DEPARTMENTAL SEMINAR (COMPUTER & COGNITIVE SCIENCES) AUTUMN TERM 1997 TIME AND PLACE: Thursdays 4pm Lecture Room 7, School of Computer Science ORGANISER: Marta Kwiatkowska (M.Z.Kwiatkowska@cs.bham.ac.uk, ext 7264) SPEAKERS and TITLES -- Thurs 2 Oct Prof. S.Y. Bang, Pohang University of Science and Technology/ University of Birmingham: An Improved 2-stage Classification Method for Printed Korean Characters by Expanding Input Subimages for Grapheme Identification -- Tue 7 Oct (NOTE CHANGE OF DAY, 4pm in LR7) Matthias Schneider-Hufschmidt, Siemens AG: Adaptive User Interfaces -- Thurs 9 Oct Prof. David Lodge, Honorary Professor of English, University of Birmingham: The consciousness debate: how it looks from a literary/critical perspective -- Thurs 16 Oct Chris Thornton, COGS, University of Sussex: Truth from Trash: A Learning Principle with Applications to Mobot Football -- Thurs 23 Oct Dr Steve Schneider, Royal Holloway Using CSP for authentication protocol analysis: the Needham-Schroeder Public Key Protocol -- Thurs 30 Oct Dr Brian Logan, University of Birmingham As simple as ABC -- Thurs 6 Nov Prof. Edmund Robinson, Queen Mary and Westfield College Logic and Logical Relations -- Thurs 13 Nov Prof. John Barnden, University of Birmingham: Conflict Resolution in the ATT-Meta System for Uncertain (and Metaphor-Based) Reasoning about Beliefs -- Thurs 20 Nov Dr Donald Peterson, University of Birmingham Perspective-Switching on a Connected Planet POSTPONED UNTIL SUMMER TERM: Steve Torrance, Middlesex University Must Deep Blue be conscious to play (real) chess? Insights into cognition and consciousness. -- Thurs 27 Nov Dr Lubo Jankovic, InteSys Ltd: Predicting the Future Without a Crystal Ball - Modelling and Forecasting of Complex Systems with ISLEC -- Thurs 4 Dec Ian Pratt, University of Manchester: Plane Mereotopology -- Thurs 11 Dec Prof. Peter Jarratt, University of Birmingham: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Open Conference System ABSTRACTS ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Thurs 2 Oct Prof. S.Y. Bang, Pohang University of Science and Technology & University of Birmingham: An Improved 2-stage Classification Method for Printed Korean Characters by Expanding Input Subimages for Grapheme Identification In my talk I will first discuss: (1) an overview of Korean characters, (2) one of the standard methods to recognize Korean characters which is a two-stage classification: the first is a rough classification and the next a detailed classification, and (3) an improvement to the above method. Later I will briefly introduce my research interests and the projects which I am involved in. Finally, I will introduce POSTECH and our department. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Tue 7 Oct (NOTE CHANGE OF DAY, 4pm in LR7) Matthias Schneider-Hufschmidt, Siemens AG: Adaptive User Interfaces Adaptive user interfaces have been a focus of HCI research for a long time. Adaptive interfaces are a promising attempt to overcome contemporary problems due to the increasing complexity of human-computer interaction. They are designed to tailor a system's interactive behavior with consideration of both individual needs of human users and altering conditions within an application environment. The broader approach of intelligent user interfaces includes adaptive characteristics as a major source of its intelligent behavior. In this presentation we will concentrate on the following aspects of adaptivity in user interfaces: * survey and taxonomy of adaptive user interface behavior, * important basic techniques for the implementation of adaptive user interfaces: user, task, and interaction modeling, user monitoring, implementation of adaptive behavior, etc. * success and failure stories: what makes adaptive behavior successful and under which circumstances? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Thurs 9 Oct Prof. David Lodge, Honorary Professor of English, University of Birmingham: The consciousness debate: how it looks from a literary/critical perspective The problem of consciousness (what is it? how can we explain it?) is said to be the hottest topic of scientific speculation and investigation at present. There is a long tradition of philosophical discussion about consciousness - as old as philosophy itself - and some scientific investigators engage with it. Many cognitive scientists working in AI were originally trained in philosophy. But in my (admittedly limited) experience there is little reference in the scientific literature about consciousness to "literature" in the artistic or creative sense, or to literary theory. This is perhaps surprising, since literature provides the richest available verbal descriptions of "qualia"; and the dominant literary form of the last three centuries, the novel, is distinguished from earlier narrative literature by its emphasis on the representation of consciousness. In their own way, novelists have struggled continually with the problem, often referred to in scientific discussion, of giving a "third-person" account of the "first-person" phenomenon of conscious experience. Furthermore, recent literary theory, loosely designated "post-structuralism", has challenged the concept of the autonomous self-conscious Cartesian subject on which character in the realistic novel is based, as has "postmodern" fiction. There are parallels here with the challenges posed to orthodox religious belief, humanism, and folk psychology by scientific approaches to the problem of consciousness. This talk will attempt to trace some of these parallels and connections. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Thurs 16 Oct Chris Thornton, COGS, University of Sussex: Truth from Trash: A Learning Principle with Applications to Mobot Football As natural resources become less abundant, we naturally become more interested in and more adept at utilisation of waste materials. And in doing this we are bringing to bear a ploy which is of key importance in learning and cognition---or so I will argue in this talk. In the `Truth from Trash' model, learning is viewed as a process which uses environmental feedback to assemble random patterns of sensory noise (i.e., sensory `trash') into useful, information vehicles, i.e., `truthful' indicators of salient phenomena. The main aim of the talk will be to show how I have used an implementation of the model to enhance (through learning) the strategic abilities of a simulated, football playing mobot. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Thurs 23 Oct Dr Steve Schneider, Royal Holloway Using CSP for authentication protocol analysis: the Needham-Schroeder Public Key Protocol This talk presents a general approach for analysis and verification of authentication properties in CSP. It is illustrated by an examination of the Needham-Schroeder Public-Key protocol. The paper aims to develop a specific theory appropriate to the analysis of authentication protocols, built on top of the general CSP semantic framework. This approach aims to combine the ability to express such protocols in a natural and precise way with the ability to reason formally about the properties they exhibit. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Thurs 30 Oct Dr Brian Logan, University of Birmingham As simple as ABC Route planning in realistic terrains is a critical task for many autonomous agents such as mobile robots, autonomous vehicles or Computer Generated Forces. The route planning problem is often formulated as one of finding a minimum-cost route between two locations in a digitised map, where the cost of a route is an indication of its quality. In this approach, planning is seen as a search problem in the space of partial plans, allowing many of the classic search algorithms to be applied. However, while such planners are complete and optimal, the composite cost functions on which they are based are difficult to devise or justify. In this talk, I will describe a new approach to route planning based on a novel constraint-based search procedure, A* with bounded costs (ABC), which generalises the single criterion optimisation problem solved by conventional route planners, and present some results of experiments with a prototype implementation. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Thurs 6 Nov Prof. Edmund Robinson, Queen Mary and Westfield College Logic and Logical Relations Logical relations are one of the fundamental tools for proving equivalence of representations and undefinability of operations. Moreover, in the basic case their definition is simple, concrete, and easy to understand. However, in order to get results one has to extend this definition in what frequently seems an ad hoc fashion. In this talk we aim to show first how these extensions fit into a framework due to Reynolds, and next to show how they can frequently be related to forms of program logic. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Thurs 13 Nov Prof. John Barnden, University of Birmingham: Conflict Resolution in the ATT-Meta System for Uncertain (and Metaphor-Based) Reasoning about Beliefs ATT-Meta is an implemented system that performs uncertain reasoning, which can be about agents' uncertain beliefs and reasoning acts, which can themselves be about agents' uncertain beliefs and reasoning acts, and so on. The uncertainty in the system is qualitative, and uncertain reasoning is performed largely by means of a type of default rule. As a result, there is a need for qualitative conflict-resolution between different lines of reasoning towards hypotheses, where different lines can lie within the mental spaces of different agents. For instance, the system may hypothesize that Peter has conducted a line of reasoning in favour of hypothesis X, but the system may also have another line of reasoning, external to Peter, that supports the hypothesis that he does not believe X. In ATT-Meta, a preliminary scheme has been developed for coping in a general and well-founded way with such conflict-resolution problems. To the speaker's knowledge, no other implemented reasoning system has addressed them. Also, a variant of the scheme serves some conflict-resolution needs of another style of reasoning that ATT-Meta does, namely metaphor-based reasoning about beliefs and reasoning. Since mental states and processes are often described metaphorically in real, mundane discourse, metaphor-based reasoning is important in practice. Because such reasoning must be uncertain to be realistic, uncertainty and conflict-resolution are central; yet they have rarely been addressed in implemented metaphor-processing systems. The talk will present the general issues of uncertainty and conflict-resolution that are addressed in ATT-Meta, and will sketch the way in which they are dealt with. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Thurs 20 Nov Dr Donald Peterson, University of Birmingham Perspective-Switching on a Connected Planet ABSTRACT: In several fields (politics, sociology, cultural studies, even theology, and in studies of postmodernity, globalisation and multiculturalism), it is recognised that an increasing plurality and fluidity attach to the life of the human individual --- in the late 20th Century, and we can expect, in the 3rd millennium. This sets an agenda for cognitive science --- to understand and articulate the perspective-switching cognition required to survive these developments. My methodology for this agenda is to work in tandem, combining philosophical questions (relativism, anti-realism, etc) with concrete case studies. I will mention five areas of work, some in progress, whose results can be applied in this way --- false belief tasks with 4-year-old children, autistic cognition, alternative notations, re-representation, and the matching of graphical notations to data. These bear on the theme of perspective-switching in a number of ways: for example, on the roles of process and representation, the optical metaphor of knowledge, and the issues of relativism and epistemic chaos. POSTPONED UNTIL SUMMER TERM: Steve Torrance, Middlesex University Must Deep Blue be conscious to play (real) chess? Insights into cognition and consciousness. Some argue that insight and creativity are of the essence of consciousness. This paper proposes a pluralist view of mind which preserves a non-cognitive notion of consciousness. Cognition is seen as run-time production of elements 'fit for purpose' - a conception harmonizing with computationalism. Deep Blue could thus be viewed as a genuine chessplayer, even if nonconscious, because it generates moves dynamically - albeit by massive statespace search. Many features commonly associated with consciousness - insight, creativity, representational redescription, etc. - conform to this productive model. By contrast, core, phenomenal consciousness involves the consumption of experience. A computational account of the latter seems ruled out. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Thurs 27 Nov Dr Lubo Jankovic, InteSys Ltd: Predicting the Future Without a Crystal Ball - Modelling and Forecasting of Complex Systems with ISLEC The subject of the seminar is ISLEC, a new self-learning algorithm for modelling and simulation of complex systems. Although ISLEC was initially conceived for modelling of heat transfer in buildings, it was applied very successfully to forecasting of currency exchange rates. Forecasts of $ to # exchange rates were produced daily, 30 days in advance and compared with forecasts by major banks worldwide. The results showed consistently high performance during the trial period. Suitability of ISLEC for modelling an open ended information content from the complex system will be explained, and consequences on its computational non-intensity and suitability for a range of applications, including industrial control, will be discussed. Differences and advantages over Neural Network algorithms will be highlighted. ISLEC is protected by a US patent and is a Registered Trade Mark of InteSys Ltd. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Thurs 4 Dec Ian Pratt, University of Manchester: Plane Mereotopology Several authors have suggested that a parsimonious and conceptually elegant treatment of practical spatial reasoning can be obtained by adopting an ontology in which regions, not points, are the primitive entities. This interest has expressed itself in the development of various calculi for topological reasoning in which regions are taken as primary, an enterprise known as mereotopology. This talk investigates the mereotopology of 2-dimensional space. Our strategy is to define a formal mereotopological language with a familiar ``practical'', point-based interpretation: we then propose that, in order to pass the test of practical applicability, any alternative spatial ontology should make the same formulae in our language true. We provide an axiomatic characterization of this set of formulae, and show how some other mereotopological calculi fail to pass the test of practical applicability. We present results on decidability and on the definability of topological notions with respect to this model. Finally, we give a model-theoretic analysis to show that any alternative ontologies of the plane are, in a precise sense, less parsimonious than the point-based ontology which they are supposed to replace! This talk is couched in terms accessible to non-mathematicians; accompanying technical material, available in the technical reports UMCS-97-1-1 and UMCS-97-2-2 on http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/csonly/cstechrep/titles97.html, is not. Joint work with Oliver Lemon and Dominik Schoop. Funded in part by the Leverhulme trust grant number F120 AQ and the British Council's British-German ARC project 720. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Thurs 11 Dec Prof. Peter Jarratt, University of Birmingham: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Open Conference System A major European investment bank wished to provide an information system for use at their annual general meeting. The talk will cover the design and development of the system and discuss issues involving: * integration of corporate databases, * the provision of electronic messaging, both for AGM guests and corporate users, * messaging integration, both directory synchronization and message transfer between the corporate communities at the AGM and the London Head Office, * development of information browsing facilities, and * automatic menu generation for rapidly changing information such as press releases and conference speeches. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------