Detecting and resolving conflicts among cooperating human and machine-based design agents

The design of complex artifacts is fundamentally a cooperative process, with the detection and resolution of conflicts between design agents playing a central role. Effective tools for supporting the conflict management process, however, are still lacking. These tools, in general, do not support task-level interaction or encode significant expertise about how to detect and resolve conflicts. This paper described an implemented computer-based system called DCSS (the Design Collaboration Support System) for supporting conflict detection and resolution among cooperating human and machine-based design agents that avoid these limitations. Design agents describe their design actions and rationale to DCSS in terms of a task-level model of the cooperative design process; human designers use a direct-manipulation graphical interface for this purpose. DCSS uses a body of domain-independent expertise to help the agents detect and resolve conflicts among them. The system has been used successfully by human designers to design Local Area Networks in cooperation with other human and machine-based designers. This paper described DCSSs underlying model and implementation, gives examples of its operation, and evaluates its strengths, weaknesses and potential for future growth.     

Distributed conflict resolution among cooperating expert systems

Abstract: Cooperating experts approach attempts to integrate and coordinate the activities of multiple specialised problem solvers that come together to solve complex tasks such as design, medical diagnosis, business management and so on. Due to the different goals, knowledge and viewpoints of agents, conflicts may arise at any phase of the problem-solving process. Managing diverse expertise requires well-organised models of conflict resolution. In this paper, a model for cooperating experts is described which openly supports multi-agent conflict detection and resolution. The model is based on the idea that each agent has its own conflict knowledge which is separated from its domain level knowledge, and each agent has its own conflict resolution knowledge which is not accessible and known by others. Furthermore, there are no globally known conflict resolution strategies. Each agent involved in a conflict chooses a resolution scheme according to its self interest. The model is described by using an example in the domain of office design and it is compared with other systems.     

协同设计中的冲突体系及解决方法研究

对冲突在协同设计中所处的时期、层次及冲突属性三个维度进行了分析，并据此构建了一个协同设计冲突体系，在设计理念、应用、系统三个层次上对冲突的表现和导致的后果进行了说明。指出了冲突之间的关系在冲突解决问题上的重要性，在此基础上给出了一个面向冲突体系的冲突解决策略，这一策略能够更好地应对协同设计中冲突的复杂性和动态性，最后给出了关键算法的实现。     

协同设计中多主体冲突问题的研究

从设计流程和体系结构的角度，对多主体冲突的产生、预防、检测与解决机制进行了系统的研究，提出了一个解决冲突问题的三层结构模型和各层相应的冲突解决策略，从而在控制级及领域级都对冲突进行了有效的避免和控制，该模型及方法在摩托车协同概念设计系统中得到了实现，为智能设计和协同设计奠定了基础。     

Attention,polychronicity, and expertise in prospective memory performance: Programmers' vulnerability to habit intrusion error in multitasking

The paper examines prospective memory (ProM) in programmer multitasking and reports administration of a naturalistic atypical action. The study emphasizes on how attention, time orientation, and expertise affect ProM performance in multitasking among a group of computer science and engineering students (N=108). The results suggest that attention play a crucial role in multitasking and ProM performance with respect to whether or not a word display requires more attention to be devoted in monitoring and identifying it for an appropriate action. Polychrons exhibit lesser degree of ProM performance failure than monochrons whereas expertise does not have an effect. Finally, results show that out of overall ProM performance failure, habit intrusion errors comprise of 16.22% occurring 1.75 times in every 10 valid click responses of ProM task. Moreover, experts demonstrate a superior performance over novices in programming.     

Design and validation of a knowledge-based system for screeningproduct innovations

The authors' research goal is to develop and validate an expert system that screens innovations prior to commercialization. This is an important research issue because business corporations are highly dependent on innovations for their growth and profitability, yet most corporations suffer from a high rate of new product failure. Few of the existing decision support systems have alleviated this problem, partly because of their inability to deal with nonmathematical (logical) relationships. An expert system for new product planning could save organizations tremendous amounts of resources (such as dollars, time and scientific talent) spent on product failures. The design of the proposed knowledge-based system is built upon the authors' earlier work in this area. The authors have addressed several critical research issues in the development of such a system: choice of the appropriate sources of knowledge, resolution of conflict among human experts chosen for knowledge acquisition, use of knowledge programming techniques that can accommodate uncertainty, and multiple methods of system validation. The research makes several contributions to marketing theory and practice. Most notably, the development of such systems contributes to effective product planning in organizations and enhances resource efficiency. Further, it generates guidelines for capturing and using expertise in highly unstructured decision-making situations such as product management     

Influence diagrams and multiple experts: a preliminary model

Abstract: This paper examines the problem of eliciting expertise from multiple experts without using group techniques and then using that expertise in a meaningful manner. The solution proposed preserves the input of the experts in two problem areas: (1) where there is disagreement among the experts and (2) where there is unequal weighting of the experts. The model proposed has the benefit of robustness and of retaining the reliability and validity of the underlying expertise.     

Reactive navigation of multiple moving agents by collaborative resolution of conflicts

In navigation that involves several moving agents or robots that are not in possession of each other's plans, a scheme for resolution of collision conflicts between them becomes mandatory. A resolution scheme is proposed in this paper specifically for the case where it is not feasible to have a priori the plans and locations of all other robots, robots can broadcast information between one another only within a specified communication distance, and a robot is restricted in its ability to react to collision conflicts that occur outside of a specified time interval called the reaction time interval. Collision conflicts are resolved through velocity control by a search operation in the robot's velocity space. The existence of a cooperative phase in conflict resolution is indicated by a failure of the search operation to find velocities in the individual velocity space of the respective robots involved in the conflict. A scheme for cooperative resolution of conflicts is modeled as a search in the joint velocity space of the robots involved in conflict when the search in the individual space yields a failure. The scheme for cooperative resolution may further involve modifying the states of robots not involved in any conflict. This phenomenon is characterized as the propagation phase where cooperation spreads to robots not directly involved in the conflict. Apart from presenting the methodology for the resolution of conflicts at various levels (individual, cooperative, and propagation), the paper also formally establishes the existence of the cooperative phase during real‐time navigation of multiple mobile robots. The effect of varying robot parameters on the cooperative phase is presented and the increase in requirement for cooperation with the scaling up of the number of robots in a system is also illustrated. Simulation results involving several mobile robots are presented to indicate the efficacy of the proposed strategy. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

An analysis of expert thinking

Human expertise should be better understood before the users of expert sytems specify the services needed and expected from such systems. An analysis of expert thinking has been developed to assist in this understanding. The analysis is discussed in the paper under three main headings:Specifications: examples are given of the services users obtain from human experts, in the particular domain of petroleum geology. These services indicate general qualities desirable in a human and, by analogy, in a system. The qualities are listed as specifications for expert system design.A theory of expert thinking: how human experts acquire, understand and use their knowledge (particularly with reference to petroleum geology). The theory identifies a number of human, knowledge-handling techniques which could be implemented in a system to meet most of the user's specifications.Human and system expertise: a comparison suggests that, properly designed and suitably applied, an expert system can help its users make well-informed decisions; failing this, the system may prove dangerously misleading and should not be accepted as a substitute for an accountable, human expert.     

The Expertise Effect on Web Accessibility Evaluation Methods

Web accessibility means that disabled people can effectively perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the web. Web accessibility evaluation methods are needed to validate the accessibility of web pages. However, the role of subjectivity and of expertise in such methods is unknown and has not previously been studied. This article investigates the effect of expertise in web accessibility evaluation methods by conducting a Barrier Walkthrough (BW) study with 19 expert and 57 nonexpert judges. The BW method is an evaluation method that can be used to manually assess the accessibility of web pages for different user groups such as motor impaired, low vision, blind, and mobile users.

Our results show that expertise matters, and even though the effect of expertise varies depending on the metric used to measure quality, the level of expertise is an important factor in the quality of accessibility evaluation of web pages. In brief, when pages are evaluated with nonexperts, we observe a drop in validity and reliability. We also observe a negative monotonic relationship between number of judges and reproducibility: more evaluators mean more diverse outputs. After five experts, reproducibility stabilizes, but this is not the case with nonexperts. The ability to detect all the problems increases with the number of judges: With 3 experts all problems can be found, but for such a level 14 nonexperts are needed. Even though our data show that experts rated pages differently, the difference is quite small. Finally, compared to nonexperts, experts spent much less time and the variability among them is smaller, they were significantly more confident, and they rated themselves as being more productive. The article discusses practical implications regarding how BW results should be interpreted, how to recruit evaluators, and what happens when more than one evaluator is hired.

Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Human–Computer Interaction for statistical details and additional measures for this article.     

Involving domain experts in assistive technology research

Teams engaging in assistive technology research should include expertise in the domain of disability itself, in addition to other areas of expertise that are more typical in human–computer interaction (HCI) research, such as computer science and psychology. However, unexpected problems can arise when HCI researchers do not adequately plan the involvement of domain experts in a research project. Although many research teams have included domain experts when designing assistive technologies, there has been little work published on how to best involve these experts in the research process. This paper is a first step towards filling that void. Based on the authors’ own experiences involving domain experts in research, as well as those documented in the literature, five types of domain experts and three broad roles that domain experts can play are identified, and five guidelines for their involvement are presented. This analysis will be useful to anyone in the assistive technology and universal accessibility communities, especially those who are in the early stages of conducting research in this area. It is intended to lay the foundation of best practices for involving domain experts in assistive technology research.     

Development of control mechanisms to support coherency of product model during cooperative design process

Product development became an increasingly collaborative and distributed activity. Collaborative design process gathers experts from different backgrounds and areas for a common objective about product development. An effective exchange support is expected to share and integrate design knowledge avoiding conflicts between designers. The management of heterogeneous product representation is a major step to integrate expert activities. To successfully manage this process, this paper proposes: (1) A research experimental platform for cooperative design in product development processes. (2) A new constraint based model to maintain complex relationships in multi-disciplinary cooperative design. (3) A model differentiation technique, which identifies differences and conflicts between models. (4) A Meta-rule concept, which controls the constraint network in design process, leading to a new notification mechanism to present conflict to all corresponding actors.     

Role of a Common Frame of Reference in Cognitive Cooperation: Sharing Tasks between Agents in Air Traffic Control

This study deals with cognitive cooperation in the context of the design of cooperative computer support for sharing aircraft conflict detection and resolution tasks between human and machine in air traffic control. In order to specify some necessary cooperative capabilities of such a system, we have observed an artificial situation on a simulator where two radar controllers (RCs) had to cooperate for the management of a heavy traffic within a single sector. This paper reports the analysis of the verbal communications between the two RCs recorded during the simulation. The results enabled us to describe the elements of a common frame of reference (COFOR), elaborated and updated by the two RCs, as a crucial cooperative activity in this kind of situation. They also show the role of this COFOR in the implicit detection and resolution of interference between the RCs’ individual activities. Their contribution to design, associated with other investigations and the state of the art, is discussed.     

A novel approach for combination of individual and group decisions based on fuzzy best-worst method

The process of decision-making in an enterprise may either keep the business on track or derail it. Thus, a senior decision maker often use a group of experts as the supportive team to ensure appropriate decisions. The experts often have different expertise level regarding their knowledge, talent, proficiency, and experience. In this study, we first extend the best-worst method based on the linguistic preferences of decision-makers about importance of attributes. These preferences are converted into triangular fuzzy numbers to be utilized in the linear programming model. That is, in contrast with the original best-worst method in which the preferences towards the attributes are crisp, fuzzy preferences are considered in the proposed method to reflect the imprecise comments of experts. Second, we propose a novel group decision making approach based on the fuzzy best-worst method to combine the opinion of senior decision-maker and the opinions of the experts. Indeed, our model helps the senior decision-maker to make a significant trade-off between democratic and autocratic decision-making styles. From sensitivity analyses on two numerical examples, we show that, when there is conflict between senior decision-maker and group of decision-makers, the consistency of group decision-making (democracy) will increase as it tends to individual decision-making (autocracy).     

Cooperation,reliability of socio-technical systems and allocation of function

When (re)designing a work environment, tasks or functions are allocated more or less explicitly among humans and between humans and machines. After a brief review and discussion of issues related to task allocation, we argue that an important aspect to be addressed when (re)designing socio-technical systems is the systematic evaluation of the impact of allocation decisions on the overall reliability of such systems. It is contended that the cooperative dimension of such systems is one of the main elements that contribute to this reliability. This claim leads us to present a conceptual framework for modelling the human contribution to the overall reliability of complex cooperative work systems. The framework is characterized here as a set of notions, mainly regulation and shared context, used to discuss and reason about this role of humans in the error tolerance properties of such systems. These notions are demonstrated with different examples derived from empirical studies of work practices in two complex cooperative work settings (air traffic and nuclear reactor control). We then show how this conceptual framework can be used for the evaluation of allocation decisions and more generally to inform design.     

An institutional analysis of software teams

Modern software is constructed by teams of software developers. The central question that this paper addresses is what policies should be enacted for structuring software teams to enhance cooperative as opposed to self-serving behavior? The contribution of this paper is in viewing software teams as being subject to a set of well-understood collective action problems: there are individual incentives to receive the joint rewards for a team-developed software project without contributing a fair share to its development. In this paper, an institutional analysis perspective is used in presenting a set of theoretical principles and an analytical framework recently developed in game theory, political economy, experimental economics, and natural resource governance for the understanding and resolution of these collective action problems. The principles and analysis framework are applied to an empirical case study of software teamwork within an academic setting. This case study shows, first, how to apply the analytic framework on an actual collective action situation. Second, it demonstrates how the theoretical understandings can be used as a basis to account for outcomes within this setting. And third, it provides an example of a particular institutional arrangement that elicits high levels of cooperation and low levels of free riding within a real-world setting. Understanding the importance of institutions for shaping individual and social behavior within software development teams makes these institutions more amenable to intentional human design.     

一种支持动态任务分配的协同设计方法

协同设计是一种复杂的、由不同领域的专业人员参加的群体活动.介绍了一种多Agent设计系统中的协作方法,提出了支持动态任务分配的公告板机制以及设计过程中的冲突协调方法.公告板模型结合了黑板模型与合同网模型的优点,有效地利用Agent的自主性和协作性,采用分布与集中相结合的方式,克服了在分布式环境下进行动态任务分配时采用黑板模型与合同网模型的不足之处.同时,所提出的冲突预检查及冲突处理的方法可以在设计的早期阶段发现和解决冲突,以避免不必要的资源浪费.     

On optimization of expertise matching with various constraints

This paper studies the problem of expertise matching with various constraints. Expertise matching, which aims to find the alignment between experts and queries, is a common problem in many applications such as conference paper-reviewer assignment, product-reviewer alignment, and product-endorser matching. Most existing methods formalize this problem as an information-retrieval problem and focus on finding a set of experts for each query independently. However, in real-world systems, various constraints are often needed to be considered. For example, in order to review a paper, it is desirable that there is at least one senior reviewer to guide the reviewing process. An important question is: “Can we design a framework to efficiently find the optimal solution for expertise matching under various constraints?” This paper explores such an approach by formulating the expertise matching problem in a constraint-based optimization framework. In the proposed framework, the problem of expertise matching is linked to a convex cost flow problem, which guarantees an optimal solution under various constraints. We also present an online matching algorithm to support incorporating user feedbacks in real time. The proposed approach has been evaluated on two different genres of expertise matching problems, namely conference paper-reviewer assignment and teacher-course assignment. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Based on the proposed method, we have also developed an online system for paper-reviewer suggestions, which has been used for paper-reviewer assignment in a top conference and feedbacks from the conference organizers are very positive.     

A semantic social network-based expert recommender system

This research work presents a framework to build a hybrid expert recommendation system that integrates the characteristics of content-based recommendation algorithms into a social network-based collaborative filtering system. The proposed method aims at improving the accuracy of recommendation prediction by considering the social aspect of experts’ behaviors. For this purpose, content-based profiles of experts are first constructed by crawling online resources. A semantic kernel is built by using the background knowledge derived from Wikipedia repository. The semantic kernel is employed to enrich the experts’ profiles. Experts’ social communities are detected by applying the social network analysis and using factors such as experience, background, knowledge level, and personal preferences. By this way, hidden social relationships can be discovered among individuals. Identifying communities is used for determining a particular member’s value according to the general pattern behavior of the community that the individual belongs to. Representative members of a community are then identified using the eigenvector centrality measure. Finally, a recommendation is made to relate an information item, for which a user is seeking an expert, to the representatives of the most relevant community. Such a semantic social network-based expert recommendation system can provide benefits to both experts and users if one looks at the recommendation from two perspectives. From the user’s perspective, she/he is provided with a group of experts who can help the user with her/his information needs. From the expert’s perspective she/he has been assigned to work on relevant information items that fall under her/his expertise and interests.     

MIRROR: a state-conscious concurrency control protocol for replicated real-time databases

Data replication can help database systems meet the stringent temporal constraints of current real-time applications, especially Web-based directory and electronic commerce services. A prerequisite for realizing the benefits of replication, however, is the development of high-performance concurrency control mechanisms. In this paper, we present managing isolation in replicated real-time object repositories (MIRROR), a concurrency control protocol specifically designed for firm-deadline applications operating on replicated real-time databases. MIRROR augments the classical O2PL concurrency control protocol with a novel state-based real-time conflict resolution mechanism. In this scheme, the choice of conflict resolution method is a dynamic function of the states of the distributed transactions involved in the conflict. A feature of the design is that acquiring the state knowledge does not require inter-site communication or synchronization, nor does it require modifications to the two-phase commit protocol.Using a detailed simulation model, we compare MIRROR's performance against the real-time versions of a representative set of classical replica concurrency control protocols for a range of transaction workloads and system configurations. Our performance studies show that (a) the relative performance characteristics of these protocols in the real-time environment can be significantly different from their performance in a traditional (non-real-time) database system, (b) MIRROR provides the best performance in both fully and partially replicated environments for real-time applications with low to moderate update frequencies, and (c) MIRROR's simple to implement conflict resolution mechanism works almost as well as more sophisticated strategies.