Towards Social Identity in Socio-Cognitive Agents

Current architectures for social agents are designed around some specific units of social behaviour that address particular challenges. Although their performance might be adequate for controlled environments, deploying these agents in the wild is difficult. Moreover, the increasing demand for autonomous agents capable of living alongside humans calls for the design of more robust social agents that can cope with diverse social situations. We believe that to design such agents, their sociality and cognition should be conceived as one. This includes creating mechanisms for constructing social reality as an interpretation of the physical world with social meanings and selective deployment of cognitive resources adequate to the situation. We identify several design principles that should be considered while designing agent architectures for socio-cognitive systems. Taking these remarks into account, we propose a socio-cognitive agent model based on the concept of Cognitive Social Frames that allow the adaptation of an agent's cognition based on its interpretation of its surroundings, its Social Context. Our approach supports an agent's reasoning about other social actors and its relationship with them. Cognitive Social Frames can be built around social groups, and form the basis for social group dynamics mechanisms and construct of Social Identity

COVID 19 e o fechamento da Ponte Internacional da Amizade

O objetivo deste artigo é discutir a relação da covid-19, no período pandêmico de 2020, e os impactos com o fechamento da Ponte Internacional da Amizade, entre os meses de março e outubro, localizada sobre o rio Paraná na região binacional entre Foz do Iguaçu e Ciudad del Este. Para isso, apresenta-se a ponte como um local, historicamente, utilizado para práticas de diferentes manifestações públicas cuja tática adotada é o seu bloqueio, mas que, em 2020 viu-se fechada por uma determinação dos Estados Brasil e Paraguai, ocasionando um amplo movimento pela abertura da ponte devido sua importância nas áreas sociais e econômicas. A pesquisa baseia-se na análise de fontes jornalísticas, historiográficas e documentais

Disseminação de dados em redes de sensores

Tese de mestrado, Engenharia Informática (Arquitectura, Sistemas e Redes de Computadores), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2010As redes de sensores sem fios (RSSF) são compostas por um grande número de pequenos dispositivos que monitorizam o ambiente em que estão inseridas. Estes dispositivos são caracterizados pelas restrições a nível energético, poder de processamento e de memória. As fortes restrições a que os dispositivos estão sujeitos obrigam à utilização de paradigmas de comunicação específicos, que tenham em consideração uma utilização racional dos recursos. Com a especialização dos nós receptores surge a necessidade destes conseguirem expressar o interesse em informação que considerem relevante, independentemente dos restantes participantes. O paradigma de comunicação usado tipicamente nas RSSF não considera os interesses que os nós receptores têm na informação que está a ser transmitida, pelo que pode ser enviado um grande número de mensagens nas quais nenhum nó receptor está interessado. O envio de mensagens desnecessárias é particularmente penalizador nas RSSF, uma vez que a actividade do rádio é responsável pelo consumo de grande parte da energia que os dispositivos dispõem. Sendo a memória um recurso escasso, importa também que o paradigma de comunicação seja igualmente eficiente em termos da quantidade de memória utilizada. Este trabalho apresenta e avalia experimentalmente um sistema Publicador/Subscritor que tem em conta o interesse dos nós em determinados tipos de informação e suprime o envio de informação sem relevância. Para além disso, o sistema adapta-se às restrições de energia e de memória dos dispositivos. Adicionalmente é apresentada uma concretização dum algoritmo de disseminação para o sistema operativo TinyOS que sugere que o sistema apresentado é exequível em sensores reais.Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are composed of a large number of small devices which monitor the environment in which they operate. These devices are characterized by restrictions like energy, processing and memory. The strong restrictions on the devices enforce the use of paradigms of communication which take into account a rational use of resources. With the specialization of the receptor nodes arises the need for them to be able express interest in information they deem relevant, regardless the interests of other participants. The paradigm of communication typically used in WSNs does not consider the receivers’ interests in information being transmitted, so it is possible to send a large number of messages in which no receiver node is interested. Sending unnecessary messages is particularly expensive in WSNs, since the activity of the radio is responsible for consuming much of the power the devices have. Since memory is a scarce resource, the paradigm of communication must also be efficient in the amount of memory used. This work presents and experimentally evaluates a Publisher/Subscriber system which takes into account the interest of the nodes in certain types of information and suppresses the sending of information without relevance. In addition, the system adapts to the resource constraints of devices such as reduced energy capacity and scarce memory space. Additionally, an implementation of an dissemination algorithm to the TinyOS operating system is presented. This implementation suggests that the presented system is feasible in real sensors

Building Persuasive Robots with Social Power Strategies

Can social power endow social robots with the capacity to persuade? This paper represents our recent endeavor to design persuasive social robots. We have designed and run three different user studies to investigate the effectiveness of different bases of social power (inspired by French and Raven's theory) on peoples' compliance to the requests of social robots. The results show that robotic persuaders that exert social power (specifically from expert, reward, and coercion bases) demonstrate increased ability to influence humans. The first study provides a positive answer and shows that under the same circumstances, people with different personalities prefer robots using a specific social power base. In addition, social rewards can be useful in persuading individuals. The second study suggests that by employing social power, social robots are capable of persuading people objectively to select a less desirable choice among others. Finally, the third study shows that the effect of power on persuasion does not decay over time and might strengthen under specific circumstances. Moreover, exerting stronger social power does not necessarily lead to higher persuasion. Overall, we argue that the results of these studies are relevant for designing human--robot-interaction scenarios especially the ones aiming at behavioral change

A tutorial on machine learning for interactive pedagogical systems

This paper provides a short introduction to the field of machine learning for interactive pedagogical systems. Departing from different examples encountered in interactive pedagogical systems—such as intelligent tutoring systems or serious games—we go over several representative families of methods in machine learning, introducing key concepts in this field. We discuss common challenges in machine learning and how current methods address such challenges. Conversely, by anchoring our presentation on actual interactive pedagogical systems, highlight how machine learning can benefit the development of such systems

Game Mechanics for Cooperative Games

In this paper, we approach the subject of Cooperative Video Games and their Design. We start out by examining Cooperative Game Mechanics - these include common Design Patterns used currently in Cooperative Video Games and how the challenge archetypes are currently used in Cooperative Video Games. We then proceed to examine our experience in designing a cooperative two player video game using the previously mentioned patterns and challenges, and we present some preliminary evaluation data of the game

D1.3 – Two-level authoring widget software and documentation:RAGE – WP1 – D1.3

In this deliverable, we give detailed description of all end user tools developed in the frame of WP1, with the special emphasis on the Configuration Editor Wizard, described in Chapter 5. So far, significant parts of the asset creation infrastructure have been reported in previous deliverables D1.1 and D1.4. In order to counteract the fragmentation of the descriptions of different parts in different documents and annexes, we have opted for providing a comprehensive overview of the full range of authoring tools created in Task 1.3. We felt a coherent, full overview is needed, because of the interdependencies of the various tools that we created to accommodate the asset creation methodology. The deliverable summarises the various component authoring tools, taxonomy tools and component management tools, reported before, but also presents the new Configuration Editor Wizard: this tools allows component developers to define and generate a tailored configuration editor alongside their component, which then can be used by the user of the component (viz. game developers) to configure the component for technical integration in different software and gaming platforms. The very idea of having “an editor for creating editors” explains the reference in the deliverable’s title to “two-level authoring”. Readers already familiar with the contents of the previous deliverables may want to go immediately to chapter 5, which presents the Configuration Editor Wizard and a detailed description of two case studies used to test and demonstrate the effectiveness of the Configuration Editor Wizard