Towards Social Autonomous Vehicles: Efficient Collision Avoidance Scheme Using Richardson's Arms Race Model

Background Road collisions and casualties pose a serious threat to commuters around the globe. Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) aim to make the use of technology to reduce the road accidents. However, the most of research work in the context of collision avoidance has been performed to address, separately, the rear end, front end and lateral collisions in less congested and with high inter-vehicular distances. Purpose The goal of this paper is to introduce the concept of a social agent, which interact with other AVs in social manners like humans are social having the capability of predicting intentions, i.e. mentalizing and copying the actions of each other, i.e. mirroring. The proposed social agent is based on a human-brain inspired mentalizing and mirroring capabilities and has been modelled for collision detection and avoidance under congested urban road traffic. Method We designed our social agent having the capabilities of mentalizing and mirroring and for this purpose we utilized Exploratory Agent Based Modeling (EABM) level of Cognitive Agent Based Computing (CABC) framework proposed by Niazi and Hussain. Results Our simulation and practical experiments reveal that by embedding Richardson's arms race model within AVs, collisions can be avoided while travelling on congested urban roads in a flock like topologies. The performance of the proposed social agent has been compared at two different levels.Comment: 48 pages, 21 figure

Multi objective optimization in charge management of micro grid based multistory carpark

Distributed power supply with the use of renewable energy sources and intelligent energy flow management has undoubtedly become one of the pressing trends in modern power engineering, which also inspired researchers from other fields to contribute to the topic. There are several kinds of micro grid platforms, each facing its own challenges and thus making the problem purely multi objective. In this paper, an evolutionary driven algorithm is applied and evaluated on a real platform represented by a private multistory carpark equipped with photovoltaic solar panels and several battery packs. The algorithm works as a core of an adaptive charge management system based on predicted conditions represented by estimated electric load and production in the future hours. The outcome of the paper is a comparison of the optimized and unoptimized charge management on three different battery setups proving that optimization may often outperform a battery setup with larger capacity in several criteria.Web of Science117art. no. 179

A review of key planning and scheduling in the rail industry in Europe and UK

Planning and scheduling activities within the rail industry have benefited from developments in computer-based simulation and modelling techniques over the last 25 years. Increasingly, the use of computational intelligence in such tasks is featuring more heavily in research publications. This paper examines a number of common rail-based planning and scheduling activities and how they benefit from five broad technology approaches. Summary tables of papers are provided relating to rail planning and scheduling activities and to the use of expert and decision systems in the rail industry.EPSR

Heterogeneous data source integration for smart grid ecosystems based on metadata mining

The arrival of new technologies related to smart grids and the resulting ecosystem of applications andmanagement systems pose many new problems. The databases of the traditional grid and the variousinitiatives related to new technologies have given rise to many different management systems with several formats and different architectures. A heterogeneous data source integration system is necessary toupdate these systems for the new smart grid reality. Additionally, it is necessary to take advantage of theinformation smart grids provide. In this paper, the authors propose a heterogeneous data source integration based on IEC standards and metadata mining. Additionally, an automatic data mining framework isapplied to model the integrated information.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2013-40767-

Early aspects: aspect-oriented requirements engineering and architecture design

This paper reports on the third Early Aspects: Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design Workshop, which has been held in Lancaster, UK, on March 21, 2004. The workshop included a presentation session and working sessions in which the particular topics on early aspects were discussed. The primary goal of the workshop was to focus on challenges to defining methodical software development processes for aspects from early on in the software life cycle and explore the potential of proposed methods and techniques to scale up to industrial applications

Multi-Agent Systems

A multi-agent system (MAS) is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems which are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or monolithic system to solve. Agent systems are open and extensible systems that allow for the deployment of autonomous and proactive software components. Multi-agent systems have been brought up and used in several application domains

Uncertainty in coupled models of cyber-physical systems

The development of cyber-physical systems typically involves the association between multiple coupled models that capture different aspects of the system and the environment where it operates. Due to the dynamic aspect of the environment, unexpected conditions and uncertainty may impact the system. In this work, we tackle this problem and propose a taxonomy for characterizing uncertainty in coupled models. Our taxonomy extends existing proposals to cope with the particularities of coupled models in cyber-physical systems. In addition, our taxonomy discusses the notion of uncertainty propagation to other parts of the system. This allows for studying and (in some cases) quantifying the effects of uncertainty on other models in a system even at design time. We show the applicability of our uncertainty taxonomy in real use cases motivated by our envisioned scenario of automotive development

A Formal Transformation Method for Automated Fault Tree Generation from a UML Activity Model

Fault analysis and resolution of faults should be part of any end-to-end system development process. This paper is concerned with developing a formal transformation method that maps control flows modeled in UML Activities to semantically equivalent Fault Trees. The transformation method developed features the use of propositional calculus and probability theory. Fault Propagation Chains are introduced to facilitate the transformation method. An overarching metamodel comprised of transformations between models is developed and is applied to an understood Traffic Management System of Systems problem to demonstrate the approach. In this way, the relational structure of the system behavior model is reflected in the structure of the Fault Tree. The paper concludes with a discussion of limitations of the transformation method and proposes approaches to extend it to object flows, State Machines and functional allocations.Comment: 1st submission made to IEEE Transactions on Reliability on 27-Nov-2017; 2nd submission (revision) made on 27-Apr-2018. This version is the 2nd submission. 20 pages, 11 figure

Formal transformation methods for automated fault tree generation from UML diagrams

With a growing complexity in safety critical systems, engaging Systems Engineering with System Safety Engineering as early as possible in the system life cycle becomes ever more important to ensure system safety during system development. Assessing the safety and reliability of system architectural design at the early stage of the system life cycle can bring value to system design by identifying safety issues earlier and maintaining safety traceability throughout the design phase. However, this is not a trivial task and can require upfront investment. Automated transformation from system architecture models to system safety and reliability models offers a potential solution. However, existing methods lack of formal basis. This can potentially lead to unreliable results. Without a formal basis, Fault Tree Analysis of a system, for example, even if performed concurrently with system design may not ensure all safety critical aspects of the design. [Continues.]</div