Consciosusness in Cognitive Architectures. A Principled Analysis of RCS, Soar and ACT-R

This report analyses the aplicability of the principles of consciousness developed in the ASys project to three of the most relevant cognitive architectures. This is done in relation to their aplicability to build integrated control systems and studying their support for general mechanisms of real-time consciousness.\ud To analyse these architectures the ASys Framework is employed. This is a conceptual framework based on an extension for cognitive autonomous systems of the General Systems Theory (GST).\ud A general qualitative evaluation criteria for cognitive architectures is established based upon: a) requirements for a cognitive architecture, b) the theoretical framework based on the GST and c) core design principles for integrated cognitive conscious control systems

An intelligent-agent approach for managing congestion in W-CDMA networks

PhDResource Management is a crucial aspect in the next generation cellular networks since the use of W-CDMA technology gives an inherent flexibility in managing the system capacity. The concept of a “Service Level Agreement” (SLA) also plays a very important role as it is the means to guarantee the quality of service provided to the customers in response to the level of service to which they have subscribed. Hence there is a need to introduce effective SLA-based policies as part of the radio resource management. This work proposes the application of intelligent agents in SLA-based control in resource management, especially when congestion occurs. The work demonstrates the ability of intelligent agents in improving and maintaining the quality of service to meet the required SLA as the congestion occurs. A particularly novel aspect of this work is the use of learning (here Case Based Reasoning) to predict the control strategies to be imposed. As the system environment changes, the most suitable policy will be implemented. When congestion occurs, the system either proposes the solution by recalling from experience (if the event is similar to what has been previously solved) or recalculates the solution from its knowledge (if the event is new). With this approach, the system performance will be monitored at all times and a suitable policy can be immediately applied as the system environment changes, resulting in maintaining the system quality of service

Cognitive modelling of complex problem solving behaviour

In the universe of problems humans face every day there is subset characterized by a salient dynamic component. The FireChief task (Omodei & Wearing 1995) is a fire-fighting computer simulation that can be characterized as the acquisition of interactive skills involving fast-paced actions cued by external information. This research describes the process followed to create a cognitive model of this complex dynamic task where full experimental control is not available. The cognitive model provides a detailed description of how cognition and perception interplay to produce the interactive skill of fighting the fire. Several artefacts were produced by this effort including a dynamic task fully compatible with ACT-R, a tool for analysing the data, and a cognitive model whose features enable the replication of several aspects of the empirical data. A key finding is that good performance is linked to an effective combination of strategic control with attention to changing task demands, reflecting time and care taken in informing and effecting action. The contributions of this work towards our understanding of complex problem solving are the methodological approach to the creation of the model, the design patterns embedded in the model (which are a reflection of the cognitive demands imposed by the nature of the task) and mainly an explanation of how skill, described in terms of strategy use, is acquired in complex scenarios. This study also provides a deeper understanding of the interactions observed in the Cañas et al. (2005) dataset, including a computational realisation of how cognitive inflexibility occurs