José Neves - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by José Neves
ECMS 2008 Proceedings edited by: L. S. Louca, Y. Chrysanthou, Z. Oplatkova, K. Al-Begain, 2008
Modelling the service life for asphalt pavements is widely made with base on empirical methods, d... more Modelling the service life for asphalt pavements is widely made with base on empirical methods, developed half-century ago, with poor results. The new reality of the XXI century, with high construction costs, environmental restrictions and growing volumes of vehicles in the highways, enforce the shift to a new level of quality and accuracy to predict the service life of the pavements. This paper presents some insights either theoretical or experimental into a making from the ground, of an approach to predict and model the asphalt pavement behaviour using soft computing tools and, at the same time, create a way to accumulate the knowledge in this engineering field. The knowledge about the asphalt pavement life cycle is organized in a hierarchical way in order to be reused in a formal way, leading to an evolutionary process of adaptation and construction (Neves et al. 2007).
Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing, 2010
The development of Intelligent Environments is a complex challenge. This complexity arises, in pa... more The development of Intelligent Environments is a complex challenge. This complexity arises, in part, from the amount of different devices that need to be seamlessly integrated in a common and homogeneous environment, despite the fact of each device having its own characteristics. This heterogeneity of devices is particularly risky when one passes from the specification to the implementation phase, where all unexpected things start to happen. Multi-agent systems are the paradigm par excellence for implementing Intelligent Environments. However, traditionally, agents are only used at the implementation phase. In this paper we propose a new 3 step approach in which agents are used during all the development process, playing undoubtedly a much more preponderant role and making the path from the specification to the implementation a much easier and controllable one, always having in mind the challenges of the development of Intelligent Environments.
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2013
This paper describes an approach for assessing the level of stress of users of mobile devices wit... more This paper describes an approach for assessing the level of stress of users of mobile devices with tactile screens by analysing their touch patterns. Two features are extracted from touches: duration and intensity. These features allow to analyse the intensity curve of each touch. We use decision trees (J48) and support vector machines (SMO) to train a stress detection classifier using additional data collected in previous experiments. This data includes the amount of movement, acceleration on the device, cognitive performance, among others. In previous work we have shown the co-relation between these parameters and stress. Both algorithms show around 80% of correctly classified instances. The decision tree can be used to classify, in real time, the touches of the users, serving as an input to the assessment of the stress level.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014
In our daily life, we often have the feeling of being exhausted due to mental or physical work, a... more In our daily life, we often have the feeling of being exhausted due to mental or physical work, and a sense of performance degradation in the execution of simple tasks. The maximum capacity of operation and performance of an individual, whether physical or mental, usually also decreases gradually as the day progresses. The loss of these resources is linked to the onset of fatigue, which is particularly noticeable in long and demanding tasks or repetitive jobs. However, good management of the working time and eort invested in each task, as well as the eect of breaks at work, can result in better performance and better mental health, delaying the eects of fatigue. This paper details a non-invasive approach on the monitoring of fatigue of a human being, based on the analysis of the performance of his interaction with the computer.
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2014
Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and its related elds emerged some years ago with the exciting promise ... more Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and its related elds emerged some years ago with the exciting promise of pervasive intelligence, magic interaction mechanisms, and everywhere availability. This promise would be materialized in homes that knew all about our habits and preferences, proactive workplaces to support people's work or personal digital assistants to improve our daily living in all aspects possible. This somewhat utopian vision, expected by many to have already taken place, remains unaccomplished and far from it. Many challenges still lay ahead which delayed and continue to delay the expected technological unravelling. In this paper we focus on the immense technological challenges of designing and implementing AmI Systems. Specically, we propose a technological approach that will contribute to overcome some of these challenges by making developed AmI solutions more modular, interoperable, and extensible. This will result especially advantageous for large development teams or teams that span multiple institutions.
Law, Governance and Technology Series, 2014
As technological tools find their way into the realms of conflict resolution, the field gains inc... more As technological tools find their way into the realms of conflict resolution, the field gains increased complexity. Until a few years ago, conflict resolution would only touch fields such as Psychology, Philosophy, Economy or Law. Now, it also touches a wide range of technological fields that go much further than communication technologies to include Artificial Intelligence and many of its sub-fields. This significantly expands the possible future directions of research which, at the same time, plunges the field in a certain degree of uncertainty. One must, nonetheless, bear in mind that such uncertainty, doubt and suspicion is natural in any revolution and that, at the time, it is a Technological Revolution that we are living. Thus, a significant focus should be placed on analyzing the work carried out so far by researchers and commercial providers in an attempt to draw conclusions that can better guide the future steps. Moreover, these future steps should be guided not only by the technical challenges or the improvement of performance but also by more abstract notions such as fairness and transparency, with a marked concern on ethics. Only this way can the support and trust of significant slices of the society be harnessed, fundamental for the successful implementation and active use of the type of tools described in this book.
Law, Governance and Technology Series, 2014
Contextual factors allow us to fully grasp an event, situation, communication process or action. ... more Contextual factors allow us to fully grasp an event, situation, communication process or action. Frequently, the context in which an event takes place provides more valuable information than the event itself. This chapter addresses context and its importance from a general perspective and in the particular domain of conflict resolution. It describes many different contextual dimensions such as the verbal, social or cultural, pointing out the importance of each one to understand individuals’ actions. It then moves on to the address the recent field of Context-aware Computing: the vision of computers that are sensible to contextual cues, harness it and use such information to provide better services. Several context-aware solutions are described in this chapter that point out the range of application domains. However, no such application exists in the domain of conflict resolution. While the next chapters are dedicated do describing the components of such an application, this chapter ends with the enumeration of several contextual dimensions that are of relevance to fully describe a conflict and its resolution process.
Progress in Artificial Intelligence, 2012
The analysis and development of a novel approach to asphalt pavement modeling, able to attend the... more The analysis and development of a novel approach to asphalt pavement modeling, able to attend the need to predict the failure according to technical and non-technical criteria in a highway, is a hard task, namely in terms of the huge amount of possible scenarios. Indeed, the current state-of-the-art for service-life prediction is at empiric and empiric-mechanistic levels, and does not provide any suitable answer even for a single failure criteria. Consequently, it is imperative to achieve qualified models and qualitative reasoning methods, in particular due to the need to have firstclass environments at our disposal where defective information is at hand. To fulfill this goal, this paper presents a dynamic and formal model oriented to fulfill the task of making predictions for multi-failure criteria, in particular
ADCAIJ: Advances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal, 2013
The prevalence of situations of medical error and defensive medicine in healthcare institutions i... more The prevalence of situations of medical error and defensive medicine in healthcare institutions is a great concern of the medical community. Clinical Practice Guidelines are regarded by most researchers as a way to mitigate theseoccurrences; however, there is a need to make them interactive, easier to update and to deploy. This paper provides a model for Computer-Interpretable Guidelines based on the generic tasks of the clinical process, devised to be included in the framework of a Clinical Decision Support System. Aiming to represent medical recommendations in a simple and intuitive way. Hence, this work proposes a knowledge representation formalism that uses an Extension to Logic Programming to handle incomplete information. This model is used to represent different cases of missing, conflicting and inexact information with the aid of a method to quantify its quality. The integration of the guideline model with the knowledge representation formalism yields a clinical decision mod...
The progressive ageing of population combined with the need for comfort in situations of disease ... more The progressive ageing of population combined with the need for comfort in situations of disease and disability are pushing healthcare organizations and governments to find new solutions to enable people to live longer in their preferred environment, while having access to quality healthcare services. iGenda is an Ambient Assisted Living platform that provides constant monitoring to people with this type of needs. The use of a Computer-Interpretable Guideline model for decision making is one of the features of this platform. The model used to represent Clinical Practice Guidelines gathers a set of features that make guidelines more dynamic and easily implementable. The model is defined using Ontology Web Language, profiting from the existing constructors provided by this language. It is based on a set of primitive tasks, namely Plans, Actions, Questions and Decisions. Focusing on decision support, a method for dealing with incomplete information about the clinical parameters of a health record is presented. The objective is to keep a continuous flow of information through the decision process and assuring that an outcome is always achieved. The usefulness of the integration of guideline recommendations with a reason mechanism capable of handling incomplete information is demonstrated through a case study about the diagnosis of metabolic syndrome.
Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing, 2010
In Group Decision Making based on argumentation, decisions are made considering the diverse point... more In Group Decision Making based on argumentation, decisions are made considering the diverse points of view of the different partakers in order to decide which course of action a group should follow. However, knowledge and belief are normally incomplete, contradictory, or error sensitive, being desirable to use formal tools to deal with the problems that arise from the use of uncertain and even not precise information. On the other hand, qualitative models and qualitative reasoning have been around in Artificial Intelligence research for some time, in particular due the growing need to offer support in decision-making processes, a problem that in this work will be addressed in terms of an extension to the logic programming language and based on an evaluation of the Quality-of-Information (QoI) that stems out from those extended logic programs or theories. We present a computational model to address the problem of decision making, in terms of a multitude of scenarios, also defined as logic programs or theories, where the more appropriate ones stand for the higher QoIs values.
Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2013
The work presented focuses not only on the behavioural patterns that influence the outcome of a n... more The work presented focuses not only on the behavioural patterns that influence the outcome of a negotiation, but also on the discovery of ways to predict the type of conflict used in the process and the stress levels of the actors. After setting up an experimental intelligent environment provided with sensors to capture behavioural and contextual information, a set of relevant data was collected and analysed, with the underlying objective of using the behavioural patterns (obtained by statistical/probabilistic methods) as a basis to design and present plans and suggestions to the associated participants. In sooth, these proposals may influence in a positive way the course and outcome of a negotiation task in many aspects. This work highlights the importance of knowledge in negotiation, as in other social forms of interaction, providing also some new insights for informed decision support in situations in which uncertainty and conflict may be present.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 2009
Quality on the welfare services in caring, and the trend to minimize the economical and social-po... more Quality on the welfare services in caring, and the trend to minimize the economical and social-political costs that come with such practice, due to the population aging, are paramount nowadays, i.e., health care reform has become the leading policy issue in all latitudes. Indeed, the major thrust of all this research is the perception that escalating costs make the current structure and financing of health care unsustainable. The issue of sustainability is, therefore, the main subject of this paper. As a result, and in order to accomplish this goal, we decided to look to the problem from an user perspective, i.e., the system not only will provide different services, but will be also able to trace the ones more frequently used and to learn about the context in which they happen. As a result, we will have a system that will act and learn according to the preferences and habits of its users, and, simultaneously, will adapt to the environment with the objective of reducing the cost of its practices.
Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments, 2010
In the last years we have witnessed to a substantial increase on the number of people in need of ... more In the last years we have witnessed to a substantial increase on the number of people in need of care services, especially among the elderly, a phenomenon related to population ageing. However, this is becoming not exclusive of the elderly, as diseases like obesity, diabetes, and blood pressure have been increasing amongst young adults. This is a new reality which needs to be dealt by the healthcare sector, specifically the public one. Given these new scenarios, the importance of finding new and cost-effective ways for health care delivery are of particular relevance, especially when it is believed that these new patients should not be removed from their natural, day-today life, environment. The evolution of the, so called, new technologies may pay here a very important role as they may become part of the solution for this new problematic. Actually, they are already been used as, in recent years, several projects have raised in this relatively new area of work. These projects, although legitimate ones, were essential for delineating a path to pursue for others to come, as they were in some case, very simple ones (e.g. panic buttons), and, especially, reactive ones. In this paper, we are going to present how we are trying to evolve these projects a step further, through the introduction of proactiveness as a key factor, taking advantage of "new", as in applied to this areas, techniques of decision making, idea generation, argumentation and data quality, applied, not only to the in transit information, but also to the one provided by the several intervenient as well as themselves. In order to be able to pursue this delineated path, a new approach for knowledge representation, reasoning, and even for problem solving is proposed. To achieve these goals, the VirtualECare environment is presented, together with its sustaining infrastructure and architecture. Particular attention will be paidto how it may be used to simulate a virtual Assisted Living Environment in order to, later, better monitor real ones, attending to its customers' needs.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, 2007
1. INTRODUCTION According to Portuguese Law (Decree 7/2004 article 33) the general rules on error... more 1. INTRODUCTION According to Portuguese Law (Decree 7/2004 article 33) the general rules on error in electronic contracting without human intervention will apply only in case of human error in programming (it will be applied the rules considered for human error in the ...
Ambient Intelligence and Future Trends - International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence (Isaml 2010), 2010
Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing, 2011
Electronic contracting, mostly through software agents, led to an impressive growth in electronic... more Electronic contracting, mostly through software agents, led to an impressive growth in electronic transactions, but also in the number of disputes arising out of these transactions. Paper-based courts are however unable to efficiently deal with this increase in disputes. On the other hand, current Online Dispute Resolution methodologies are impersonal and cold, leaving aside important information such as the disputants' body language and emotions. In that sense, in this paper we propose the creation of environments for dispute resolution that can complement the existing tools with important context information. This, we believe, will lead to dispute resolution tools that will more efficiently achieve mutually satisfactory outcomes.
Progress in Artificial Intelligence
Abstract. In this paper we address the role of divergence and convergence in creative processes, ... more Abstract. In this paper we address the role of divergence and convergence in creative processes, and argue about the need to consider them in Computational Creativity research in the Genetic or Evolutionary Programming paradigm, being one´s goal the problem of ...
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2014
Progress is inherent to a living society, which may occur in several different areas (e.g. comput... more Progress is inherent to a living society, which may occur in several different areas (e.g. computation, healthcare) and manners. The present (or now) is the time that is associated with the events perceived directly and in the first time, making, for example, the society to be very inquisitive on assistive technologies and how they may improve the human beings quality of living. This application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes may help the user in his/her diminished capabilities, and, usually, implies a small adaptation on the part of the individual in the use of devices; indeed one of the die down potentials of people with cognitive disabilities is the one of spatial orientation. On the other hand several were the authors that have developed systems to help an human being to travel between two locations. However, once the system is set up the change in the configurations have to be done manually in order to better adjust the system to the user. In order to go round this drawback, in this work it is presented a framework of speculative computation to set up the computation of the next user step using default values. When the information is obtained the computation is revised. Thus, the system may have a faster reaction to the user stimulus or it may start warning the user before he/she takes the wrong direction.
IFIP – The International Federation for Information Processing
It is understood that Collaborative Work plays an important role in today's organizations life cy... more It is understood that Collaborative Work plays an important role in today's organizations life cycle. On the other hand, any decision that may involve a set of decision makers is, by itself, quite complex. It is under this umbrella that it will be presented the VirtualECare project, that contemplates an intelligent multi-agent system able to monitor, interact and serve its customers in need of (health)care services. We will center our attention on the system group decision and argumentation modules, which use idea generation techniques and resort to argumentation to exchange and justify belief and choice. At the end, a prototype will be presented.
ECMS 2008 Proceedings edited by: L. S. Louca, Y. Chrysanthou, Z. Oplatkova, K. Al-Begain, 2008
Modelling the service life for asphalt pavements is widely made with base on empirical methods, d... more Modelling the service life for asphalt pavements is widely made with base on empirical methods, developed half-century ago, with poor results. The new reality of the XXI century, with high construction costs, environmental restrictions and growing volumes of vehicles in the highways, enforce the shift to a new level of quality and accuracy to predict the service life of the pavements. This paper presents some insights either theoretical or experimental into a making from the ground, of an approach to predict and model the asphalt pavement behaviour using soft computing tools and, at the same time, create a way to accumulate the knowledge in this engineering field. The knowledge about the asphalt pavement life cycle is organized in a hierarchical way in order to be reused in a formal way, leading to an evolutionary process of adaptation and construction (Neves et al. 2007).
Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing, 2010
The development of Intelligent Environments is a complex challenge. This complexity arises, in pa... more The development of Intelligent Environments is a complex challenge. This complexity arises, in part, from the amount of different devices that need to be seamlessly integrated in a common and homogeneous environment, despite the fact of each device having its own characteristics. This heterogeneity of devices is particularly risky when one passes from the specification to the implementation phase, where all unexpected things start to happen. Multi-agent systems are the paradigm par excellence for implementing Intelligent Environments. However, traditionally, agents are only used at the implementation phase. In this paper we propose a new 3 step approach in which agents are used during all the development process, playing undoubtedly a much more preponderant role and making the path from the specification to the implementation a much easier and controllable one, always having in mind the challenges of the development of Intelligent Environments.
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2013
This paper describes an approach for assessing the level of stress of users of mobile devices wit... more This paper describes an approach for assessing the level of stress of users of mobile devices with tactile screens by analysing their touch patterns. Two features are extracted from touches: duration and intensity. These features allow to analyse the intensity curve of each touch. We use decision trees (J48) and support vector machines (SMO) to train a stress detection classifier using additional data collected in previous experiments. This data includes the amount of movement, acceleration on the device, cognitive performance, among others. In previous work we have shown the co-relation between these parameters and stress. Both algorithms show around 80% of correctly classified instances. The decision tree can be used to classify, in real time, the touches of the users, serving as an input to the assessment of the stress level.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014
In our daily life, we often have the feeling of being exhausted due to mental or physical work, a... more In our daily life, we often have the feeling of being exhausted due to mental or physical work, and a sense of performance degradation in the execution of simple tasks. The maximum capacity of operation and performance of an individual, whether physical or mental, usually also decreases gradually as the day progresses. The loss of these resources is linked to the onset of fatigue, which is particularly noticeable in long and demanding tasks or repetitive jobs. However, good management of the working time and eort invested in each task, as well as the eect of breaks at work, can result in better performance and better mental health, delaying the eects of fatigue. This paper details a non-invasive approach on the monitoring of fatigue of a human being, based on the analysis of the performance of his interaction with the computer.
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2014
Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and its related elds emerged some years ago with the exciting promise ... more Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and its related elds emerged some years ago with the exciting promise of pervasive intelligence, magic interaction mechanisms, and everywhere availability. This promise would be materialized in homes that knew all about our habits and preferences, proactive workplaces to support people's work or personal digital assistants to improve our daily living in all aspects possible. This somewhat utopian vision, expected by many to have already taken place, remains unaccomplished and far from it. Many challenges still lay ahead which delayed and continue to delay the expected technological unravelling. In this paper we focus on the immense technological challenges of designing and implementing AmI Systems. Specically, we propose a technological approach that will contribute to overcome some of these challenges by making developed AmI solutions more modular, interoperable, and extensible. This will result especially advantageous for large development teams or teams that span multiple institutions.
Law, Governance and Technology Series, 2014
As technological tools find their way into the realms of conflict resolution, the field gains inc... more As technological tools find their way into the realms of conflict resolution, the field gains increased complexity. Until a few years ago, conflict resolution would only touch fields such as Psychology, Philosophy, Economy or Law. Now, it also touches a wide range of technological fields that go much further than communication technologies to include Artificial Intelligence and many of its sub-fields. This significantly expands the possible future directions of research which, at the same time, plunges the field in a certain degree of uncertainty. One must, nonetheless, bear in mind that such uncertainty, doubt and suspicion is natural in any revolution and that, at the time, it is a Technological Revolution that we are living. Thus, a significant focus should be placed on analyzing the work carried out so far by researchers and commercial providers in an attempt to draw conclusions that can better guide the future steps. Moreover, these future steps should be guided not only by the technical challenges or the improvement of performance but also by more abstract notions such as fairness and transparency, with a marked concern on ethics. Only this way can the support and trust of significant slices of the society be harnessed, fundamental for the successful implementation and active use of the type of tools described in this book.
Law, Governance and Technology Series, 2014
Contextual factors allow us to fully grasp an event, situation, communication process or action. ... more Contextual factors allow us to fully grasp an event, situation, communication process or action. Frequently, the context in which an event takes place provides more valuable information than the event itself. This chapter addresses context and its importance from a general perspective and in the particular domain of conflict resolution. It describes many different contextual dimensions such as the verbal, social or cultural, pointing out the importance of each one to understand individuals’ actions. It then moves on to the address the recent field of Context-aware Computing: the vision of computers that are sensible to contextual cues, harness it and use such information to provide better services. Several context-aware solutions are described in this chapter that point out the range of application domains. However, no such application exists in the domain of conflict resolution. While the next chapters are dedicated do describing the components of such an application, this chapter ends with the enumeration of several contextual dimensions that are of relevance to fully describe a conflict and its resolution process.
Progress in Artificial Intelligence, 2012
The analysis and development of a novel approach to asphalt pavement modeling, able to attend the... more The analysis and development of a novel approach to asphalt pavement modeling, able to attend the need to predict the failure according to technical and non-technical criteria in a highway, is a hard task, namely in terms of the huge amount of possible scenarios. Indeed, the current state-of-the-art for service-life prediction is at empiric and empiric-mechanistic levels, and does not provide any suitable answer even for a single failure criteria. Consequently, it is imperative to achieve qualified models and qualitative reasoning methods, in particular due to the need to have firstclass environments at our disposal where defective information is at hand. To fulfill this goal, this paper presents a dynamic and formal model oriented to fulfill the task of making predictions for multi-failure criteria, in particular
ADCAIJ: Advances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal, 2013
The prevalence of situations of medical error and defensive medicine in healthcare institutions i... more The prevalence of situations of medical error and defensive medicine in healthcare institutions is a great concern of the medical community. Clinical Practice Guidelines are regarded by most researchers as a way to mitigate theseoccurrences; however, there is a need to make them interactive, easier to update and to deploy. This paper provides a model for Computer-Interpretable Guidelines based on the generic tasks of the clinical process, devised to be included in the framework of a Clinical Decision Support System. Aiming to represent medical recommendations in a simple and intuitive way. Hence, this work proposes a knowledge representation formalism that uses an Extension to Logic Programming to handle incomplete information. This model is used to represent different cases of missing, conflicting and inexact information with the aid of a method to quantify its quality. The integration of the guideline model with the knowledge representation formalism yields a clinical decision mod...
The progressive ageing of population combined with the need for comfort in situations of disease ... more The progressive ageing of population combined with the need for comfort in situations of disease and disability are pushing healthcare organizations and governments to find new solutions to enable people to live longer in their preferred environment, while having access to quality healthcare services. iGenda is an Ambient Assisted Living platform that provides constant monitoring to people with this type of needs. The use of a Computer-Interpretable Guideline model for decision making is one of the features of this platform. The model used to represent Clinical Practice Guidelines gathers a set of features that make guidelines more dynamic and easily implementable. The model is defined using Ontology Web Language, profiting from the existing constructors provided by this language. It is based on a set of primitive tasks, namely Plans, Actions, Questions and Decisions. Focusing on decision support, a method for dealing with incomplete information about the clinical parameters of a health record is presented. The objective is to keep a continuous flow of information through the decision process and assuring that an outcome is always achieved. The usefulness of the integration of guideline recommendations with a reason mechanism capable of handling incomplete information is demonstrated through a case study about the diagnosis of metabolic syndrome.
Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing, 2010
In Group Decision Making based on argumentation, decisions are made considering the diverse point... more In Group Decision Making based on argumentation, decisions are made considering the diverse points of view of the different partakers in order to decide which course of action a group should follow. However, knowledge and belief are normally incomplete, contradictory, or error sensitive, being desirable to use formal tools to deal with the problems that arise from the use of uncertain and even not precise information. On the other hand, qualitative models and qualitative reasoning have been around in Artificial Intelligence research for some time, in particular due the growing need to offer support in decision-making processes, a problem that in this work will be addressed in terms of an extension to the logic programming language and based on an evaluation of the Quality-of-Information (QoI) that stems out from those extended logic programs or theories. We present a computational model to address the problem of decision making, in terms of a multitude of scenarios, also defined as logic programs or theories, where the more appropriate ones stand for the higher QoIs values.
Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2013
The work presented focuses not only on the behavioural patterns that influence the outcome of a n... more The work presented focuses not only on the behavioural patterns that influence the outcome of a negotiation, but also on the discovery of ways to predict the type of conflict used in the process and the stress levels of the actors. After setting up an experimental intelligent environment provided with sensors to capture behavioural and contextual information, a set of relevant data was collected and analysed, with the underlying objective of using the behavioural patterns (obtained by statistical/probabilistic methods) as a basis to design and present plans and suggestions to the associated participants. In sooth, these proposals may influence in a positive way the course and outcome of a negotiation task in many aspects. This work highlights the importance of knowledge in negotiation, as in other social forms of interaction, providing also some new insights for informed decision support in situations in which uncertainty and conflict may be present.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 2009
Quality on the welfare services in caring, and the trend to minimize the economical and social-po... more Quality on the welfare services in caring, and the trend to minimize the economical and social-political costs that come with such practice, due to the population aging, are paramount nowadays, i.e., health care reform has become the leading policy issue in all latitudes. Indeed, the major thrust of all this research is the perception that escalating costs make the current structure and financing of health care unsustainable. The issue of sustainability is, therefore, the main subject of this paper. As a result, and in order to accomplish this goal, we decided to look to the problem from an user perspective, i.e., the system not only will provide different services, but will be also able to trace the ones more frequently used and to learn about the context in which they happen. As a result, we will have a system that will act and learn according to the preferences and habits of its users, and, simultaneously, will adapt to the environment with the objective of reducing the cost of its practices.
Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments, 2010
In the last years we have witnessed to a substantial increase on the number of people in need of ... more In the last years we have witnessed to a substantial increase on the number of people in need of care services, especially among the elderly, a phenomenon related to population ageing. However, this is becoming not exclusive of the elderly, as diseases like obesity, diabetes, and blood pressure have been increasing amongst young adults. This is a new reality which needs to be dealt by the healthcare sector, specifically the public one. Given these new scenarios, the importance of finding new and cost-effective ways for health care delivery are of particular relevance, especially when it is believed that these new patients should not be removed from their natural, day-today life, environment. The evolution of the, so called, new technologies may pay here a very important role as they may become part of the solution for this new problematic. Actually, they are already been used as, in recent years, several projects have raised in this relatively new area of work. These projects, although legitimate ones, were essential for delineating a path to pursue for others to come, as they were in some case, very simple ones (e.g. panic buttons), and, especially, reactive ones. In this paper, we are going to present how we are trying to evolve these projects a step further, through the introduction of proactiveness as a key factor, taking advantage of "new", as in applied to this areas, techniques of decision making, idea generation, argumentation and data quality, applied, not only to the in transit information, but also to the one provided by the several intervenient as well as themselves. In order to be able to pursue this delineated path, a new approach for knowledge representation, reasoning, and even for problem solving is proposed. To achieve these goals, the VirtualECare environment is presented, together with its sustaining infrastructure and architecture. Particular attention will be paidto how it may be used to simulate a virtual Assisted Living Environment in order to, later, better monitor real ones, attending to its customers' needs.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, 2007
1. INTRODUCTION According to Portuguese Law (Decree 7/2004 article 33) the general rules on error... more 1. INTRODUCTION According to Portuguese Law (Decree 7/2004 article 33) the general rules on error in electronic contracting without human intervention will apply only in case of human error in programming (it will be applied the rules considered for human error in the ...
Ambient Intelligence and Future Trends - International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence (Isaml 2010), 2010
Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing, 2011
Electronic contracting, mostly through software agents, led to an impressive growth in electronic... more Electronic contracting, mostly through software agents, led to an impressive growth in electronic transactions, but also in the number of disputes arising out of these transactions. Paper-based courts are however unable to efficiently deal with this increase in disputes. On the other hand, current Online Dispute Resolution methodologies are impersonal and cold, leaving aside important information such as the disputants' body language and emotions. In that sense, in this paper we propose the creation of environments for dispute resolution that can complement the existing tools with important context information. This, we believe, will lead to dispute resolution tools that will more efficiently achieve mutually satisfactory outcomes.
Progress in Artificial Intelligence
Abstract. In this paper we address the role of divergence and convergence in creative processes, ... more Abstract. In this paper we address the role of divergence and convergence in creative processes, and argue about the need to consider them in Computational Creativity research in the Genetic or Evolutionary Programming paradigm, being one´s goal the problem of ...
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2014
Progress is inherent to a living society, which may occur in several different areas (e.g. comput... more Progress is inherent to a living society, which may occur in several different areas (e.g. computation, healthcare) and manners. The present (or now) is the time that is associated with the events perceived directly and in the first time, making, for example, the society to be very inquisitive on assistive technologies and how they may improve the human beings quality of living. This application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes may help the user in his/her diminished capabilities, and, usually, implies a small adaptation on the part of the individual in the use of devices; indeed one of the die down potentials of people with cognitive disabilities is the one of spatial orientation. On the other hand several were the authors that have developed systems to help an human being to travel between two locations. However, once the system is set up the change in the configurations have to be done manually in order to better adjust the system to the user. In order to go round this drawback, in this work it is presented a framework of speculative computation to set up the computation of the next user step using default values. When the information is obtained the computation is revised. Thus, the system may have a faster reaction to the user stimulus or it may start warning the user before he/she takes the wrong direction.
IFIP – The International Federation for Information Processing
It is understood that Collaborative Work plays an important role in today's organizations life cy... more It is understood that Collaborative Work plays an important role in today's organizations life cycle. On the other hand, any decision that may involve a set of decision makers is, by itself, quite complex. It is under this umbrella that it will be presented the VirtualECare project, that contemplates an intelligent multi-agent system able to monitor, interact and serve its customers in need of (health)care services. We will center our attention on the system group decision and argumentation modules, which use idea generation techniques and resort to argumentation to exchange and justify belief and choice. At the end, a prototype will be presented.