Hironori Hiraishi

Smart office robot collaboration based on multi-agent programming

Abstract As a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) application to our everyday life, we designed and implemented a smart office environment in which various information appliances work collaboratively to support our office activities. In this environment, many cameras and infrared sensors allow handling robots and mobile robots to perform complex tasks such as printing and delivering document. The delivery task is a typical example of an important class of tasks supporting humans in the smart office. In this paper, such robots are modeled as robotic agents, and collaboration between the agents is realized using multi-agent programming. We have developed a multi-agent robot language (MRL) as an evolution of concurrent logic programming. MRL provides synchronous and asynchronous control of agents based on guarded Horn clauses. It also supports describing an advanced negotiation protocol using broadcast and incomplete messages, and making decisions using a set of logical rules. These features are unified within an MRL framework, yielding an intelligent integration of the robotic agents. We view the smart office environment as a human assistant system through agent collaboration, and this view is novel and extendable as AI for everyday functions.

Qualitative Reasoning Approach to a Driver's Cognitive Mental Load

This paper explores applying qualitative reasoning to a drivers mental state in real driving situations so as to develop a working load for intelligent transportation systems. The authors identify the cognitive state that determines whether a driver will be ready to operate a device in car navigation. In order to identify the drivers cognitive state, the authors will measure eye movements during car-driving situations. Data can be acquired for the various actions of a car driver, in particular braking, acceleration, and steering angles from the experiment car. The authors constructed a driver cognitive mental load using the framework of qualitative reasoning. The response of the model was checked by qualitative simulation. The authors also verified the model using real data collected by driving an actual car. The results indicated that the model could represent the change in the cognitive mental load based on measurable data. This means that the framework of this paper will be useful for designing user interfaces for next-generation systems that actively employ user situations.

Web-based communication and control for multiagent robots

In this paper we describe a Web-based method for communication with and control of heterogeneous robots in a unified manner, including mobile robots and vision sensors. We base this method on recent Web technologies such as browsers, Java language and socket communication. It allows users to connect to robots through a Web server, using their hand-held computers, and to monitor and control the robots via various input devices. As a model of an everyday working environment, we configured mobile robots and cameras that work autonomously and cooperatively. The Web technologies provide a general framework for integrating robot control, communication between robots and humans, and Web-page access. This framework can extend the robot-based intelligent office as a new direction of the intranet.

A cellular telephone-based application for skin-grading to support cosmetic sales

We have developed a sales-support system for door-to-door sales of cosmetics based on a system called Skin-Expert, a skin-image grading service that includes analysis and diagnosis. Skin-Expert analyzes a customers current skin quality from a picture of the skin. Several parameters are extracted by image processing, and the skin grading is done by rules generated by data mining from a baseline of grades given by human skin-care experts. Communication with the Skin-Expert is through a cellular telephone with a camera, using e-mail software and a Web browser. Salespeople photograph the customers skin using the camera in a standard cellular telephone and then send an e-mail message that includes the picture as an attachment to our analysis system. Other parameters associated with the customer (for example, age and gender) are included in the body of the message. The picture is analyzed by our skin-grading system, and the results are made available as a page in HTML format on a customer-accessible Web site. An e-mail is sent when the results are available, usually within minutes. Salespeople check the results by using a Web browser on their cellular telephones. The output not only provides a grading result but also gives recommendations for the care and cosmetics that are most suitable for the customer. Our system integrates cellular communication, Web technology, computer analysis, data mining, and an expert system. Though salespeople use only a cellular telephone with very little computing power as the front end, they can take advantage of intelligent services such as computer grading and data mining. The salespeople do not need to think about what is running in the background, and there is no requirement that end users have any special hardware.

Human-robot collaboration in the smart office environment

This paper describes human-robot collaboration in the smart office environment, where some cameras and infrared sensors are embedded to support our activities and several manipulators and mobile robots deliver documents and printed-out papers to a workers room. Such environment is realized by software components including device controller, multiagent programming, a robot access server on the Web, and a remote control browser. These components integrate various office devices and sensors, and a user can control the robots through a cellular phone and a browser.

Applying qualitative reasoning to a driver's cognitive mental load

In this paper, we explore applying qualitative reasoning to a drivers mental state in real driving situations so as to develop a working load for intelligent transportation systems. We identify the cognitive state that determines whether a driver will be ready to operate a device in car navigation. In order to identify the drivers cognitive state, we will measure eye movements during car-driving situations. We can acquire data for the various actions of a car driver, in particular braking, acceleration, and steering angles from our experiment car. We constructed a driver cognitive mental load using the framework of qualitative reasoning. We checked the response of our model by qualitative simulation. We also verified the model using real data collected by driving an actual car. The results indicated that our model could represent the change in the cognitive mental load based on measurable data. This means that the framework of this paper will be useful for designing user interfaces for next-generation systems that actively employ user situations.

Time-Constrained HeuristicSearch for Practical Route Finding

In this paper, the authors present a heuristic search algorithm that can be applied to real-time route finding for automobile navigation systems. By using this algorithm, an accurate estimate for the finishing time of a search is obtained, and optimal solutions are achieved.

Designing an agent-based RBAC system for dynamic security policy

Most practical applications have dynamic attributes, but conventional access control mechanisms have not addressed the problem sufficiently. We discuss how to realize an access control system that enables us to manage dynamic security policies. Our proposed method is based on role-based access control (RBAC), and the agent decides access rights dynamically for the abstract role, which is defined by the role administrator statically using context-enabled rules and an inference engine. By defining rules using declarative representation (logic programming style), bidirectional queries can be realized for user-role-permission relationships. We demonstrate the usefulness of our proposed system by presenting our project management application and its access control system.

Log summarizing agent for Web access data using data mining techniques

We can get useful information from the WWW (World Wide Web) and the users are increasing every year. The available data is growing explosively, so techniques for analysis and discovery of useful information are important. The information providers and Web manager make an effort to construct an effective Web site. If providers and administrators can determine user browsing patterns from Web access logs, they would be able to use the patterns as one index to construct an effective site. However, it is difficult to extract user browsing patterns manually because the Web access log is huge. Therefore, we adopt a data mining technique to solve this problem and design a log summarizing agent. This agent can automatically extract profitable information from large amounts of Web access logs.

WWW Visualization Tools for Discovering Interesting Web Pages

In this paper, we describe three types of WWW Visualization tools based on the hyperbolic tree, the WWW Information Access System (WebMapper), the Interactive Browsing Support System (HANAVI), and Web Site Rating System (KAGAMI). WebMapper integrates structure visualization and retrieval of WWW information. It consists of hyperbolic tree visualization and attribute-value pair query manipulation, and provides a filtering function to reduce the size of the WWW information structure. HANAVI is an interactive version of WebMapper implemented by Java Applet to run on a general web browser. KAGAMI is an automatic web site rating system that outputs six evaluation parameters on a radar chart. It can promote the improvement of a web site and provide effective information of the web site. Our tools enable web browsing support and discovery of interesting pages and lead to creation of a more effective web site.