Animating a Knowledge Base: From Ontologies to Generative AI Models From Expert Systems and the Semantic W eb to Generative AI: Model - Driven and Data - Driven Approaches in Area Studies In a context where the social sciences and humanities are experimenting with non - anthropocentric analytical frames, this article proposes a semiotic (structural) reading of the hybridization between symbolic AI and neural (or sub - symbolic) AI based on a field of application: the design and use of a knowledge base for area studies. W e describe the LaCAS ecosystem - Open Archives in Linguistic and Cultural Studies (thesaurus; RDF/OWL ontology; LOD services; harvesting; expertise; publication), deployed at Inalco (National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations) in Paris with the Okapi (Open Knowledge and Annotation Interface) software environment from Ina (National Audiovisual Institute), which now has around 160,000 documentary r esources and ten knowledge macro - domains grouping together several thousand knowledge objects. W e illustrate this approach using the knowledge domain "Languages of the world" (~540 languages) and the knowledge object "Quechua (language)". On this basis, we discuss the controlled integration of neural tools, more specifically generative tools, into the life cycle of a knowledge base: assistance with data localization/qualification, index extraction and aggregation, property suggestion and testing, dynamic file generation, and engineering of contextualized prompts (generic, contextual, explanatory, adjustment, procedural) aligned with a domain ontology. W e outline an ecosystem of specialized agents capable of animating the database while respe cting its symbolic constraints, by articulating model - driven and data - driven methods .

Recent state-of-the-art algorithms in photometric stereo rely on neural networks and operate either through prior learning or inverse rendering optimization. Here, we revisit the problem of calibrated photometric stereo by leveraging recent advances in 3D inverse rendering using the Gaussian Splatting formalism. This allows us to parameterize the 3D scene to be reconstructed and optimize it in a more interpretable manner. Our approach incorporates a simplified model for light representation and demonstrates the potential of the Gaussian Splatting rendering engine for the photometric stereo problem.

This paper presents a direct 3D visual servo scheme for the automatic alignment of point clouds (respectively, objects) using visual information in the spectral domain. Specifically, we propose an alignment method for 3D models/point clouds that works by estimating the global transformation between a reference point cloud and a target point cloud using harmonic domain data analysis. A 3D discrete Fourier transform (DFT) in $\mathbb{R}^3$ is used for translation estimation and real spherical harmonics in $SO(3)$ are used for rotation estimation. This approach allows us to derive a decoupled visual servo controller with 6 degrees of freedom. We then show how this approach can be used as a controller for a robotic arm to perform a positioning task. Unlike existing 3D visual servo methods, our method works well with partial point clouds and in cases of large initial transformations between the initial and desired position. Additionally, using spectral data (instead of spatial data) for the transformation estimation makes our method robust to sensor-induced noise and partial occlusions. Our method has been successfully validated experimentally on point clouds obtained with a depth camera mounted on a robotic arm.

We are currently designing an object oriented model which describes static and dynamical knowledge in diff{\'e}rent domains. It provides a twin conceptual level. The internal level proposes: the object structure composed of sub-objects hierarchy, structure evolution with dynamical functions, same type objects comparison with evaluation functions. It uses multiple upward inheritance from sub-objects properties to the Object. The external level describes: object environment, it enforces object types and uses external simple inheritance from the type to the sub-types.