Leon Sterling

ROADMAP: extending the gaia methodology for complex open systems

This paper is concerned with improving the software engineering of agent-based open systems. It critiques the existing Gaia methodology in the light of a motivating example of intelligent home networks. It describes the ROADMAP1 methodology, which extends Gaia with four improvements - formal models of knowledge and the environment, role hierarchies, explicit representation of social structures and relationships, and incorporation of dynamic changes.

INTEGRATING CASE-BASED AND RULE-BASED REASONING TO MEET MULTIPLE DESIGN CONSTRAINTS

Although case‐based reasoning (CBR) was introduced as an alternative to rule‐based reasoning (RBR), there is a growing interest in integrating it with other reasoning paradigms, including RBR. New hybrid approaches are being piloted to achieve new synergies and improve problem‐solving capabilities. In our approach to integration, CBR is used to satisfy multiple numeric constraints, and RBR allows the performance of “what if” analysis needed for creative design.

JUSTICE: a judicial search tool using intelligent concept extraction

A legal knowledge based system called JUSTICE is presented which provides conceptual information retrieval for legal cases. JUSTICE can identify heterogeneous representations of concepts across all major Australian jurisdictions. The knowledge representation scheme used for legal and common sense concepts is inspired by human processes for the identification of concepts and the expected order and location of concepts. These are supported by flexible search functions and various string utilities. JUSTICE is a client-based legal software agent which works with both plaintext and HTML representations of legal cases over file systems, and the World Wide Web. In creating JUSTICE an ontology for legal cases was developed, and is implicit within JUSTICE. Further, the identification of concepts within data is shown to be a process enabling conceptual information retrieval and search, conceptualised summarisation, automated statistical analysis, and the conversion of informal documents into formalised semi-structured representations. JUSTICE was tested on the precision, recall and usefulness of its concept identifications; achieving good results. The results show the promise of the approach and establish JUSTICE as an intelligent legal research aid offering improved multifaceted access to the concepts within legal cases.

An agile manufacturing workcell design

This paper introduces a design for agile manufacturing workcells intended for light mechanical assembly of products made from similar components (i.e., parts families). We define agile manufacturing as the ability to accomplish rapid changeover from the assembly of one product to the assembly of a different product. Rapid hardware changeover is made possible through the use of robots, flexible part feeders, modular grippers, and modular assembly hardware. The division of assembly, feeding, and unloading tasks between multiple robots is examined with prioritization based upon assembly time. Rapid software changeover will be facilitated by the use of a real-time, object-oriented software environment utilizing graphical simulations for off-line software development. An innovative dual VMEbus controller architecture permits an open software environment while accommodating the closed nature of most commercial robot controllers. These agile features permit new products to be introduced with minimal downtime and system reconfiguration.

AI '92: Proceedings of the 5th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence

Automated operation of complex machinery using plans extracted from numerical models - towards adaptive control of a stainless steel cold rolling mill, D. Stirling and S. Sevinc annealing networks and fractal landscapes - is the writing on the wall?, R. Lister a master/slave neural network architecture, P. Hingston classification with networks of fixed hidden units, A. Kowalczyk a comparison of image processing techniques and neural networks for an automated visual inspection problem, V. Ciesielski et al estimating sun direction from a single image, W. Chojnacki et al a framework for reasoning about modelling, N.Y. Foo a belief revision approach to nonmonotonic reasoning, W. Wobcke man-machine collaboration for knowledge acquisition, G.I. Webb learning with continuous classes, J.R. Quinlan induction of ripple-down rules, B.R. Gaines and P.J. Compton predicting situation outcomes on the basis of past cases, C. Bradburn and J. Zeleznikow. (Part contents)

Adding monotonicity to learning algorithms may impair their accuracy

Ordinal (i.e., ordered) classifiers are used to make judgments that we make on a regular basis, both at work and at home. Perhaps surprisingly, there have been no comprehensive studies in the scientific literature comparing the various ordinal classifiers. This paper compares the accuracy of five ordinal and three non-ordinal classifiers on a benchmark of fifteen real-world datasets. The results show that the ordinal classifiers that were tested had no meaningful statistical advantage over the corresponding non-ordinal classifiers. Furthermore, the ordinal classifiers that guaranteed monotonic classifications showed no meaningful statistical advantage over a majority-based classifier. We suggest that the tested ordinal classifiers did not properly utilize the order information in the presence of non-monotonic noise.

Design of an agile manufacturing workcell for light mechanical applications

This paper introduces a design for agile manufacturing workcells intended for light mechanical assembly of products made from similar components (i.e. parts families). We define agile manufacturing as the ability to accomplish rapid changeover from the assembly of one product to the assembly of another product. Rapid hardware changeover is made possible through the use of robots, flexible part feeders, modular grippers and modular assembly hardware. The flexible feeders rely on belt feeding and binary computer vision for Dose estimation. This has a distinct advantage over non-flexible feeding schemes such as bowl feeders which require considerable adjustment to changeover from one part to another. Rapid software changeover is being facilitated by the use of a real-time, object-oriented software environment, modular software, graphical simulations for off-line software development, and an innovative dual VMEbus controller architecture. These agile features permit new products to be introduced with minimal downtime and system reconfiguration.

Metainterpreters for expert system construction

Abstract We discuss the use of metainterpreters for building expert systems in PROLOG. Three issues are covered. The first is a technique for mixing a metainterpreter into an object program imbuing it with the functionality specified by the matainterpreter. Mixing a metainterpreter into a PROLOG program consists of two steps: partially evaluating the metainterpreter with respect to the object program and pushing down the metaarguments of the metainterpreter into the object program. The second issue is a classification of metainterpreters into structural, contextual, and behavioral enhancements. Examples are given of useful enhancements for building expert systems. Finally, we discuss the combination of several metainterpreters and how a programming environment for building expert systems could be built based on the ideas in this paper.

Logic-based specification languages for intelligent software agents

The research field of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) aims to find abstractions, languages, methodologies and toolkits for modeling, verifying, validating and prototyping complex applications conceptualized as Multiagent Systems (MASs). A very lively research sub-field studies how formal methods can be used for AOSE. This paper presents a detailed survey of six logic-based executable agent specification languages that have been chosen for their potential to be integrated in our ARPEGGIO project, an open framework for specifying and prototyping a MAS. The six languages are

The ROADMAP Meta-model for Intelligent Adaptive Multi-agent Systems in Open Environments

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