164 research outputs found
Integrating conversational case retrieval with generative planning
Advances in Case-Based Reasoning Research and Development: Proceedings of the 5th European Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning, EWCBR 2000, pp. 210-221.Some problem-solving tasks are amenable to integrated case
retrieval and generative planning techniques. This is certainly true for
some decision support tasks, in which a user controls the problem-solving
process but cannot provide a complete domain theory. Unfortunately,
existing integrations are either non-interactive or require a complete domain
theory and/or complete world state to produce acceptable plans
preventing them from being easily used in these situations. We describe
a novel integrated algorithm, named SiN, that is interactive and does
not require a complete domain theory or complete world state. SiN users
leverage a conversational case retriever to focus both partial world state
acquisition and plan generation. We highlight the benefits of SiN (e.g.
quadratically fewer cases needed) in an experimental study using a new
travel planning domain
An intelligent lessons learned process
Paper presented at The 12th International Symposium, ISMIS 2000: pp. 358-367.A learned lesson, in the context of a pre-defined organizational
process, summarizes an experience that should be used to modify that process,
under the conditions for which that lesson applies. To promote lesson reuse,
many organizations employ lessons learned processes, which define how to
collect, validate, store, and disseminate lessons among their personnel, typically
by using a standalone retrieval tool. However, these processes are problematic:
they do not address lesson reuse effectively. We demonstrate how reuse can be
facilitated through a representation that highlights reuse conditions (and other
features) in the context of lessons learned systems embedded in targeted
decision-making processes. We describe a case-based reasoning implementation
of this concept for a decision support tool and detail an example
CCBR-Driven Business Process Evolution
Process-aware information systems (PAIS) allow coordinating
the execution of business processes by providing the right tasks to the right people at the right time. In order to support a broad spectrum of business processes, PAIS must be flexible at run-time. Ad-hoc deviations from the predefined process schema as well as the quick adaptation of the process schema itself due to changes of the underlying business processes must be supported. This paper presents an integrated approach combining the concepts and methods provided by the process management systems ADEPT and CBRFlow. Integrating these two systems enables ad-hoc modifications of single process instances, the memorization of these modifications using conversational case-based reasoning, and their reuse in similar future situations. In addition, potential process type changes can be derived from cases when similar ad-hoc modifications at the process instance level occur frequently
Active case-based reasoning for lessons delivery systems
Paper presented at The 13th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference, FLAIRS 1999, Menlo Park, FL: pp. 170-174.Exploiting lessons learned is a key knowledge management
(KM) task. Currently, most lessons learned systems are
passive, stand-alone systems. In contrast, practical KM
solutions should be active, interjecting relevant information
during decision-making. We introduce an architecture for
active lessons delivery systems, an instantiation of it that
serves as a monitor, and illustrate it in the context of the
conversational case-based plan authoring system HICAP
(Muñoz-Avila et al., 1999). When users interact with
HICAP, updating its domain objects, this monitor accesses a
repository of lessons learned and alerts the user to the
ramifications of the most relevant past experiences. We
demonstrate this in the context of planning noncombatant
evacuation operations
Active delivery for lessons learned systems
Paper presented at The 5th European Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning, EWCBR 2000: pp.322-334.Lessons learned processes, and software systems that support them,
have been developed by many organizations (e.g., all USA military branches,
NASA, several Department of Energy organizations, the Construction Industry
Institute). Their purpose is to promote the dissemination of knowledge gained
from the experiences of an organization’s employees. Unfortunately, lessons
learned systems are usually ineffective because they invariably introduce new
processes when, instead, they should be embedded into the processes that they
are meant to improve. We developed an embedded case-based approach for
lesson dissemination and reuse that brings lessons to the attention of users rather
than requiring them to fetch lessons from a standalone software tool. We
demonstrate this active lessons delivery architecture in the context of HICAP, a
decision support tool for plan authoring. We also show the potential of active
lessons delivery to increase plan quality for a new travel domain
Architecture for planning and execution of missions with fleets of unmanned vehicles
Esta tesis presenta contribuciones en el campo de la planificación automática y la
programación de tareas, la rama de la inteligencia artificial que se ocupa de la
realización de estrategias o secuencias de acciones típicamente para su ejecución por
parte de vehículos no tripulados, robots autónomos y/o agentes inteligentes. Cuando se
intenta alcanzar un objetivo determinado, la cooperación puede ser un aspecto clave. La
complejidad de algunas tareas requiere la cooperación entre varios agentes. Mas aún,
incluso si una tarea es lo suficientemente simple para ser llevada a cabo por un único
agente, puede usarse la cooperación para reducir el coste total de la misma. Para realizar
tareas complejas que requieren interacción física con el mundo real, los vehículos no
tripulados pueden ser usados como agentes. En los últimos años se han creado y utilizado
una gran diversidad de plataformas no tripuladas, principalmente vehículos que pueden
ser dirigidos sin un humano a bordo, tanto en misiones civiles como militares.
En esta tesis se aborda la aplicación de planificación simbólica de redes jerárquicas
de tareas (HTN planning, por sus siglas en inglés) en la resolución de problemas de
enrutamiento de vehículos (VRP, por sus siglas en inglés) [18], en dominios que implican
múltiples vehículos no tripulados de capacidades heterogéneas que deben cooperar para
alcanzar una serie de objetivos específicos.
La planificación con redes jerárquicas de tareas describe dominios utilizando una
descripción que descompone conjuntos de tareas en subconjuntos más pequeños de
subtareas gradualmente, hasta obtener tareas del más bajo nivel que no pueden ser
descompuestas y se consideran directamente ejecutables. Esta jerarquía es similar al modo
en que los humanos razonan sobre los problemas, descomponiéndolos en subproblemas
según el contexto, y por lo tanto suelen ser fáciles de comprender y diseñar.
Los problemas de enrutamiento de vehículos son una generalización del problema del
viajante (TSP, por sus siglas en inglés). La resolución del problema del viajante consiste
en encontrar la ruta más corta posible que permite visitar una lista de ciudades, partiendo
y acabando en la misma ciudad. Su generalización, el problema de enrutamiento de
vehículos, consiste en encontrar el conjunto de rutas de longitud mínima que permite
cubrir todas las ciudades con un determinado número de vehículos. Ambos problemas
cuentan con una fuerte componente combinatoria para su resolución, especialmente en el caso del VRP, por lo que su presencia en dominios que van a ser tratados con un planificador
HTN clásico supone un gran reto.
Para la aplicación de un planificador HTN en la resolución de problemas de enrutamiento
de vehículos desarrollamos dos métodos. En el primero de ellos presentamos un sistema
de optimización de soluciones basado en puntuaciones, que nos permite una nueva forma
de conexión entre un software especializado en la resolución del VRP con el planificador
HTN. Llamamos a este modo de conexión el método desacoplado, puesto que resolvemos
la componente combinatoria del problema de enrutamiento de vehículos mediante un
solucionador específico que se comunica con el planificador HTN y le suministra la
información necesaria para continuar con la descomposición de tareas. El segundo método
consiste en mejorar el planificador HTN utilizado para que sea capaz de resolver el
problema de enrutamiento de vehículos de la mejor forma posible sin tener que depender
de módulos de software externos. Llamamos a este modo el método acoplado. Con
este motivo hemos desarrollado un nuevo planificador HTN que utiliza un algoritmo de
búsqueda distinto del que se utiliza normalmente en planificadores de este tipo.
Esta tesis presenta nuevas contribuciones en el campo de la planificación con redes
jerárquicas de tareas para la resolución de problemas de enrutamiento de vehículos. Se
aplica una nueva forma de conexión entre dos planificadores independientes basada en
un sistema de cálculo de puntuaciones que les permite colaborar en la optimización de
soluciones, y se presenta un nuevo planificador HTN con un algoritmo de búsqueda distinto
al comúnmente utilizado. Se muestra la aplicación de estos dos métodos en misiones
civiles dentro del entorno de los Proyectos ARCAS y AEROARMS financiados por la
Comisión Europea y se presentan extensos resultados de simulación para comprobar la
validez de los dos métodos propuestos.This thesis presents contributions in the field of automated planning and scheduling,
the branch of artificial intelligence that concerns the realization of strategies or
action sequences typically for execution by unmanned vehicles, autonomous robots and/or
intelligent agents. When trying to achieve certain goal, cooperation may be a key aspect.
The complexity of some tasks requires the cooperation among several agents. Moreover,
even if the task is simple enough to be carried out by a single agent, cooperation can be
used to decrease the overall cost of the operation. To perform complex tasks that require
physical interaction with the real world, unmanned vehicles can be used as agents. In the
last years a great variety of unmanned platforms, mainly vehicles that can be driven without
a human on board, have been developed and used both in civil and military missions.
This thesis deals with the application of Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planning
in the resolution of vehicle routing problems (VRP) [18] in domains involving multiple
heterogeneous unmanned vehicles that must cooperate to achieve specific goals.
HTN planning describes problem domains using a description that decomposes set of
tasks into subsets of smaller tasks and so on, obtaining low-level tasks that cannot be
further decomposed and are supposed to be executable. The hierarchy resembles the way
the humans reason about problems by decomposing them into sub-problems depending
on the context and therefore tend to be easy to understand and design.
Vehicle routing problems are a generalization of the travelling salesman problem (TSP).
The TSP consists on finding the shortest path that connects all the cities from a list, starting
and ending on the same city. The VRP consists on finding the set of minimal routes that
cover all cities by using a specific number of vehicles. Both problems have a combinatorial
nature, specially the VRP, that makes it very difficult to use a HTN planner in domains
where these problems are present.
Two approaches to use a HTN planner in domains involving the VRP have been tested.
The first approach consists on a score-based optimization system that allows us to apply a
new way of connecting a software specialized in the resolution of the VRP with the HTN
planner. We call this the decoupled approach, as we tackle the combinatorial nature of the
VRP by using a specialized solver that communicates with the HTN planner and provides
all the required information to do the task decomposition. The second approach consists on improving and enhancing the HTN planner to be capable of solving the VRP without
needing the use of an external software. We call this the coupled approach. For this reason,
a new HTN planner that uses a different search algorithm from these commonly used in
that type of planners has been developed and is presented in this work.
This thesis presents new contributions in the field of hierarchical task network planning
for the resolution of vehicle routing problem domains. A new way of connecting two
independent planning systems based on a score calculation system that lets them cooperate
in the optimization of the solutions is applied, and a new HTN planner that uses a different
search algorithm from that usually used in other HTN planners is presented. These two
methods are applied in civil missions in the framework of the ARCAS and AEROARMS
Projects funded by the European Commission. Extensive simulation results are presented
to test the validity of the two approaches
Dynamic theme-based narrative systems
The advent of videogames, and the new forms of expressions they offered, sprouted the
possibility of presenting narratives in ways that could capitalize on unique qualities of the
media, most notably the agency found in their interactive nature.
In spite of many people in the game studies’ field interested in how far said novelty could bring
narrative experiences, most approached the creation of narrative systems from a structural
approach (especially the classical Aristotelian one), and concurrently, with a bottom-up
(characters defining a world) or top-down (world defining characters) perspective.
While those more mainstream takes have been greatly progressing what interactive digital
narrative can be, this research intended to take a bit of a detour, proposing a functionally similar
system that emphasized thematic coherence and responsiveness above all else. Once the
theoretical formulation was done, taking into consideration previously similar or tangential
systems, a prototype would be developed to make a first step towards validating the proposal,
and contribute to building a better understanding of the field’s possibilities
Integration of social values in a multi-agent platform running in a supercomputer
Agent-based modelling is one of the most suitable ways to simulate and analyse complex
problems and scenarios, especially those involving social interactions. Multi-agent systems, consisting
of multiple agents in a simulation environment, are widely used to understand emergent behaviour in
various fields such as sociology, economics and policy.
However, existing multi-agent platforms often face challenges in terms of scalability and
reasoning capacity. Some platforms can scale well in terms of computation, but lack sophisticated
reasoning mechanisms. On the other hand, some platforms employ complex reasoning systems, but
this can compromise their scalability.
In this work, we have extended an existing platform developed at UPC that enables scalable,
parallel HTN planning for complex agents. Our main goal has been to improve the analysis of social
relationships between agents by incorporating moral values.
Building on previous work done by David Marín on the implementation of the platform, we
have made extensions and modifications both formally and in the implementation. We have
formalised the additions to the system model and provided an updated implementation.
Finally, we have presented a complex example scenario that demonstrates all the additions we
have made. This scenario allows us to show how agents' preferences and moral values influence their
decisions and actions in a simulated environment. Through this work, we have sought to improve the
existing platform and fulfil the spirit and purpose of the platform
- …