Action, Abduction And Plan Recognition

none1In the forthcoming distributed autonomous robotic systems it will be useful for a robot to recognize other robots' goals and plans from visual information. Till now, much emphasis has been given to plan inference. This paper is about goal recognition: having recognised a plan (may be after the entire plan has been performed), try to recognise which can be the actor's reasons for the plan to be performed. If the actor's planner possesses sufficient inferential capabilities, then goal recognition is not a trivial question. This paper shows that, under simple hypotheses on the nature of the planner that guides an actor's behaviour, an observer can recognize the actor's goal by means of a simple clause-based abductive reasoning. Furthermore, the paper shows how goal recognition can be regarded as a useful step in plan inference. This results refer to the prototypical state-based STRIPS plannerAldo Franco DragoniDragoni, Aldo Franc

PHI : a logic-based tool for intelligent help systems

We introduce a system which improves the performance of intelligent help systems by supplying them with plan generation and plan recognition components. Both components work in close mutual cooperation. We demonstrate two modes of cross-talk between them, one where plan recognition is done on the basis of abstract plans provided by the planner and the other where optimal plans are generated based on recognition results. The examples which are presented are taken from an operating system domain, namely from the UNIX mail domain. Our system is completely logic-based. Relying on a common logical framework--the interval-based modal temporal logic LLP which we have developed--both components are implemented as special purpose inference procedures. Plan generation from first and second principles is provided and carried out deductively, whereas plan recognition follows a new abductive approach for modal logics. The plan recognizer is additionally supplied with a probabilistic reasoner as a means to adjust the help provided for user-specific characteristics

Approaches to abductive reasoning : an overview

Abduction is a form of non-monotonic reasoning that has gained increasing interest in the last few years. The key idea behind it can be represented by the following inference rule frac{varphirightarrowomega,}{varphi}omega, i.e., from an occurrence of omega and the rule "varphi implies omega';, infer an occurrence of varphi as a plausible hypothesis or explanation for omega. Thus, in contrast to deduction, abduction is as well as induction a form of "defeasible'; inference, i.e., the formulae sanctioned are plausible and submitted to verification. In this paper, a formal description of current approaches is given. The underlying reasoning process is treated independently and divided into two parts. This includes a description of methods for hypotheses generation and methods for finding the best explanations among a set of possible ones. Furthermore, the complexity of the abductive task is surveyed in connection with its relationship to default reasoning. We conclude with the presentation of applications of the discussed approaches focusing on plan recognition and plan generation

A Bayesian Abduction Model For Sensemaking

This research develops a Bayesian Abduction Model for Sensemaking Support (BAMSS) for information fusion in sensemaking tasks. Two methods are investigated. The first is the classical Bayesian information fusion with belief updating (using Bayesian clustering algorithm) and abductive inference. The second method uses a Genetic Algorithm (BAMSS-GA) to search for the k-best most probable explanation (MPE) in the network. Using various data from recent Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, experimental simulations were conducted to compare the methods using posterior probability values which can be used to give insightful information for prospective sensemaking. The inference results demonstrate the utility of BAMSS as a computational model for sensemaking. The major results obtained are: (1) The inference results from BAMSS-GA gave average posterior probabilities that were 103 better than those produced by BAMSS; (2) BAMSS-GA gave more consistent posterior probabilities as measured by variances; and (3) BAMSS was able to give an MPE while BAMSS-GA was able to identify the optimal values for kMPEs. In the experiments, out of 20 MPEs generated by BAMSS, BAMSS-GA was able to identify 7 plausible network solutions resulting in less amount of information needed for sensemaking and reducing the inference search space by 7/20 (35%). The results reveal that GA can be used successfully in Bayesian information fusion as a search technique to identify those significant posterior probabilities useful for sensemaking. BAMSS-GA was also more robust in overcoming the problem of bounded search that is a constraint to Bayesian clustering and inference state space in BAMSS

The Perfect Wife and the Evil Temptress: The Dichotomy of Penelope and Helen of Troy

Stories about Helen of Troy and Odysseus’ wife Penelope have existed alongside each other over the centuries since Athens dominated Greek art and culture. By considering depictions of these two women in three time periods, this study will trace the way their stories have changed, and what these changes may tell us about each period’s attitude towards women. This analysis also problematizes the tropes of “the virgin” and “the whore” ro demonstrate the adverse impact of such recurring images on women today. Starting in the fifth century, Athens, I will consider Helen through three plays by Euripides, asking why Penelope is a major character in Homer’s Odyssey, but does not appear in any extant Greek tragedy. Moving to the Middle Ages in Britain, I will look at how Helen is constructed in three adaptations of Guido de Colonna's Hystoria Troiana, as well as Penelope’s letter to her husband in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis. I will also consider Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, which places these women onstage and subjects them to the male gaze. My study of these sources will attempt to discern the reasons that the character of Penelope became a well-known ideal of femininity by the late fourteenth century, while Helen was to some extent pardoned for inciting the Trojan War. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, US productions of theatrical adaptations of both of these characters have received widespread attention; but what does this mean for a feminist analysis of Helen and Persephone? To answer this question, I will use three plays that adapt the myths of Helen and Penelope; Jean Giraudoux’s Tiger at the Gates, Mark Schultz’s A Brief History of Helen of Troy, and Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad. After investigating my chosen time periods, I conclude that stories and dramas about the stereotypical whore and the idealized wife have allowed two characters constructed by men in a patriarchal culture to be re-adapted in the twenty-first century and given their own voices. These adaptations, however, continue to uphold Helen and Penelope as dichotomous figures, something that hinders their ability to function as theatrical advocates for third wave feminism

Exploration of antecedents of environmentally responsible behavior by stakeholders in Grand Lake watershed

Grand Lake O' the Cherokees in Oklahoma is one of two lakes in the State of Oklahoma that allows private ownership and development of the shoreline. This has created water quality issues attributed to phosphorus levels in effluent waste water from septic systems and municipal water treatment facilities, as well as nutrient and sediment contamination from nonpoint source runoff. In the Grand Lake Watershed Basin, there are currently twenty segments listed on the Missouri 303(d) Clean Water Act (CWA) list as impaired for nutrients and eighty segments listed on the Kansas 303(d) Clean Water Act (CWA) list as impaired by organic enrichment and eutrophication The purpose of this study was to evaluate Grand Lake Watershed Basin stakeholder perceptions of the Grand Lake water quality issues to gain an understanding of the phenomenon and facilitate more effective education outreach programs and policy development.Utilizing Q-Method, 19 participants provided ranked order sorting arrays for 36 statements encompassing six behavioral antecedents for environmentally responsible behavior. The six behavioral antecedents, based on previous research on environmentally responsible behavior, included ascription of responsibility, knowledge and awareness, locus of control, sense of place, place protection, and motivation. Four perspectives emerged from the study data demonstrating that different levels and combinations of behavioral antecedents affect how people construct their understanding of an environmental problem creating perspectives that function to define both the individual's idea of the problem and their role in the problem resolution.Factor 1 provided insight into previous models on environmentally responsible behavior linking high levels of ascription of responsibility, locus of control and knowledge to intention to act on an environmentally responsible behavior while Factor 2 contributed to the understanding of strong sense of place and place protection elements in environmentally responsible behavior. Factor 3 and factor 4 were limited by the small sample size, but each provided enlightenment on perspectives derived from low levels of knowledge or internal locus of control for the issue, in combination with the other antecedents. These findings support the need for greater discernment of human perspectives associated with environmental issues in order to affect improvement through behavior change

The Influence of Innate Behavioral Predispositions on Conflict Stakeholder Interactions in Mediation: The Camp David Accords of 1978

This constructivist grounded theory study will explore the possibility that early socio-cultural experience in concert with innate cognitive mechanisms are essential components of a dual process of decision-making. Each element may influence conflict actors toward predictable predispositional behaviors manifest as bias. Specifically, we are concerned that these biases will influence the perceived and actual neutrality of the principle mediator thus compromising a mediation success. The presence of these predispositions in both mediators and conflict stakeholder challenges the validity of the conclusions in other research that does not consider the true impact of cultural dissonance on more than a superficial insinuation of social facts. This will be accomplished through interrogating data yielded through content analysis of the actors’ use of language both spoken and written utilizing the techniques used in grounded theory studies

Diagnosing runtime violations of security and dependability properties

Monitoring the preservation of security and dependability (S&D) properties of complex software systems is widely accepted as a necessity. Basic monitoring can detect violations but does not always provide sufficient information for deciding what the appropriate response to a violation is. Such decisions often require additional diagnostic information that explains why a violation has occurred and can, therefore, indicate what would be an appropriate response action to it. In this thesis, we describe a diagnostic procedure for generating explanations of violations of S&D properties developed as extension of a runtime monitoring framewoek, called EVEREST. The procedure is based on a combination of abductive and evidential reasoning about violations of S&D properties which are expressed in Event Calculus