NASA Ames Research Center
Dynamic Controllability of Temporal Plans in Uncertain and Partially Observable Environments
Bit-Monnot, Arthur (a:1:{s:5:"en_US";s:9:"LAAS-CNRS";}) | Morris, Paul (NASA Ames Research Center)
The formalism of Simple Temporal Networks (STNs) provides methods for evaluating the feasibility of temporal plans. The basic formalism deals with the consistency of quantitative temporal requirements on scheduled events. This implicitly assumes a single agent has full control over the timing of events. The extension of Simple Temporal Networks with Uncertainty (STNU) introduces uncertainty into the timing of some events. Two main approaches to the feasibility of STNUs involve (1) where a single schedule works irrespective of the duration outcomes, called Strong Controllability, and (2) whether a strategy exists to schedule future events based on the outcomes of past events, called Dynamic Controllability. Case (1) essentially assumes the timing of uncertain events cannot be observed by the agent while case (2) assumes full observability. The formalism of Partially Observable Simple Temporal Networks with Uncertainty (POSTNU) provides an intermediate stance between these two extremes, where a known subset of the uncertain events can be observed when they occur. A sound and complete polynomial algorithm to determining the Dynamic Controllability of POSTNUs has not previously been known; we present one in this paper. This answers an open problem that has been posed in the literature. The approach we take factors the problem into Strong Controllability micro-problems in an overall Dynamic Controllability macro-problem framework. It generalizes the notion of labeled distance graph from STNUs. The generalized labels are expressed as max/min expressions involving the observables. The paper introduces sound generalized reduction rules that act on the generalized labels. These incorporate tightenings based on observability that preserve dynamic viable strategies. It is shown that if the generalized reduction rules reach quiescence without exposing an inconsistency, then the POSTNU is Dynamically Controllable (DC). The paper also presents algorithms that apply the reduction rules in an organized way and reach quiescence in a polynomial number of steps if the POSTNU is Dynamically Controllable. Remarkably, the generalized perspective leads to a simpler and more uniform framework that applies also to the STNU special case. It helps illuminate the previous methods inasmuch as the max/min label representation is more semantically clear than the ad-hoc upper/lower case labels previously used.
No AI Is an Island: The Case for Teaming Intelligence
Johnson, Matthew (IHMC) | Vera, Alonso (NASA Ames Research Center)
The purpose of this article is to draw attention to an aspect of intelligence that has not yet received significant attention from the AI community, but that plays a crucial role in a technology’s effectiveness in the world, namely teaming intelligence. We propose that Al will reach its full potential only if, as part of its intelligence, it also has enough teaming intelligence to work well with people. Although seemingly counterintuitive, the more intelligent the technological system, the greater the need for collaborative skills. This paper will argue why teaming intelligence is important to AI, provide a general structure for AI researchers to use in developing intelligent systems that team well, assess the current state of the art and, in doing so, suggest a path forward for future AI systems. This is not a call to develop a new capability, but rather, an approach to what AI capabilities should be built, and how, so as to imbue intelligent systems with teaming competence.
Comparing and Integrating Constraint Programming and Temporal Planning for Quantum Circuit Compilation
Booth, Kyle E. C. (University of Toronto) | Do, Minh (Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies Inc.) | Beck, J. Christopher (University of Toronto) | Rieffel, Eleanor (NASA Ames Research Center) | Venturelli, Davide (NASA Ames Research Center) | Frank, Jeremy (NASA Ames Research Center)
Recently, the makespan-minimization problem of compiling a general class of quantum algorithms into near-term quantum processors has been introduced to the AI community. The research demonstrated that temporal planning is a strong approach for a class of quantum circuit compilation (QCC) problems. In this paper, we explore the use of constraint programming (CP) as an alternative and complementary approach to temporal planning. We extend previous work by introducing two new problem variations that incorporate important characteristics identified by the quantum computing community. We apply temporal planning and CP to the baseline and extended QCC problems as both stand-alone and hybrid approaches. Our hybrid methods use solutions found by temporal planning to warm start CP, leveraging the ability of the former to find satisficing solutions to problems with a high degree of task optionality, an area that CP typically struggles with. The CP model, benefiting from inferred bounds on planning horizon length and task counts provided by the warm start, is then used to find higher quality solutions. Our empirical evaluation indicates that while stand-alone CP is only competitive for the smallest problems, CP in our hybridization with temporal planning out-performs stand-alone temporal planning in the majority of problem classes.
User Interfaces and Scheduling and Planning: Workshop Summary and Proposed Challenges
Freedman, Richard G. (University of Massachusetts Amherst) | Chakraborti, Tathagata (Arizona State University) | Talamadupula, Kartik (IBM Research) | Magazzeni, Daniele (King's College London) | Frank, Jeremy D. (NASA Ames Research Center)
The User Interfaces and Scheduling and Planning (UISP) Workshop had its inaugural meeting at the 2017 International Conference on Automated Scheduling and Planning (ICAPS). The UISP community focuses on bridging the gap between automated planning and scheduling technologies and user interface (UI) technologies. Planning and scheduling systems need UIs, and UIs can be designed and built using planning and scheduling systems. The workshop participants included representatives from government organizations, industry, and academia with various insights and novel challenges. We summarize the discussions from the workshop as well as outline challenges related to this area of research, introducing the now formally established field to the broader user experience and artificial intelligence communities.
Reports of the Workshops of the Thirty-First AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Anderson, Monica (University of Alabama) | Barták, Roman (Charles University) | Brownstein, John S. (Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard University) | Buckeridge, David L. (McGill University) | Eldardiry, Hoda (Palo Alto Research Center) | Geib, Christopher (Drexel University) | Gini, Maria (University of Minnesota) | Isaksen, Aaron (New York University) | Keren, Sarah (Technion University) | Laddaga, Robert (Vanderbilt University) | Lisy, Viliam (Czech Technical University) | Martin, Rodney (NASA Ames Research Center) | Martinez, David R. (MIT Lincoln Laboratory) | Michalowski, Martin (University of Ottawa) | Michael, Loizos (Open University of Cyprus) | Mirsky, Reuth (Ben-Gurion University) | Nguyen, Thanh (University of Michigan) | Paul, Michael J. (University of Colorado Boulder) | Pontelli, Enrico (New Mexico State University) | Sanner, Scott (University of Toronto) | Shaban-Nejad, Arash (University of Tennessee) | Sinha, Arunesh (University of Michigan) | Sohrabi, Shirin (IBM T. J. Watson Research Center) | Sricharan, Kumar (Palo Alto Research Center) | Srivastava, Biplav (IBM T. J. Watson Research Center) | Stefik, Mark (Palo Alto Research Center) | Streilein, William W. (MIT Lincoln Laboratory) | Sturtevant, Nathan (University of Denver) | Talamadupula, Kartik (IBM T. J. Watson Research Center) | Thielscher, Michael (University of New South Wales) | Togelius, Julian (New York University) | Tran, So Cao (New Mexico State University) | Tran-Thanh, Long (University of Southampton) | Wagner, Neal (MIT Lincoln Laboratory) | Wallace, Byron C. (Northeastern University) | Wilk, Szymon (Poznan University of Technology) | Zhu, Jichen (Drexel University)
Reports of the Workshops of the Thirty-First AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Anderson, Monica (University of Alabama) | Barták, Roman (Charles University) | Brownstein, John S. (Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard University) | Buckeridge, David L. (McGill University) | Eldardiry, Hoda (Palo Alto Research Center) | Geib, Christopher (Drexel University) | Gini, Maria (University of Minnesota) | Isaksen, Aaron (New York University) | Keren, Sarah (Technion University) | Laddaga, Robert (Vanderbilt University) | Lisy, Viliam (Czech Technical University) | Martin, Rodney (NASA Ames Research Center) | Martinez, David R. (MIT Lincoln Laboratory) | Michalowski, Martin (University of Ottawa) | Michael, Loizos (Open University of Cyprus) | Mirsky, Reuth (Ben-Gurion University) | Nguyen, Thanh (University of Michigan) | Paul, Michael J. (University of Colorado Boulder) | Pontelli, Enrico (New Mexico State University) | Sanner, Scott (University of Toronto) | Shaban-Nejad, Arash (University of Tennessee) | Sinha, Arunesh (University of Michigan) | Sohrabi, Shirin (IBM T. J. Watson Research Center) | Sricharan, Kumar (Palo Alto Research Center) | Srivastava, Biplav (IBM T. J. Watson Research Center) | Stefik, Mark (Palo Alto Research Center) | Streilein, William W. (MIT Lincoln Laboratory) | Sturtevant, Nathan (University of Denver) | Talamadupula, Kartik (IBM T. J. Watson Research Center) | Thielscher, Michael (University of New South Wales) | Togelius, Julian (New York University) | Tran, So Cao (New Mexico State University) | Tran-Thanh, Long (University of Southampton) | Wagner, Neal (MIT Lincoln Laboratory) | Wallace, Byron C. (Northeastern University) | Wilk, Szymon (Poznan University of Technology) | Zhu, Jichen (Drexel University)
The AAAI-17 workshop program included 17 workshops covering a wide range of topics in AI. Workshops were held Sunday and Monday, February 4-5, 2017 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square in San Francisco, California, USA. This report contains summaries of 12 of the workshops, and brief abstracts of the remaining 5
Goal Recognition with Noisy Observations
E-Martin, Yolanda (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM)) | Smith, David E. (NASA Ames Research Center)
It may (2010) to estimate the probability of each possible goal be that one agent needs to monitor the activities of another based on the difference between the cost of the best plan agent, attempt to assist the other agent, or simply avoid getting for the goal given the observed actions, Cost(G O), and the in the way while performing its own duties. For all of cost of the best plan for the goal without the observed actions, these cases the agent needs to be able to realize what the Cost(G O). The big difference here is that the observations other agent is doing. In the absence of full and timely communication only indirectly give us probabilities for actions in of plans and goals, goal and plan recognition becomes the plan graph. We therefore first construct a Bayesian Network essential. Many goal recognition techniques allow the (BN) to estimate these action probabilities, and then sequence of observations to be incomplete, but few consider use this probability information in the plan graph to compute the possibility of noisy observations. In practice, this is not expected cost for each goal, given the observations.
Developing Decision Aids to Enable Human Spaceflight Autonomy
Frank, Jeremy D. (NASA Ames Research Center) | McGuire, Kerry (NASA Johnson Space Center) | Moses, Haifa R. (NASA Johnson Space Center) | Stephenson, Jerri (NASA Johnson Space Center)
As NASA explores destinations beyond the Moon, the distance between Earth and spacecraft will increase communication delays between astronauts and Mission Control. Today, astronauts coordinate with Mission Control to request assistance and await approval to perform tasks. Many of these coordination tasks require multiple exchanges of information, (for example, taking turns). In the presence of long communication delays, the length of time between turns may lead to inefficiency, or increased mission risk. Future astronauts will need software-based decision aids to enable them to work autonomously from Mission Control. These tools require the right combination of mission operations functions, for example, automated planning and fault management, troubleshooting recommendations, easy to access information, and just-in-time training. Ensuring these elements are properly designed and integrated requires an integrated human factors approach. This article describes a recent demonstration of autonomous mission operations using a novel software-based decision aid onboard the International Space Station. We describe how this new technology changes the way astronauts coordinate with mission control, and how the lessons learned from these early demonstrations will enable the operational autonomy needed to ensure astronauts can safely journey to Mars, and beyond.
Activity Planning for a Lunar Orbital Mission
Bresina, John L. (NASA Ames Research Center)
This article describes a challenging, real-world planning problem within the context of a NASA mission called LADEE (Lunar Atmospheric and Dust Environment Explorer). One key aspect of this approach is the design of the activity planning process based on principles of problem decomposition and planning abstraction levels. The second key aspect is the mixed-initiative system developed for this task, called LASS (LADEE Activity Scheduling System). The primary challenge for LASS was representing and managing the science constraints that were tied to key points in the spacecraft's orbit, given their dynamic nature due to the continually updated orbit determination solution.
Activity Planning for a Lunar Orbital Mission
Bresina, John L. (NASA Ames Research Center)
This article describes a challenging, real-world planning problem within the context of a NASA mission called LADEE (Lunar Atmospheric and Dust Environment Explorer). I present the approach taken to reduce the complexity of the activity-planning task in order to perform it effectively under the time pressures imposed by the mission requirements. One key aspect of this approach is the design of the activity planning process based on principles of problem decomposition and planning abstraction levels. The second key aspect is the mixed-initiative system developed for this task, called LASS (LADEE Activity Scheduling System). The primary challenge for LASS was representing and managing the science constraints that were tied to key points in the spacecraft’s orbit, given their dynamic nature due to the continually updated orbit determination solution.