Anticipation based on constraint processing in a multi-agent context

Anticipation is a general concept used and applied in various domains. Many studies in the field of artificial intelligence have investigated the capacity for anticipation. In this article, we focus on the use of anticipation in multi-agent coordination, particularly preventive anticipation which consists of anticipating undesirable future situations in order to avoid them. We propose to use constraint processing to formalize preventive anticipation in the context of multi-agent coordination. The resulting algorithm allows any action that may induce an undesirable future state to be detected upstream of any multi-agent coordination process. Our proposed method is instantiated in a road traffic simulation tool. For the specific question of simulating traffic at road junctions, our results show that taking anticipation into account allows globally realistic behaviors to be reproduced without provoking gridlock between the simulated vehicles.     

Engineering aesthetics and aesthetic ergonomics: theoretical foundations and a dual-process research methodology

Although industrial and product designers are keenly aware of the importance of design aesthetics, they make aesthetic design decisions largely on the basis of their intuitive judgments and "educated guesses". Whilst ergonomics and human factors researchers have made great contributions to the safety, productivity, ease-of-use, and comfort of human-machine-environment systems, aesthetics is largely ignored as a topic of systematic scientific research in human factors and ergonomics. This article discusses the need for incorporating the aesthetics dimension in ergonomics and proposes the establishment of a new scientific and engineering discipline that we can call "engineering aesthetics". This discipline addresses two major questions: How do we use engineering and scientific methods to study aesthetics concepts in general and design aesthetics in particular? How do we incorporate engineering and scientific methods in the aesthetic design and evaluation process? This article identifies two special features that distinguish aesthetic appraisal of products and system designs from aesthetic appreciation of art, and lays out a theoretical foundation as well as a dual-process research methodology for "engineering aesthetics". Sample applications of this methodology are also described.     

Engineering aesthetics and aesthetic ergonomics: Theoretical foundations and a dual-process research methodology

Although industrial and product designers are keenly aware of the importance of design aesthetics, they make aesthetic design decisions largely on the basis of their intuitive judgments and ‘educated guesses’. Whilst ergonomics and human factors researchers have made great contributions to the safety, productivity, ease-of-use, and comfort of human-machine-environment systems, aesthetics is largely ignored as a topic of systematic scientific research in human factors and ergonomics. This article discusses the need for incorporating the aesthetics dimension in ergonomics and proposes the establishment of a new scientific and engineering discipline that we can call ‘engineering aesthetics’. This discipline addresses two major questions: How do we use engineering and scientific methods to study aesthetics concepts in general and design aesthetics in particular? How do we incorporate engineering and scientific methods in the aesthetic design and evaluation process? This article identifies two special features that distinguish aesthetic appraisal of products and system designs from aesthetic appreciation of art, and lays out a theoretical foundation as well as a dual-process research methodology for ‘engineering aesthetics’. Sample applications of this methodology are also described.     

人工生命浅谈

1987年兰顿首次提出了人工生命的概念,定义“人工生命是研究人工系统来模拟自然生命系统行为特性的学科”,经过20年的发展,人工生命的独立学科地位已经得到国际学术界的广泛承认,正在逐渐成为学术研究的热点之一,人工生命的研究兴趣在于对生命系统行为特性的仿生,学科中应使用由下而上合成的方法,以使人工系统具有很好适应性、灵活性。本文将介绍人工生命起源、重要概念和发展趋势等方面的内容。     

先秦儒、道、墨——中国传统设计美学思想之渊源

代表着先秦诸子百家文化中的儒、墨、道,三者对美学的感悟是中国传统设计美学思想的源头活水。儒家美学的中和之美,道家美学的无为之美,墨家美学的实用之美,交织形成了内容丰富而独特的中国传统设计美学思想体系。     

人工生命在计算机图形学中的应用

首先介绍了细胞自动机和L-系统在计算机图形建模中的应用,然后重点综述三维物理模拟环境中虚拟生物形态和行为共进化的研究进展,并对不同的编码策略进行了比较;最后讨论了智能虚拟环境中的人工生命及其艺术化问题。     

Tac-Anticipator: Visual Analytics of Anticipation Behaviors in Table Tennis Matches

Anticipation skill is important for elite racquet sports players. Successful anticipation allows them to predict the actions of the opponent better and take early actions in matches. Existing studies of anticipation behaviors, largely based on the analysis of in-lab behaviors, failed to capture the characteristics of in-situ anticipation behaviors in real matches. This research proposes a data-driven approach for research on anticipation behaviors to gain more accurate and reliable insight into anticipation skills. Collaborating with domain experts in table tennis, we develop a complete solution that includes data collection, the development of a model to evaluate anticipation behaviors, and the design of a visual analytics system called Tac-Anticipator. Our case study reveals the strengths and weaknesses of top table tennis players' anticipation behaviors. In a word, our work enriches the research methods and guidelines for visual analytics of anticipation behaviors.     

Cognitive revolution, virtuality and good life

We are living in an era when the focus of human relationships with the world is shifting from execution and physical impact to control and cognitive/informational interaction. This emerging, increasingly informational world is our new ecology, an infosphere that presents the grounds for a cognitive revolution based on interactions in networks of biological and artificial, intelligent agents. After the industrial revolution, which extended the human body through mechanical machinery, the cognitive revolution extends the human mind/cognition through information-processing machinery. These novel circumstances come with new qualities and preferences demanding new conceptualizations. We have some work ahead of us to establish value systems and practices extended from the real to the increasingly virtual/info-computational. This paper first presents a current view of the virtual versus the real and then offers an interpretation framework based on an info-computational understanding of cognition in which agency implies computational processing of informational structures of the world as an infosphere. The notion of “good life” is discussed in light of different ideals of well-being in the infosphere, connecting virtuality as a space of potential and alternative worlds for an agent for whom the reality is a space of actual experiences, in the sense of Deleuze. Even though info-computational framework enables us to see both the real world and the diversity of virtual worlds in terms of computational processes on informational structures, based on a distinct layered cognitive architecture of all physical agents, there is clear difference between potential worlds of the virtual and actual agent’s experiences made in the real. Info-computationalism enables insight into the mechanisms of infosphere and elucidates its importance as cognitively predominant environment and communication media. The conclusion is that by cocooning ourselves in an elaborate info-computational infrastructure of the virtual, we may be increasingly isolating ourselves from the reality of direct experience of the world. The biggest challenges of the cognitive revolution may not be technological but ethical. They are about the nature of being human and its values.     

Artificial Animals and Humans: From Physics to Intelligence

The confluence of virtual reality and artificial life, an emerging discipline that spans the computational and biological sciences, has yielded synthetic worlds inhabited by realistic, artificial flora and fauna. Artificial animals are complex synthetic organisms that possess functional biomechanical bodies, sensors, and brains with locomotion, perception, behavior, learning, and cognition centers. Artificial humans and other animals are of interest in computer graphics because they are self‐animating characters that dramatically advance the state of the art of production animation and interactive game technologies. More broadly, these biomimetic autonomous agents in their realistic virtual worlds also foster deeper, computationally oriented insights into natural living systems.     

Turing Test Considered Mostly Harmless

Turing’s landmark paper on computing machinery and intelligence is multifaceted and has an underemphasized ethical dimension. Turing’s notion of “intelligence” and “thinking” was far more encompassing than the common anthropocentric view may suggest. We discuss a number of open and underrated problems that the common interpretation of the Turing test as a test of machine intelligence entails. We suggest that a more meaningful question than “Can machines think?” is whether modern computing machinery can amplify human intelligence. We cite examples ranging from traditional silicon-based environments to carbon-based, living organisms in order to illustrate that this kind of intelligence amplification is indeed happening today. We conclude that in its interpretation as a test of machine intelligence, the Turing test may indeed be harmful for artificial intelligence (AI); in its wider interpretation, however, it remains an inspiring source for philosophy and AI alike.     

中国国画情感-美感数据库

目的 有关艺术作品审美感受的量化或计算,在心理学上已有许多研究。近年来,人工智能的研究成为热点,而对人类感知的定量分析也随之受到极大关注,例如基于图片或者音乐内容的情感计算等。美感作为一种艺术化的审美情感,与之相关的定量研究有较大潜力。为便于进行中国文化背景下的审美研究,同时为丰富图像情感与审美计算相关研究的数据基础,需建立一个国画美感和情感分析所用的图像数据库。方法 从多种渠道收集筛选511幅国画素材及350个国画美感形容词,通过词汇筛选和因子分析获得国画美感主要因子;采用离散词汇和PAD（pleasure-arousal-dominance）情感连续维度空间这两种描述方式对国画的审美感受进行标注;对数据库进行情感和美感的模式分类,从而验证其实用性。结果 获得5个国画美感主要语义标签：气势、清幽、生机、雅致和萧瑟;标注数据结果满足有效性验证;不同美感的PAD情感分布呈现一定极化;经测试,情感分类精度平均可达0.68,美感分类精度最高可达0.77。结论 本文得到的5个国画美感评价范畴,可基本概括国画的审美感受;所建立的数据库,能为视觉美感及情感的定量研究或者计算机视觉、实验美学等领域的研究提供有效数据基础;PAD分布对美感有较好区分性。下一步将进一步扩充数据库,以解决数据分布不均问题,同时进一步挖掘PAD分布与美感分布之间的关联。     

Anticipation: learning from the past. The Russian/Soviet contributions to the science of anticipation

The focus on Russian/Soviet contributions is only an opportunity to understand the objective premises of anticipation. Since anticipation expresses a main concept characterizing human action, it is important to see whether and how it corresponds to the neuro-physiology of the human. The aim of this review is to show that anticipation is neuro-physiologically constitutive and is intertwined with all other reflective, cognitive, and coordinative functions that form an inseparable unity in the process of adaptation. The experiments described in the book draw attention to anticipation as the internal tendency of the living that cannot be ignored. The review highlights the dialectic of continuity and discontinuity in the living from the standpoint of anticipation, and the holistic conclusions of the scientific research regarding the living and the human being.     

艺术设计理论课程体系中的审美释要

艺术设计理论课程体系由"艺术概论"、"设计概论"和"设计美学"三个部分组成,审美是艺术设计的灵魂,文章从存在方式,发挥作用、本质与目的、设计形态与设计过程等方面阐述了艺术设计理论课程体系中的审美特征、审美要求和审美实质,诠释了审美活动在艺术设计过程中重要意义。     

High and low spatial frequencies in website evaluations

Statement of Relevance:

Which features of websites are important for users' perceptions regarding aesthetics or usability? This study investigates how evaluations of aesthetic appeal and usability depend on high vs. low spatial frequencies. High spatial frequencies convey information on fine details, whereas low spatial frequencies convey information about the global layout. Participants rated aesthetic appeal and usability of 50 website screenshots from different domains. Screenshots were presented unfiltered, low-pass filtered with blurred targets or high-pass filtered with high-pass filtered targets. The main result is that low spatial frequencies can be seen to have a unique contribution in perceived website aesthetics, thus confirming a central prediction from processing fluency theory. There was no connection between low spatial frequencies and usability evaluations, whereas strong correlations were found between ratings of high-pass filtered websites and those of unfiltered websites in aesthetics and usability. This study thus offers a new perspective on the biological basis of users' website perceptions.

This research links ergonomics to neurocognitive models of visual processing. This paper investigates how high and low spatial frequencies, which are neurologically processed in different visual pathways, independently contribute to users' perceptions of websites. This is very relevant for theories of website perceptions and for practitioners of web design.     

Cultural commentators: Non-native interpretations as resources for polyphonic assessment

Designs for everyday life must be considered in terms of the many facets of experience they affect, including their aesthetics, emotional effects, genre, social niche, and cultural connotations. In this paper, I discuss the use of cultural commentators, people whose profession it is to inform and shape public opinion, as resources for multi-layered assessments of designs for everyday life. I describe our work with a team of movie screenwriters to help interpret the results of a Cultural Probe study, and with film-makers to document the experiences of people living with prototype designs in their homes. The value of employing cultural commentators is that they work outside our usual community of discourse, and are often accustomed to reflecting issues of aesthetics, emotions, social fit or cultural implication that are difficult to address from traditional HCI perspectives. They help to focus and articulate people's accounts of their experiences, extrapolating narratives from incomplete information, and dramatising relationships to create powerful and provocative stories. In so doing, they create the grounds for a polyphonic assessment of prototypes, in which a multiplicity of perspectives encourages a multi-layered assessment.     

ALife approach to eco-evo-devo using evolution of virtual creatures

Evolutionary developmental biology, evo-devo, emerged to integrate evolution and development in the 1980s, in which evolution is conceptualized as heritable changes in development. Recently, the field is moving to a new synthesis: ecological evolutionary developmental biology, eco-evo-devo. We believe that artificial life (ALife) approach will provide new insights into the field, and also contribute to the field of robotics through the emergence perspective and the constructive methodology. This paper explores the potential of such an artificial life approach based on the evolution of virtual creatures by presenting our ongoing studies with three models: (1) metamorphosis model, (2) exaptation model and (3) Prey-predator model.     

P. Fishwick (Ed.) Aesthetic Computing, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2006, ISBN 0-262-06250-X.

The questions raised in the Preface hopefully provoke a deep thinking of aesthetic computing as possibly a new discipline:

to what extent can the traditional definitions of aesthetics in computing and art be interrelated and connected, with each informing the other? What roles can quality, subjectivity, and emotion play in mathematics and computing as ways to achieve a balance between form and function? What are effective social frameworks in which artists, designers, mathematicians, and computer scientists can collaborate in teams or in distributed networks?

The viewpoints expressed and many examples demonstrated in this book, some of which bear deep root in arts and sciences, are stimulating and of great interest to anyone who is interested in both computing (or mathematics) and art. I was slightly disappointed in not seeing any discussion on color and form, two essential dimensions of arts and design, for their roles in aesthetic computing, particularly in visualization and interface design. Aesthetic computing being a field of study may be premature. We have however come to a stage when we can “afford” thinking of this idea. This is because the modern computer graphics and interface technologies are so advanced that guidelines for effective yet enjoyable human–computer interactions are greatly needed.     

You, robot: on the linguistic construction of artificial others

How can we make sense of the idea of ‘personal’ or ‘social’ relations with robots? Starting from a social and phenomenological approach to human–robot relations, this paper explores how we can better understand and evaluate these relations by attending to the ways our conscious experience of the robot and the human–robot relation is mediated by language. It is argued that our talk about and to robots is not a mere representation of an objective robotic or social-interactive reality, but rather interprets and co-shapes our relation to these artificial quasi-others. Our use of language also changes as a result of our experiences and practices. This happens when people start talking to robots. In addition, this paper responds to the ethical objection that talking to and with robots is both unreal and deceptive. It is concluded that in order to give meaning to human–robot relations, to arrive at a more balanced ethical judgment, and to reflect on our current form of life, we should complement existing objective-scientific methodologies of social robotics and interaction studies with interpretations of the words, conversations, and stories in and about human–robot relations.     

Linking objective design factors with subjective aesthetics: An experimental study on how structure and color of websites affect the facets of users’ visual aesthetic perception

The present study examines how objective design factors of a website are linked to different facets of subjective aesthetic perception. Five online experiments based upon the screenshots of real-existing websites with a total of N = 194 participants were conducted to isolate and analyze the effects of two objective structural factors (vertical symmetry, visual complexity) and three objective color factors (hue, saturation, brightness) on the different facets of subjective aesthetic perception (simplicity, diversity, colorfulness, craftsmanship) measured with the Visual Aesthetics of Website Inventory (Moshagen & Thielsch, 2010). Although all investigated factors are apparent features in website design, their effects on different facets of subjective aesthetic perception are not yet well understood. Our results show that websites of high symmetry, low complexity, blue hue, medium brightness or medium and high saturation received the highest overall aesthetics ratings. Furthermore, data reveal that structural factors compared to color factors have a manifold and greater impact on the different facets of subjective aesthetic perception than the color factors. Both structural factors have a great impact on simplicity, diversity and craftsmanship whereas the color factors have a great impact especially on colorfulness. Only complexity affects all facets of subjective aesthetic perception. The other objective design factors had effects on specific facets. Our findings shed light on the relationship between objective and subjective factors of aesthetic perception and may help designers to systematically target specific facets of visual aesthetics.     

生态美学与产品设计

生态美学是在后现代文明阶段产生的一种有关人类生存状态的崭新的美学观,它研究人与自然、人与社会以及人与自身的生态审美关系。在工业化高度发展的当今社会,人们生活中充斥的大量工业产品将人与自然隔离,人对自然的过度索取导致了一系列生态问题,在这种背景下,将生态美学思想引入产品设计领域不仅是对产品设计学科在美学领域的拓展,更能在形式、技术和意境等各个层面唤醒人的自然意识,使人在使用产品的过程中自觉地完成人与自然、人与社会、人与自身问题的再思考。