325 research outputs found
A Temporal Logic for Modelling Activities of Daily Living
Behaviour support technology is aimed at assisting people in organizing their Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). Numerous frameworks have been developed for activity recognition and for generating specific types of support actions, such as reminders. The main goal of our research is to develop a generic formal framework for representing and reasoning about ADLs and their temporal relations. This framework should facilitate modelling and reasoning about 1) durative activities, 2) relations between higher-level activities and subactivities, 3) activity instances, and 4) activity duration. In this paper we present a temporal logic as an extension of the logic TPTL for specification of real-time systems. Our logic TPTL_{bih} is defined over Behaviour Identification Hierarchies (BIHs) for representing ADL structure and typical activity duration. To model execution of ADLs, states of the temporal traces in TPTL_{bih} comprise information about the start, stop and current execution of activities. We provide a number of constraints on these traces that we stipulate are desired for the accurate representation of ADL execution, and investigate corresponding validities in the logic. To evaluate the expressivity of the logic, we give a formal definition for the notion of Coherence for (complex) activities, by which we mean that an activity is done without interruption and in a timely fashion. We show that the definition is satisfiable in our framework. In this way the logic forms the basis for a generic monitoring and reasoning framework for ADLs
Using Psychological Characteristics of Situations for Social Situation Comprehension in Support Agents
Support agents that help users in their daily lives need to take into account
not only the user's characteristics, but also the social situation of the user.
Existing work on including social context uses some type of situation cue as an
input to information processing techniques in order to assess the expected
behavior of the user. However, research shows that it is important to also
determine the meaning of a situation, a step which we refer to as social
situation comprehension. We propose using psychological characteristics of
situations, which have been proposed in social science for ascribing meaning to
situations, as the basis for social situation comprehension. Using data from
user studies, we evaluate this proposal from two perspectives. First, from a
technical perspective, we show that psychological characteristics of situations
can be used as input to predict the priority of social situations, and that
psychological characteristics of situations can be predicted from the features
of a social situation. Second, we investigate the role of the comprehension
step in human-machine meaning making. We show that psychological
characteristics can be successfully used as a basis for explanations given to
users about the decisions of an agenda management personal assistant agent.Comment: 21 page
From Sensing to Action: Quick and Reliable Access to Information in Cities Vulnerable to Heavy Rain
Cities need to constantly monitor weather to anticipate heavy storm events and reduce the impact of floods. Information describing precipitation and ground conditions at high spatio-temporal resolution is essential for taking timely action and preventing damages. Traditionally, rain gauges and weather radars are used to monitor rain events, but these sources provide low spatial resolutions and are subject to inaccuracy. Therefore, information needs to be complemented with data from other sources: from citizens' phone calls to the authorities, to relevant online media posts, which have the potential of providing timely and valuable information on weather conditions in the city. This information is often scattered through different, static, and not-publicly available databases. This makes it impossible to use it in an aggregate, standard way, and therefore hampers efficiency of emergency response. In this paper, we describe information sources relating to a heavy rain event in Rotterdam on October 12-14, 2013. Rotterdam weather monitoring infrastructure is composed of a number of rain gauges installed at different locations in the city, as well as a weather radar network. This sensing network is currently scarcely integrated and logged data are not easily accessible during an emergency. Therefore, we propose a reliable, efficient, and low-cost ICT infrastructure that takes information from all relevant sources, including sensors as well as social and user contributed information and integrates them into a unique, cloud-based interface. The proposed infrastructure will improve efficiency in emergency responses to extreme weather events and, ultimately, guarantee more safety to the urban population
CFD study of Jet Impingement Test erosion using Ansys Fluent® and OpenFOAM®
The initial aim of this study was to compare OpenFoam and Ansys Fluent in order to verify OpenFoam’s Lagrangian Library and erosion capabilities. However, it was found that previous versions of Fluent have been providing wrong results for the discrete phase and the differences with the latest version (Ansys Fluent 15) are shown. A Submerged Jet Impingement Test is an effective method for studying erosion created by solid particles entrained in a liquid. When considering low particle concentrations a Lagrangian modeling of the particulate phase is a reasonable approach. Proper linkage between OpenFOAM’s Lagrangian library and the solver pimpleFoam for incompressible transient flows allows two-phase simulations to be undertaken for comparison with Ansys Fluent with the aim of verifying OpenFoam’s accuracy. Steady state convergence for the fluid flow is first accomplished and the results are compared, confirming a good agreement between the two packages. A transient simulation was then set up and spherical particles incorporated into the fluid flow. An assessment of the two codes’ discrete phase models was carried out, focusing on the differences between impact angles and velocities yielded at the impingement plate’s surface employing a similar strategy to that outlined first by Hattori et al. (2008) and later by Gnanavelu et al. (2009, 2011). In the comparison of OpenFoam with the latest version of Fluent, the main differences between the injection models are highlighted and the coupling possibilities between phases are taken into consideration. Agreement between trends for both impact angles and velocities is satisfactory when the last version of the commercial package is considered and the average discrepancy between numerical values is very low, verifying OpenFoam’s Lagrangian library. Two different Jet Impingement Test configurations are also compared and the differences highlighted
Context-Sensitive Sharedness Criteria for Teamwork (Extended Abstract)
ABSTRACT Teamwork between humans and intelligent systems gains importance with the maturing of agent and robot technology. In the social sciences, sharedness of mental models is used to explain and understand teamwork. To use this concept for developing teams that include agents, we propose contextsensitive sharedness criteria. These criteria specify how much, what, and among whom knowledge in a team should be shared
The Near East as a cradle of biodiversity: a phylogeography of banded newts (genus Ommatotriton) reveals extensive inter- and intraspecific genetic differentiation
The banded newt (genus Ommatotriton) is widely distributed in the Near East (Anatolia, Caucasus and the Levant) - an understudied region from the perspective of phylogeography. The genus is polytypic, but the number of species included and the phylogenetic relationships between them are not settled. We sequenced two mitochondrial and two nuclear DNA markers throughout the range of Ommatotriton. For mtDNA we constructed phylogenetic trees, estimated divergence times using fossil calibration, and investigated changes in effective population size with Bayesian skyline plots and mismatch analyses. For nuDNA we constructed phylogenetic trees and haplotype networks. Species trees were constructed for all markers and nuDNA only. Species distribution models were projected on current and Last Glacial Maximum climate layers. We confirm the presence of three Ommatotriton species: O. nesterovi, O. ophryticus and O. vittatus. These species are genetically distinct and their most recent common ancestor was dated at ∼25Ma (Oligocene). No evidence of recent gene flow between species was found. The species show deep intraspecific genetic divergence, represented by geographically structured clades, with crown nodes of species dated ∼8-13Ma (Miocene to Early Quaternary); evidence of long-term in situ evolution and survival in multiple glacial refugia. While a species tree based on nuDNA suggested a sister species relationship between O. vittatus and O. ophryticus, when mtDNA was included, phylogenetic relationships were unresolved, and we refrain from accepting a particular phylogenetic hypothesis at this stage. While species distribution models suggest reduced and fragmented ranges during the Last Glacial Maximum, we found no evidence for strong population bottlenecks. We discuss our results in the light of other phylogeographic studies from the Near East. Our study underlines the important role of the Near East in generating and sustaining biodiversity
Separating Agent-Functioning and Inter-Agent Coordination by Activated Modules: The DECOMAS Architecture
The embedding of self-organizing inter-agent processes in distributed
software applications enables the decentralized coordination system elements,
solely based on concerted, localized interactions. The separation and
encapsulation of the activities that are conceptually related to the
coordination, is a crucial concern for systematic development practices in
order to prepare the reuse and systematic integration of coordination processes
in software systems. Here, we discuss a programming model that is based on the
externalization of processes prescriptions and their embedding in Multi-Agent
Systems (MAS). One fundamental design concern for a corresponding execution
middleware is the minimal-invasive augmentation of the activities that affect
coordination. This design challenge is approached by the activation of agent
modules. Modules are converted to software elements that reason about and
modify their host agent. We discuss and formalize this extension within the
context of a generic coordination architecture and exemplify the proposed
programming model with the decentralized management of (web) service
infrastructures
- …