Towards a core ontology for robotics and automation

In this paper, we present the current results of the newly formed IEEE-RAS Working Group, named Ontologies for Robotics and Automation. In particular, we introduce a core ontology that encompasses a set of terms commonly used in Robotics and Automation along with the methodology we have adopted. Our work uses ISO/FDIS 8373 standard developed by the ISO/TC184/SC2 Working Group as a reference. This standard defines, in natural language, some generic terms which are common in Robotics and Automation such as robot, robotic device, etc. Furthermore, we discuss the ontology development process employed along with the problems and decisions taken.     

Natural language understanding based on mental image description language <Emphasis Type=Italic>L</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type=Italic>md</Emphasis></Subscript> and its application to language-centered robot manipulation

The authors have been working on natural language understanding based on the knowledge representation language L _md and its application to robot manipulation by verbal suggestion. The most remarkable feature of L _md is its capability of formalizing spatiotemporal events in good correspondence with human/robotic sensations and actions, which can lead to integrated computation of sensory, motory and conceptual information. This paper describes briefly the process from text to robot action via semantic representation in L _md and the experimental results of robot manipulation driven by verbal suggestion. This work was presented in part at the 13th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 31–February 2, 2008     

Component meets service: what does the mongrel look like?

Computing with services has attracted much attention as a promising approach for developing distributed applications. The approach is often advertised as being superior to distributed component-based software engineering (CBSE), because it provides a higher potential to bridge heterogeneous IT application and infrastructure landscapes. It facilitates cross-institutional cooperation, lets services run over all kinds of ubiquitous communication infrastructure, scales better and simplifies legacy software integration. If this were absolutely true, there would be no reason for a consortium of major vendors of service and Java EE technology to come up with a new specification, called service component architecture (SCA). This emerging standard tries to leverage service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles with component-based software development techniques. In this article we discuss some commonalities and fundamental differences of the CBS and SOA worlds. We illustrate SCA briefly using snippets of an ongoing case study based on an e-university federation. Then we elaborate on the qualities and current deficits of SCA in the light of CBSE findings and related works.     

Multi-model driven collaborative development platform for service-oriented e-Business systems

Enterprises need to be responsive to meet dynamic businesses and requirements. Service-oriented architecture and Web services can improve e-Business systems to be integrated and flexible. This paper proposes a multi-model driven collaborative development platform for service-oriented e-Business systems. The platform provides engineers/consultants with three views, i.e., business view, process view, and service view to support service-oriented software engineering, top-down business design and bottom-up service composite and development. The views are kept consistent through model-driven translation mechanisms. The platform employs three models, i.e., service meta-model, process model and business model to implement the translation. On the platform, business and technical consultants/engineers can use the views designated for their roles to collaborate for a service-oriented e-Business system based at the distributed sites of, e.g., IT vendors and their clients. The collaboration is featured with visual development and rapid demonstration. Comparingly, most of the mainstream development environments focus on object-oriented application development other than service-oriented business process modeling. The platform has been developed and deployed in an innovation centre to be evaluated by visiting customers.     

Human-robot collaboration in precise positioning of a three-dimensional object

This paper deals with fundamental issues of human-robot cooperation in precise positioning of a flat object on a target. Based on the analysis of human-human interaction, two cooperation schemes are introduced. Several algorithms implementing these schemes are developed. A general theoretical framework for human/robot cooperation has been developed to represent these algorithms. The evaluation of the algorithms was carried out using our in-house made robot prototype and experiments by human subjects has demonstrated the effectiveness of our schemes. The main problem was the regulation of the robot-human interaction. Since the robot has no range sensors, it has to rely on the force and displacement information resulting from the interaction with human to understand human intention. The way the robot interprets these signal is crucial for smooth interaction. To be able to carry out a concrete task a simplification was made, in which robot and human do not directly hold the object but a frame to which the object and various sensors are attached.     

知识链模型研究

知识链定义为有限个知识资源组成的有序集合。从“过程”的观点来看,伴随业务过程而存在的一个流动的“知识过程”,也就是知识链。知识链映射业务过程,支持并主导业务过程,更提升、激励业务过程。知识链模型包含了知识资源生产过程和知识资源应用过程。前者定义为知识生产链,其操作包括知识资源的挖掘、表示和存储。后者定义为知识应用链,其操作包括知识资源的识别和选用、执行、评估。一个完备、健壮的知识链模型可以通过定义知识链单元的特性参数来评估,以保证知识链操作过程的高效率、低成本和负荷平衡。     

A service-oriented city portal framework and collaborative development platform

Cities are being equipped with multiple information systems to provide public services for city officials, officers, citizens, and tourists. There have been concerns with efficient service implementation and provision, e.g., data islands and function overlaps between systems and applications. Service-oriented portals are efficient at facilitating information sharing and collaborative work between city systems and users. The goal of this research is to make cities responsive, agile and to provide composite services efficiently and cost efficiently. A service-oriented framework for city portals is proposed to design, integrate and streamline city systems and applications. A model driven collaborative development platform of the proposed framework was developed for service-oriented digital portals. The architecture and implementation issues of the platform are discussed. The service identification policies are discussed within the framework. A case study has been developed and evaluated on the platform to provide a composite service, i.e., a traffic search service on a city portal.     

RoboMusic: a behavior-based approach

Based on principles from modern artificial intelligence and robotics, we developed the RoboMusic concept. In RoboMusic, we use a number of robotic devices as instruments, and the tunes are composed as a behavior-based system. The music artist composes a baseline behavior for the robotic instruments, and composes the behavioral response to interactions by human musicians. The music artist is transformed from a composer of static music tunes to a developer of robot behavior: behavior that is expressed by the robotic system as music pieces. Music compositions are transformed to become robotic behavior as in a behavior-based system. A RoboMusic concert is performed with robotic instruments, and changes the concept of live concerts by inviting the audience to interact with the band’s instruments themselves and thereby guide the live performance of the music themselves. This work was presented in part at the 12th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 25–27, 2007     

面向事件的本体研究

世界是物质的,物质的世界是运动的,运动是绝对的,静止是相对的.事件作为人类知识的单元,反映了事物的运动,受到了学术界多领域专家的高度重视.在研究面向事件的知识表示的基础上,给出了事件定义及其六元组的形式化表示,并提出了事件本体模型;最后,以基于事件本体的篇章理解为例,简要说明了篇章与句子的事件网络表示、生成及其应用.与传统本体相比,事件本体以更高粒度的事件作为知识表示单元,更符合客观实际,更便于计算机模拟大脑工作.     

集成Agent技术和面向服务计算技术：现状和展望

Agent技术和面向服务计算技术是目前计算机科学与技术领域中的二项重要技术.这二种技术都试图为互联网软件系统的开发提供新颖的技术途径,但是它们的关注点、所采用的技术手段、优势和不足各不相同.将这二种技术相互集成有助于发挥各自的优势,同时弥补各自的不足.近年来有关集成Agent技术和面向服务计算技术的研究引起了人们的关注和重视,它将为部署在互联网上的动态、开放系统的开发提供新颖、有效的技术途径.分析了集成Agent技术和面向服务计算技术的背景和动机,综述了该领域的研究现状和已有的成果,并展望了其面临的问题和挑战.     

面向服务的软件体系结构的形式化

用形式规格说明语言Z对面向服务这样一种新出现的分布式软件体系结构进行形式化，克服了原先面向服务体系结构的非形式化描述中的限制，为更好地进行面向服务的分布式软件开发提供了指导模型。     

Simulation and control of distributed robot search teams

This article describes the simulation of distributed autonomous robots for search and rescue operations. The simulation system is utilized to perform experiments with various control strategies for the robot team and team organizations, evaluating the comparative performance of the strategies and organizations. The objective of the robot team is to, once deployed in an environment (floor-plan) with multiple rooms, cover as many rooms as possible. The simulated robots are capable of navigation through the environment, and can communicate using simple messages. The simulator maintains the world, provides each robot with sensory information, and carries out the actions of the robots. The simulator keeps track of the rooms visited by robots and the elapsed time, in order to evaluate the performance of the robot teams. The robot teams are composed of homogenous robots, i.e., identical control strategies are used to generate the behavior of each robot in the team. The ability to deploy autonomous robots, as opposed to humans, in hazardous search and rescue missions could provide immeasurable benefits.     

A time-aware Bayesian approach for optimal manufacturing service recommendation in distributed manufacturing environments

With the growing emergence of distributed collaborative manufacturing systems, the utilization of service-oriented manufacturing to offer seamless access to a variety of complex, distributed and dynamic manufacturing resources has become a challenging issue. This paper presents a novel time-aware probabilistic Bayesian approach for recommending a few optimal manufacturing services based on the user preference for an initial manufacturing service. The Bayesian approach operates over a comprehensive, formal representation of manufacturing services, which adds the time-aware probability of satisfied service execution in manufacturing service ontology to take into account the statistical nature of the dynamic manufacturing environment. The Bayesian approach is useful because it infers a few top ranked hypotheses of manufacturing service that have the largest probability as the optimal selection in a specified context of user preference. A prototype system is built and validated with an illustrative example from manufacturing industry to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach for optimal service recommendation.     

关于知识表示的讨论

知识表示是人工智能（ＡＩ）研究中基本问题之一,对ＡＩ来说,知识表示的研究分成两个层次：（２）知识表示方法的研究,（２）表示观的研究,首先,本文在总结各种表示方法的基础上,提出了一种“知识表示体系树”,以观察ＡＩ研究的发展趋势,其次,文中收集了目前ＡＩ学界对这个问题讨论了各种主张,并将其归纳为评论论、本体论及知识工程等三类对表示的观点;最后,还讨论了ＡＩ一些研究分支与表示的关系。     

基于统一建模语言的面向服务体系结构的描述

介绍了面向服务体系结构的产生、发展及其基本概念,详细分析了它的组成、组件角色和所涉及的操作。该文用统一建模语言描述面向服务体系结构,并接合供应链管理实例进一步阐明如何使用UML描述面向服务的体系结构。     

Applied ontologies and standards for service robots

Service robotics is an emerging application area for human-centered technologies. The rise of household and personal assistance robots forecasts a human–robot collaborative society. One of the robotics community’s major task is to streamline development trends, work on the harmonization of taxonomies and ontologies, along with the standardization of terms, interfaces and technologies. It is important to keep the scientific progress and public understanding synchronous, through efficient outreach and education. These efforts support the collaboration among research groups, and lead to widely accepted standards, beneficial for both manufacturers and users. This article describes the necessity of developing robotics ontologies and standards focusing on the past and current research efforts. In addition, the paper proposes a roadmap for service robotics ontology development. The IEEE Robotics & Automation Society is sponsoring the working group Ontologies for Robotics and Automation. The efforts of the Working group are presented here, aiming to connect the cutting edge technology with the users of these services—the general public.