31564735
Improve the service quality of multi-agent system: ontology management
The association of ontology with services enables service providers to export their services and also enables clients to declare desired services so that new service providers can serve existing clients. Changes and enhancements can be kept track of through the ontology management. The ontology management platform in our system not only declares semantics of agent services, but also provides interface specification for clients to use such a system with semantic information provided.
2203951
Ontology Management for Agent Development
The content of agent messages is often defined according to some ontology through which agents can communicate with each other based on a common vocabulary. However, when ontology evolves, the existing agents may not be able to communicate properly with new agents built on the evolved ontology unless existing agents are re-designed or re-implemented. In this paper, we propose an ontology management platform called OntoWrap with three distinct components. Firstly it maintains an ontology repository which keeps track of changes to ontology so that the relationship between different versions of ontology and their extensions are maintained. Secondly, it maintains a service repository which links ontology with agent service specifications so that different implantations of an ontology are also maintained. Thirdly, based on the ontology versioning and service specifications, a wrapping service framework is provided for the automatic generation of adapter agents for existing agents to make use of new services.
22708219
Automated Paper-Based Watermark Extraction and Processing
The boom of digital market and rapid expansion and demand of digital content consumption have many requirements for automated content processing, cataloguing, authenticating, indexing, etc.. Digital watermarking and fingerprinting techniques are being explored to authenticate and detect features in digital objects. This is similar to the analogue paper-based watermarking technique that was invented in the 13th century in Italy for the identification of the workers. This paper presents a framework for the digitisation, extraction and graphical representation of paper-based watermark designs. With a general overview of the framework by Hiary and Ng (2005), the paper focuses on automated processes which determine the configuration of processing parameters in order to allow optimal content processing without time-consuming manual intervention. With a machine readable graphical representation of the watermark, cataloguing and indexing of these heritage resources can be enhanced with the ease of digital content retrieval functionalities for scholarly usages and many other advantages of digital technologies including distribution and preservation
12496765
A practical implementation of a 3D game engine
Creating a 3D game engine is not a trivial task as gamers often demand for high quality output with top notch performance in games. In this paper, we show how various real-time rendering algorithms can be applied to implement a practical 3D game engine. We explore the general architecture of a 3D engine and discuss the role of a scene graph in a 3D engine. We look at scene graph from the software engineering perspective. In particular, we show the way to design a scene graph that is object-oriented and portable across different rendering engine. Then, we explain the algorithms that we apply to speed up the performance of our 3D engine. We optimize the 3D engine on the scene graph and object geometry levels. The algorithms that we propose are expected to perform reasonably well for both static and dynamic scenes. Finally, we give a brief preview on the possibility of parallel processing in scene graph to create a 3D engine with multiprocessing capability.
10675081
The applicability of universal pragmatics in information retrieval interaction: a pilot study
This article discusses the possibility and usefulness of applying Habermas' universal pragmatics to analyze information retrieval interaction. The first part of the article is theoretical argumentation. It examines the current common schemes of studies of human computer interaction (HCI), inspects their appropriateness and limitations, argues for a pragmatic perspective, and elaborates some of Habermas' idea of universal pragmatics. The second part is a case study. It reports an investigation of the initiation and development of verification of validity claims in HCI from the universal pragmatics perspective. It describes some patterns in which a user deals with what may be considered as invalid claims of an IR system outputs. A typical sequence consists of the following pattern: (1) user invokes a simple request; (2) system replies with a questionable answer; leading to (3) user tries to verify the validity claims of truth, truthfulness, and/ or rightness of the system output; and (4) when the available interaction channels cannot support the validation, the interaction becomes a non-communicative process which discourages further interaction.
41815623
Looking for Arbitrage or Term Structures in Frictional Markets
In this paper we consider a frictional market with finitely many securities and finite and discrete future times. The frictions under consideration include fixed and proportional transaction costs, bid-ask spreads, and taxes. In such a market, we find that whether there exists an arbitrage opportunity does not dependent on the fixed transaction costs. Under a reasonable assumption, the no-arbitrage is equivalent to the condition that the optimal value of some linear programming problem is zero, and to the existence of a so-called consistent term structure. These results permit us to identify and to find arbitrage and consistent term structures in polynomial time. Two linear programming problems are proposed, each of which can identify and find the arbitrage opportunity or the consistent term structure if either exists.
27124087
An Autonomous Sensor for 3D Reconstruction
We describe an automated approach to the reconstruction of 3D interiors from laser range data and digital images. This is achieved using a scanning laser rangefinder and digital camera that are mounted on an autonomous mobile platform known as the AEST. The objective is to reproduce complete interiors that are accurate enough for surveying, virtual studio and Augmented Reality applications. The AEST selects and navigates to a series of capture points to progressively reconstruct a 3D textured model to the required degree of accuracy. Navigation and structural information is used to register the data from each new capture point relative to the partial model. The user interface is a web browser with a radio link to the AEST. Results can be viewed in a VRML window as they are obtained. The AEST has been developed in EU-ACTS project RESOLV.