Real-time integrated model for visual perception and fuzzy control

Current state-of-the-art security systems incorporate ‘passive’ and/or ‘human’ elements, the effectiveness of which can only be measured by their ability to ‘deter’ intruders. However, rapidly changing economic and cultural conditions have weakened the strengths associated with such systems. In the not too distant future, the need for an ‘active’ security system will become necessary in order to reduce the onslaught of crime.

This paper presents a conceptual basis for the incorporation of artificial intelligence concepts in the design and implementation of ‘active’ security systems. Specifically, the paper discusses issues pertaining to a real-time model for visual perception and tracking of possible intruders.     

Knowledge-based analysis of carotid angiograms

The project described is concerned with the development of a practical system for interpreting carotid angiograms. The general requirements of such a system are identified and some of the design considerations are discussed. The analysis strategies and types of knowledge used by an expert in recognizing and naming vessels and categorizing abnormalities on a single-plane angiogram are described- Two distinct types of knowledge are identified: ‘facts’ knowledge which is drawn from various areas of science, and ‘strategy’ knowledge which determines how the facts should be used. It is suggested that confidence parameters should be associated with each type of knowledge and these should be used in the control of the analysis of an angiogram. The ‘facts’ and ‘strategy’ knowledge bases have a hierarchical structure which, if exploited, would enable the system to be easily adapted for use in other application areas.     

Circularly orthogonal moments for geometrically robust image watermarking

Circularly orthogonal moments, such as Zernike moments (ZMs) and pseudo-Zernike moments (PZMs), have attracted attention due to their invariance properties. However, we find that for digital images, the invariance properties of some ZMs/PZMs are not perfectly valid. This is significant for applications of ZMs/PZMs. By distinguishing between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ZMs/PZMs in terms of their invariance properties, we design image watermarks with ‘good’ ZMs/PZMs to achieve watermark's robustness to geometric distortions, which has been considered a crucial and difficult issue in the research of digital watermarking. Simulation results show that the embedded information can be decoded at low error rates, robust against image rotation, scaling, flipping, as well as a variety of other common manipulations such as lossy compression, additive noise and lowpass filtering.     

Simple association rules (SAR) and the SAR-based rule discovery

Association rule mining is one of the most important fields in data mining and knowledge discovery in databases. Rules explosion is a problem of concern, as conventional mining algorithms often produce too many rules for decision makers to digest. Instead, this paper concentrates on a smaller set of rules, namely, a set of simple association rules each with its consequent containing only a single attribute. Such a rule set can be used to derive all other association rules, meaning that the original rule set based on conventional algorithms can be ‘recovered’ from the simple rules without any information loss. The number of simple rules is much less than the number of all rules. Moreover, corresponding algorithms are developed such that certain forms of rules (e.g. ‘P?’ or ‘?Q’) can be generated in a more efficient manner based on simple rules.     

Detailed design of reinforced concrete buildings using logic programming

A procedure is proposed leading to an optimal detailed design of reinforced concrete members. The general scheme followed is that of a multi-criterion design optimization. The method synthesizes the information from the cross-sectional level, to the member level and finally, to a group of members where the detailed design of the whole group is decided. At the cross-sectional level, the required reinforcement in cm² is converted into reinforcing bars of all possible diameters. At the member and/or group of members level, a number of lists that contain different design scenarios are generated. The method of objective weighting is applied to a multi-criterion objective function, which represents a compromise of the ‘minimum weight’, ‘maximum uniformity’ and ‘minimum number of reinforcing bars’ criteria. By varying the weighting factors, it is possible to generate the Pareto optimal set of the problem. The performance of the system is illustrated with a number of examples. The same building is designed using different weighting factors in the multi-criterion objective. The variation of the detailed designs is discussed and certain values for the weighting factors are recommended.     

Defining a taxonomy of output modalities from an HCI perspective

The paper addresses an issue that must be resolved to produce a scientifically sound and practically useful reference model for intelligent multimedia presentation systems (IMP systems), namely that of providing, from the point of view of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), a systematic understanding of the types of output information to be presented by IMP systems. The term ‘medium’, as it is used in the context of multimedia systems, is too coarse-grained for distinguishing between different types of output information. The paper introduces the notion of (representational) ‘modalities’ to enable sufficiently fine-grained distinctions to be made. For the term itself to be meaningful, ‘multimodal’ presentations must be composed of unimodal representations. In the approach presented, unimodal representations are defined from a small number of basic properties whose combinations specify the ‘generic’ level of a taxonomy of unimodal output modalities. Additional basic property distinctions serve to generate the more fine-grained ‘atomic’ and ‘sub-atomic’ levels in a hierarchical fashion. The taxonomy is set up with the aim of satisfying four basic requirements, viz. completeness, orthogonality, relevance and intuitiveness. A concluding discussion illustrates the practical use of the taxonomy.     

Designing for operations: Towards a sociotechnical systems and cognitive engineering approach to concurrent engineering

In the practice of concurrent engineering, the factors that are considered early in the product design process include manufacturability, assembly, and cost. A set of issues that are not typically considered revolve around the operational requirements for human workers in the manufacturing system. What tasks will human workers accomplish? How will these tasks be organized and coordinated? What information and resources need to be shared? Will the workers have a coherent set of job responsibilities? How should the manufacturing environment be designed to support effective work practices? How can a manufacturing process be designed that also informs organizational structure and takes into account the quality of working life?

The field of sociotechnical systems theory (STS) focuses on exactly these kinds of issues. Rather than subscribing to the usual view of technological determinism — that a complex human-machine system is designed solely with respect to optimization of technical criteria — the goal of STS is to jointly optimize both human and technological considerations in system design and operation. The spirit of STS has much in common with recent work in cognitive systems engineering that advocates the design of joint cognitive systems in which machines serve as flexible, context-sensitive resources for human problem solving. Furthermore, a focus on design teams necessitates the study of the relationship between group work and technology as studied in the field of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). This paper briefly reviews current research in sociotechnical systems theory, computer-supported cooperative work, and cognitive systems engineering and proposes a framework for integrating operational concerns into the concurrent engineering process. Relevance to industry

To be competitive, organizations need to effectively manage human and technological resources. A key issue is the nature of the information and technological infrastructure that both enables and supports ‘best practice’ across the enterprise. This paper describes such an approach in the context of the ‘operational enterprise’ and provides both a philosophical stance as well as specific examples of software support.     

The challenge of interface design for communication theory: from interaction metaphor to contexts of discovery

Those who study interface design still have not resolved the issue of whether the computer is a passive medium or a communicative participant with which we can hope to ‘engage in conversation’. The authors think that this controversy reflects an inadequate philosophy of interface design, which cannot account for what purpose a medium serves in a human communication. In a short history of humancomputer interface research, we trace the development of this philosophy through three generations of computer interface technology and find that its failure lies in the conceptual limitations of its driving concept of interaction.

Just as the concept of interaction provided the transition from the past (command-line interface) to the present (desktop metaphor interface), perhaps, the concept of engagement can provide the transition from our present understanding of the ‘interactive desktop’ interface to multimedia's ‘contexts of discovery’.

The development of multimedia gives interface designers the ultimate challenge to develop interface technology that will simulate human-to-human communication. Should human communication theory be able to treat the conceptual deficiencies of interface design philosophy? The authors find fundamental challenges here and briefly indicate what Charles S. Peirce's semiotic might offer as an age-old remedy.     

Consumer-oriented versus technology-oriented systems: designing services for people

Current computer systems providing consumer services seem to be designed primarily on ‘technology-oriented’ thinking, based on the ‘efficiency’ and the operating methods of the computer. To be of benefit to a wider variety of consumers, the system design may have to reflect a more ‘consumer-oriented’ approach, based on factors such as the needs, preferences, skills and knowledge of the user. This article demonstrates the differences between user evaluations of two computer systems designed to help in house-hunting, modelled on (a) consumer-oriented, and (b) technology-oriented approaches. Although particularly relevant to consumer systems, the article may have important implications for consumer and public services in general.     

The ergonomics of information presentation

This article is restricted to the human aspects of information presentation. Clearly any practical problem of display design must be solved in the context of current instrumentation and the final choice may well be dominated by relative availability and cost. It could be argued that ergonomics as a technology distinct from the human sciences must incorporate these wider factors but it seems justifiable, for the present purpose, to use the term ergonomics to signify an approach to information presentation based entirely on the limitations and advantages of the human operator.

This article is based on a keynote address to the IEE Conference on ‘Display’ at Loughborough University, 7–10 September 1971.     

The role of modeling in computational science education

Modeling and simulation skills are two core competences of computational science and thus should be a central part of any curriculum. While there is a well-founded methodology for the design of simulation algorithms today the teaching of modeling skills carries some intrinsic problems. The reason is that modeling is still partly an art and partly a science. As an important consequence for university education, the concepts for teaching modeling must be quite different from those for teaching simulation algorithms. Experiences made with the courses on ‘Modeling and Simulation’ at the University of Siegen are summarized and some general concepts for the teaching of modeling skills are presented. In particular, three practical approaches to modeling education are discussed with several examples.     

Effective development, documentation, and distribution of computer programs

A common objective of government-funded technology efforts is to develop computer programs for analysis of weapon systems components such as a shell in a missile. It is often stipulated that the programs be made available to all organizations serving government needs and, in some cases, to anyone. However, there is a big difference between a program that is ‘available’ and one that can actually be used in a relatively short period of time by an organization other than the originator's. That is, the transferability of computer programs is not necessarily high. The objective of this paper is to develop guidelines for making computer programs more readily transferable than is common at present. The guidelines naturally fall into three categories: (1) original development or writing of a program; (2) documentation of program usage and characteristics in the form of a user's manual; and (3) the mechanics of distributing a program to other organizations. If the guidelines are not observed, significant pitfalls that are tremendous ‘effort drains’ must be expected. Adherance to the guidelines, on the other hand, should enable government agencies and contractors, as well as many other organizations, to minimize the effort required to adopt and make effective use of almost any computer program.     

Locating systems at work: implications for the development of active badge applications

The paper reports findings from a sociological examination of the use of ‘active badge’ location information systems in two research laboratories. The use, distribution and control of location information is examined in reference to the social roles individuals have in what will be called the ‘moral order’ of workplaces. Suggestions for subsequent versions of location systems are made, and the use of sociological methods in design remarked.     

The constituents of business interaction––generic layered patterns

In order to perform business modelling as apart of information systems development, there is a need for frameworks and methods. The paper proposes a framework for business interaction based on a language/action perspective. The framework is an architecture of five generic layers. The first layer concept is ‘business act’, which functions as the basic unit of analysis. The following four layer concepts are ‘action pair’, ‘exchange’, ‘business transaction’, and ‘transaction group’. The framework is inspired by a similar framework constructed by Weigand et al. The paper makes a critical examination of this framework as a basis for the proposed framework.     

The Internet: global information superhighway for the future

The information revolution is bringing people of different backgrounds from around the world into a global information superhighway. The Internet provides a global platform connecting thousands of networks around the world. There is a variety of information available on the Internet for the users. It has been considered as a forum for users to share worldwide information resources. The resources are so vast that many of us really cannot grasp or understand the Internet fully. It has become a ‘global information library’ which allows the users to participate in the group discussion, search for any information, start any discussion with others and so on. It can be considered as a hybrid environment of postal services, citizen's band radio, libraries and neighborhood community centers where we (‘we’ is mainly used in this paper in its generic form) can spend time with our friends (‘our’ is also mainly used generically). Internet users (Internauts) share jokes, gossip in on-line conferences and join special groups to keep abreast of their specific interests. The main objective of this tutorial is to discuss various services on the Internet, their implementations, various Internet tools, and interconnection to the Internet. Other important issues like the Internet addressing, domain name system, IP addressing, etc. are discussed in detail in order to understand some design concepts. A brief list of the different types of browsers for different platforms is given. A discussion on future of the Internet is given via different advances and tools defined to provide security, interconnectivity and other related issues.     

Analysing and modelling train driver performance

Arguments for the importance of contextual factors in understanding human performance have been made extremely persuasively in the context of the process control industries. This paper puts these arguments into the context of the train driving task, drawing on an extensive analysis of driver performance with the Automatic Warning System (AWS). The paper summarises a number of constructs from applied psychological research thought to be important in understanding train driver performance. A ‘situational model’ is offered as a framework for investigating driver performance. The model emphasises the importance of understanding the state of driver cognition at a specific time (‘Now’) in a specific situation and a specific context.     

Addition and removal of information for a knowledge base with incomplete information

A knowledge base containing incomplete information in the form of disjunctions and negative information shows difficulties regarding the update operators. In this paper simple and straightforward definitions are given for an ‘adding’ operator (‘+’) and a ‘removing’ operator (‘−’) using Hebrand models.     

The new HCI? navigation of information space

When we use the term ‘human–computer interaction’ (HCI), the image that is conjured up is of a person sitting at a visual display unit staring in at the world of ‘information’; the person is very much outside the space of information. But when we think of other activities such as going shopping, having a meeting or driving across town, we do not think of the person as outside this space. On the contrary, we see the person as inside a space of activities, surrounded by, and interacting with, assorted artefacts and people. Navigation of Information Space is an alternative conceptualisation of HCI that sees people as existing inside information spaces. Looking at HCI in this way means looking at HCI design as the creation of information spaces. This paper explores these ideas in more detail, arguing that Navigation of Information Space is not just a metaphor for HCI; it is a ‘paradigm shift’. The paper illustrates how Semiotics has informed this conception and discusses why such a paradigm shift is needed.     

Justifying reliability claims for a fault-detecting parallel architecture

This paper describes ‘Goal Structuring Notation’ (GSN), a graphical notation that can be used to structure and present an argument justifying some aspect of system performance. The design of a fault-detecting processor pair is examined to determine the extent to which it is indeed ‘fault-detecting’. It is argued that for complex systems, difficulties with assessment arise not so much from a lack of analysis techniques, but from the need to integrate the results from many diverse analyses into a coherent and compelling argument. It is suggested that GSN provides a framework in which such an argument can be made.