Narrative based Postdictive Reasoning for Cognitive Robotics

Making sense of incomplete and conflicting narrative knowledge in the presence of abnormalities, unobservable processes, and other real world considerations is a challenge and crucial requirement for cognitive robotics systems. An added challenge, even when suitably specialised action languages and reasoning systems exist, is practical integration and application within large-scale robot control frameworks. In the backdrop of an autonomous wheelchair robot control task, we report on application-driven work to realise postdiction triggered abnormality detection and re-planning for real-time robot control: (a) Narrative-based knowledge about the environment is obtained via a larger smart environment framework; and (b) abnormalities are postdicted from stable-models of an answer-set program corresponding to the robot's epistemic model. The overall reasoning is performed in the context of an approximate epistemic action theory based planner implemented via a translation to answer-set programming.Comment: Commonsense Reasoning Symposium, Ayia Napa, Cyprus, 201

Fusion of aerial images and sensor data from a ground vehicle for improved semantic mapping

This work investigates the use of semantic information to link ground level occupancy maps and aerial images. A ground level semantic map, which shows open ground and indicates the probability of cells being occupied by walls of buildings, is obtained by a mobile robot equipped with an omnidirectional camera, GPS and a laser range finder. This semantic information is used for local and global segmentation of an aerial image. The result is a map where the semantic information has been extended beyond the range of the robot sensors and predicts where the mobile robot can find buildings and potentially driveable ground

Who speaks for the future of Earth? How critical social science can extend the conversation on the Anthropocene

This paper asks how the social sciences can engage with the idea of the Anthropocene in productive ways. In response to this question we outline an interpretative research agenda that allows critical engagement with the Anthropocene as a socially and culturally bounded object with many possible meanings and political trajectories. In order to facilitate the kind of political mobilization required to meet the complex environmental challenges of our times, we argue that the social sciences should refrain from adjusting to standardized research agendas and templates. A more urgent analytical challenge lies in exposing, challenging and extending the ontological assumptions that inform how we make sense of and respond to a rapidly changing environment. By cultivating environmental research that opens up multiple interpretations of the Anthropocene, the social sciences can help to extend the realm of the possible for environmental politics

ROTUNDE - A Smart Meeting Cinematography Initiative: Tools, Datasets, and Benchmarks for Cognitive Interpretation and Control

We construe smart meeting cinematography with a focus on professional situations such as meetings and seminars, possibly conducted in a distributed manner across socio-spatially separated groups. The basic objective in smart meeting cinematography is to interpret professional interactions involving people, and automatically produce dynamic recordings of discussions, debates, presentations etc in the presence of multiple communication modalities. Typical modalities include gestures (e.g., raising one's hand for a question, applause), voice and interruption, electronic apparatus (e.g., pressing a button), movement (e.g., standing-up, moving around) etc. ROTUNDE, an instance of smart meeting cinematography concept, aims to: (a) develop functionality-driven benchmarks with respect to the interpretation and control capabilities of human-cinematographers, real-time video editors, surveillance personnel, and typical human performance in everyday situations; (b) Develop general tools for the commonsense cognitive interpretation of dynamic scenes from the viewpoint of visuo-spatial cognition centred perceptual narrativisation. Particular emphasis is placed on declarative representations and interfacing mechanisms that seamlessly integrate within large-scale cognitive (interaction) systems and companion technologies consisting of diverse AI sub-components. For instance, the envisaged tools would provide general capabilities for high-level commonsense reasoning about space, events, actions, change, and interaction.Comment: Appears in AAAI-2013 Workshop on: Space, Time, and Ambient Intelligence (STAMI 2013

Gender stereotypes and the apology in a small state : uncovering Creole male stereotypes in the Seychelles using digital matched-guise methodology

Recent research in the Seychelles speaks of a “growing crisis of masculinity”, manifested in statistics such as a ten-year life expectancy difference in favour of women, alarmingly high levels of substance abuse amongst younger men, and underachievement of boys in schools. According to the authors, males are generally disempowered by stereotypical views of males as “irresponsible”, “unreliable” and “secondary to women”. Similar gender patterns have been observed in other ex-slavery Creole cultures such as the small states in the Caribbean, and some scholars argue that these structures have historical origins dating back to slavery. In this study, we seek to explore aspects of Seychellois stereotypes of masculinity through so-called matched-guise experiments. Through digital manipulations of voice quality, we produce identity-warped male and female versions of the same monologue recording – a short apology. We then asked respondents to listen to the recordings and respond to the same in a short online questionnaire, where we ask questions relating to their impressions of the apology and the speaker. Dimensions here include honesty-dishonesty; politenessimpoliteness; weakness-strength; and reliability-unreliability. Differences in results of responses to male and female versions of the apology give strong indications that Seychellois stereotypically view males as dishonest, unreliable, lazy and careless. We discuss potential origins and consequences of such constructions, and propose awareness-raising measures for how these destructive historically produced scripts of gender can be rewritten.peer-reviewe

The Relative Importance of Institutional Trust in Countering Feelings of Unsafety in Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods

The segregated nature of urban areas reflects an uneven exposure to risk and unsafety. This article analyzes the relevance of place to people’s feelings of unsafety by comparing questionnaire responses from people living in a segregated, disadvantaged neighbourhood to a random sample of people living in the same city. The results suggest that the central factors explaining the individual’s feelings of unsafety differ in this particular neighbourhood compared to the broader population. The article shows that place has a moderating effect on feelings of unsafety. Trust in public institutions is argued to be particularly important in segregated, disadvantaged neighbourhoods because of its potential to prevent feelings of unsafety

Between Sense and Sensibility: Declarative narrativisation of mental models as a basis and benchmark for visuo-spatial cognition and computation focussed collaborative cognitive systems

What lies between `\emph{sensing}' and `\emph{sensibility}'? In other words, what kind of cognitive processes mediate sensing capability, and the formation of sensible impressions ---e.g., abstractions, analogies, hypotheses and theory formation, beliefs and their revision, argument formation--- in domain-specific problem solving, or in regular activities of everyday living, working and simply going around in the environment? How can knowledge and reasoning about such capabilities, as exhibited by humans in particular problem contexts, be used as a model and benchmark for the development of collaborative cognitive (interaction) systems concerned with human assistance, assurance, and empowerment? We pose these questions in the context of a range of assistive technologies concerned with \emph{visuo-spatial perception and cognition} tasks encompassing aspects such as commonsense, creativity, and the application of specialist domain knowledge and problem-solving thought processes. Assistive technologies being considered include: (a) human activity interpretation; (b) high-level cognitive rovotics; (c) people-centred creative design in domains such as architecture & digital media creation, and (d) qualitative analyses geographic information systems. Computational narratives not only provide a rich cognitive basis, but they also serve as a benchmark of functional performance in our development of computational cognitive assistance systems. We posit that computational narrativisation pertaining to space, actions, and change provides a useful model of \emph{visual} and \emph{spatio-temporal thinking} within a wide-range of problem-solving tasks and application areas where collaborative cognitive systems could serve an assistive and empowering function.Comment: 5 pages, research statement summarising recent publication

Towards a reflexive turn in the governance of global environmental expertise the cases of the IPCC and the IPBES

The role and design of global expert organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) needs rethinking. Acknowledging that a one-size-fits-all model does not exist, we suggest a reflexive turn that implies treating the governance of expertise as a matter of political contestation

Improved data association and occlusion handling for vision-based people tracking by mobile robots

This paper presents an approach for tracking multiple persons using a combination of colour and thermal vision sensors on a mobile robot. First, an adaptive colour model is incorporated into the measurement model of the tracker. Second, a new approach for detecting occlusions is introduced, using a machine learning classifier for pairwise comparison of persons (classifying which one is in front of the other). Third, explicit occlusion handling is then incorporated into the tracker

Miniversal deformations of pairs of symmetric matrices under congruence

For each pair of complex symmetric matrices $(A,B)$ we provide a normal form with a minimal number of independent parameters, to which all pairs of complex symmetric matrices $(\widetilde{A},\widetilde{B})$, close to $(A,B)$ can be reduced by congruence transformation that smoothly depends on the entries of $\widetilde{A}$ and $\widetilde{B}$. Such a normal form is called a miniversal deformation of $(A,B)$ under congruence. A number of independent parameters in the miniversal deformation of a symmetric matrix pencil is equal to the codimension of the congruence orbit of this symmetric matrix pencil and is computed too. We also provide an upper bound on the distance from $(A,B)$ to its miniversal deformation.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1104.249