André Paraense

Effects of behavior network as a suggestion system to assist BCI users

This work describes the development of an intelligent agent responsible for making relevant action suggestions to a BCI user in the context of an intelligent environment. For the development of this agent, a modified version of a behavior network, embedded into a neuroscience inspired cognitive architecture, has been implemented. A new soft-preconditions list has been introduced in the original model in order for it to be used as an assistant agent. A number of simulated experiments were performed to evaluate if the behavior network was indeed presenting valuable suggestions and performing as expected. Results suggest that the agent was able to take into account predefined goals, scheduled events and topological information about the environment in order to deliberate over the possible behaviors and make relevant suggestions. A discussion is made about the strong points and drawbacks of this approach and future work is suggested.

Crowdsourced integrity verification of election results: An experience from Brazilian elections

In this work, we describe an experiment for evaluating the integrity of election results, and improving transparency and voter participation in electronic elections. The idea was based on two aspects: distributed collection of poll tape pictures, taken by voters using mobile devices; and crowdsourced comparison of these pictures with the partial electronic results published by the electoral authority. The solution allowed voters to verify if results were correctly transmitted to the central tabulator without manipulation, with granularity of individual polling places. We present results, discuss limitations of the approach and future perspectives, considering the context of the previous Brazilian presidential elections of 2014, where the proposed solution was employed for the first time. In particular, with the aid of our project, voters were able to verify 1.6 % of the total poll tapes, amounting to 4.1 % of the total votes, which prompted the electoral authority to announce improved support for automated verification in the next elections. While the case study relies on the typical workflow of a paperless DRE-based election, the approach can be improved and adapted to other types of voting technology.