1,720,971 research outputs found
Adjustable Autonomy: Controling Influences on Decision Making
No full textDue to technological developments we foresee future systems where groups of actors coordinate their actions in a dynamic manner to reach their goals. Our aim is to develop a reasoning model for artificial actors in such systems. Starting point is the relation between autonomy of individuals and coordination of group behavior. We adopt the agent paradigm as basis for the actors. Although autonomy is a key concept in agent research, there is no common definition of agent autonomy and adjustable autonomy. Our agents should be autonomous such that they can be held responsible for their actions. Furthermore, they should be able to work together following different types of coordination in order to achieve dynamic coordination. In this research, we define being autonomous as having control over external influences on the decision-making process. Adjustable autonomy in our context means dynamically dealing with external influences on the decision-making process based on internal motivations. An agent controls to what extend it is being influenced by the environment and by other agents. Agents achieve coordination by allowing influences of others on their decision-making process. We present an abstract reasoning model that facilitates agent autonomy. The two main components of the reasoning model are influence control and decision-making. In the component for influence control the agent deals with new observations and messages. We propose to use reasoning rules to process those external events. The reasoning rules specify the effects of external events on the beliefs and goals of the agent. The beliefs and goals, then, are used for the decision-making process. With this reasoning model we do a simulation experiment of a firefighter organization extinguishing several fires. The organizational goal can be reached via different types of coordination ranging from emergent to centralized coordination. The experiment shows that the perspective on autonomy as influence control provides a promising way to facilitate dynamic coordination. Our reasoning model separates event-processing and decision-making. This allows the development of domain-independent heuristics for event-processing. In this thesis we mention three heuristics: information relevance, organizational knowledge and trust. The first two are discussed in further detail. We propose an algorithm for relevance determination. We argue that potential benefits of using information relevance for influence control can be found in controling the decision quality and preventing information overload. Furthermore, we work out the use of organizational knowledge to process external events. We show how organizational norms can be translated into event-processing rules. We describe how our approach facilitates organizational dynamics. The modularity in our reasoning model ensures that the event-processing rules are explicitly defined. This allows for metareasoning about the event-processing rules. We present a metareasoning model, with which the agent can select and take up the desired attitude with respect to the environment and to other agents. This process gives the agent control over external influences, and therewith it meets the requirements for autonomy and adjustable autonomy. In a simulation experiment we implement a firefighter organization that exhibits dynamic coordination via self-adjustable autonomy of the firefighters
Behaviour Coordination for Cooperative Multi-Robot Systems
No full textThis report introduces a general formulation of relational behaviours for cooperative real robots and an example of its implementation using the pass between soccer robots of the Middle-Sized League of RoboCup. The framework supports explicit teamwork between two team mates. This implies that both participants know from each other that they are committed to the relational behaviour and that they will not quit without informing the other team members first. The formulation is based on the Joint-Commitment Theory by Cohen and Levesque [2]. The implementation of the pass concerns furthermore the development of two primitive behaviours, the intercept and aimAndPass behaviour, and the introduction of heuristics to support coordinated execution. This implementation is supported by past work on soccer robots navigation. Results of experiments with real robots under controlled situations (i.e., not during a game) are presented to illustrate the described concepts. The framework provides an easy way for implementing relational behaviours and takes care of synchronized execution.
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Adaptive Autonomy for Agile Task Coordination
No full textAchieving high levels of agility and resilience in upcoming military organizations will require new ways of thinking about command and control. As traditional military organizations are gradually being equipped for new types of network-centric missions, it becomes obvious that we need rethink coordination strategies. In future arenas, there will be many more parties involved and a much less transparent chain of command. We will need to rely more on distributed processes and accept that traditional centralized command and control strategies will not lead us to agile capabilities
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