Journal

MAS applications

I found this journal Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems and their list of publications and conference proceedings here.  They look like a very neat conference.  I took a look at their most recent proceedings and found to my delight that they have some cool applications that I’m interested in and make me think that some of my ideas for applications for the Bounty system aren’t so bad.

First, I think that my idea for using the bounty system for reducing traffic problem in an earlier post might be a good one (here and maybe here but it seems like maybe they could be developed a bit more).  Or at least that the bounty model should be applied.  I found the paper, From Goods to Traffic: First Steps Toward an Auction-Based Traffic Signal Controller, that was published this year in paamas which shows that there is some interest in using these sorts of methods.

The other idea I had a while back was to use the bounty system for parking (here)!  They have a paper, Evaluating the Social Benefit of a Negotiation–Based Parking Allocation, which looks into the problem of parking in cities and methods for doing this and how it can help both the city and the drivers.  So, again there is a body of work (they cite) that is interested in this problem.

Maybe I should put together some of my ideas for applying bounties to these problems and try and publish them there?  Also, I’m excited to find out what other problems that paamas has published.  Glad I found this and can’t wait for the semester to begin :).

 

Extreme Sports, Baby Cribs and Pipes

In the future we will have new extreme sports.  We are already sort of seeing it with that person that did a jump from close to outer space.  We will start to have ziplines that you can ride from the moon to the earth.  We will surf/swim on the lakes of lava on the sun!  We will skate on astroids.  We could build ice-rinks or glass/transparent swimming pools that float through space!  I am sure there are things that we haven’t even invented yet or dreamt up that will cause us to create new and insanely awesome sports.

On a much more mundane note, we should have a computational geometry person and a mechanical engineer redesign portable baby cribs.  Their current design is terribly difficult to setup and take down.  It should be as easy as pressing a single button or even no buttons!  There shouldn’t be these set of buttons that need to be pressed in order for the thing to be taken down.  It is terribly difficult for all of the buttons to be pressed correctly for everything to work.

What about pipes that don’t clog and if they do there would be this thing inside the pipe that could chop and push the stuff through.  No chemicals needed.  Or if you want chemicals it would be cool if the pressure on the sides of the pipe due to the clog would release a chemical that would dissolve the clog.  The chemicals would be based on some algae that could live on the pipe.  So, you wouldn’t need to dump drano or stuff down the pipe.  Also, this make me think that the pipes in your house could be modeled after the human digestive system.

Directed Reading

I’m planning my directed reading class this coming semester.  So, basically I have/get to come up with an entire semester’s worth of material.  I might be able to make a class out of it by the time I’m done 🙂 haha.  My subjects are focusing on the areas I want to explore with the bounty hunting task allocation model.

  1. Petri-net models and applications to MAS and task allocation.  Basically I’m thinking that petri-nets can be used to create task allocation problems abstractly.  By doing so I can better gauge the usefulness of different task allocation methods.
  2. Contest Theory and tournament theory.  They are two areas which seem like they have crucial information for helping the bounty hunting method mature.  Explore how aspects such as effort can be incorporated into the task allocation problem to make it more realistic.
  3. Coalitional Game theory and the El Farol Bar problem.  The game theory aspect will help me create better learning algorithms for the bounty hunters and the El Farol problem is very similar to the bounty hunting problem.  Also, look into collectives, a complex systems term that describes a system of selfish agents that have a well defined system level performance measure.
  4. Specific problems in Multiagent Task Allocation.  Namely cooperative, resource dependent, heterogeneous tasks and tasks that have sub-tasks.
  5. Automated Task decomposition for MAS.  This is mainly so that I can explore the idea that behaviors (and possibly tasks) may be automatically reduced to states with single feature transitions hierarchically using only state action pair sequences.  Doing so will allow complex behaviors to be learned without so much work required by the human to decompose the problem.  I’d also like to apply it to tasks.
  6. Learning coalition formation, or automatic organization formation for MAS mainly with coordination in mind.  Main applications focusing on large scale systems like autonomous vehicles, cloud robotics and crisis management.
  7. Large scale MAL/MAS and applications.  autonomous vehicles, cloud robotics and crisis management
  8. Current topics in reinforcement learning and its use in MAS.

I’m working on fleshing out the details before the semester starts so that I might already have the list of papers I want to read.

First Authentic Chinese in America food

So, I had a ton of new food today!  David and I went to a Chinese restaurant with Ermo and his wife.  We ate off of the special “Chinese menu” and had tea and everything.  The food came on dishes which we all shared.  The style was from a province that prepares the food hot and spicy (very spicy, as in my lips went numb).  It was delicious though.  I had chicken poppers, this really tender and spicy beef, and tofu.  Then I tried various types of  vegetables and roots etc.  I used chopsticks too to eat!  Although for some of it I did need a fork.  Ermo said he was taking it slow with us.  He paid for the whole thing!  I’d like to try and take them somewhere American that they haven’t been.

Exercise and eat healthy

Well I was working out every-other-day and really eating healthy for about two weeks.  As a result I had a lot of energy and felt good, other than the muscle soreness.  This past week I couldn’t go to the gym at all and I started eating pretty bad.  By the end of the week (today) I’m tired, and out of energy but my muscles aren’t sore!  This is crazy considering I didn’t exercise.  Why should I be tired?  I was never tired when I was exercising.  I think I finally experienced the full cycle of benefits of working out  and eating healthy and detriments of not.  Crazy.

So, I’m going to go back to exercising and eating healthy.

Botball 2015

A bunch of us from GMU were Botball mentors for middle schools in the DC area.  I helped out at Fred Lynn middle school with Kevin, David, Joseph and Anna.  Our school was big enough that we had two teams that entered the competition.  Thanks to David who interpreted the results pdf, last Saturday’s Botball tournament we got overall 22nd/27 teams.  However, that score is determined by documentation and presentation as well as the actual tournament itself.  So, if we only consider the tournament our two teams tied for 8th out of 27 teams!  So, they did great :).  Can’t wait for next year’s tournament!

Power grid for shipping containers

Shocks in shipping containers that would charge batteries that would allow for gps tracking of all of the containers.  Also, when stacked they could essentially distribute the electricity.  Harvesting the energy from the force of tons of pressure would be interesting.  Also, they could be very safe batteries!! You could use Lightsail storage.  Then it would be also be eco-friendly as well.  This would be pretty cool.

The gps would then allow for more effiecient logistics which would make the cost of new containers non-existent.  At first not every container would even need to have the system installed.

Main concern is the weight of the lightsail system may be prohibitive…  Also, if you want GPS units that always are on and not intermitant when ever you have the juice, we might need a better storage system…

Scratch that, right on their website the system claims to be able to be placed in a shipping container form.  This makes me think that if you buy a few of these to generate the electricity for the rest of the system and then use relays to distribute the electricity when stacked then it would be perfect.  Then each container would only require a simple battery that has properties that would make it work in such a system for a very long time with being able to charge and discharge at will.  The great part is that the compression of the air will be done by moving the containers.

Tom Bihn Robot Soccer Jerseys

Today was eventful.  Sean, my professor, comes in this morning and tells us this story about how he had discovered that the company that makes his backpack had been hacked.  He notified the company and told them about it and the company gave him a $250 gift certificate.  Which was nice for him because he loves there stuff.  One of the things he purchased were these little bags that were just big enough for the robots to fit into.  So, of course he took pictures and shared them with the company and there forums.  Low and behold, he gets a package today and it has six custom made soccer jerseys one for each of our soccer playing robots!  So, today we just had fun with the robots.  We made a little video, nothing too special of them wearing the jerseys and one of them coming by and kicking the ball.  So, I had a pretty fun day.  I didn’t get much real work done, but I had fun.

Travel

Oh man this seems like this is the year I get to travel!  I’m presenting a paper I’m first author of and giving a workshop presentation of another paper at AAMAS in Istanbul, going to Heifei China for Robocup, and most likely going to Hamburg Germany to present a paper at IROS!  That is amazing, I can’t wait!  I’m glad I like to travel.

Decision Theory Paradoxes

I’ve been researching decision theory paradoxes because in my Bounty’s task allocation system I am considering the benefits of giving the bondsman the decision to allocate particular tasks through an auction (ie exclusive) or through its normal bounty (non-exclusive) method.  This brings with it a potentially multi-criteria decision which has me interested about the theoretical ramifications of such a decision.

In my search I have encountered quite a few paradoxes in decision theory, utility theory, and social choice (ie voting).  However, other than the wikipedia listing I haven’t found an authoritative reference (a book) on the subject!  I find this quite strange.  I know probably there are very few people that like this sort of thing, but I believe that knowing about them and that they exist might be of use to multiagent systems researchers who use such theories as the basis for their work.  So, if I can’t find a book or a survey paper on the subject I might write a paper on them.  That would be fun.  I would relate them all to problems in MAS and AI or computer science.  So, it would be Paradoxes that are relevant to an AI researcher.