Agent-Robot Interaction and app idea

I think that the AI would be able to jump around and that it would have access to various other AI like functions like vision, planning, scheduling, communication that reside on the system that it is interacting with.  However, its behavior, decision making, goals, history, higher-level learning ability would be part of itself. Therefore, it would interface with the rest of the system that way.  Therefore, the agent-robot-interaction would be simplified and would allow the system to be seamless between real and virtual environments and would allow code reuse and modularity in the system.

The interface may be agent based (meaning the interface itself has goals, priorities, behaviors and an environment).

It also lends itself to distributed AI when there are multiple agents trying to interact with the same system.  Meaning how does the system determine who gets to use what when resources are limited.  Then there is the multiagent system aspect of when the agents are trying to do things that require cooperation.  Trying to determine who does what with what systems. Especially when you are all possibly different and some may have more experience doing certain tasks than other agents. Also, forming hierarchies would be important.

I think that this might have applications in areas like smart grid.  Where there are robots that are repairmen and essentially what happens is this:  We have some robots they are specialized (heterogeneous) and there is a hierarchy within the grid that can send out …  more on this later.

You should be able to txt your order to fast food and sub shops.  Or a universal ordering app.  The place would just subscribe to the website as a service and the site would have a standard way to order things.

The Flight to Joao Pessoa

It was a very very long journey, about 27 hours, to get from Dulles to Joao Pessoa.  I made the trip with David Freelan and Stephen Arnold.  We went from Dulles to Miami in 3hr and then had a 5hr layover there.  Then we had about an 8hr red eye flight to Rio De Janeiro.  We then had an 8hr layover there!  Finally we had a short 3hr flight to Joao Pessoa.

I carried the majority of the batteries for the robots in one of my carry-ons and every time we had to go through security the security guard had to take my bag to the side and check it out.  So, I got to tell a lot of people about how we were going to play soccer with robots and that those were the batteries for them.

We had some fun at all of the layovers.  During the layover in Miami, a friend of Stephen’s from highschool stopped at the airport and we at pizza with her.  We found that the Miami airport is strange and that you have to come out of security to go from domestic to international flights.  We didn’t go outside because it was rainy.  While at the airport we waited in an empty area around the corner from our gate.  Our trip was in an hour and we decided we were going to walk around and check out our gate.  We get there and there is no one there!  We walk over to the counter and find out that international flights board an hour early and that we are just on time.  We were glad we went to check it out.

The flight was reallllly long.  I had an isle seat and sat next to David who had the window.  We got a mini pillow and a fleece blanket.  Each person had their own screen with a pretty big selection of free movies, games and tv shows.  This was cool.  So, for the first 2 hours I watched “The Book Thief”.  It was a book I had always wanted to read but never got to.  So, it was fun to watch the movie.  The worst part of this part of the trip was when the person in front of me laid back their seat.  I had practically no room for my knees.  Next time I fly for so long I have to get the seats where there is nothing in front of me.  We were served food twice.  My first time eating plane food.  Not the best but nice to eat something.

In Rio we had a super long layover.  But first we had to go through customs.  We didn’t run into any trouble.  The asked David to open his one pellican case with the tools for the robots, but they only looked at the pictures that Stephen printed out of what was inside and didn’t make him disassemble the foam packing.  They had stopped him because it was curious that he was bringing in so many tools.  But he explained they were for the robots we had just brought in.  So, all went well.  After customs and re-checking our baggage it was a lot of waiting.  The airport was small and security was nice.  We didn’t have to take off our shoes like we do in the US.

The top three experiences at the Rio airport I think were the view of the mountains, I tried an espresso (awful), and our first experience trying to order food when the people behind the counter only understand Portuguese.  This was the start of our trip long use of obrigado (thank you in Portuguese).  Also of note, toilet paper was disposed of in cans beside the toilet and there was a person sitting in the elevator and pressed the floor button for you.  We also may or may not have been able to see the Jesus statue from the airport.  We couldn’t tell what the big white statue looking thing in the distance was to be sure.

Since security was simple and we were there for so long I went out side and walked around the front of the airport.  I saw some construction, palm trees and jagged mountains.  I also saw a car called LOGAN.

So, that pretty much summarizes my first international flight.  Overall I enjoyed it.

GMU’s Multicampus Smartgrid

This would be awesome!  GMU has multiple campuses and it is a state school.  So, it would be awesome if GMU could be funded to create a smart grid for their campuses.  So, I would be able to do live experiments rather than just simulating.  Well probably I would have to do a lot of simulation.  Like simulate the various campuses.  Get the electricity data and weather patterns.  I would also need to do assessments on the viability of various alternative energy like solar for installation at different places on the campuses.

This would be an awesome thesis.  I would be able to apply MAL and MAS to a live system after first simulating it.  This would cost a lot of money.  However, I believe the dividends the school and state would make would be worth it.

Smart grid

I am starting to think that my application area for MAL will be in smart grid tech.  I was talking to Stephen (PhD student that works at the NRL) and he suggested Navy ships and subs as a possible place to look into.  So, I looked it up and they do seem to already use smart grid tech.  Which makes sense since they are already using nuclear power to run the ships.  I then thought of mobile smartgrids/microgrids for the army.  I found that back in 2012 they were starting testing this sort of tech.  http://www.army.mil/article/88440/

My main interests are on the large scale like a city.  If we consider each house an agent and we have a hierarchy of agents (proposed by Kevin so that we don’t have to deal with privacy concerns) then each agent has objectives, actuators, sensors and can communicate.  Kevin’s project involves creating the sensor network that will feed the sensor data to a central location.  This location will be the agent that makes decisions based off of that data and communication with other agents.  I am interested in the problem of the agents learning to work together cooperatively to achieve their objectives.

My plan would be to find/develop a simulator that simulates the rest of the smart grid and will have one of the houses linked to real sensors that Kevin has out.

Also, my company Procyon R&D may get a subcontract with developing the software for the control of the battery storage devices that will be installed in Hawaii’s smart grid project.  (http://smartgrid.epri.com/DemoProjects.aspx).  I will need to become familiar with http://smartgrid.epri.com/SimulationTool.aspx the simulation tool for smart grids and maybe use this as the interface into Kevin’s sensor network.  Unfortunately, that tool is written in Delphi XE2 and pascal.  I found https://github.com/rwl/DSS which is in Java that is 2 years old but I might still use instead since that is probably the last time epri released anything new.  Otherwise it seems the recommended way is to use Matlab.

 

https://sites.google.com/site/luisfochoa/research/opendss possibly helpful website.