Univ., Diss. u.d.T.: Günter, Manuel: Management of multi provider Internet services with software agents--Bern, 2001.

The ability to change one's beliefs in a rational manner is one of many facets of the abilities of an intelligent agent. Central to any investigation of belief change is the notion of an epistemic state. This dissertation is mainly concerned with three issues involving epistemic states: 1. How should an epistemic state be represented? 2. How does an agent use an epistemic state to perform belief change? 3. How does an agent arrive at a particular epistemic state? With regard to the first question, note that there are many different methods for constructing belief change operations. We argue that semantic constructions involving ordered pairs, each consisting of a set of beliefs and an ordering on the set of "possible worlds" (or equivalently, on the set of basic independent bits of information) are, in an important sense, more fundamental. Our answer to the second question provides indirect support for the use of semantic structures. We show how well-known belief change operations and related structures can be modelled semantically. Furthermore, we introduce new forms of belief change related operations and structures which are all defined, and motivated, in terms of such semantic representational formalisms. These include a framework for unifying belief revision and nonmonotonic reasoning, new versions of entrenchment orderings on beliefs, novel approaches to withdrawal operations, and an expanded view of iterated belief change. The third question is. one which has not received much attention in the belief change literature. We propose to extract extra-logical information from the formal representation of an agent's set of beliefs, which can then be used in the construction of epistemic state. his proposal is just a first approximation, although it seems to have the potential for developing into a full-fledged theory. / Computing / D.Phil.(Computer Science)

Nova Friburgo é uma cidade turística brasileira, a qual atrai diversos tipos de visitantes. Esta dissertação descreve um sistema inteligente que ficará instalado em um centro de informações turísticas para auxílio daqueles que necessitam localizar as principais atrações da cidade. Atualmente, existe uma aplicação multimídia comum de suporte ao turismo, mas esta sendo expandida para incluir uma base de conhecimento com perfis de turistas. Dependendo dos caminhos percorridos pelo usuário durante sua consulta, o sistema seleciona um perfil, que reflete o melhor possível às opções escolhidas. De acordo com o perfil selecionado, o sistema poderá sugerir vários roteiros e destinos baseados nos possíveis interesses do turista, fornecendo inclusive, informações sobre hotéis e restaurantes do seu interesse. A base de conhecimento, que fornece este tipo de inferência, esta desenvolvida em Visual C++. / Nova Friburgo is a Brazilian tourist city, which attracts different types of visitors. This dissertation describes an intelligent system to be installed at a tourist information center for assisting those who need directions to this citys major attractions. Currently, there is an ordinary multimedia application for tourism support but such system is being expanded to include a knowledge base of profiles of tourists. On the base of the tracks or paths a user has already performed during his/her consultation, the system selects the profile, which most closely reflects the options taken. According to this selected profile, the system is expected to suggest various routes and destinations based on the tourists possible interests, in addition to provide information on hotels and restaurants he/she will likely be interested in. The knowledge base, which provides this type of inference, is being developed in Visual C++.

Este estudo apresenta resultados experimentais sobre a escalabilidade da formação de estruturas de coalizão para grafos reais que passam de 5 mil vértices. Um algoritmo heurístico simples denominado Algoritmo de Propagação para Formação de Estrutura de Coalizão (APFEC) com garantias experimentais é apresentado e sondado, com base em uma versão de propagação balanceada de rótulos para detecção de comunidades em grafos muito grandes. Os limites da proposta são avaliados, comparando-o com o estado-da-arte em relação aos algoritmos exatos (ODP-IP - A junção do algoritmo IP, baseado em representação de partições de inteiros, e ODP, programação dinâmica ótima) e heurístico (CFSS - Formação de coligação para grafos esparsos). Os experimentos são executados com um conjunto de 14 grafos do mundo real, e os resultados mostram que esta abordagem consegue calcular estruturas de coalizão de maneira rápida, mesmo na presença das limitações discutidas. Finalmente, os resultados preliminares são analisados considerando a influência da habilidade e a inter-relação entre os agentes na avaliação das coalizões. / This study presents experimental results on the scalability of the coalition’s structures formation for real graphs that go from 5 thousand vertices. A simple heuristic algorithm called Propagation Algorithm for Coalition Structure Formation (APFEC in Portuguese) with experimental guarantees is presented and probed, based on a balanced label propagation version for detection of communities in very large graphs. The limits of the proposal are evaluated, comparing it with the state-of-the-art in relation to the exact algorithms (ODP-IP - The IP algorithm, based on representation of integer partitions, and ODP, optimal dynamic programming) and heuristic (CFSS - Coalition Formation for Sparse Synergies). The experiments are performed with a set of 14 real-world graphs, and the results show that this approach can calculate coalition structures quickly, even in the presence of the limitations discussed. Finally, the preliminary results are analyzed considering the influence of the ability and the interrelation between the agents in the evaluation of the coalitions.

Nova Friburgo é uma cidade turística brasileira, a qual atrai diversos tipos de visitantes. Esta dissertação descreve um sistema inteligente que ficará instalado em um centro de informações turísticas para auxílio daqueles que necessitam localizar as principais atrações da cidade. Atualmente, existe uma aplicação multimídia comum de suporte ao turismo, mas esta sendo expandida para incluir uma base de conhecimento com perfis de turistas. Dependendo dos caminhos percorridos pelo usuário durante sua consulta, o sistema seleciona um perfil, que reflete o melhor possível às opções escolhidas. De acordo com o perfil selecionado, o sistema poderá sugerir vários roteiros e destinos baseados nos possíveis interesses do turista, fornecendo inclusive, informações sobre hotéis e restaurantes do seu interesse. A base de conhecimento, que fornece este tipo de inferência, esta desenvolvida em Visual C++. / Nova Friburgo is a Brazilian tourist city, which attracts different types of visitors. This dissertation describes an intelligent system to be installed at a tourist information center for assisting those who need directions to this citys major attractions. Currently, there is an ordinary multimedia application for tourism support but such system is being expanded to include a knowledge base of profiles of tourists. On the base of the tracks or paths a user has already performed during his/her consultation, the system selects the profile, which most closely reflects the options taken. According to this selected profile, the system is expected to suggest various routes and destinations based on the tourists possible interests, in addition to provide information on hotels and restaurants he/she will likely be interested in. The knowledge base, which provides this type of inference, is being developed in Visual C++.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The Pedestrian Automatic Emergency Braking System (PAEB) can utilize on-board sensors to detect pedestrians and take safety related actions. However, PAEB system only benefits the individual vehicle and the pedestrians detected by its PAEB. Additionally, due to the range limitations of PAEB sensors and speed limitations of sensory data processing, PAEB system often cannot detect or do not have sufficient time to respond to a potential crash with pedestrians. For further improving pedestrian safety, we proposed the idea for integrating the complimentary capabilities of V2V and PAEB (V2V-PAEB), which allows the vehicles to share the information of pedestrians detected by PAEB system in the V2V network. So a V2V-PAEB enabled vehicle uses not only its on-board sensors of the PAEB system, but also the received V2V messages from other vehicles to detect potential collisions with pedestrians and make better safety related decisions. In this thesis, we discussed the architecture and the information processing stages of the V2V-PAEB system. In addition, a comprehensive Matlab/Simulink based simulation model of the V2V-PAEB system is also developed in PreScan simulation environment. The simulation result shows that this simulation model works properly and the V2V-PAEB system can improve pedestrian safety significantly.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Recent technological applications have made the life of people too much dependent on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and its applications. Understanding basic level science is a must in order to use and contribute to this technological revolution. Science education in middle and high school levels however depends heavily on visual representations such as models, diagrams, figures, animations and presentations etc. This leaves visually impaired students with very few options to learn science and secure a career in STEM related areas. Recent experiments have shown that small aural clues called Audemes are helpful in understanding and memorization of science concepts among visually impaired students. Audemes are non-verbal sound translations of a science concept. In order to facilitate science concepts as Audemes, for visually impaired students, this thesis presents an automatic system for audeme generation from STEM textbooks. This thesis describes the systematic application of multiple Natural Language Processing tools and techniques, such as dependency parser, POS tagger, Information Retrieval algorithm, Semantic mapping of aural words, machine learning etc., to transform the science concept into a combination of atomic-sounds, thus forming an audeme. We present a rule based classification method for all STEM related concepts. This work also presents a novel way of mapping and extracting most related sounds for the words being used in textbook. Additionally, machine learning methods are used in the system to guarantee the customization of output according to a user's perception. The system being presented is robust, scalable, fully automatic and dynamically adaptable for audeme generation.