Resilience, reliability, and coordination in autonomous multi-agent systems

Acknowledgements The research reported in this paper was funded and supported by various grants over the years: Robotics and AI in Nuclear (RAIN) Hub (EP/R026084/1); Future AI and Robotics for Space (FAIR-SPACE) Hub (EP/R026092/1); Offshore Robotics for Certification of Assets (ORCA) Hub (EP/R026173/1); the Royal Academy of Engineering under the Chair in Emerging Technologies scheme; Trustworthy Autonomous Systems “Verifiability Node” (EP/V026801); Scrutable Autonomous Systems (EP/J012084/1); Supporting Security Policy with Effective Digital Intervention (EP/P011829/1); The International Technology Alliance in Network and Information Sciences.Peer reviewedPostprin

Synthesis of Scientific Workflows: Theory and Practice of an Instance-Aware Approach

The last two decades brought an explosion of computational tools and processes in many scientific domains (e.g., life-, social- and geo-science). Scientific workflows, i.e., computational pipelines, accompanied by workflow management systems, were soon adopted as a de-facto standard among non-computer scientists for orchestrating such computational processes. The goal of this dissertation is to provide a framework that would automate the orchestration of such computational pipelines in practice. We refer to such problems as scientific workflow synthesis problems. This dissertation introduces the temporal logic SLTLx, and presents a novel SLTLx-based synthesis approach that overcomes limitations in handling data object dependencies present in existing synthesis approaches. The new approach uses transducers and temporal goals, which keep track of the data objects in the synthesised workflow. The proposed SLTLx-based synthesis includes a bounded and a dynamic variant, which are shown in Chapter 3 to be NP-complete and PSPACE-complete, respectively. Chapter 4 introduces a transformation algorithm that translates the bounded SLTLx-based synthesis problem into propositional logic. The transformation is implemented as part of the APE (Automated Pipeline Explorer) framework, presented in Chapter 5. It relies on highly efficient SAT solving techniques, using an off-the-shelf SAT solver to synthesise a solution for the given propositional encoding. The framework provides an API (application programming interface), a CLI (command line interface), and a web-based GUI (graphical user interface). The development of APE was accompanied by four concrete application scenarios as case studies for automated workflow composition. The studies were conducted in collaboration with domain experts and presented in Chapter 6. Each of the case studies is used to assess and illustrate specific features of the SLTLx-based synthesis approach. (1) A case study on cartographic map generation demonstrates the ability to distinguish data objects as a key feature of the framework. It illustrates the process of annotating a new domain, and presents the iterative workflow synthesis approach, where the user tries to narrow down the desired specification of the problem in a few intuitive steps. (2) A case study on geo-analytical question answering as part of the QuAnGIS project shows the benefits of using data flow dependencies to describe a synthesis problem. (3) A proteomics case study demonstrates the usability of APE as an “off-the-shelf” synthesiser, providing direct integration with existing semantic domain annotations. In addition, a manual evaluation of the synthesised results shows promising results even on large real-life domains, such as the EDAM ontology and the complete bio.tools registry. (4) A geo-event question-answering study demonstrates the usability of APE within a larger question-answering system. This dissertation answers the goals it sets to solve. It provides a formal framework, accompanied by a lightweight library, which can solve real-life scientific workflow synthesis problems. Finally, the development of the library motivated an upcoming collaborative project in the life sciences domain. The aim of the project is to develop a platform which would automatically compose (using APE) and benchmark workflows in computational proteomics

1982-1983 Bulletin

Volume LXXXXIII, Number 6. Scanned from the copy held in the Registrar\u27s Office.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/bulletin/1027/thumbnail.jp

1981-1982 Bulletin

Volume LXXXXII, Number 5. Scanned from the copy held in the Registrar\u27s Office.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/bulletin/1026/thumbnail.jp

A predictive fault-tolerance framework for IoT systems

As Internet of Things (IoT) systems scale, attributes such as availability, reliability, safety, maintainability, security, and performance become increasingly more important. A key challenge to realise IoT is how to provide a dependable infrastructure for the billions of expected IoT devices. A dependable IoT system is one that can defensibly be trusted to deliver its intended service within a given time period. To define a FT-support solution that is applicable to all IoT systems, it is important that error definition is a generic, language-agnostic process, so that FT can be applied as a software pattern. It must also be interoperable, so that FT support can be easily 'plugged into' any existing IoT system, which is facilitated by an adherence to standards and protocols. Lastly, it is important that FT support is, itself, fault tolerant, so that it can be depended on to provide correct support for IoT systems. The work in this thesis considers how real-time and historical data analysis techniques can be combined to monitor an IoT environment and analyse its short- and long-term data to make the system as resilient to failure as possible. Specifically, complex event processing (CEP) is proposed for real-time error detection based on the analysis of stream data in an IoT system, where errors are defined as nondeterministic finite automata (NFA). For long-term error analysis, machine learning (ML) is proposed to predict when an error is likely to occur and mitigate imminent system faults based on previous experience of erroneous system behaviour in the IoT system. The contribution is threefold: (1) a language-agnostic approach to error definition using NFAs, designed to provide 'FT as a service' for easy deployment and integration into existing IoT systems; (2) an implementation of NFAs on a bespoke CEP system, BoboCEP, that provides distributed, resilient event processing at the network edge via active replication; and (3) a ML approach to intelligent FT that can learn from system errors over time to ensure correct long-term FT support. The proposed solution was evaluated using two vertical-farming testbeds and a dataset from a real-world vertical farm. Results showed that the proposed solution could detect and predict the successful detection and recovery of erroneous system behaviours. A performance analysis of BoboCEP was conducted with favourable results

Sonic, infrasonic, and ultrasonic frequencies : the utilisation of waveforms as weapons, apparatus for psychological manipulation, and as instruments of physiological influence by industrial, entertainment, and military organisations

This study is a trans-disciplinary and trans-historical investigation into civilian and battlefield contexts in which speaker systems have been utilised by the military-industrial and military-entertainment complexes to apply pressure to mass social groupings and the individuated body. Drawing on authors such as historian/sociologist Michel Foucault, economist Jacques Attali, philosopher Michel Serres, political geographer/urban planner Edward Soja, musician/sonic theorist Steve Goodman, and cultural theorist/urbanist Paul Virilio, this study engages a wide range of texts to orchestrate its arguments. Conducting new strains of viral theory that resonate with architectural, neurological, and political significance, this research provides new and original analysis about the composition of waveformed geography. Ultimately, this study listens to the ways in which the past and current utilisation of sonic, infrasonic, and ultrasonic frequencies as weapons, apparatus for psychological manipulation, and instruments of physiological influence, by industrial, civilian, entertainment, and military organisations, predict future techniques of sociospatialised organisation. In chapter one it is argued that since the inception of wired radio speaker systems into U.S. industrial factories in 1922, the development of sonic strategies based primarily on the scoring of architectonic spatiality, cycles of repetition, and the enveloping dynamics of surround sound can be traced to the sonic torture occurring in Guantanamo Bay during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Exploring the use of surround sound speaker techniques by the FBI during the Waco Siege in Texas, this argument is developed in chapter two. In chapter three it is further contended that the acoustic techniques utilised in the Guantanamo torture cells represent the final modality and the logical conclusion of these strategies that have evolved between civilian and military contexts over the past 80 years. In chapter four, the speaker system instrumentality of the HSS ultrasonic beam - occurring post Guantanamo - comes to symbolise an epistemic shift in the application of waveformed pressure; the dynamics of directional ultrasound technology signalling the orchestration of a new set of frequency-based relations between the transmitter and the receiver, the speaker system and architectural context, and the civilian and war torn environment. The concluding proposition of the study submits that a waveformed cartography - mapping the soundscape's territorialisation by the military-entertainment complex - needs to be composed and arranged so that forms of recording, amplification, and resistance can be made coherent. Given the new set of non-sound politics announced by the HSS, this philosophy of frequency-based mapping will have to re-evaluate the taxonomy and indexical nature of spatial relations. This discipline will be a waveformed psychogeography; a frequency-based modality that heuristically charts the spatial concerns of the neural environment as well as the environs of the material and the built. As a field of research it will have a wide-ranging remit to explore the spatial, psychological, physiological, social, economic, and sexual effects that waveforms have upon our subjectivity. Its methodology - as suggested through the structuring of this study - will be multi-disciplined and multi-channelled. It will create new forms of knowledge about LRADs, iPods, Mosquitos, I ntonarumori , loudhailers, and Sequential Arc Discharge Acoustic Generators - the meta-network of speaker systems through which rhythms and cadences of power are transmitted, connected, and modulated

The Music Sound

A guide for music: compositions, events, forms, genres, groups, history, industry, instruments, language, live music, musicians, songs, musicology, techniques, terminology , theory, music video. Music is a human activity which involves structured and audible sounds, which is used for artistic or aesthetic, entertainment, or ceremonial purposes. The traditional or classical European aspects of music often listed are those elements given primacy in European-influenced classical music: melody, harmony, rhythm, tone color/timbre, and form. A more comprehensive list is given by stating the aspects of sound: pitch, timbre, loudness, and duration. Common terms used to discuss particular pieces include melody, which is a succession of notes heard as some sort of unit; chord, which is a simultaneity of notes heard as some sort of unit; chord progression, which is a succession of chords (simultaneity succession); harmony, which is the relationship between two or more pitches; counterpoint, which is the simultaneity and organization of different melodies; and rhythm, which is the organization of the durational aspects of music

Unbounded Orchestrations of Transducers for Manufacturing

There has recently been increasing interest in using reactive synthesis techniques to automate the production of manufacturing process plans. Previous work has assumed that the set of manufacturing resources is known and fixed in advance. In this paper, we consider the more general problem of whether a controller can be synthesized given sufficient resources. In the unbounded setting, only the types of available manufacturing resources are given, and we want to know whether it is possible to manufacture a product using only resources of those type(s), and, if so, how many resources of each type are needed. We model manufacturing processes and facilities as transducers (automata with output), and show that the unbounded orchestration problem is decidable and the (Pareto) optimal set of resources necessary to manufacture a product is computable for uni-transducers. However, for multi-transducers, the problem is undecidable