support

This paper discusses how agent technology can be applied to the design of advanced Information Systems for Decision Support. In particular, it describes the different steps and models that are necessary to engineer Decision Support Systems based on a multiagent architecture. The approach is illustrated by a case study in the traffic management domain