8370711
Consistency of Action Descriptions
As a contribution to the metatheory of reasoning about actions, we present some characteristics of the consistency of action theories. Three levels of consistency are investigated for the evaluation of action descriptions: uniform consistency, consistency of formulas and regional consistency. The first two provide an intuitive resolution of problems of explanation conflicts and fluent dependency. The concept of regional consistency provides for a measure of ramification. A highly expressive form of action descriptions, the normal form, is introduced to facilitate this analysis. The relative satisfiability of the situation calculus is generalized to accommodate non-deterministic effects and ramifications.
1042778
Axiomatic Analysis of Negotiation Protocols
This paper presents an axiomatic approach to negotiation protocol analysis. We consider a negotiation procedure as multiple stages of mutual belief revision. A set of postulates in AGM-style of belief revision are proposed to specify rational behavior of negotiation. An explicit construction of negotiation function is given in which negotiation process is viewed as the interaction of two iterated revision operations. As a result the proposed axiomatic system is proved to be consistent. Finally, we examine our approach with an instantiation of Rosenschein and Zlotkin’s Monotonic Concession Protocol of Negotiation.
10744441
Autonomy of Autonomous Agents
Autonomy is one of the most notable attributes of agency, and this paper presents a formal framework for modelhng it. By representing the mental states of agents, we provide an analysis of some attributes of autonomy. In particular, we define three sorts of autonomous agents and examine their structure. We also outline features of higher autonomy. Our framework can be a basis for cleissifying hierarchies of autonomy of agency.
9693532
Negotiation mechanism for TAC SCM component market
This paper presents a new negotiation mechanism and a new supplier model for Trading Agent Competition Supply Chain Management(TAC SCM). Under the new negotiation mechanism, an agent is allowed to negotiate with component suppliers on price, delivery date and supply quantity while a supplier can autonomously vary its production capacity with market demands and allocate its products to buyers through auction. A mathematical analysis is given to ensure the new negotiation mechanism and supplier model effectively solve the existing problems while keeping most good features of the original TAC SCM game model.
1234389
Nonmonotonic Reasoning and Multiple Belief Revision
The aim of the present paper is to reveal the interrelation between general patterns of nonmonotonic reasoning and multiple belief revision. For this purpose we de ne a nonmonotonic inference frame in which individual inference rules have been proposed in the literature but their combination as a system has not been investigated. It is shown that such a system is so strong that almost all the rules (including the supracompactness) suggested for nonmonotonic inference relations in the literature hold in it. We prove that this nonmonotonic inference frame is strictly correspendent with multiple belief revision operation. On the basis of this result we analyse a speci c paradigm of defult theory which satis es all the rules under consideration and discuss limitations of methods based on consequence relations for the study of nonmonotonic reasoning.
35603840
State Minimization Re-visited
A well-known circumscription policy in situation calculus theories of actions is to minimize the Abnormality predicate by varying the Holds predicate. Unfortunately this admitted counter-intuitive models. A different policy of varying the Result function eliminated these models. Explanations of how it did this are not entirely satisfactory, but seem to appeal to informal notions of state minimization. We reexamine this policy and show that there are simple justifications for it that are based on classical automata theory. It incidentally turns out that the description "state minimization" for the varying Result policy is more accurate than the original nomenclature had intended.
13991122
Multi-scale classification of 3-D objects
We describe an approach to the classification of 3-D objects using a multi-scale representation. This approach starts with a smoothing algorithm for representing objects at different scales. Smoothing is applied in curvature space directly, thus avoiding the usual shrinkage problems and allowing for efficient implementations. A 3-D similarity measure that integrates the representations of the objects at multiple scales is introduced. Given a library of models, objects that are similar based on this multi-scale measure are grouped together into classes. The objects that are in the same class are combined into a single prototype object. Finally, the prototypes are used for hierarchical recognition by first comparing the scene representation to the prototypes and then matching it only to the objects in the most likely class rather than to the entire library of models. Beyond its application to object recognition, this approach provides an attractive implementation of the intuitive notions of scale and approximate similarity for 3-D shapes.
3129003
Efficient computation of temporal aggregates with range predicates
A temporal aggregation query is an important but costly operation for applications that maintain time-evolving data (data warehouses, temporal databases, etc.). Due to the large volume of such data, performance improvements for temporal aggregation queries are critical. In this paper we examine techniques to compute temporal aggregates that include key-range predicates (range temporal aggregates). In particular we concentrate on SUM, COUNT and AVG aggregates. This problem is novel; to handle arbitrary key ranges, previous methods would need to keep a separate index for every possible key range. We propose an approach based on a new index structure called the Multiversion SB-Tree, which incorporates features from both the SB-Tree and the Multiversion B-Tree, to handle arbitrary key-range temporal SUM, COUNT and AVG queries. We analyze the performance of our approach and present experimental results that show its efficiency.
489296
Multimodal Integration for Meeting Group Action Segmentation and Recognition
We address the problem of segmentation and recognition of sequences of multimodal human interactions in meetings. These interactions can be seen as a rough structure of a meeting, and can be used either as input for a meeting browser or as a first step towards a higher semantic analysis of the meeting. A common lexicon of multimodal group meeting actions, a shared meeting data set, and a common evaluation procedure enable us to compare the different approaches. We compare three different multimodal feature sets and our modelling infrastructures: a higher semantic feature approach, multi-layer HMMs, a multi-stream DBN, as well as a multi-stream mixed-state DBN for disturbed data.
16120099
Efficient temporal join processing using indices
We examine the problem of processing temporal joins in the presence of indexing schemes. Previous work on temporal joins has concentrated on non-indexed relations which were fully scanned. Given the large data volumes created by the ever increasing time dimension, sequential scanning is prohibitive. This is especially true when the temporal join involves only parts of the joining relations (e.g., a given time interval instead of the whole timeline). Utilizing an index becomes then beneficial as it directs the join to the data of interest. We consider temporal join algorithms for three representative indexing schemes, namely a B+-tree, an R*-tree and a temporal index, the Multiversion B+-tree (MVBT). Both the B+-tree and R*-tree result in simple but not efficient join algorithms because neither index achieves good temporal data clustering. Better clustering is maintained by the MVBT through record copying. Nevertheless, copies can greatly affect the correctness and effectiveness of the join algorithms. We identify these problems and propose efficient solutions and optimizations. An extensive comparison of all index based temporal joins, using a variety of datasets and query characteristics shows that the MVBT based join algorithms are consistently faster. In particular the link-based algorithm has the most robust behavior. In our experiments it showed a ten fold improvement over the R*-tree joins while it was between six and thirty times faster than the B+-tree joins.
8809044
Adaptive Vision for Playing Table Soccer
For real time object recognition and tracking often color-based methods are used. While these methods are very efficient, they usually dependent heavily on lighting conditions. In this paper we present a robust and efficient vision system for the table soccer robot KiRo. By exploiting knowledge about invariant characteristics of the table soccer game, the system is able to adapt to changing lighting conditions dynamically and to detect relevant objects on the table within a few milliseconds. We give experimental evidence for the robustness and efficiency of our approach.