Theoretical aspects roads

So, abstractly what is a road.  It is a queue for vehicles.  Intersections allow elements (vehicles) to change queues.  In this thought experiment I will abstract away lanes to just increased bandwidth and a corresponding increased throughput.  Essentially, the idea with dynamically changing road systems is two fold: one, we want the transitions between queues to be as efficient as possible two, we want the throughput of the queues to be maximized.  Main cause of congestion is crossing traffic which holds up the queue.  So, usually we create a separate lane for those that are turning against opposing traffic.  Or we make roads one way and you can’t turn against traffic (seen in DC).

So, the problem turns into a resource allocation problem at intersections, meaning you have some number of queues (resources) and you have to get the elements (cars) as quickly through to there destination.  The idea then would be to determine how to adjust the queues to increase the resources when necessary and at the right locations.

Dynamic road system scalable?

Is my idea for the dynamic road systems scalable to current road networks or will new road constructs need to be developed?  I think the current networks will work perfectly.  Because the main construct I think will be the figure-eight.  This will allow the system to change.  This is already present in most networks in terms of blocks and circles.

If it works it would be incredibly useful, here are some quotes on the subject:

The World Bank estimates traffic congestion costs Egypt 8 Billion dollars per year, which is approximately 4% of Egypt’s GDP [1].

http://d2dtl5nnlpfr0r.cloudfront.net/tti.tamu.edu/documents/mobility-report-2012.pdf

[1] World Bank, 2012, “Traffic Congestion in Cairo: An overview of the causes as well as possible solutions,” Report 71852, Washington D.C.

 

 

Thoughts on traffic and shopping

When we have autonomous cars will we be able to have the ability to make roads bi-directional?  Meaning during parts of the day one or both side of the road could be going in the same direction.  Or sometimes switching (like going from USA style to driving like people in England).  Or will our roads be constructed to not need to do this?  Or is it actually less efficient to do that sort of thing and just keep everyone driving on the right side of the road?

My hypothesis is that given local communication and cooperation of the cars, a dynamic road rules system that can adapt to the needs of the traffic will be much more efficient than the static rules that we currently adhere to currently.  Already we know of the crazy taxi drivers that can get you to your destination faster than anyone else and its because they are willing to break the rules.  Of course this is extremely dangerous now, but when the cars agree to change the rules I think that it will be even safer than if they would continue to follow the current set of rules.  For reasons just like the taxi driver that is willing to break the rules.  So, I’m pretty sure patterns will emerge and norms will develop and an equilibrium established where at particular times of day the roads are like x and at another time they are like y.  I believe that a system like this would also be better for emergency situations.  The ability to dynamically adjust the traffic patterns along a route would be life saving.  Also, logistics/trucking companies could purchase “routes” sort of like advertisements on google.  Essentially giving their destination a higher priority than normal.

Knot theory?  Seems like loops may develop and the cars might end up colliding or creating longer paths in order to avoid colliding.

Control theory and DA?  Much of this would build on a reliable lane changing and driving control constructs.  Hopefully a bit of distributed AI in there as well.

MAS/L?  For the higher level decision making, cooperation, and goal setting, definitely relevant.  The cars have to on their own form coalitions and make decisions that will most certainly produce ripple effects that they will not be able to predict but other coalitions must adapt to.  These systems will be very large and complex.  However, I believe that given that they will learn quickly (lots of info) and change at a reasonable pace that a MAS is called for here.

Is it homogenous.  No!  There are all types of vehicles and types of traffic.  This makes it very interesting.  What weight do they bring to the system.

Is it hierarchical?  Seems like different locations might represent parts of the hierarchy.  At least in terms of how much of the system they can effect by making changes to the rules.  The hierarchy in this case would be highly dynamic based on time of day.  Maybe there is an underlying hierarchy that might form naturally when looking at the coalitions of traffic.  I mean this is essentially what happened when we added lanes to the highways.  Right?  We created a hierarchy of types and goals of the drivers.  I think that not only will there be natural hierarchies, but I also think that there may be the need to impose or provide engineered hierarchies.  This would help the system to more quickly adapt and realize the importance of events.

I think that I mainly had this idea because as I was waiting in a line to check out a small kid asked her mom why they had to stand in this long line.  She reminded me of the need to nurture the ability to see past the norms of society, such as having to wait in line, and produce creative solutions.  The kid is right, we really shouldn’t need to have to wait in a long line to purchase items from an outlet.  We have the technology to eliminate them.  Most of the time we can avoid lines by purchasing things online.  But, we still are in the habit of purchasing food things from local stores.  So, there is still the line.  Giant has installed in some of there stores a scanner so that you can scan you groceries as you add them to your cart.  For more than a few items this becomes a hassle.  Safeway has a program where you can order your groceries and employees can deliver them to you.  This does not seem efficient, or cost effective when only a few are doing this.

I dream of when you could walk in and your phone already has created a list of things that you probably will want and compiled the available coupons and deals for those items.  You would then scroll through the list and approve and remove the selections.  As you are browsing and finding the other things that were not on the list your order is being packaged by robots and humans in the back.  The more standard your order is you could get reduced price.

Well that was a lot.

Robot-Virtual-agent interaction

So there would be a variety of robots.  There would be lots of mini scouter robots.  These types of robots would be distributed throughout the grid.  Their job would be to detect when a break occurs in the wire and then to determine the exact location.  Then they would alert their commander and then either provide safety fixes, like cutting and capping wires or just setting up safety perimeters so no one gets hurt.  Then with the information gathered by the scouts (pictures/video, electrical data, course taken ie cutting or capping wires, approximate number customers affected) the commander can determine which robots to send out to fix the problem.  The decision to send out the type of robot will be done by a virtual agent.  However, a human will receive the info as well in order to determine whether emergency teams should be deployed to rescue any injured people.

 

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.

Antiviruses and Cancer

Well I diagnosed myself with an URI (upper respiratory infection I finished the initial 3 day first phase and am in the second phase).  Meaning I have a virus.  Most likely it is a Rhinovirus.  So, I was thinking about how to remove it…  I first thought of changing the cells so that they have some sort of “firewall.”  Probably implemented as a white list for the cell so that they wouldn’t be able to accept anything other than the things on the list into itself.  Then I was thinking about a honeypot cell that would attract the virus and would then destroy it.   All of this of course I am taking from computer security, so probably I will find that doctors have already tried these things.

Well my honeypot idea was implemented and published in 2011 at NIST!  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110302121842.htm.  The paper http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016874.  Also more in 2012 but you need Science Direct access http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167779912000327.

However, my whitelist idea doesn’t seem feasible because the cell would have to be wrapped in this “firewall” which essentially acts as the decoy and this “atrium” per say can discard the virus if it determines that it is a virus.  So, can we stick natural cells inside the artificial cells and everything work ok?  I doubt it.

So, it seems like all we are doing is tricking the virus.  It is theorized by the 2011 paper that even though the virus can evolve to not try and go after the particular decoy that this also means it will reduce its ability to invade natural cells.  This is an interesting theory.  It would be neat to get funding to try and see if this is true.  I wonder how do you get viruses to evolve?  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_evolution)  It seems like its not too hard.  They do a good job of it already.

This made me think.  Could the cell accept it and just produce duds?  So essentially during the replication process the cell would incorrectly replicate the virus so that it was useless?  I think this would have to be a reaction mechanism of the cell to being attacked.  Essentially the virus kills the cell such that it won’t be able to replicate anything correctly?  Sort of like an all or nothing sort of thing?  If cells were like this we could attack cancer this way!  We would just send a bunch of viruses in and destroy the cancerous cells.

Now this I need to think about…  (I have noticed I become very single minded and focused on random things for intermittent periods when I am sick…)  Well I looked it up and this seems to also have been an area of research in 2010 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20433575).  They looked at cell death as a way to stop viruses it seems.  A “genetically controlled cell death programme” as they call it.  So, that is cool.  They even mentioned my idea about it stopping cancer.  Cool.

Another thing, it would seem to me that if the cells are the ones who are doing all the work of replicating the virus that they would learn and augment themselves and communicate that info to the other cells.  I mean they are the ones that have all of the information about the virus right.  The cell that creates the virus is privy to detailed information about the mutation and change of the virus.  So, why not adapt itself accordingly?  Meaning why doesn’t the cell augment its DNA to protect itself from the viruses that it has replicated.  And then create a new cell that has that info and in the process leave the original cell to die?

Some viruses can prevent programmed cell death (apoptosis) (http://pathmicro.med.sc.edu/mhunt/replicat.htm).  Now that is interesting.

So, now I need a virus that can infect other viruses.  I googled that and found the virophage!

Hopefully my business takes off and I can have a bioengineering research department.