36,764 research outputs found
COORDINATION OF LEADER-FOLLOWER MULTI-AGENT SYSTEM WITH TIME-VARYING OBJECTIVE FUNCTION
This thesis aims to introduce a new framework for the distributed control of multi-agent systems with adjustable swarm control objectives. Our goal is twofold: 1) to provide an overview to how time-varying objectives in the control of autonomous systems may be applied to the distributed control of multi-agent systems with variable autonomy level, and 2) to introduce a framework to incorporate the proposed concept to fundamental swarm behaviors such as aggregation and leader tracking. Leader-follower multi-agent systems are considered in this study, and a general form of time-dependent artificial potential function is proposed to describe the varying objectives of the system in the case of complete information exchange. Using Lyapunov methods, the stability and boundedness of the agents\u27 trajectories under single order and higher order dynamics are analyzed. Illustrative numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the validity of our results. Then, we extend these results for multi-agent systems with limited information exchange and switching communication topology. The first steps of the realization of an experimental framework have been made with the ultimate goal of verifying the simulation results in practice
PRIMA — Privacy research through the perspective of a multidisciplinary mash up
Based on a summary description of privacy protection research within three fields of inquiry, viz. social sciences, legal science, and computer and systems sciences, we discuss multidisciplinary approaches with regard to the difficulties and the risks that they entail as well as their possible advantages. The latter include the identification of relevant perspectives of privacy, increased expressiveness in the formulation of research goals, opportunities for improved research methods, and a boost in the utility of invested research efforts
Who is the director of this movie? Automatic style recognition based on shot features
We show how low-level formal features, such as shot duration, meant as length
of camera takes, and shot scale, i.e. the distance between the camera and the
subject, are distinctive of a director's style in art movies. So far such
features were thought of not having enough varieties to become distinctive of
an author. However our investigation on the full filmographies of six different
authors (Scorsese, Godard, Tarr, Fellini, Antonioni, and Bergman) for a total
number of 120 movies analysed second by second, confirms that these
shot-related features do not appear as random patterns in movies from the same
director. For feature extraction we adopt methods based on both conventional
and deep learning techniques. Our findings suggest that feature sequential
patterns, i.e. how features evolve in time, are at least as important as the
related feature distributions. To the best of our knowledge this is the first
study dealing with automatic attribution of movie authorship, which opens up
interesting lines of cross-disciplinary research on the impact of style on the
aesthetic and emotional effects on the viewers
Heritage-led ontologies: Digital platform for supporting the regeneration of cultural and historical sites
The increasing application of digital technologies to cultural heritage (CH) is wide and well
documented, including a variety of tools such as digital archives, online guides and HBIM repositories.
Several vocabularies and ontologies were designed to order heritage data and make CH more accessible
and exploitable. However, these tools have often focused on a particular dimension of CH producing
high value in separate sectors (e.g. access to conservation of historic buildings and data valorisation for
restoration of heritage assets) but lacking ways for adapting or replicating the model to urban complex
systems. Moreover, many studies and tools show large effort in cataloguing and archiving, but less in
providing tools for designing and managing. The ROCK platform, developed within the Horizon 2020
(H2020) funded project ROCK (GA 730280), addresses the need for a management and interventionoriented interoperable tool, aimed at storing, visualizing, elaborating and linking data on cultural
heritage. The use of already existing ontologies was not sufficient for developing a tool to deal with the
complexity of urban systems and heterogeneous data sources. Instead, a participative methodology was
set in place for the development of a context-based semantic framework to define the needs and
requirements of heritage-led regeneration actions
Structuring information work: Ferranti and Martins Bank, 1952-1968
The adoption of large-scale computers by the British retail banks in the 1960s required a first-time dislocation of customer accounting from its confines in the branches, where it had been dealt with by paper-based and mechanized information systems, to a new collective space: the bank computer center. While historians have rightly stressed the continuities between centralized office work, punched-card tabulation and computerization, the shift from decentralized to centralized information work by means of a computer has received little attention. In this article, I examine the case of Ferranti and Martins Bank and employ elements of Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory to highlight the difficulties of transposing old information practices directly onto new computerized information work
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