Peter Jarvis - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Peter Jarvis

To achieve more widespread application, workflow systems need to be developed to operate in dynam... more To achieve more widespread application, workflow systems need to be developed to operate in dynamic environments where they are expected to ensure that users are supported in performing flexible and creative tasks while maintaining organisational norms. We argue that in order to cope with these demands, the systems must be provided with knowledge about the organisational structure and authority context of tasks. We support this argument by identifying a number of decision points that an adaptive workflow system must support, discussing how these decisions can be supported with technically oriented capability specifications, and describe how this support can be enhanced with the inclusion of knowledge about organisational structure and authority. We outline how such knowledge can be captured, structured, and represented in a workflow system. We then demonstrate the use of such knowledge by describing how the task initiation, task planning, activity scheduling, and agent interaction functions within a workflow system can be enhanced by it.

Submitted to the 17th Workshop of the UK …, 1998

To develop a quality Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planning application, one must understand ho... more To develop a quality Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planning application, one must understand how to use the representational devices provided by these systems to construct a principled model of an application domain. Support for this objective is currently limited to evolving guidance frameworks and repositories of domain descriptions. To date, there has been no description of the application of these guidance frameworks to form concrete domain descriptions. The developer is instead left to discover for themself the mapping between the steps of the frameworks and entries in the repositories. In this paper, we address this issue by describing the development of a HTN solution for the construction industry with the guidance of the TF Method. From this experience, we conclude that the TF Method o ers signi cant assistance to the knowledge engineer. Speci cally, the method highlights the importance of a planned approach to the development of an application, a conscious commitment to a primary modelling method, and the gradual and considered development of HTN descriptions. The method, however, would bene t from pointers to complementary techniques developed in other areas (e.g. the KADS methodology), and from tool-support.

Spring Simulation Multiconference, 2008

Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) is a powerful agent paradigm that allows for the development of so-... more Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) is a powerful agent paradigm that allows for the development of so-called intelligent agents - agents that can reason and act based on their beliefs and intentions. However, this power often comes at the cost of increased computational overhead. We describe our experience using a BDI agent framework for developing a simulation of collaborative air traffic flow management

AI Mag., 2005

We describe the application of plan recognition techniques to support human intelligence analysts... more We describe the application of plan recognition techniques to support human intelligence analysts in processing national security alert sets by automatically identifying the hostile intent behind them. Identifying the intent enables us to both prioritize and explain the alert sets for succinct user presentation. Our empirical evaluation demonstrates that the approach can handle alert sets of as many as 20 elements and can readily distinguish between false and true alarms. We discuss the important opportunities, for future work, that will increase the cardinality of the alert sets supported by the system to the level demanded by a deployable application. In particular, we outline opportunities to bring the analysts into the process and the opportunities for heuristic improvements to the plan recognition algorithm.

European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2000

Traditionally, planning problems are cast in terms of imperative constraints that are either whol... more Traditionally, planning problems are cast in terms of imperative constraints that are either wholly satisfied or wholly violated. It is argued herein that this framework is too rigid to capture the full subtlety of many real problems. A new flexible planning problem is defined which supports the soft constraints often found in reality. A solution strategy using the Graphplan framework is described and it is shown how flexible plan extraction can be cast as the solution of a sequence of linked Dynamic Flexible Constraint Satisfaction Problems (DFCSPs). A recently developed DFCSP algorithm, Flexible Local Changes, is exploited to solve this sequence. For a given flexible problem, this framework can synthesise a range of plans that trade the compromises made in a plan versus plan length. The proposed technique is evaluated on a range of flexible problems and against leading boolean solvers on benchmark problems.

Multi-Agent Systems for Traffic and Transportation Engineering

Today’s air traffic management system is not expected to scale to the projected increase in traff... more Today’s air traffic management system is not expected to scale to the projected increase in traffic over the next two decades. Enhancing collaboration between the controllers and the users of the airspace could lessen the impact of the resulting air traffic flow problems. The authors summarize a new concept that has been proposed for collaborative air traffic flow management, the problems it is meant to address, and our approach to evaluating the concept. The authors present their initial simulation design and experimental results, using several simple route selection strategies and traffic flow management approaches. Though their model is still in an early stage of development, these results have revealed interesting properties of the proposed concept that will guide their continued development, refinement of the model, and possibly influence other studies of traffic management elsewhere. Finally, they conclude with the challenges of validating the proposed concept through simulati...

AIAA Infotech@Aerospace 2007 Conference and Exhibit, 2007

We describe a software simulation test bed for evaluating Concepts of Operation (CONOPS) for Unma... more We describe a software simulation test bed for evaluating Concepts of Operation (CONOPS) for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) flying earth science missions. The Mission Operational Concept Evaluation Framework (MOCEF) aids in the rapid evaluation of proposed system automation designs, including intelligent controllers for vehicles, sensor payloads, and decision support systems, on a wide range of missions. Such broad evaluation is prohibitively expensive when limited to physical experiments and real missions. MOCEF allows evaluation of automation concepts in multiple mission scenarios operating in a wide range of environments. It records mission metric parameters such as the quality of sensor data obtained, flight time, stress on the vehicles, and air traffic control rules infringed or invoked. This information can be fed into specific mission metric formulas to rate performance and into the Google Earth tool for visualization.

SAE International Journal of Aerospace, 2009

The Engineering Meetings Board has approved this paper for publication. It has successfully compl... more The Engineering Meetings Board has approved this paper for publication. It has successfully completed SAEʼs peer review process under the supervision of the session organizer. This process requires a minimum of three (3) reviews by industry experts. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of SAE.

Enterprise modelling - integrating models of all pertinent aspects of an enterpriseis essential t... more Enterprise modelling - integrating models of all pertinent aspects of an enterpriseis essential to the management of change in organisations. An integrated view ofan organisation provides insight into what aspects may be changed, how they may bechanged, and what the overall effect of specific changes will be.AIAI at the University of Edinburgh has an ongoing research programme which focuseson the use AI techniques to cover the requirements of enterprise modelling and thetools to support ...

Knowledge-Based Systems, 2003

In recent years, many organisations have found enterprise modelling, especially business process ... more In recent years, many organisations have found enterprise modelling, especially business process modelling, to be an effective tool for managing organisational change. The application of business processing modelling has brought benefits to many organisations, but the models developed tend to be used for reference during business operations and re-engineering activities; they rarely play an active role in supporting the day-today execution of the processes. While workflow management systems are widely used for the streamlined management of "administrative" business processes, current systems are unable to cope with the more dynamic situations encountered in ad-hoc and collaborative processes [1]. A system that supports complex and dynamically changing processes is required. There is increasing interest in making workflow systems more adaptive [8][20] and using knowledge-based techniques to provide more flexible process management support than is possible

We present a technique which extends the current HTN planning paradigm, by providing a more knowl... more We present a technique which extends the current HTN planning paradigm, by providing a more knowledge centred assessment of activities and ordering constraints. Centred upon a knowledge-rich model, DART-Network planning applies mixed mode reasoning to determine the need for activities and ordering constraints within a plan. We describe a simple construc- tion problem to demonstrate the limitations of existing HTN formalisms and the advantages of our approach. To aid the technique's application, we present a generic ontology which de- scribes the modelling constructs central to our method.

Citeseer

This paper presents results from the implementation of a prototype based on the architecture for ... more This paper presents results from the implementation of a prototype based on the architecture for integrating planning and simulators proposed last year. The paper describes exactly what has been implemented and uses a non-combatant evacuation scenario (NEO) to show the benefits of such integration. Also discussed are the lessons learned from the results obtained and, finally, a description of a revised and improved architecture, which is believed will address some of the outstanding research issues.

The AllDay Financial Services Group has the stated business goal of being able to sell any of its... more The AllDay Financial Services Group has the stated business goal of being able to sell any of its products, at any time of the day or night, in any place, and through any available channel to market. In this paper, we outline the business benefits this Group has obtained from the deployment of current workflow technology and short comings of the technology that are preventing the Group from completely satisfying its business goal. We then set out the research issues raised by this experience and discuss how emerging AI technologies could be exploited in satisfying them. The AI technologies discussed include information-gathering planning, general planning, and scheduling. We conclude by encouraging the formation of partnerships between workflow users, workflow vendors and AI researchers. Such partnerships will give researchers access to real problems that can be used to demonstrate the scalability of their work and provide evidence that will encourage vendors and users to exploit the technologies. The feed back will also guide researchers on where further research should be focused.

… INSTITUTE AIAI TR, 1998

Early work on the NONLIN and O-Plan projects in-dicated a need for a defined methodology which wo... more Early work on the NONLIN and O-Plan projects in-dicated a need for a defined methodology which would guide users performing various roles in the acquisi-tion and analysis of domain requirements for planning. This work included links to a requirement analysis ...

In this paper we describe how we are exploiting AI technologies to infuse workflow systems with a... more In this paper we describe how we are exploiting AI technologies to infuse workflow systems with adaptive capabilities. This work is part of an ongoing applied research programme between AIAI and a number of industrial and academic partners. We begin by presenting the requirements of adaptive workflow within a taxonomy consisting of the layers 0f domain, process, agents, organisation, and infrastructure. We then show how each level can be substantially addressed with AI technologies. Specifically, infrastructure adaptation is addressed with multi-agent toolkits, agent adaptation through knowledgebased capability matching, organisational adaptation through authority based capability matching, process adaptation through AI planning and execution architectures, and domain adaptation through rationale capture. We conclude by identifying important challenges for further work as being the improvement of rationale capture and the support for the evolution of the process models that underlie executing processes.

In this paper, we outline the requirements of a planning and decision aid to support US Army smal... more In this paper, we outline the requirements of a planning and decision aid to support US Army small unit operations in urban terrain and show how AI planning technologies can be exploited in that context. The work is a rare example of a comprehensive use of AI technologies across the whole planning lifecycle, set in a realistic application in which the actual user community set the requirements. The phases involved include: * Domain knowledge elicitation * Rich plan representation and use * Hierarchical Task Network Planning * Detailed constraint management * Goal structure-based plan monitoring * Dynamic issue handling * Plan repair in low and high tempo situations * Interfaces for users with different roles * Management of planning and execution workflow

In this paper, we outline the requirements of a planning and decision aid to support US Army smal... more In this paper, we outline the requirements of a planning and decision aid to support US Army small unit operations in urban terrain and show how AI planning technologies can be exploited in that context. The work is a rare example of a comprehensive use of AI technologies across the whole planning lifecycle, set in a realistic application in which the actual user community set the requirements. The phases involved include: • Domain knowledge elicitation • Rich plan representation and use • Hierarchical Task Network Planning • Detailed constraint management • Goal structure-based plan monitoring • Dynamic issue handling • Plan repair in low and high tempo situations • Interfaces for users with different roles • Management of planning and execution workflow

Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Planning and Scheduling (AIPS-02), Apr 1, 2002

The International Planning Competitions, run by Drew Mc-Dermott in 1998 and Fahiem Bacchus in 200... more The International Planning Competitions, run by Drew Mc-Dermott in 1998 and Fahiem Bacchus in 2000, have provided an important spur to the planning community, encouraging the development of planning technology and of a wide selection of planning bench mark domains. One of the most important contributions has been the introduction of a widely accepted standard for domain description, Drew McDermott's PDDL language (McDermott 2000), leading to the sharing of domains and planning systems. An equally important ...

To achieve more widespread application, workflow systems need to be developed to operate in dynam... more To achieve more widespread application, workflow systems need to be developed to operate in dynamic environments where they are expected to ensure that users are supported in performing flexible and creative tasks while maintaining organisational norms. We argue that in order to cope with these demands, the systems must be provided with knowledge about the organisational structure and authority context of tasks. We support this argument by identifying a number of decision points that an adaptive workflow system must support, discussing how these decisions can be supported with technically oriented capability specifications, and describe how this support can be enhanced with the inclusion of knowledge about organisational structure and authority. We outline how such knowledge can be captured, structured, and represented in a workflow system. We then demonstrate the use of such knowledge by describing how the task initiation, task planning, activity scheduling, and agent interaction functions within a workflow system can be enhanced by it.

Submitted to the 17th Workshop of the UK …, 1998

To develop a quality Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planning application, one must understand ho... more To develop a quality Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planning application, one must understand how to use the representational devices provided by these systems to construct a principled model of an application domain. Support for this objective is currently limited to evolving guidance frameworks and repositories of domain descriptions. To date, there has been no description of the application of these guidance frameworks to form concrete domain descriptions. The developer is instead left to discover for themself the mapping between the steps of the frameworks and entries in the repositories. In this paper, we address this issue by describing the development of a HTN solution for the construction industry with the guidance of the TF Method. From this experience, we conclude that the TF Method o ers signi cant assistance to the knowledge engineer. Speci cally, the method highlights the importance of a planned approach to the development of an application, a conscious commitment to a primary modelling method, and the gradual and considered development of HTN descriptions. The method, however, would bene t from pointers to complementary techniques developed in other areas (e.g. the KADS methodology), and from tool-support.

Spring Simulation Multiconference, 2008

Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) is a powerful agent paradigm that allows for the development of so-... more Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) is a powerful agent paradigm that allows for the development of so-called intelligent agents - agents that can reason and act based on their beliefs and intentions. However, this power often comes at the cost of increased computational overhead. We describe our experience using a BDI agent framework for developing a simulation of collaborative air traffic flow management

AI Mag., 2005

We describe the application of plan recognition techniques to support human intelligence analysts... more We describe the application of plan recognition techniques to support human intelligence analysts in processing national security alert sets by automatically identifying the hostile intent behind them. Identifying the intent enables us to both prioritize and explain the alert sets for succinct user presentation. Our empirical evaluation demonstrates that the approach can handle alert sets of as many as 20 elements and can readily distinguish between false and true alarms. We discuss the important opportunities, for future work, that will increase the cardinality of the alert sets supported by the system to the level demanded by a deployable application. In particular, we outline opportunities to bring the analysts into the process and the opportunities for heuristic improvements to the plan recognition algorithm.

European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2000

Traditionally, planning problems are cast in terms of imperative constraints that are either whol... more Traditionally, planning problems are cast in terms of imperative constraints that are either wholly satisfied or wholly violated. It is argued herein that this framework is too rigid to capture the full subtlety of many real problems. A new flexible planning problem is defined which supports the soft constraints often found in reality. A solution strategy using the Graphplan framework is described and it is shown how flexible plan extraction can be cast as the solution of a sequence of linked Dynamic Flexible Constraint Satisfaction Problems (DFCSPs). A recently developed DFCSP algorithm, Flexible Local Changes, is exploited to solve this sequence. For a given flexible problem, this framework can synthesise a range of plans that trade the compromises made in a plan versus plan length. The proposed technique is evaluated on a range of flexible problems and against leading boolean solvers on benchmark problems.

Multi-Agent Systems for Traffic and Transportation Engineering

Today’s air traffic management system is not expected to scale to the projected increase in traff... more Today’s air traffic management system is not expected to scale to the projected increase in traffic over the next two decades. Enhancing collaboration between the controllers and the users of the airspace could lessen the impact of the resulting air traffic flow problems. The authors summarize a new concept that has been proposed for collaborative air traffic flow management, the problems it is meant to address, and our approach to evaluating the concept. The authors present their initial simulation design and experimental results, using several simple route selection strategies and traffic flow management approaches. Though their model is still in an early stage of development, these results have revealed interesting properties of the proposed concept that will guide their continued development, refinement of the model, and possibly influence other studies of traffic management elsewhere. Finally, they conclude with the challenges of validating the proposed concept through simulati...

AIAA Infotech@Aerospace 2007 Conference and Exhibit, 2007

We describe a software simulation test bed for evaluating Concepts of Operation (CONOPS) for Unma... more We describe a software simulation test bed for evaluating Concepts of Operation (CONOPS) for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) flying earth science missions. The Mission Operational Concept Evaluation Framework (MOCEF) aids in the rapid evaluation of proposed system automation designs, including intelligent controllers for vehicles, sensor payloads, and decision support systems, on a wide range of missions. Such broad evaluation is prohibitively expensive when limited to physical experiments and real missions. MOCEF allows evaluation of automation concepts in multiple mission scenarios operating in a wide range of environments. It records mission metric parameters such as the quality of sensor data obtained, flight time, stress on the vehicles, and air traffic control rules infringed or invoked. This information can be fed into specific mission metric formulas to rate performance and into the Google Earth tool for visualization.

SAE International Journal of Aerospace, 2009

The Engineering Meetings Board has approved this paper for publication. It has successfully compl... more The Engineering Meetings Board has approved this paper for publication. It has successfully completed SAEʼs peer review process under the supervision of the session organizer. This process requires a minimum of three (3) reviews by industry experts. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of SAE.

Enterprise modelling - integrating models of all pertinent aspects of an enterpriseis essential t... more Enterprise modelling - integrating models of all pertinent aspects of an enterpriseis essential to the management of change in organisations. An integrated view ofan organisation provides insight into what aspects may be changed, how they may bechanged, and what the overall effect of specific changes will be.AIAI at the University of Edinburgh has an ongoing research programme which focuseson the use AI techniques to cover the requirements of enterprise modelling and thetools to support ...

Knowledge-Based Systems, 2003

In recent years, many organisations have found enterprise modelling, especially business process ... more In recent years, many organisations have found enterprise modelling, especially business process modelling, to be an effective tool for managing organisational change. The application of business processing modelling has brought benefits to many organisations, but the models developed tend to be used for reference during business operations and re-engineering activities; they rarely play an active role in supporting the day-today execution of the processes. While workflow management systems are widely used for the streamlined management of "administrative" business processes, current systems are unable to cope with the more dynamic situations encountered in ad-hoc and collaborative processes [1]. A system that supports complex and dynamically changing processes is required. There is increasing interest in making workflow systems more adaptive [8][20] and using knowledge-based techniques to provide more flexible process management support than is possible

We present a technique which extends the current HTN planning paradigm, by providing a more knowl... more We present a technique which extends the current HTN planning paradigm, by providing a more knowledge centred assessment of activities and ordering constraints. Centred upon a knowledge-rich model, DART-Network planning applies mixed mode reasoning to determine the need for activities and ordering constraints within a plan. We describe a simple construc- tion problem to demonstrate the limitations of existing HTN formalisms and the advantages of our approach. To aid the technique's application, we present a generic ontology which de- scribes the modelling constructs central to our method.

Citeseer

This paper presents results from the implementation of a prototype based on the architecture for ... more This paper presents results from the implementation of a prototype based on the architecture for integrating planning and simulators proposed last year. The paper describes exactly what has been implemented and uses a non-combatant evacuation scenario (NEO) to show the benefits of such integration. Also discussed are the lessons learned from the results obtained and, finally, a description of a revised and improved architecture, which is believed will address some of the outstanding research issues.

The AllDay Financial Services Group has the stated business goal of being able to sell any of its... more The AllDay Financial Services Group has the stated business goal of being able to sell any of its products, at any time of the day or night, in any place, and through any available channel to market. In this paper, we outline the business benefits this Group has obtained from the deployment of current workflow technology and short comings of the technology that are preventing the Group from completely satisfying its business goal. We then set out the research issues raised by this experience and discuss how emerging AI technologies could be exploited in satisfying them. The AI technologies discussed include information-gathering planning, general planning, and scheduling. We conclude by encouraging the formation of partnerships between workflow users, workflow vendors and AI researchers. Such partnerships will give researchers access to real problems that can be used to demonstrate the scalability of their work and provide evidence that will encourage vendors and users to exploit the technologies. The feed back will also guide researchers on where further research should be focused.

… INSTITUTE AIAI TR, 1998

Early work on the NONLIN and O-Plan projects in-dicated a need for a defined methodology which wo... more Early work on the NONLIN and O-Plan projects in-dicated a need for a defined methodology which would guide users performing various roles in the acquisi-tion and analysis of domain requirements for planning. This work included links to a requirement analysis ...

In this paper we describe how we are exploiting AI technologies to infuse workflow systems with a... more In this paper we describe how we are exploiting AI technologies to infuse workflow systems with adaptive capabilities. This work is part of an ongoing applied research programme between AIAI and a number of industrial and academic partners. We begin by presenting the requirements of adaptive workflow within a taxonomy consisting of the layers 0f domain, process, agents, organisation, and infrastructure. We then show how each level can be substantially addressed with AI technologies. Specifically, infrastructure adaptation is addressed with multi-agent toolkits, agent adaptation through knowledgebased capability matching, organisational adaptation through authority based capability matching, process adaptation through AI planning and execution architectures, and domain adaptation through rationale capture. We conclude by identifying important challenges for further work as being the improvement of rationale capture and the support for the evolution of the process models that underlie executing processes.

In this paper, we outline the requirements of a planning and decision aid to support US Army smal... more In this paper, we outline the requirements of a planning and decision aid to support US Army small unit operations in urban terrain and show how AI planning technologies can be exploited in that context. The work is a rare example of a comprehensive use of AI technologies across the whole planning lifecycle, set in a realistic application in which the actual user community set the requirements. The phases involved include: * Domain knowledge elicitation * Rich plan representation and use * Hierarchical Task Network Planning * Detailed constraint management * Goal structure-based plan monitoring * Dynamic issue handling * Plan repair in low and high tempo situations * Interfaces for users with different roles * Management of planning and execution workflow

In this paper, we outline the requirements of a planning and decision aid to support US Army smal... more In this paper, we outline the requirements of a planning and decision aid to support US Army small unit operations in urban terrain and show how AI planning technologies can be exploited in that context. The work is a rare example of a comprehensive use of AI technologies across the whole planning lifecycle, set in a realistic application in which the actual user community set the requirements. The phases involved include: • Domain knowledge elicitation • Rich plan representation and use • Hierarchical Task Network Planning • Detailed constraint management • Goal structure-based plan monitoring • Dynamic issue handling • Plan repair in low and high tempo situations • Interfaces for users with different roles • Management of planning and execution workflow

Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Planning and Scheduling (AIPS-02), Apr 1, 2002

The International Planning Competitions, run by Drew Mc-Dermott in 1998 and Fahiem Bacchus in 200... more The International Planning Competitions, run by Drew Mc-Dermott in 1998 and Fahiem Bacchus in 2000, have provided an important spur to the planning community, encouraging the development of planning technology and of a wide selection of planning bench mark domains. One of the most important contributions has been the introduction of a widely accepted standard for domain description, Drew McDermott's PDDL language (McDermott 2000), leading to the sharing of domains and planning systems. An equally important ...