Nondeterministic Effects Research Articles

A rewriting framework and logic for activities subject to regulations

Activities such as clinical investigations (CIs) or financial processes are subject to regulations to ensure quality of results and avoid negative consequences. Regulations may be imposed by multiple governmental agencies as well as by institutional policies and protocols. Due to the complexity of both regulations and activities, there is great potential for violation due to human error, misunderstanding, or even intent. Executable formal models of regulations, protocols and activities can form the foundation for automated assistants to aid planning, monitoring and compliance checking. We propose a model based on multiset rewriting where time is discrete and is specified by timestamps attached to facts. Actions, as well as initial, goal and critical states may be constrained by means of relative time constraints. Moreover, actions may have non-deterministic effects, i.e. they may have different outcomes whenever applied. We present a formal semantics of our model based on focused proofs of linear logic with definitions. We also determine the computational complexity of various planning problems. Plan compliance problem, for example, is the problem of finding a plan that leads from an initial state to a desired goal state without reaching any undesired critical state. We consider all actions to be balanced, i.e. their pre- and post-conditions have the same number of facts. Under this assumption on actions, we show that the plan compliance problem is PSPACE-complete when all actions have only deterministic effects and is EXPTIME-complete when actions may have non-deterministic effects. Finally, we show that the restrictions on the form of actions and time constraints taken in the specification of our model are necessary for decidability of the planning problems.

A generic approach to explicit simulation of uncertainty in the NEMO ocean model

Abstract. In this paper, a generic implementation approach is presented, with the aim of transforming a deterministic ocean model (like NEMO) into a probabilistic model. With this approach, several kinds of stochastic parameterizations are implemented to simulate the non-deterministic effect of unresolved processes, unresolved scales and unresolved diversity. The method is illustrated with three applications, showing that uncertainties can produce a major effect in the circulation model, in the ecosystem model, and in the sea ice model. These examples show that uncertainties can produce an important effect in the simulations, strongly modifying the dynamical behaviour of these three components of ocean systems.

Tractability of Planning with Loops

We create a unified framework for analyzing and synthesizing plans with loops for solving problems with non-deterministic numeric effects and a limited form of partial observability. Three different action models---with deterministic, qualitative non-deterministic and Boolean non-deterministic semantics---are handled using a single abstract representation. We establish the conditions under which the correctness and termination of solutions, represented as abstract policies, can be verified. We also examine the feasibility of learning abstract policies from examples. We demonstrate our techniques on several planning problems and show that they apply to challenging real-world tasks such as doing the laundry with a PR2 robot. These results resolve a number of open questions about planning with loops and facilitate the development of new algorithms and applications.

First Race Detection in Parallel Program with Random Synchronization using Trace Information

Detecting data races in multi-threaded programs is a challenging problem in debugging, because the races could reveal nondeterministic program behavior in execution of such programs. Nondeterministic runtime effects of a race are hard to identify and it is difficult to decide whether the reported data races can appear or not in the actual program executions. Previous techniques for detecting races cannot provide method to locate first races in parallel programs with random synchronization including lock/unlock mechnism. This paper presents an algorithm which extracts first races by replaying the program and checking concurrency between sequenced traced data and candidate accesses, which are from a particular execution of parallel programs. We also present the correctness of our algorithm by showing that all the first races are included in the traced accesses which are composed of key accesses.

Multi-Modal Journey Planning in the Presence of Uncertainty

Multi-modal journey planning, which allows multiple types of transport within a single trip, is becoming increasingly popular, due to a strong practical interest and an increasing availability of data. In real life, transport networks feature uncertainty. Yet, most approaches assume a deterministic environment, making plans more prone to failures such as major delays in the arrival. We model the scenario as a non-deterministic planning problem with continuous time and time-dependent probabilities of non-deterministic effects. We present new hardness results. We introduce a heuristic search planner, based on Weighted AO* (WAO*). The planner includes search enhancements such as sound pruning, based on state dominance, and an admissible heuristic. Focusing on plans that are robust to uncertainty, we demonstrate our ideas on data compiled from real historical data from Dublin, Ireland. Repeated calls to WAO*, with decreasing weights, have a good any-time performance. Our search enhancements play an important role in the planner's performance.

External and internal choice with event groups in Event-B

Abstract Abrial’s Event-B formalism for refinement-based system development is influenced by Back’s action system approach. Morgan has defined a CSP-like failures-divergence semantics for action systems that distinguishes internal and external choice of actions. Morgan’s semantics has the characteristic that the choice between enabled actions is external while internal choice is represented less directly through nondeterministic effect of actions. Practical experience with Event-B has demonstrated the need to be able to represent both internal and external choice between enabled events more explicitly. In this paper, Morgan’s failures semantics for action systems is modified to allow both internal and external choice to be represented directly. This is achieved by grouping events so that external choice is between event groups and internal choice is within event groups. This leads to a refinement rule for preservation of choice between event groups while allowing for reduction of choice within event groups. We also provide a refinement rule for splitting event groups in order to increase external choice. The refinement rules are justified in terms of failures refinement.

Probabilistic Plan Graph Heuristic for Probabilistic Planning

This work focuses on developing domain-independent heuristics for probabilistic planning problems characterized by full observability and non-deterministic effects of actions that are expressed by probability distributions. The approach is to first search for a high probability deterministic plan using a classical planner. A novel probabilistic plan graph heuristic is used to guide the search towards high probability plans. The resulting plans can be used in a system that handles unexpected outcomes by runtime replanning. The plans can also be incrementally augmented with contingency branches for the most critical action outcomes. This abstract will describe the steps that we have taken in completing the above work and the obtained results.

조건부 계획수립을 위한 효과적인 그래프 기반의 휴리스틱

In order to derive domain-independent heuristics from the specification of a planning problem, it is required to relax the given problem and then solve the relaxed one. In this paper, we present a new planning graph, Merged Planning Graph(MPG), and GD heuristics for solving contingent planning problems with both uncertainty about the initial state and non-deterministic action effects. The merged planning graph is an extended one to be applied to the contingent planning problems from the relaxed planning graph, which is a common means to get effective heuristics for solving the classical planning problems. In order to get heuristics for solving the contingent planning problems with sensing actions and non-deterministic actions, the new graph utilizes additionally the effect-merge relaxations of these actions as well as the traditional delete relaxations. Proceeding parallel to the forward expansion of the merged planning graph, the computation of GD heuristic excludes the unnecessary redundant cost from estimating the minimal reachability cost to achieve the overall set of goals by analyzing interdependencies among goals or subgoals. Therefore, GD heuristics have the advantage that they usually require less computation time than the overlap heuristics, but are more informative than the max and the additive heuristics. In this paper, we explain the experimental analysis to show the accuracy and the search efficiency of the GD heuristics.

DFG Priority Programme 1305: Control Theory of Digitally Networked Dynamical Systems

Abstract The application of modern means of communication, like wireless LAN or Ethernet, enables novel concepts and structures for control engineering. Data can be transmitted between sensors, actuators, and controllers over long distances. Information can even be exchanged between moving objects which was impossible in conventional point to point wired realizations of control loops. However, besides these advantages the use of networks within a control loop also brings up new challenges due to nondeterministic effects like delays and dropouts of data packets. But for yet, there does not exist a theory for the modeling, analysis and design of such complex systems. The connection of several components of a control loop over a communication network represents a digitally networked dynamical system, which is subject of the Priority Programme 1305 “Control Theory of Digitally Networked Dynamical Systems”. The goal of this priority programme, which is founded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) over a period of six years, is to develop a comprehensive theory for this new class of systems. Here, three defined cross-sectional issues are worked out by 13 research groups and their solutions are experimentally proved in demonstration and benchmark processes. Within this priority programme several research groups from the disciplines of control engineering, mathematics and information technology cooperate.

Updating action domain descriptions

Incorporating new information into a knowledge base is an important problem which has been widely investigated. In this paper, we study this problem in a formal framework for reasoning about actions and change. In this framework, action domains are described in an action language whose semantics is based on the notion of causality. Unlike the formalisms considered in the related work, this language allows straightforward representation of non-deterministic effects and indirect effects of (possibly concurrent) actions, as well as state constraints; therefore, the updates can be more general than elementary statements. The expressivity of this formalism allows us to study the update of an action domain description with a more general approach compared to related work. First of all, we consider the update of an action description with respect to further criteria, for instance, by ensuring that the updated description entails some observations, assertions, or general domain properties that constitute further constraints that are not expressible in an action description in general. Moreover, our framework allows us to discriminate amongst alternative updates of action domain descriptions and to single out a most preferable one, based on a given preference relation possibly dependent on the specified criteria. We study semantic and computational aspects of the update problem, and establish basic properties of updates as well as a decomposition theorem that gives rise to a divide and conquer approach to updating action descriptions under certain conditions. Furthermore, we study the computational complexity of decision problems around computing solutions, both for the generic setting and for two particular preference relations, viz. set-inclusion and weight-based preference. While deciding the existence of solutions and recognizing solutions are PSPACE-complete problems in general, the problems fall back into the polynomial hierarchy under restrictions on the additional constraints. We finally discuss methods to compute solutions and approximate solutions (which disregard preference). Our results provide a semantic and computational basis for developing systems that incorporate new information into action domain descriptions in an action language, in the presence of additional constraints.

Dynamic planning approach to automated web service composition

In this paper, novel ideas are presented for solving the automated web service composition problem. Some of the possible real world problems such as partial observability of the environment, nondeterministic effects of web services and service execution failures are solved through a dynamic planning approach. The proposed approach is based on a novel AI planner that is designed for working in highly dynamic environments under time constraints, namely Simplanner. World altering service calls are done according to the WS-Coordination and WS-Business Activity web service transaction specifications in order to physically recover from failure situations and prevent the undesired side effects of the aborted web service composition efforts.

Spreading of atomic wave packets and semiclassical chaos

The correspondence between the statistical properties of the evolution of a quantum system and Lyapunov instability and the chaos of its semiclassical analog has been demonstrated. The results of the analyses of atomic motion in a laser field in the semiclassical approximation (dynamics is described by several nonlinear equations) and without this approximation (dynamics is described by an infinite system of linear equations) are compared. In the ranges of the parameters for which the semiclassical dynamics of point-like atoms is unstable, the fast “spreading” of quantized wave packets in the momentum space is observed. Thus, deterministic chaos “imitates” the statistics of the quantum nondeterministic effects, although the semiclassical and quantum solutions are fundamentally different.

Sonic Boom Variability Due to Homogeneous Atmospheric Turbulence

This study describes the nondeterministic effect of homogeneous atmospheric turbulence on sonic boom propagation. The Sears-Haack body was calculated in three dimensions by computational fluid dynamics in inviscid flow (Euler) mode to create the near-field pressure wave. The homogeneous atmospheric turbulence field was represented by the finite sum of discrete Fourier modes based on the von Karman and Pao energy spectrum. The sonic boom signature was then calculated by the modified waveform parameter method, considering a random velocity of homogeneous atmospheric turbulence. The results of this study indicated that atmospheric turbulence has a marked influence on sonic boom overpressure during its propagation to the ground. In comparison to the no-turbulence condition, we found that the sonic boom decreased in 59 % of the cases and increased in 41 % of the cases. Thus, homogeneous atmospheric turbulence seems to favor a decrease, rather than an increase, in boom overpressure. In addition, we found that turbulence has a small effect on the propagation path from the flight altitude to the ground. Nonetheless, this small change in the propagation path may result in a variability, of the point at which the sonic boom reaches the ground, of up to 1820 ft in the north-south direction (flight direction) and 115 ft in the east-west direction.

Mass-Selection in Alignment Models with Non-Deterministic Effects

In this paper we consider a kinetic model for alignment of cells or filaments with probabilistic turning. For this equation existence of solutions is known, see [6]. To understand its qualitative behavior, especially with respect to the selection of orientations and mass distributions for long times, the model is approximated by a diffusion equation in the limit of small deviations of the interactions between the cell bundles. For this new equation existence of steady states is shown. In contrast to the kinetic equation discussed in [6] with deterministic turning, where local stability of two opposite orientations was shown but no selection of mass could be observed, for the new approximating problem with probabilistic turning additionally mass selection takes place. In the limit of small diffusion, steady states can only be constructed, if the aligning masses are either equal or the total mass is concentrated in one direction. By numerical simulations we tested stability of these steady states and for situations with 4 symmetrically placed smooth distributions of alignment. Convergence of the numerical code was proved. The simulations suggest, that only the 2- and the 1-peak steady states can be stable, whereas the 4 peak steady state is always unstable. We conjecture that the noise in the system is responsible for this final selection of masses. There exist other steady states with an arbitrary number of aligned bundles of cells or filaments, but we suspect that, as numerically shown for the 4 peak case, these multi-peak states are all unstable.

Radiation effects analysis in a group of interventional radiologists using biological and physical dosimetry methods

Interventional radiologists and staff members are frequently exposed to protracted and fractionated low doses of ionizing radiation, which extend during all their professional activities. These exposures can derive, due to the effects of direct and scattered radiation, in deterministic effects (radiodermitis, aged skin, cataracts, telangiectasia in nasal region, vasocellular epitelioms, hands depilation) and/or stochastic ones (cancer incidence). A methodology has been proposed for estimating the radiation risk or detriment from a group of six exposed interventional radiologists of the Hospital Universitario La Fe (Valencia, Spain), which had developed general exposition symptoms attributable to deterministic effects of ionizing radiation. Equivalent doses have been periodically registered using TLD’s and wrist dosimeters, H p (10) and H p (0.07), respectively, and estimated through the observation of translocations in lymphocytes of peripheral blood (biological methods), by extrapolating the yield of translocations to their respective dose–effect curves. The software RADRISK has been applied for estimating radiation risks in these occupational radiation exposures. This software is based on transport models from epidemiological studies of population exposed to external sources of ionizing radiation, such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors [UNSCEAR, Sources and effects of ionizing radiation: 2006 report to the general assembly, with scientific annexes. New York: United Nations; 2006]. The minimum and maximum average excess ratio for skin cancer has been, using wrist physical doses, of [ 1.03 × 1 0 − 3 , 5.06 × 1 0 − 2 ], concluding that there is not an increased risk of skin cancer incidence. The minimum and maximum average excess ratio for leukemia has been, using TLD physical doses, of [ 7.84 × 1 0 − 2 , 3.36 × 1 0 − 1 ], and using biological doses, of [ 1.40 × 1 0 − 1 , 1.51], which is considerably higher than incidence rates, showing an excess radio-induced risk of leukemia in the group under study. Finally, the maximum radiological detriment in the group, evaluated as the total number of radio-induced cancers using physical dosimetry, has been of 2.18/1000 person-year (skin and leukemia), and using biological dosimetry of 9.20/1000 PY (leukemia). As a conclusion, this study has provided an assessment of the non-deterministic effects (rate of radio-induced cancer incidence) attributable to the group under study due to their professional activity.

Specifying and monitoring economic environments using rights and obligations

We provide a formal scripting language to capture the semantics of economic environments. The language is based on a set of well-defined design principles and makes explicit an agent's rights, as derived from property, and an agent's obligations, as derived from restrictions placed on its actions either voluntarily or as a consequence of other actions. Coupled with the language is a run-time system that is able to monitor and enforce rights and obligations in an agent-mediated economic environment. The framework allows an agent to formally express guarantees (obligations) in relation to its actions, and the run-time system automatically checks that these obligations are met and verifies that an agent has appropriate rights before executing an action. Rights and obligations are viewed as first-class goods that can be transferred from one agent to another. This treatment makes it easy to define natural and expressive recursive statements, so that, for instance, one may have rights or obligations in selling or trading some other right or obligation. We define fundamental axioms about well-functioning markets in terms of rights and obligations, and delineate the difference between ownership and possession, arguably two of the most important notions in economic markets. The framework provides a rich set of action-related constructs for modeling conditional and non-deterministic effects, and introduces the use of transactions to safely bundle actions, including the issuing of rights and taking on of obligations. By way of example, we show that our language can represent a variety of economic mechanisms, ranging from simple two-agent single-good exchanges to complicated combinatorial auctions. The framework, which is fully implemented, can be used to formalize the semantics of markets; as a platform for prototyping, testing and evaluating agent-mediated markets; and also provide a basis for deploying an electronic market.

Probabilistic Hybrid Action Models for Predicting Concurrent Percept-driven Robot Behavior

This article develops Probabilistic Hybrid Action Models (PHAMs), a realistic causal model for predicting the behavior generated by modern percept-driven robot plans. PHAMs represent aspects of robot behavior that cannot be represented by most action models used in AI planning: the temporal structure of continuous control processes, their non-deterministic effects, several modes of their interferences, and the achievement of triggering conditions in closed-loop robot plans. The main contributions of this article are: (1) PHAMs, a model of concurrent percept-driven behavior, its formalization, and proofs that the model generates probably, qualitatively accurate predictions; and (2) a resource-efficient inference method for PHAMs based on sampling projections from probabilistic action models and state descriptions. We show how PHAMs can be applied to planning the course of action of an autonomous robot office courier based on analytical and experimental results.

Wide-Band Measurements of Nondeterministic Effects on the BRAN Indoor Radio Channel

External nonstatic effects on the indoor radio channel can be classified according to their natures; they can be quasistatic, as are those due to the furnishing and decoration of rooms, or clearly dynamic, as are those forced by the movement of people and pets within the propagation environment. So, it can be stated that people acting and walking nearby the antennas of radio-communication systems introduce nondeterministic effects in the radio channel, whereas walls, ceiling, floors, and even doors and windows are structural elements whose influence can be modeled by ray-tracing tools, the activity of people (both movement and variations in the distribution of elements such as furniture or decorative objects) introduces stochastic components in the channel characteristics prediction. Deterministic tools cannot model these effects, but their experimental knowledge will allow radio-network designers to keep guard values for the different design parameters at the same time that they plan the radio network. In this manner, the quality of service provided by these communication systems could be preserved. This paper shows the results and analysis of measurement campaigns performed in static and dynamic conditions, in order to compare the behavior of both narrow and wide-band parameters of the radio channel, including people activity within the environment.

The classical AI planning problems in the mirror of Horn linear logic: semantics, expressibility, complexity

We introduce Horn linear logic as a comprehensive logical system capable of handling the typical AI problem of making a plan of the actions to be performed by a robot so that he could get into a set of final situations, if he started with a certain initial situation. Contrary to undecidability of propositional Horn linear logic, the planning problem is proved to be decidable for a reasonably wide class of natural robot systems.The planning problem is proved to be EXPTIME-complete for the robot systems that allow actions with non-deterministic effects. Fixing a finite signature, that is a finite set of predicates and their finite domains, we get a polynomial time procedure of making plans for the robot system over this signature.The planning complexity is reduced to PSPACE for the robot systems with only pure deterministic actions.As honest numerical parameters in our algorithms we invoke the length of description of a planning task ‘from W to Z˜’ and the Kolmogorov descriptive complexity of AxT, a set of possible actions.

Dose displays and record keeping.

In digital diagnostic and interventional radiology, patient dosimetry is essential. When considering the display requirements for interventionalists it is necessary to consider the basis for their information needs. An interventionalist must be made aware of the potential for deterministic and non-deterministic effects. Thus a display is required which provides an indication of whether skin effects are likely and this predicates a display of maximum estimated skin entrance dose. For non-deterministic effects, a display of dose-area product is useful. Unfortunately, neither display is generally available to the interventionalist, so inevitably they will remain in the dark about the potential radiological consequences of the procedure. Given the need to follow up patients, who may receive a high dose, it is important that the patient notes contain relevant dosimetry data. One way of achieving this in the future would be to link electronically the patient dosimetry device to the patient record in the Radiological Information System. This dictates a need to develop patient dosimetry record minimum dataset and equipment connectivity standards.