While computers assist humans with tasks such as navigation that involve spatial aspects, agents that can interact in a meaningful way in this context are still in their infancy. One core issue is the mismatch in the representation of spatial information a computer-based system is likely to use, and the one a human is likely to use. Computers are better suited for quantitative schemes such as maps or diagrams that rely on measurable distances between entities. Humans frequently use higher-level, domain-specific conceptual representations such as buildings, rooms, or streets for orientation purposes. Combined with the person-centric world view that we often assume when we refer to spatial information, it is challenging for agents to convert statements using spatial references into assertions that match their own internal representation. In this paper, we discuss an approach that uses natural language processing and information extraction tool kits to identify entities and statements about their spatial relations. These extractions are then processed by a spatial reasoner to convert them from the human conceptual space into the quantitative space used by the computer-based agent.

The collaboration between a human and a robot is here understood as a learning process mediated by the instructor prompt behaviours and the apprentice collecting information from them to learn a plan. The instructor wears the Gaze Machine, a wearable device gathering and conveying visual and audio input from the instructor while executing a task. The robot, on the other hand, is eager to learn both the best sequence of actions, their timing and how they interlace. The cross relation among actions is specified both in terms of time intervals for their execution, and in terms of location in space to cope with the instruction interaction with people and objects in the scene. We outline this process: how to transform the rich information delivered by the Gaze Machine into a plan. Specifically, how to obtain a map of the instructor positions and his gaze position, via visual slam and gaze fixations; further, how to obtain an action map from the running commentaries and the topological maps and, finally, how to obtain a temporal net of the relevant actions that have been extracted. The learned structure is then managed by the flexible time paradigm of flexible planning in the Situation Calculus for execution monitoring and plan generation.

Demographic predictions of population aged 65 and over suggest the need for telemedicine applications in the eldercare domain. Current solutions are mainly focused on fall detection. This paper presents a working prototype of a system that in addition to fall detection monitors a variety of user’s behavior characteristics that help raise awareness of health risks. It monitors the state of user’s health, and more importantly, detects changes in behavior characteristics that potentially indicate a forthcoming or current disease, illness or some other disability. The system utilizes domain knowledge from medical literature on quantitative behavior analysis and combines it with an outlier-detection algorithm in order to identify anomalous behavior. Preliminary results with the working prototype are promising, showing a potential to deploy the system in practice.

his paper focuses on the issue of premissary relevance, as a challenge faced in health promotion interventions. To promote attitude change and influence health behavior change, it is crucial that we use premises that are relevant on an individual level. Relevance in argumentation refers to both the fact that the premises have to do with the standpoint at issue and the fact that our interlocutors will accept them. We claim that autonomous argumentation systems hold the promise to enable proper argumentative exchanges that capture and addresses what matters to individuals. To do so, however, there is a need to better consider and operationalise theories of argumentation that enable a reconstruction of the different stages of argumentation. The theory of argumentation known as pragma-dialectics can offer a promising basis for the architecture of autonomous health promotion advisors.

In this contribution, it is suggested that argumentation theories may offer the tools to do so. More specifically, the pragmadialectical theory of argumentation (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1992; 2004) is proposed as a solid instrument for analyzing and evaluating argumentation in consultation, as it not only provides a set of reasonableness criteria for argumentative conduct but also can account for arguers' need to effectively tailor argumentative messages to their recipients. The instrumental value of pragma-dialectics in the field of automated argument selection will be elucidated by means of a case study concerning antibiotics. In doing so, this contribution is closely connected to the paper by Rubinelli, Wierda, Labrie, and O'Keefe (AAAI Spring Symposium 2011) and provides an exploratory investigation of the advantages of a pragma-dialectical approach to the conceptual design of automated health communication systems and autonomous health promotion.

The paper addresses how a robot can maintain a state representation of all that it knows about the environment over time and space, given its observations and its domain knowledge. The advantage in combining domain knowledge and observations is that the robot can in this way project from the past into the future, and reason from observations to more general statements to help guide how it plans to act and interact. The difficulty lies in the fact that observations are typically uncertain and logical inference for completion against a knowledge base is computationally hard.

The past decade has witnessed an increasing interest in the use of virtual coaches in healthcare. This paper describes a virtual coach to provide mindfulness meditation training, and the coaching support necessary to begin a regular practice. The coach is implemented as an embodied conversational character, and provides mindfulness training and coaching support via a web-based application. The coach is represented as a female character, capable of showing a variety of affective and conversational expressions, and interacts with the user via a mixed-initiative, text-based, natural language dialogue. The coach adapts both its facial expressions and the dialogue content to the user’s learning needs and motivational state. Findings from a pilot evaluation study indicate that the coach-based training is more effective in helping users establish a regular practice than self-administered training via written and audio materials. The paper concludes with an analysis of the coach features that contribute to these results, discussion of key challenges in affect-adaptive coaching, and plans for future work.

Sustainable design is as an important movement in design. Biologically inspired design is a major paradigm for sustainable design. In this paper, we analyze a corpus of biologically inspired design projects in terms of sustainability. We then describe a case study of analogical design of a fog harvesting net, and abstract from it the patterns of Hydrophobia and Hydrophilia. We indicate how these two function-mechanism design patterns occur in several design projects in our corpus. This analysis indicates how biologically inspired sustainable design can be analyzed in terms of cross-domain analogical transfer of design patterns.

The increasing agility of business requires an accelerated adaptation of organizations to continuously changing conditions. Individual and organizational learning are prominent means to achieve this. Hereby learning is always accompanied by the development of knowledge artifacts. For the entire of learning and artifact development the term knowledge maturing has been introduced recently, which focuses on these three manifestations of knowledge: cognifacts, sociofacts, and artifacts. In this paper we will focus on sociofacts as the subject-bound knowledge manifestation of social actions. Sociofacts are rooted in respective cognifacts play an independent role due to their binding to collective actions and subjects. These are particularly difficult to grasp but play a decisive role for the performance of organizations and the collaboration in there.The presented paper approaches the notion of sociofacts, discusses them on a theoretical level and establishes a first formal notation for sociofacts. We use the case of a merger between two companies to describe the advantages of sociofact analysis for such process. Some sociofact related problems during a merger are described and possible solutions are presented. We identify technical approaches for seizing sociofacts from tool-mediated social interaction and discuss open question for future research.

There is an urgent need for interventions to assist teenagers and young adults in appreciating the physical and social risks of binge drinking. While research on the health risks associated with alcohol abuse is well developed, the translation and communication of this knowledge to young people is not. This paper describes a prototype visualisation tool, an Alcohol Risk Calculator, that provides personalised information on risks associated with alcohol consumption based on individual drinking habits. Its design is informed by studies of graphical literacy, evidence on forms of presenting risk that aid understanding, and theory that provides insight into changing health damaging behaviour.