<p> Starting from Edward Edinger's portrayal of Jung's process of individuation as the creation of consciousness, this dissertation asks in what ways the creation of artificial intelligence (AI) can be seen as the recreation of consciousness, and specifically whether the AI's maturation from nonconsciousness to something equivalent to consciousness will have an analogous effect on humanity's development out of unconsciousness toward a greater state of cognitive freedom. Taking a functional perspective, this dissertation asks whether B. F. Skinner's metaphor of the human psyche as a black box, normally seen as expressing the belief that humans are mechanistic and determined, is in fact an attempt to insulate the most intimate of human experiences (the soul) from the intrusive gaze of the scientific mindset. Juxtaposing this black box metaphor with two other metaphors&mdash;that of the box that holds Schrodinger's cat and that of Pandora's box&mdash;this dissertation asks whether the presence of an entirely constructed entity that displays all the signs of soul will cause the artificially intelligent entity to act as a mirror, reflecting humanity's gaze past our inner defenses, to an inner absence where a metaphysical soul was once surmised to be. Although such a change in self-image would initially entail an apparent loss of meaning, this dissertation notes that such a lacuna of meaning is already growing in society and concludes that the loss of this concept would eventually result in a new concept of self that would represent an important milestone for the collective individuation of the species.</p>

This thesis presents a development environment for Design Expert Systems that features a new language where the roles of knowledge and the way it is brought to bear are predefined by the solution method. / The language also allows knowledge to be organized into classes of objects whose dynamic creation corresponds to the structure of the components to be configured. This approach, combined with a specialized control strategy for Design problems, helps in narrowing the representation gap between the expert's knowledge and the system's knowledge. / The environment assists knowledge acquisition by means of a structured editor and by static and dynamic analyses for validation; it is implemented on a micro-computer and includes an internal Production System to execute the Expert Systems that are generated. Two applications to Engineering Design are used to demonstrate the environment's capabilities.

A robotic workcell is a collection of robots, sensors, and other industrial equipment grouped in a cooperative environment to perform various complex tasks. Due to their distributed nature however, the control and programming of robotic workcells is often a difficult task, for which dedicated environments have to be designed and built. / Simulation, especially graphic simulation, can greatly contribute to the development of programs for such integrated robotic applications: the simulator emulates the behavior of the workcell on a computer display, and allows the programmer to test and debug programs without requiring an immediate access to the physical equipment. / This thesis presents the design of a graphic simulator for robotic workcell applications. The simulator is based on SAGE/WRAP, an environment for the programming and run-time control of robotic workcells. Given a WRAP program as input, the simulator displays a top-view of the workcell and animates graphically the execution of the program; the coordination and the flow of operations within the workcell being shown, the programmer can quickly assess the overall validity of the program. / The simulator was developed in C under the X Window System, and is currently implemented as a standalone software; the design was made flexible and modular, to facilitate an eventual integration to the WRAP environment.

Planning under uncertainty is an increasingly important research field, and it is clear that the design of robust and scalable algorithms which consider uncertainty is key to the development of effective autonomous and semi-autonomous systems. Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) offer a powerful mathematical framework for making optimal action choices in noisy and/or uncertain environments. However, integration of the POMDP model with real world applications has been slow due to the high computation cost of exact approaches to POMDP planning. / In recent years, point-based POMDP solvers have emerged as efficient methods for providing approximate solutions by planning over a small subset of the belief space. This thesis first provides a survey on many of the proposed point-based POMDP solvers. We then conduct an empirical analysis on the key components of point-based methods, the belief collection and belief updating processes. This is an important contribution, as previous publications on point-based methods have only compared full algorithms, without comparing the underlying processes. As well, we verify the effect of a variety of parameters and optimizations that could be used within a point-based solver. Experiments are conducted on a variety of POMDP environments. / L'importance grandissante de la recherche dans le domaine de la planification sous incertitude est signe que l'élaboration d'algorithmes robustes et extensibles qui gèrent l'incertitude est un élément clé dans le développement de systèmes autonomes et semi-autonomes efficaces. Les processus de décision markoviens partiellement observables (POMDP) constituent une puissante fondation mathématique pour le choix d'actions optimales dans un environnement incertain. Il a cependant été difficile d'incorporer les POMDPs à des applications réelles, à cause de leur coût de calcul élevé lorsqu'une solution exacte est requise. / Récemment, les approches de résolution de POMDPs dites par points, qui planifient sur un petit sous-ensemble de l'état des croyance, se sont révélées être efficaces pour obtenir des solutions approximatives. Le présent m´emoire propose tout d'abord une revue de plusieurs approches par points. Par la suite, une analyse empirique des composantes primordiales des approches par points, de la collecte d'observations, ainsi que du processus de mise à jour de l'état des croyance, est proposée. De plus, les effets de différents paramètres et optimisations liés aux approches par points sont vérifiés. Des expériences sont conduites avec une variété d'environnements de type POMDP.

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1976. / Bibliography: leaves 153-169. / Microfiche. / ix, 169 leaves ill

Typescript. / Bibliography: [197]-206. / x, 206 l illus., graphs, tables

Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) information plays a key role in the planning for, and conduct of all military operation. ISR information can be collected from a number of sources such as surveillance aircraft, satellites, human intelligence collectors etc. Once ISR information is collected it is the responsibility of the 'ISR processing system' to collate the information, conduct analysis and processing on the information items in a way that adds value to the information and finally, to move the information items to ISR end-users who are able to make use of the information. Initially, this thesis provides a detailed examination of the information 'need', of ISR end-users, that is fulfilled by an ISR processing system and proposes a technique for examining the way in which that need changes across the broad spectrum of military operations. The environment in which an ISR processing system resides is also examined and a set of attributes are proposed for describing those aspects of the environment which potentially affect the operation of a processing system. In recent times, two distinctly different approaches to the conduct of ISR processing have gained significant attention: Task, Process, Exploit, Disseminate (TPED) and Task, Post Process, Use (TPPU). However, in practice, hybrid ISR processing systems may be built which exhibit some characteristics of both of these approaches. The comparative strengths and weaknesses of these approaches are examined and a framework is proposed for matching the information needs of end-users and the system's operating environment to the most suitable configuration of a hybrid processing system. / Thesis (MEng(SystemsEng))--University of South Australia, 2006.

Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 1997

Much has been written in the popular media about the importance of emotional intelligence (EI) in determining exceptional leadership. The present research contributes to the academic literature by studying the direct and indirect effects of leader EI on a number of organisational variables. Study 1 was the main focus of the research and progressed in three stages. The first involved the development of a measurement model of an employee survey. Respondents reported on their leaders' EI and transformational leadership (TL), and self reported on their own attitudes and intentions. Drawing on exploratory (n = 218) and confirmatory factor analysis (n = 230) results, an eight dimensional model was supported. The emergent factors consisted of EI-perception, EI-management, TL-inspiring influence, TL-concern/behaviour, change cynicism and intention to leave. Secondly, a structural model of relationships between the emergent factors was examined then compared to alternative models (n = 448). The best-fitting model showed that leader EI was associated with employees' intentions to leave and change cynicism via TL and trust. Significant relationships between both EI variables and each TL factor were evidenced. At both stages, the results were successfully cross-validated in a sample from a different organisation (n = 339) and controlled for dispositional trust levels and geographic location. Third, the structural relationships were shown to hold longitudinally over a twelve months (n = 210). Study 2 aimed to assess the effects of leader EI from an ability perspective by matching leader scores on EI tests with employee survey responses. Total leader scores on the AO-MEIS (n = 102) and MSCEIT V2 (n = 102) were not significantly correlated with employee perceptions of leader EI. Total scores on both EI tests were significantly yet weakly related to transformational leadership ratings. At the total-test level, there were no significant relationships between leader EI and trust in manager, trust in organisation, change cynicism or intention to leave. At the branch level, leader scores on MSCEIT-emotion perception were positively associated with employees' trust in both the manager and organisation. Leader MSCEIT-emotion management scores were also related to lower change cynicism. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1241864 / Thesis (Ph.D.)-- University of Adelaide, Adelaide Graduate School of Business, 2006.

Bibliography: leaves 215-232. / xvi, 313 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology, 2000?