In this work we present an approach to model an action-oriented system controlled by BDI agents using a defeasible argumentation formalism to represent its knowledge. Here, our main concern will be modelling the software agents that drive the physical robots.

Complex control tasks may be solved by dividing them into a more specific and more easily handled subtasks hierarchy. Several authors have demonstrated that the incremental layered evolution paradigm allows obtaining controllers capable of solving this type of tasks.
In…

Personalization of web sites has become an important issue in web modeling methods. Many of these methods use similar approaches to specify personalization. However even with similar (personalization) requirements the resulting implementations differ. The consequence is that we cannot reuse…

Following the deaths of Victoria Climbié and of Peter Connelly (Baby P) the media has raged about social work competence, the public have expressed dismay and the government has responded with proposals designed to alter practice procedures. Altering procedures gives…

Policies to avert the threat of dangerous climate change focus on stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations by drastically reducing anthropogenic emissions of carbon. Such reductions require limiting the use of fossil fuels-which supply the bulk of energy to economic activity,…

by Robert Cregar Berwick., Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1982., MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING., Bibliography: leaves 439-451.

by Jaime Francisco Brito., Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1994., Includes bibliographical references (leaf 348).

by Glenn D. Bartkowski., Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001., Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-69).

Although we represent other people in terms of both what they look like and how they behave, these two aspects of person knowledge have rarely been studied together. While vision scientists have focused on the processing of faces and bodies,…

Signature schemes are fundamental cryptographic primitives, useful as a stand-alone application, and as a building block in the design of secure protocols and other cryptographic objects. In this thesis, we study both the uses that signature schemes find in protocols,…