Oscar J . Romero | Carnegie Mellon University (original) (raw)

Papers by Oscar J . Romero

Automatic service composition in mobile and pervasive computing faces many challenges due to the ... more Automatic service composition in mobile and pervasive computing faces many challenges due to the complex and highly dynamic nature of the environment. Common approaches consider service composition as a decision problem whose solution is usually addressed from optimization perspectives which are not feasible in practice due to the intractability of the problem, limited computational resources of smart devices, service host's mobility, and time constraints to tailor composition plans. Thus, our main contribution is the development of a cognitively-inspired agent-based service composition model focused on bounded rationality rather than optimality, which allows the system to compensate for limited resources by selectively filtering out continuous streams of data. Our approach exhibits features such as distributedness, modularity, emergent global functionality, and robustness, which endow it with capabilities to perform decentralized service composition by orchestrating manifold se...

As smartphones become increasingly more powerful, a new generation of highly interactive user-cen... more As smartphones become increasingly more powerful, a new generation of highly interactive user-centric mobile apps emerge to make user's life simpler and more productive. Mobile phones applications have to sustain limited resource availability on mobile devices such as battery life, network connectivity while also providing better responsiveness, lightweight interactions within the application. Developers end up spending a considerable amount of time dealing with the architecture constraints imposed by the wide variety of platforms, tools, and devices offered by the mobile ecosystem, thereby diverting them from their main goal of building such apps. Therefore, we propose a mobile-based middleware architecture that alleviates the burdensome task of dealing with low-level architectural decisions and fine-grained implementation details. We achieve such a goal by focusing on the separation of concerns and abstracting away the complexity of orchestrating device sensors and effectors, decision-making processes, and connection to remote services, while providing scaffolding for the development of higher-level functional features of interactive high-performance mobile apps. We demonstrate the powerfulness of our approach vs. Android's conventional framework by comparing different software metrics.

Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs) are software agents that can perform tasks on behalf of in... more Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs) are software agents that can perform tasks on behalf of individuals and assist them on many of their daily activities. IPAs capabilities are expanding rapidly due to the recent advances on areas such as natural language processing, machine learning, artificial cognition, and ubiquitous computing, which equip the agents with competences to understand what users say, collect information from everyday ubiquitous devices (e.g., smartphones, wearables, tablets, laptops, cars, household appliances, etc.), learn user preferences, deliver data-driven search results, and make decisions based on user's context. Apart from the inherent complexity of building such IPAs, developers and researchers have to address many critical architectural challenges (e.g., low-latency, scalability, concurrency, ubiquity, code mobility, interoperability, support to cognitive services and reasoning, to name a few.), thereby diverting them from their main goal: building IPAs. Thus, our contribution in this paper is twofold: 1) we propose an architecture for a platform-agnostic, high-performance, ubiquitous, and distributed middleware that alleviates the burdensome task of dealing with low-level implementation details when building IPAs by adding multiple abstraction layers that hide the underlying complexity; and 2) we present an implementation of the middleware that concretizes the aforementioned architecture and allows the development of high-level capabilities while scaling the system up to hundreds of thousands of IPAs with no extra effort. We demonstrate the powerfulness of our middleware by analyzing software metrics for complexity, effort, performance, cohesion and coupling when developing a conversational IPA.

Robots are increasingly becoming key players in human-robot teams. To become effective teammates,... more Robots are increasingly becoming key players in human-robot teams. To become effective teammates, robots must possess profound understanding of an environment, be able to reason about the desired commands and goals within a specific context, and be able to communicate with human teammates in a clear and natural way. To address these challenges, we have developed an intelligence architecture that combines cognitive components to carry out high-level cognitive tasks, semantic perception to label regions in the world, and a natural language component to reason about the command and its relationship to the objects in the world. This paper describes recent developments using this architecture on a fielded mobile robot platform operating in unknown urban environments. We report a summary of extensive outdoor experiments; the results suggest that a multidisciplinary approach to robotics has the potential to create competent human-robot teams.

Human Computation, 2019

Natural language interfaces have become a common part of modern digital life. Chatbots utilize te... more Natural language interfaces have become a common part of modern digital life. Chatbots utilize text-based conversations to communicate with users; personal assistants on smartphones such as Google Assistant take direct speech commands from their users; and speech-controlled devices such as Amazon Echo use voice as their only input mode. In this paper, we introduce InstructableCrowd, a crowd-powered system that allows users to program their devices via conversation. The user verbally expresses a problem to the system, in which a group of crowd workers collectively respond and program relevant multi-part IF-THEN rules to help the user. The IF-THEN rules generated by InstructableCrowd connect relevant sensor combinations (e.g., location, weather, device acceleration, etc.) to useful effectors (e.g., text messages, device alarms, etc.). Our study showed that non-programmers can use the conversational interface of InstructableCrowd to create IF-THEN rules that have similar quality compar...

Procedia Computer Science, 2018

As the Common Model of Cognition (CMC) is getting more supporters from research fields such as AI... more As the Common Model of Cognition (CMC) is getting more supporters from research fields such as AI, cognitive science, neuroscience, and robotics in an effort to contribute to the understanding of minds, a new requirement becomes imperative: standard modeling and specification mechanisms are needed to allow both developing new CMC-compliant computational frameworks and validating existing ones. Thus, this paper aims at proposing an approach to formally describe cognitive architectures by extending π-ADL, an Architecture Description Language based on π-Calculus. Four case studies illustrate the usefulness of our approach, and future work outlines how it can be used as a vehicle to formally meet architectural requirements, validate structural/behavioral equivalence among architectures, and model evolutionary cognitive systems.

Procedia Computer Science, 2018

This paper provides a starting point for the development of metacognition in a common model of co... more This paper provides a starting point for the development of metacognition in a common model of cognition. It identifies significant theoretical work on metacognition from multiple disciplines that the authors believe worthy of consideration. After first defining cognition and metacognition, we outline three general categories of metacognition, provide an initial list of its main components, consider the more difficult problem of consciousness, and present examples of prominent artificial systems that have implemented metacognitive components. Finally, we identify pressing design issues for the future.

Procedia Computer Science, 2018

We present the input to the discussion about the computational framework known as Common Model of... more We present the input to the discussion about the computational framework known as Common Model of Cognition (CMC) from the working group dealing with the knowledge/rational/social levels. In particular, we present a list of the higher level constraints that should be addressed within such a general framework.

Advances in Soft Computing, 2007

2009 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, 2009

In this work, a hybrid, self-configurable, multilayered and evolutionary architecture for cogniti... more In this work, a hybrid, self-configurable, multilayered and evolutionary architecture for cognitive agents is developed. Each layer of the subsumption architecture is modeled by one different Machine Learning System MLS based on bio-inspired techniques. In this research an evolutionary mechanism supported on Gene Expression Programming to self-configure the behaviour arbitration between layers is suggested. In addition, a co-evolutionary mechanism to

Recently, transformer language models have been applied to build both task- and non-task-oriented... more Recently, transformer language models have been applied to build both task- and non-task-oriented dialogue systems. Although transformers perform well on most of the NLP tasks, they perform poorly on context retrieval and symbolic reasoning. Our work aims to address this limitation by embedding the model in an operational loop that blends both natural language generation and symbolic injection. We evaluated our system on the multi-domain DSTC8 data set and reported joint goal accuracy of 75.8% (ranked among the first half positions), intent accuracy of 97.4% (which is higher than the reported literature), and a 15% improvement for success rate compared to a baseline with no symbolic injection. These promising results suggest that transformer language models can not only generate proper system responses but also symbolic representations that can further be used to enhance the overall quality of the dialogue management as well as serving as scaffolding for complex conversational reaso...

Automatic service composition in mobile and pervasive computing faces many challenges due to the ... more Automatic service composition in mobile and pervasive computing faces many challenges due to the complex and highly dynamic nature of the environment. Common approaches consider service composition as a decision problem whose solution is usually addressed from optimization perspectives which are not feasible in practice due to the intractability of the problem, limited computational resources of smart devices, service host's mobility, and time constraints to tailor composition plans. Thus, our main contribution is the development of a cognitively-inspired agent-based service composition model focused on bounded rationality rather than optimality, which allows the system to compensate for limited resources by selectively filtering out continuous streams of data. Our approach exhibits features such as distributedness, modularity, emergent global functionality, and robustness, which endow it with capabilities to perform decentralized service composition by orchestrating manifold se...

As smartphones become increasingly more powerful, a new generation of highly interactive user-cen... more As smartphones become increasingly more powerful, a new generation of highly interactive user-centric mobile apps emerge to make user's life simpler and more productive. Mobile phones applications have to sustain limited resource availability on mobile devices such as battery life, network connectivity while also providing better responsiveness, lightweight interactions within the application. Developers end up spending a considerable amount of time dealing with the architecture constraints imposed by the wide variety of platforms, tools, and devices offered by the mobile ecosystem, thereby diverting them from their main goal of building such apps. Therefore, we propose a mobile-based middleware architecture that alleviates the burdensome task of dealing with low-level architectural decisions and fine-grained implementation details. We achieve such a goal by focusing on the separation of concerns and abstracting away the complexity of orchestrating device sensors and effectors, decision-making processes, and connection to remote services, while providing scaffolding for the development of higher-level functional features of interactive high-performance mobile apps. We demonstrate the powerfulness of our approach vs. Android's conventional framework by comparing different software metrics.

Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs) are software agents that can perform tasks on behalf of in... more Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs) are software agents that can perform tasks on behalf of individuals and assist them on many of their daily activities. IPAs capabilities are expanding rapidly due to the recent advances on areas such as natural language processing, machine learning, artificial cognition, and ubiquitous computing, which equip the agents with competences to understand what users say, collect information from everyday ubiquitous devices (e.g., smartphones, wearables, tablets, laptops, cars, household appliances, etc.), learn user preferences, deliver data-driven search results, and make decisions based on user's context. Apart from the inherent complexity of building such IPAs, developers and researchers have to address many critical architectural challenges (e.g., low-latency, scalability, concurrency, ubiquity, code mobility, interoperability, support to cognitive services and reasoning, to name a few.), thereby diverting them from their main goal: building IPAs. Thus, our contribution in this paper is twofold: 1) we propose an architecture for a platform-agnostic, high-performance, ubiquitous, and distributed middleware that alleviates the burdensome task of dealing with low-level implementation details when building IPAs by adding multiple abstraction layers that hide the underlying complexity; and 2) we present an implementation of the middleware that concretizes the aforementioned architecture and allows the development of high-level capabilities while scaling the system up to hundreds of thousands of IPAs with no extra effort. We demonstrate the powerfulness of our middleware by analyzing software metrics for complexity, effort, performance, cohesion and coupling when developing a conversational IPA.

Robots are increasingly becoming key players in human-robot teams. To become effective teammates,... more Robots are increasingly becoming key players in human-robot teams. To become effective teammates, robots must possess profound understanding of an environment, be able to reason about the desired commands and goals within a specific context, and be able to communicate with human teammates in a clear and natural way. To address these challenges, we have developed an intelligence architecture that combines cognitive components to carry out high-level cognitive tasks, semantic perception to label regions in the world, and a natural language component to reason about the command and its relationship to the objects in the world. This paper describes recent developments using this architecture on a fielded mobile robot platform operating in unknown urban environments. We report a summary of extensive outdoor experiments; the results suggest that a multidisciplinary approach to robotics has the potential to create competent human-robot teams.

Human Computation, 2019

Natural language interfaces have become a common part of modern digital life. Chatbots utilize te... more Natural language interfaces have become a common part of modern digital life. Chatbots utilize text-based conversations to communicate with users; personal assistants on smartphones such as Google Assistant take direct speech commands from their users; and speech-controlled devices such as Amazon Echo use voice as their only input mode. In this paper, we introduce InstructableCrowd, a crowd-powered system that allows users to program their devices via conversation. The user verbally expresses a problem to the system, in which a group of crowd workers collectively respond and program relevant multi-part IF-THEN rules to help the user. The IF-THEN rules generated by InstructableCrowd connect relevant sensor combinations (e.g., location, weather, device acceleration, etc.) to useful effectors (e.g., text messages, device alarms, etc.). Our study showed that non-programmers can use the conversational interface of InstructableCrowd to create IF-THEN rules that have similar quality compar...

Procedia Computer Science, 2018

As the Common Model of Cognition (CMC) is getting more supporters from research fields such as AI... more As the Common Model of Cognition (CMC) is getting more supporters from research fields such as AI, cognitive science, neuroscience, and robotics in an effort to contribute to the understanding of minds, a new requirement becomes imperative: standard modeling and specification mechanisms are needed to allow both developing new CMC-compliant computational frameworks and validating existing ones. Thus, this paper aims at proposing an approach to formally describe cognitive architectures by extending π-ADL, an Architecture Description Language based on π-Calculus. Four case studies illustrate the usefulness of our approach, and future work outlines how it can be used as a vehicle to formally meet architectural requirements, validate structural/behavioral equivalence among architectures, and model evolutionary cognitive systems.

Procedia Computer Science, 2018

This paper provides a starting point for the development of metacognition in a common model of co... more This paper provides a starting point for the development of metacognition in a common model of cognition. It identifies significant theoretical work on metacognition from multiple disciplines that the authors believe worthy of consideration. After first defining cognition and metacognition, we outline three general categories of metacognition, provide an initial list of its main components, consider the more difficult problem of consciousness, and present examples of prominent artificial systems that have implemented metacognitive components. Finally, we identify pressing design issues for the future.

Procedia Computer Science, 2018

We present the input to the discussion about the computational framework known as Common Model of... more We present the input to the discussion about the computational framework known as Common Model of Cognition (CMC) from the working group dealing with the knowledge/rational/social levels. In particular, we present a list of the higher level constraints that should be addressed within such a general framework.

Advances in Soft Computing, 2007

2009 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, 2009

In this work, a hybrid, self-configurable, multilayered and evolutionary architecture for cogniti... more In this work, a hybrid, self-configurable, multilayered and evolutionary architecture for cognitive agents is developed. Each layer of the subsumption architecture is modeled by one different Machine Learning System MLS based on bio-inspired techniques. In this research an evolutionary mechanism supported on Gene Expression Programming to self-configure the behaviour arbitration between layers is suggested. In addition, a co-evolutionary mechanism to

Recently, transformer language models have been applied to build both task- and non-task-oriented... more Recently, transformer language models have been applied to build both task- and non-task-oriented dialogue systems. Although transformers perform well on most of the NLP tasks, they perform poorly on context retrieval and symbolic reasoning. Our work aims to address this limitation by embedding the model in an operational loop that blends both natural language generation and symbolic injection. We evaluated our system on the multi-domain DSTC8 data set and reported joint goal accuracy of 75.8% (ranked among the first half positions), intent accuracy of 97.4% (which is higher than the reported literature), and a 15% improvement for success rate compared to a baseline with no symbolic injection. These promising results suggest that transformer language models can not only generate proper system responses but also symbolic representations that can further be used to enhance the overall quality of the dialogue management as well as serving as scaffolding for complex conversational reaso...