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Epistemic logic programs constitute an extension of the stable model semantics to deal with new constructs called subjective literals. Informally speaking, a subjective literal allows checking whether some objective literal is true in all or some stable models. As it can be imagined, the associated semantics has proved to be non-trivial, since the truth of subjective literals may interfere with the set of stable models it is supposed to query. As a consequence, no clear agreement has been reached and different semantic proposals have been made in the literature. Unfortunately, comparison among these proposals has been limited to a study of their effect on individual examples, rather than identifying general properties to be checked. In this paper, we propose an extension of the well-known splitting property for logic programs to the epistemic case. We formally define when an arbitrary semantics satisfies the epistemic splitting property and examine some of the consequences that can be derived from that, including its relation to conformant planning and to epistemic constraints. Interestingly, we prove (through counterexamples) that most of the existing approaches fail to fulfill the epistemic splitting property, except the original semantics proposed by Gelfond 1991 and a recent proposal by the authors, called Founded Autoepistemic Equilibrium Logic.
In recent years, many efforts have been made to apply image processing techniques for plant leaf identification. However, categorizing leaf images at the cultivar/variety level, because of the very low inter-class variability, is still a challenging task. In this research, we propose an automatic discriminative method based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for classifying 12 different cultivars of common beans that belong to three various species. We show that employing advanced loss functions, such as Additive Angular Margin Loss and Large Margin Cosine Loss, instead of the standard softmax loss function for the classification can yield better discrimination between classes and thereby mitigate the problem of low inter-class variability. The method was evaluated by classifying species (level I), cultivars from the same species (level II), and cultivars from different species (level III), based on images from the leaf foreside and backside. The results indicate that the performance of the classification algorithm on the leaf backside image dataset is superior. The maximum mean classification accuracies of 95.86, 91.37 and 86.87% were obtained at the levels I, II and III, respectively. The proposed method outperforms the previous relevant works and provides a reliable approach for plant cultivars identification.
The intensity of cosmic radiation may differ over five orders of magnitude within a few hours or days during the Solar Particle Events (SPEs), thus increasing for several orders of magnitude the probability of Single Event Upsets (SEUs) in space-borne electronic systems. Therefore, it is vital to enable the early detection of the SEU rate changes in order to ensure timely activation of dynamic radiation hardening measures. In this paper, an embedded approach for the prediction of SPEs and SRAM SEU rate is presented. The proposed solution combines the real-time SRAM-based SEU monitor, the offline-trained machine learning model and online learning algorithm for the prediction. With respect to the state-of-the-art, our solution brings the following benefits: (1) Use of existing on-chip data storage SRAM as a particle detector, thus minimizing the hardware and power overhead, (2) Prediction of SRAM SEU rate one hour in advance, with the fine-grained hourly tracking of SEU variations during SPEs as well as under normal conditions, (3) Online optimization of the prediction model for enhancing the prediction accuracy during run-time, (4) Negligible cost of hardware accelerator design for the implementation of selected machine learning model and online learning algorithm. The proposed design is intended for a highly dependable and self-adaptive multiprocessing system employed in space applications, allowing to trigger the radiation mitigation mechanisms before the onset of high radiation levels.
In control theory, to solve a finite-horizon sequential decision problem (SDP) commonly means to find a list of decision rules that result in an optimal expected total reward (or cost) when taking a given number of decision steps. SDPs are routinely solved using Bellman's backward induction. Textbook authors (e.g. Bertsekas or Puterman) typically give more or less formal proofs to show that the backward induction algorithm is correct as solution method for deterministic and stochastic SDPs. Botta, Jansson and Ionescu propose a generic framework for finite horizon, monadic SDPs together with a monadic version of backward induction for solving such SDPs. In monadic SDPs, the monad captures a generic notion of uncertainty, while a generic measure function aggregates rewards. In the present paper, we define a notion of correctness for monadic SDPs and identify three conditions that allow us to prove a correctness result for monadic backward induction that is comparable to textbook correctness proofs for ordinary backward induction. The conditions that we impose are fairly general and can be cast in category-theoretical terms using the notion of Eilenberg-Moore algebra. They hold in familiar settings like those of deterministic or stochastic SDPs, but we also give examples in which they fail. Our results show that backward induction can safely be employed for a broader class of SDPs than usually treated in textbooks. However, they also rule out certain instances that were considered admissible in the context of Botta et al. 's generic framework. Our development is formalised in Idris as an extension of the Botta et al. framework and the sources are available as supplementary material.
Machine learning for improvement of thermal conditions inside a hybrid ventilated animal building
(2021)
In buildings with hybrid ventilation, natural ventilation opening positions (windows), mechanical ventilation rates, heating, and cooling are manipulated to maintain desired thermal conditions. The indoor temperature is regulated solely by ventilation (natural and mechanical) when the external conditions are favorable to save external heating and cooling energy. The ventilation parameters are determined by a rule-based control scheme, which is not optimal. This study proposes a methodology to enable real-time optimum control of ventilation parameters. We developed offline prediction models to estimate future thermal conditions from the data collected from building in operation. The developed offline model is then used to find the optimal controllable ventilation parameters in real-time to minimize the setpoint deviation in the building. With the proposed methodology, the experimental building's setpoint deviation improved for 87% of time, on average, by 0.53 degrees C compared to the current deviations.
Student teachers often struggle to keep track of everything that is happening in the classroom, and particularly to notice and respond when students cause disruptions. The complexity of the classroom environment is a potential contributing factor that has not been empirically tested. In this experimental study, we utilized a virtual reality (VR) classroom to examine whether classroom complexity affects the likelihood of student teachers noticing disruptions and how they react after noticing. Classroom complexity was operationalized as the number of disruptions and the existence of overlapping disruptions (multidimensionality) as well as the existence of parallel teaching tasks (simultaneity). Results showed that student teachers (n = 50) were less likely to notice the scripted disruptions, and also less likely to respond to the disruptions in a comprehensive and effortful manner when facing greater complexity. These results may have implications for both teacher training and the design of VR for training or research purpose. This study contributes to the field from two aspects: 1) it revealed how features of the classroom environment can affect student teachers' noticing of and reaction to disruptions; and 2) it extends the functionality of the VR environment-from a teacher training tool to a testbed of fundamental classroom processes that are difficult to manipulate in real-life.
The use of neural networks is considered as the state of the art in the field of image classification. A large number of different networks are available for this purpose, which, appropriately trained, permit a high level of classification accuracy. Typically, these networks are applied to uncompressed image data, since a corresponding training was also carried out using image data of similar high quality. However, if image data contains image errors, the classification accuracy deteriorates drastically. This applies in particular to coding artifacts which occur due to image and video compression. Typical application scenarios for video compression are narrowband transmission channels for which video coding is required but a subsequent classification is to be carried out on the receiver side. In this paper we present a special H.264/Advanced Video Codec (AVC) based video codec that allows certain regions of a picture to be coded with near constant picture quality in order to allow a reliable classification using neural networks, whereas the remaining image will be coded using constant bit rate. We have combined this feature with the ability to run with lowest latency properties, which is usually also required in remote control applications scenarios. The codec has been implemented as a fully hardwired High Definition video capable hardware architecture which is suitable for Field Programmable Gate Arrays.
BCH Codes mit kombinierter Korrektur und Erkennung In dieser Arbeit wird auf Grundlage des BCH Codes untersucht, wie eine Fehlerkorrektur mit einer Erkennung höherer Fehleranzahlen kombiniert werden kann. Mit dem Verfahren der 1-Bit Korrektur mit zusätzlicher Erkennung höherer Fehler wurde ein Ansatz entwickelt, welcher die Erkennung zusätzlicher Fehler durch das parallele Lösen einfacher Gleichungen der Form s_x = s_1^x durchführt. Die Anzahl dieser Gleichungen ist linear zu der Anzahl der zu überprüfenden höheren Fehler.
In dieser Arbeit wurde zusätzlich für bis zu 4-Bit Korrekturen mit zusätzlicher Erkennung höherer Fehler ein weiterer allgemeiner Ansatz vorgestellt. Dabei werden parallel für alle korrigierbaren Fehleranzahlen spekulative Fehlerkorrekturen durchgeführt. Aus den bestimmten Fehlerstellen werden spekulative Syndromkomponenten erzeugt, durch welche die Fehlerstellen bestätigt und höhere erkennbare Fehleranzahlen ausgeschlossen werden können. Die vorgestellten Ansätze unterscheiden sich von dem in entwickelten Ansatz, bei welchem die Anzahl der Fehlerstellen durch die Berechnung von Determinanten in absteigender Reihenfolge berechnet wird, bis die erste Determinante 0 bildet. Bei dem bekannten Verfahren ist durch die Berechnung der Determinanten eine faktorielle Anzahl an Berechnungen in Relation zu der Anzahl zu überprüfender Fehler durchzuführen. Im Vergleich zu dem bekannten sequentiellen Verfahrens nach Berlekamp Massey besitzen die Berechnungen im vorgestellten Ansatz simple Gleichungen und können parallel durchgeführt werden.Bei dem bekannten Verfahren zur parallelen Korrektur von 4-Bit Fehlern ist eine Gleichung vierten Grades im GF(2^m) zu lösen. Dies erfolgt, indem eine Hilfsgleichung dritten Grades und vier Gleichungen zweiten Grades parallel gelöst werden. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde gezeigt, dass sich eine Gleichung zweiten Grades einsparen lässt, wodurch sich eine Vereinfachung der Hardware bei einer parallelen Realisierung der 4-Bit Korrektur ergibt. Die erzielten Ergebnisse wurden durch umfangreiche Simulationen in Software und Hardwareimplementierungen überprüft.
Eine übliche Erzählung verknüpft lange Studienzeiten und hohe Abbrecherquoten im Informatikstudium zum einen mit der sehr gut bezahlten Nebentätigkeit von Studierenden in der Informatikbranche, die deutlich studienzeitverlängernd sei; zum anderen werde wegen des hohen Bedarfs an Informatikern ein formeller Studienabschluss von den Studierenden häufig als entbehrlich betrachtet und eine Karriere in der Informatikbranche ohne abgeschlossenes Studium begonnen. In dieser Studie, durchgeführt an der Universität Potsdam, untersuchen wir, wie viele Informatikstudierende neben dem Studium innerhalb und außerhalb der Informatikbranche arbeiten, welche Erwartungen sie neben der Bezahlung damit verbinden und wie sich die Tätigkeit auf ihr Studium und ihre spätere berufliche Perspektive auswirkt. Aus aktuellem Anlass interessieren uns auch die Auswirkungen der Covid-19-Pandemie auf die Arbeitstätigkeiten der Informatikstudierenden.
Die Fachtagungen HDI (Hochschuldidaktik Informatik) beschäftigen sich mit den unterschiedlichen Aspekten informatischer Bildung im Hochschulbereich. Neben den allgemeinen Themen wie verschiedenen Lehr- und Lernformen, dem Einsatz von Informatiksystemen in der Hochschullehre oder Fragen der Gewinnung von geeigneten Studierenden, deren Kompetenzerwerb oder auch der Betreuung der Studierenden widmet sich die HDI immer auch einem Schwerpunktthema.
Im Jahr 2021 war dies die Berücksichtigung von Diversität in der Lehre. Diskutiert wurden beispielsweise die Einbeziehung von besonderen fachlichen und überfachlichen Kompetenzen Studierender, der Unterstützung von Durchlässigkeit aus nichtakademischen Berufen, aber auch die Gestaltung inklusiver Lehr- und Lernszenarios, Aspekte des Lebenslangen Lernens oder sich an die Diversität von Studierenden adaptierte oder adaptierende Lehrsysteme.
Dieser Band enthält ausgewählte Beiträge der 9. Fachtagung 2021, die in besonderer Weise die Konferenz und die dort diskutierten Themen repräsentieren.
In this bachelor’s thesis I implement the automatic theorem prover nanoCoP-Ω. This system is the result of porting arithmetic and equality handling procedures first introduced in the automatic theorem prover with arithmetic leanCoP-Ω into the similar system nanoCoP 2.0. To understand these procedures, I first introduce the mathematical background to both automatic theorem proving and arithmetic expressions. I present the predecessor projects leanCoP, nanoCoP and leanCoP-Ω, out of which nanCoP-Ω was developed. This is followed by an extensive description of the concepts the non-clausal connection calculus needed to be extended by, to allow for proving arithmetic expressions and equalities, as well as of their implementation into nanoCoP-Ω. An extensive comparison between both the runtimes and the number of solved problems of the systems nanoCoP-Ω and leanCoP-Ω was made. I come to the conclusion, that nanoCoP-Ω is considerably faster than leanCoP-Ω for small problems, though less well suited for larger problems. Additionally, I was able to construct a non-theorem that nanoCoP-Ω generates a false proof for. I discuss how this pressing issue could be resolved, as well as some possible optimizations and expansions of the system.
Image feature detection is a key task in computer vision. Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) is a prevalent and well known algorithm for robust feature detection. However, it is computationally demanding and software implementations are not applicable for real-time performance. In this paper, a versatile and pipelined hardware implementation is proposed, that is capable of computing keypoints and rotation invariant descriptors on-chip. All computations are performed in single precision floating-point format which makes it possible to implement the original algorithm with little alteration. Various rotation resolutions and filter kernel sizes are supported for images of any resolution up to ultra-high definition. For full high definition images, 84 fps can be processed. Ultra high definition images can be processed at 21 fps.
We introduce a new measure of descriptional complexity on finite automata, called the number of active states. Roughly speaking, the number of active states of an automaton A on input w counts the number of different states visited during the most economic computation of the automaton A for the word w. This concept generalizes to finite automata and regular languages in a straightforward way. We show that the number of active states of both finite automata and regular languages is computable, even with respect to nondeterministic finite automata. We further compare the number of active states to related measures for regular languages. In particular, we show incomparability to the radius of regular languages and that the difference between the number of active states and the total number of states needed in finite automata for a regular language can be of exponential order.
User Experience (UX) describes the holistic experience of a user before, during, and after interaction with a platform, product, or service. UX adds value and attraction to their sole functionality and is therefore highly relevant for firms. The increased interest in UX has produced a vast amount of scholarly research since 1983. The research field is, therefore, complex and scattered. Conducting a bibliometric analysis, we aim at structuring the field quantitatively and rather abstractly. We employed citation analyses, co-citation analyses, and content analyses to evaluate productivity and impact of extant research. We suggest that future research should focus more on business and management related topics.
We study the concept of reversibility in connection with parallel communicating systems of finite automata (PCFA in short). We define the notion of reversibility in the case of PCFA (also covering the non-deterministic case) and discuss the relationship of the reversibility of the systems and the reversibility of its components. We show that a system can be reversible with non-reversible components, and the other way around, the reversibility of the components does not necessarily imply the reversibility of the system as a whole. We also investigate the computational power of deterministic centralized reversible PCFA. We show that these very simple types of PCFA (returning or non-returning) can recognize regular languages which cannot be accepted by reversible (deterministic) finite automata, and that they can even accept languages that are not context-free. We also separate the deterministic and non-deterministic variants in the case of systems with non-returning communication. We show that there are languages accepted by non-deterministic centralized PCFA, which cannot be recognized by any deterministic variant of the same type.
Accurately solving classification problems nowadays is likely to be the most relevant machine learning task. Binary classification separating two classes only is algorithmically simpler but has fewer potential applications as many real-world problems are multi-class. On the reverse, separating only a subset of classes simplifies the classification task. Even though existing multi-class machine learning algorithms are very flexible regarding the number of classes, they assume that the target set Y is fixed and cannot be restricted once the training is finished. On the other hand, existing state-of-the-art production environments are becoming increasingly interconnected with the advance of Industry 4.0 and related technologies such that additional information can simplify the respective classification problems. In light of this, the main aim of this thesis is to introduce dynamic classification that generalizes multi-class classification such that the target class set can be restricted arbitrarily to a non-empty class subset M of Y at any time between two consecutive predictions.
This task is solved by a combination of two algorithmic approaches. First, classifier calibration, which transforms predictions into posterior probability estimates that are intended to be well calibrated. The analysis provided focuses on monotonic calibration and in particular corrects wrong statements that appeared in the literature. It also reveals that bin-based evaluation metrics, which became popular in recent years, are unjustified and should not be used at all. Next, the validity of Platt scaling, which is the most relevant parametric calibration approach, is analyzed in depth. In particular, its optimality for classifier predictions distributed according to four different families of probability distributions as well its equivalence with Beta calibration up to a sigmoidal preprocessing are proven. For non-monotonic calibration, extended variants on kernel density estimation and the ensemble method EKDE are introduced. Finally, the calibration techniques are evaluated using a simulation study with complete information as well as on a selection of 46 real-world data sets.
Building on this, classifier calibration is applied as part of decomposition-based classification that aims to reduce multi-class problems to simpler (usually binary) prediction tasks. For the involved fusing step performed at prediction time, a new approach based on evidence theory is presented that uses classifier calibration to model mass functions. This allows the analysis of decomposition-based classification against a strictly formal background and to prove closed-form equations for the overall combinations. Furthermore, the same formalism leads to a consistent integration of dynamic class information, yielding a theoretically justified and computationally tractable dynamic classification model. The insights gained from this modeling are combined with pairwise coupling, which is one of the most relevant reduction-based classification approaches, such that all individual predictions are combined with a weight. This not only generalizes existing works on pairwise coupling but also enables the integration of dynamic class information.
Lastly, a thorough empirical study is performed that compares all newly introduced approaches to existing state-of-the-art techniques. For this, evaluation metrics for dynamic classification are introduced that depend on corresponding sampling strategies. Thereafter, these are applied during a three-part evaluation. First, support vector machines and random forests are applied on 26 data sets from the UCI Machine Learning Repository. Second, two state-of-the-art deep neural networks are evaluated on five benchmark data sets from a relatively recent reference work. Here, computationally feasible strategies to apply the presented algorithms in combination with large-scale models are particularly relevant because a naive application is computationally intractable. Finally, reference data from a real-world process allowing the inclusion of dynamic class information are collected and evaluated. The results show that in combination with support vector machines and random forests, pairwise coupling approaches yield the best results, while in combination with deep neural networks, differences between the different approaches are mostly small to negligible. Most importantly, all results empirically confirm that dynamic classification succeeds in improving the respective prediction accuracies. Therefore, it is crucial to pass dynamic class information in respective applications, which requires an appropriate digital infrastructure.
M-rate 0L systems are interactionless Lindenmayer systems together with a function assigning to every string a set of multisets of productions that may be applied simultaneously to the string. Some questions that have been left open in the forerunner papers are examined, and the computational power of deterministic M-rate 0L systems is investigated, where also tabled and extended variants are taken into consideration.
The highly structured nature of the educational sector demands effective policy mechanisms close to the needs of the field. That is why evidence-based policy making, endorsed by the European Commission under Erasmus+ Key Action 3, aims to make an alignment between the domains of policy and practice. Against this background, this article addresses two issues: First, that there is a vertical gap in the translation of higher-level policies to local strategies and regulations. Second, that there is a horizontal gap between educational domains regarding the policy awareness of individual players. This was analyzed in quantitative and qualitative studies with domain experts from the fields of virtual mobility and teacher training. From our findings, we argue that the combination of both gaps puts the academic bridge from secondary to tertiary education at risk, including the associated knowledge proficiency levels. We discuss the role of digitalization in the academic bridge by asking the question: which value does the involved stakeholders expect from educational policies? As a theoretical basis, we rely on the model of value co-creation for and by stakeholders. We describe the used instruments along with the obtained results and proposed benefits. Moreover, we reflect on the methodology applied, and we finally derive recommendations for future academic bridge policies.
Die stetige Weiterentwicklung von VR-Systemen bietet neue Möglichkeiten der Interaktion mit virtuellen Objekten im dreidimensionalen Raum, stellt Entwickelnde von VRAnwendungen aber auch vor neue Herausforderungen. Selektions- und Manipulationstechniken müssen unter Berücksichtigung des Anwendungsszenarios, der Zielgruppe und der zur Verfügung stehenden Ein- und Ausgabegeräte ausgewählt werden. Diese Arbeit leistet einen Beitrag dazu, die Auswahl von passenden Interaktionstechniken zu unterstützen. Hierfür wurde eine repräsentative Menge von Selektions- und Manipulationstechniken untersucht und, unter Berücksichtigung existierender Klassifikationssysteme, eine Taxonomie entwickelt, die die Analyse der Techniken hinsichtlich interaktionsrelevanter Eigenschaften ermöglicht. Auf Basis dieser Taxonomie wurden Techniken ausgewählt, die in einer explorativen Studie verglichen wurden, um Rückschlüsse auf die Dimensionen der Taxonomie zu ziehen und neue Indizien für Vor- und Nachteile der Techniken in spezifischen Anwendungsszenarien zu generieren. Die Ergebnisse der Arbeit münden in eine Webanwendung, die Entwickelnde von VR-Anwendungen gezielt dabei unterstützt, passende Selektions- und Manipulationstechniken für ein Anwendungsszenario auszuwählen, indem Techniken auf Basis der Taxonomie gefiltert und unter Verwendung der Resultate aus der Studie sortiert werden können.
Research publications and data nowadays should be publicly available on the internet and, theoretically, usable for everyone to develop further research, products, or services. The long-term accessibility of research data is, therefore, fundamental in the economy of the research production process. However, the availability of data is not sufficient by itself, but also their quality must be verifiable. Measures to ensure reuse and reproducibility need to include the entire research life cycle, from the experimental design to the generation of data, quality control, statistical analysis, interpretation, and validation of the results. Hence, high-quality records, particularly for providing a string of documents for the verifiable origin of data, are essential elements that can act as a certificate for potential users (customers). These records also improve the traceability and transparency of data and processes, therefore, improving the reliability of results. Standards for data acquisition, analysis, and documentation have been fostered in the last decade driven by grassroot initiatives of researchers and organizations such as the Research Data Alliance (RDA). Nevertheless, what is still largely missing in the life science academic research are agreed procedures for complex routine research workflows. Here, well-crafted documentation like standard operating procedures (SOPs) offer clear direction and instructions specifically designed to avoid deviations as an absolute necessity for reproducibility. Therefore, this paper provides a standardized workflow that explains step by step how to write an SOP to be used as a starting point for appropriate research documentation.
Research publications and data nowadays should be publicly available on the internet and, theoretically, usable for everyone to develop further research, products, or services. The long-term accessibility of research data is, therefore, fundamental in the economy of the research production process. However, the availability of data is not sufficient by itself, but also their quality must be verifiable. Measures to ensure reuse and reproducibility need to include the entire research life cycle, from the experimental design to the generation of data, quality control, statistical analysis, interpretation, and validation of the results. Hence, high-quality records, particularly for providing a string of documents for the verifiable origin of data, are essential elements that can act as a certificate for potential users (customers). These records also improve the traceability and transparency of data and processes, therefore, improving the reliability of results. Standards for data acquisition, analysis, and documentation have been fostered in the last decade driven by grassroot initiatives of researchers and organizations such as the Research Data Alliance (RDA). Nevertheless, what is still largely missing in the life science academic research are agreed procedures for complex routine research workflows. Here, well-crafted documentation like standard operating procedures (SOPs) offer clear direction and instructions specifically designed to avoid deviations as an absolute necessity for reproducibility. Therefore, this paper provides a standardized workflow that explains step by step how to write an SOP to be used as a starting point for appropriate research documentation.
The aim of our project design space exploration with answer set programming is to develop a general framework based on Answer Set Programming (ASP) that finds valid solutions to the system design problem and simultaneously performs Design Space Exploration (DSE) to find the most favorable alternatives. We leverage recent developments in ASP solving that allow for tight integration of background theories to create a holistic framework for effective DSE.
The Potsdam answer set solving collection, or Potassco for short, bundles various tools implementing and/or applying answer set programming. The article at hand succeeds an earlier description of the Potassco project published in Gebser et al. (AI Commun 24(2):107-124, 2011). Hence, we concentrate in what follows on the major features of the most recent, fifth generation of the ASP system clingo and highlight some recent resulting application systems.
Answer Set Programming faces an increasing popularity for problem solving in various domains. While its modeling language allows us to express many complex problems in an easy way, its solving technology enables their effective resolution. In what follows, we detail some of the key factors of its success. Answer Set Programming [ASP; Brewka et al. Commun ACM 54(12):92–103, (2011)] is seeing a rapid proliferation in academia and industry due to its easy and flexible way to model and solve knowledge-intense combinatorial (optimization) problems. To this end, ASP offers a high-level modeling language paired with high-performance solving technology. As a result, ASP systems provide out-off-the-box, general-purpose search engines that allow for enumerating (optimal) solutions. They are represented as answer sets, each being a set of atoms representing a solution. The declarative approach of ASP allows a user to concentrate on a problem’s specification rather than the computational means to solve it. This makes ASP a prime candidate for rapid prototyping and an attractive tool for teaching key AI techniques since complex problems can be expressed in a succinct and elaboration tolerant way. This is eased by the tuning of ASP’s modeling language to knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR). The resulting impact is nicely reflected by a growing range of successful applications of ASP [Erdem et al. AI Mag 37(3):53–68, 2016; Falkner et al. Industrial applications of answer set programming. K++nstliche Intelligenz (2018)]
In the last decades, there was a notable progress in solving the well-known Boolean satisfiability (Sat) problem, which can be witnessed by powerful Sat solvers. One of the reasons why these solvers are so fast are structural properties of instances that are utilized by the solver’s interna. This thesis deals with the well-studied structural property treewidth, which measures the closeness of an instance to being a tree. In fact, there are many problems parameterized by treewidth that are solvable in polynomial time in the instance size when parameterized by treewidth.
In this work, we study advanced treewidth-based methods and tools for problems in knowledge representation and reasoning (KR). Thereby, we provide means to establish precise runtime results (upper bounds) for canonical problems relevant to KR. Then, we present a new type of problem reduction, which we call decomposition-guided (DG) that
allows us to precisely monitor the treewidth when reducing from one problem to another problem. This new reduction type will be the basis for a long-open lower bound result for quantified Boolean formulas and allows us to design a new methodology for establishing runtime lower bounds for problems parameterized by treewidth.
Finally, despite these lower bounds, we provide an efficient implementation of algorithms that adhere to treewidth. Our approach finds suitable abstractions of instances, which are subsequently refined in a recursive fashion, and it uses Sat solvers for solving subproblems. It turns out that our resulting solver is quite competitive for two canonical counting problems related to Sat.
Discriminative Models for Biometric Identification using Micro- and Macro-Movements of the Eyes
(2021)
Human visual perception is an active process. Eye movements either alternate between fixations and saccades or follow a smooth pursuit movement in case of moving targets. Besides these macroscopic gaze patterns, the eyes perform involuntary micro-movements during fixations which are commonly categorized into micro-saccades, drift and tremor. Eye movements are frequently studied in cognitive psychology, because they reflect a complex interplay of perception, attention and oculomotor control.
A common insight of psychological research is that macro-movements are highly individual. Inspired by this finding, there has been a considerable amount of prior research on oculomotoric biometric identification. However, the accuracy of known approaches is too low and the time needed for identification is too long for any practical application. This thesis explores discriminative models for the task of biometric identification.
Discriminative models optimize a quality measure of the predictions and are usually superior to generative approaches in discriminative tasks. However, using discriminative models requires to select a suitable form of data representation for sequential eye gaze data; i.e., by engineering features or constructing a sequence kernel and the performance of the classification model strongly depends on the data representation. We study two fundamentally different ways of representing eye gaze within a discriminative framework. In the first part of this thesis, we explore the integration of data and psychological background knowledge in the form of generative models to construct representations. To this end, we first develop generative statistical models of gaze behavior during reading and scene viewing that account for viewer-specific distributional properties of gaze patterns. In a second step, we develop a discriminative identification model by deriving Fisher kernel functions from these and several baseline models. We find that an SVM with Fisher kernel is able to reliably identify users based on their eye gaze during reading and scene viewing. However, since the generative models are constrained to use low-frequency macro-movements, they discard a significant amount of information contained in the raw eye tracking signal at a high cost: identification requires about one minute of input recording, which makes it inapplicable for real world biometric systems. In the second part of this thesis, we study a purely data-driven modeling approach. Here, we aim at automatically discovering the individual pattern hidden in the raw eye tracking signal. To this end, we develop a deep convolutional neural network DeepEyedentification that processes yaw and pitch gaze velocities and learns a representation end-to-end. Compared to prior work, this model increases the identification accuracy by one order of magnitude and the time to identification decreases to only seconds. The DeepEyedentificationLive model further improves upon the identification performance by processing binocular input and it also detects presentation-attacks.
We find that by learning a representation, the performance of oculomotoric identification and presentation-attack detection can be driven close to practical relevance for biometric applications. Eye tracking devices with high sampling frequency and precision are expensive and the applicability of eye movement as a biometric feature heavily depends on cost of recording devices.
In the last part of this thesis, we therefore study the requirements on data quality by evaluating the performance of the DeepEyedentificationLive network under reduced spatial and temporal resolution. We find that the method still attains a high identification accuracy at a temporal resolution of only 250 Hz and a precision of 0.03 degrees. Reducing both does not have an additive deteriorating effect.
We introduce a type and effect system, for an imperative object calculus, which infers sharing possibly introduced by the evaluation of an expression, represented as an equivalence relation among its free variables. This direct representation of sharing effects at the syntactic level allows us to express in a natural way, and to generalize, widely-used notions in literature, notably uniqueness and borrowing. Moreover, the calculus is pure in the sense that reduction is defined on language terms only, since they directly encode store. The advantage of this non-standard execution model with respect to a behaviorally equivalent standard model using a global auxiliary structure is that reachability relations among references are partly encoded by scoping. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
plasp 3
(2019)
We describe the new version of the Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL)-to-Answer Set Programming (ASP) translator plasp. First, it widens the range of accepted PDDL features. Second, it contains novel planning encodings, some inspired by Satisfiability Testing (SAT) planning and others exploiting ASP features such as well-foundedness. All of them are designed for handling multivalued fluents in order to capture both PDDL as well as SAS planning formats. Third, enabled by multishot ASP solving, it offers advanced planning algorithms also borrowed from SAT planning. As a result, plasp provides us with an ASP-based framework for studying a variety of planning techniques in a uniform setting. Finally, we demonstrate in an empirical analysis that these techniques have a significant impact on the performance of ASP planning.
A common feature in Answer Set Programming is the use of a second negation, stronger than default negation and sometimes called explicit, strong or classical negation. This explicit negation is normally used in front of atoms, rather than allowing its use as a regular operator. In this paper we consider the arbitrary combination of explicit negation with nested expressions, as those defined by Lifschitz, Tang and Turner. We extend the concept of reduct for this new syntax and then prove that it can be captured by an extension of Equilibrium Logic with this second negation. We study some properties of this variant and compare to the already known combination of Equilibrium Logic with Nelson's strong negation.
In a recent line of research, two familiar concepts from logic programming semantics (unfounded sets and splitting) were extrapolated to the case of epistemic logic programs. The property of epistemic splitting provides a natural and modular way to understand programs without epistemic cycles but, surprisingly, was only fulfilled by Gelfond's original semantics (G91), among the many proposals in the literature. On the other hand, G91 may suffer from a kind of self-supported, unfounded derivations when epistemic cycles come into play. Recently, the absence of these derivations was also formalised as a property of epistemic semantics called foundedness. Moreover, a first semantics proved to satisfy foundedness was also proposed, the so-called Founded Autoepistemic Equilibrium Logic (FAEEL). In this paper, we prove that FAEEL also satisfies the epistemic splitting property something that, together with foundedness, was not fulfilled by any other approach up to date. To prove this result, we provide an alternative characterisation of FAEEL as a combination of G91 with a simpler logic we called Founded Epistemic Equilibrium Logic (FEEL), which is somehow an extrapolation of the stable model semantics to the modal logic S5.
Parsing of argumentative structures has become a very active line of research in recent years. Like discourse parsing or any other natural language task that requires prediction of linguistic structures, most approaches choose to learn a local model and then perform global decoding over the local probability distributions, often imposing constraints that are specific to the task at hand. Specifically for argumentation parsing, two decoding approaches have been recently proposed: Minimum Spanning Trees (MST) and Integer Linear Programming (ILP), following similar trends in discourse parsing. In contrast to discourse parsing though, where trees are not always used as underlying annotation schemes, argumentation structures so far have always been represented with trees. Using the 'argumentative microtext corpus' [in: Argumentation and Reasoned Action: Proceedings of the 1st European Conference on Argumentation, Lisbon 2015 / Vol. 2, College Publications, London, 2016, pp. 801-815] as underlying data and replicating three different decoding mechanisms, in this paper we propose a novel ILP decoder and an extension to our earlier MST work, and then thoroughly compare the approaches. The result is that our new decoder outperforms related work in important respects, and that in general, ILP and MST yield very similar performance.
Multi-sided platforms (MSP) strongly affect markets and play a crucial part within the digital and networked economy. Although empirical evidence indicates their occurrence in many industries, research has not investigated the game-changing impact of MSP on traditional markets to a sufficient extent. More specifically, we have little knowledge of how MSP affect value creation and customer interaction in entire markets, exploiting the potential of digital technologies to offer new value propositions. Our paper addresses this research gap and provides an initial systematic approach to analyze the impact of MSP on the insurance industry. For this purpose, we analyze the state of the art in research and practice in order to develop a reference model of the value network for the insurance industry. On this basis, we conduct a case-study analysis to discover and analyze roles which are occupied or even newly created by MSP. As a final step, we categorize MSP with regard to their relation to traditional insurance companies, resulting in a classification scheme with four MSP standard types: Competition, Coordination, Cooperation, Collaboration.
Emotions are a central element of human experience. They occur with high frequency in everyday life and play an important role in decision making. However, currently there is no consensus among researchers on what constitutes an emotion and on how emotions should be investigated. This dissertation identifies three problems of current emotion research: the problem of ground truth, the problem of incomplete constructs and the problem of optimal representation. I argue for a focus on the detailed measurement of emotion manifestations with computer-aided methods to solve these problems. This approach is demonstrated in three research projects, which describe the development of methods specific to these problems as well as their application to concrete research questions.
The problem of ground truth describes the practice to presuppose a certain structure of emotions as the a priori ground truth. This determines the range of emotion descriptions and sets a standard for the correct assignment of these descriptions. The first project illustrates how this problem can be circumvented with a multidimensional emotion perception paradigm which stands in contrast to the emotion recognition paradigm typically employed in emotion research. This paradigm allows to calculate an objective difficulty measure and to collect subjective difficulty ratings for the perception of emotional stimuli. Moreover, it enables the use of an arbitrary number of emotion stimuli categories as compared to the commonly used six basic emotion categories. Accordingly, we collected data from 441 participants using dynamic facial expression stimuli from 40 emotion categories. Our findings suggest an increase in emotion perception difficulty with increasing actor age and provide evidence to suggest that young adults, the elderly and men underestimate their emotion perception difficulty. While these effects were predicted from the literature, we also found unexpected and novel results. In particular, the increased difficulty on the objective difficulty measure for female actors and observers stood in contrast to reported findings. Exploratory analyses revealed low relevance of person-specific variables for the prediction of emotion perception difficulty, but highlighted the importance of a general pleasure dimension for the ease of emotion perception.
The second project targets the problem of incomplete constructs which relates to vaguely defined psychological constructs on emotion with insufficient ties to tangible manifestations. The project exemplifies how a modern data collection method such as face tracking data can be used to sharpen these constructs on the example of arousal, a long-standing but fuzzy construct in emotion research. It describes how measures of distance, speed and magnitude of acceleration can be computed from face tracking data and investigates their intercorrelations. We find moderate to strong correlations among all measures of static information on one hand and all measures of dynamic information on the other. The project then investigates how self-rated arousal is tied to these measures in 401 neurotypical individuals and 19 individuals with autism. Distance to the neutral face was predictive of arousal ratings in both groups. Lower mean arousal ratings were found for the autistic group, but no difference in correlation of the measures and arousal ratings could be found between groups. Results were replicated in a high autistic traits group consisting of 41 participants. The findings suggest a qualitatively similar perception of arousal for individuals with and without autism. No correlations between valence ratings and any of the measures could be found which emphasizes the specificity of our tested measures for the construct of arousal.
The problem of optimal representation refers to the search for the best representation of emotions and the assumption that there is a one-fits-all solution. In the third project we introduce partial least squares analysis as a general method to find an optimal representation to relate two high-dimensional data sets to each other. The project demonstrates its applicability to emotion research on the question of emotion perception differences between men and women. The method was used with emotion rating data from 441 participants and face tracking data computed on 306 videos. We found quantitative as well as qualitative differences in the perception of emotional facial expressions between these groups. We showed that women’s emotional perception systematically captured more of the variance in facial expressions. Additionally, we could show that significant differences exist in the way that women and men perceive some facial expressions which could be visualized as concrete facial expression sequences. These expressions suggest differing perceptions of masked and ambiguous facial expressions between the sexes. In order to facilitate use of the developed method by the research community, a package for the statistical environment R was written. Furthermore, to call attention to the method and its usefulness for emotion research, a website was designed that allows users to explore a model of emotion ratings and facial expression data in an interactive fashion.
The usage of mobile devices is rapidly growing with Android being the most prevalent mobile operating system. Thanks to the vast variety of mobile applications, users are preferring smartphones over desktops for day to day tasks like Internet surfing. Consequently, smartphones store a plenitude of sensitive data. This data together with the high values of smartphones make them an attractive target for device/data theft (thieves/malicious applications).
Unfortunately, state-of-the-art anti-theft solutions do not work if they do not have an active network connection, e.g., if the SIM card was removed from the device. In the majority of these cases, device owners permanently lose their smartphone together with their personal data, which is even worse.
Apart from that malevolent applications perform malicious activities to steal sensitive information from smartphones. Recent research considered static program analysis to detect dangerous data leaks. These analyses work well for data leaks due to inter-component communication, but suffer from shortcomings for inter-app communication with respect to precision, soundness, and scalability.
This thesis focuses on enhancing users' privacy on Android against physical device loss/theft and (un)intentional data leaks. It presents three novel frameworks: (1) ThiefTrap, an anti-theft framework for Android, (2) IIFA, a modular inter-app intent information flow analysis of Android applications, and (3) PIAnalyzer, a precise approach for PendingIntent vulnerability analysis.
ThiefTrap is based on a novel concept of an anti-theft honeypot account that protects the owner's data while preventing a thief from resetting the device.
We implemented the proposed scheme and evaluated it through an empirical user study with 35 participants. In this study, the owner's data could be protected, recovered, and anti-theft functionality could be performed unnoticed from the thief in all cases.
IIFA proposes a novel approach for Android's inter-component/inter-app communication (ICC/IAC) analysis. Our main contribution is the first fully automatic, sound, and precise ICC/IAC information flow analysis that is scalable for realistic apps due to modularity, avoiding combinatorial explosion: Our approach determines communicating apps using short summaries rather than inlining intent calls between components and apps, which requires simultaneously analyzing all apps installed on a device.
We evaluate IIFA in terms of precision, recall, and demonstrate its scalability to a large corpus of real-world apps. IIFA reports 62 problematic ICC-/IAC-related information flows via two or more apps/components.
PIAnalyzer proposes a novel approach to analyze PendingIntent related vulnerabilities. PendingIntents are a powerful and universal feature of Android for inter-component communication. We empirically evaluate PIAnalyzer on a set of 1000 randomly selected applications and find 1358 insecure usages of PendingIntents, including 70 severe vulnerabilities.
Das Training sozioemotionaler Kompetenzen ist gerade für Menschen mit Autismus nützlich. Ein solches Training kann mithilfe einer spielbasierten Anwendung effektiv gestaltet werden. Zwei Minispiele, Mimikry und Emo-Mahjong, wurden realisiert und hinsichtlich User Experience evaluiert. Die jeweiligen Konzepte und die Evaluationsergebnisse sollen hier vorgestellt werden.
E-Learning Symposium 2018
(2018)
In den vergangenen Jahren sind viele E-Learning-Innovationen entstanden. Einige davon wurden auf den vergangenen E-Learning Symposien der Universität Potsdam präsentiert: Das erste E-Learning Symposium im Jahr 2012 konzentrierte sich auf unterschiedliche Möglichkeiten der Studierendenaktivierung und Lehrgestaltung. Das Symposium 2014 rückte vor allem die Studierenden ins Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit. Im Jahr 2016 kam es durch das Zusammengehen des Symposiums mit der DeLFI-Tagung zu einer Fokussierung auf technische Innovationen. Doch was ist aus den Leuchttürmen von gestern geworden, und brauchen wir überhaupt noch neue Leuchttürme? Das Symposium setzt sich in diesem Jahr unter dem Motto „Innovation und Nachhaltigkeit – (k)ein Gegensatz?“ mit mediengestützten Lehr- und Lernprozessen im universitären Kontext auseinander und reflektiert aktuelle technische sowie didaktische Entwicklungen mit Blick auf deren mittel- bis langfristigen Einsatz in der Praxis.
Dieser Tagungsband zum E-Learning Symposium 2018 an der Universität Potsdam beinhaltet eine Mischung von Forschungs- und Praxisbeiträgen aus verschiedenen Fachdisziplinen und eröffnet vielschichtige Perspektiven auf das Thema E-Learning. Dabei werden die Vielfalt der didaktischen Einsatzszenarien als auch die Potentiale von Werk-zeugen und Methoden der Informatik in ihrem Zusammenspiel beleuchtet.
In seiner Keynote widmet sich Reinhard Keil dem Motto des Symposiums und geht der Nachhaltigkeit bei E-Learning-Projekten auf den Grund. Dabei analysiert und beleuchtet er anhand seiner über 15-jährigen Forschungspraxis die wichtigsten Wirkfaktoren und formuliert Empfehlungen zur Konzeption von E-Learning-Projekten. Im Gegensatz zu rein auf Kostenersparnis ausgerichteten (hochschul-)politischen Forderungen proklamiert er den Ansatz der hypothesengeleiteten Technikgestaltung, in der Nachhaltigkeit als Leitfrage oder Forschungsstrategie verstanden werden kann. In eine ähnliche Richtung geht der Beitrag von Iris Braun et al., die über Erfolgsfaktoren beim Einsatz von Audience Response Systemen in der universitären Lehre berichten.
Ein weiteres aktuelles Thema, sowohl für die Bildungstechnologie als auch in den Bildungswissenschaften allgemein, ist die Kompetenzorientierung und –modellierung. Hier geht es darum (Problemlöse-)Fähigkeiten gezielt zu beschreiben und in den Mittelpunkt der Lehre zu stellen. Johannes Konert stellt in einem eingeladenen Vortrag zwei Projekte vor, die den Prozess beginnend bei der Definition von Kompetenzen, deren Modellierung in einem semantischen maschinenlesbaren Format bis hin zur Erarbeitung von Methoden zur Kompetenzmessung und der elektronischen Zertifizierung aufzeigen. Dabei geht er auf technische Möglichkeiten, aber auch Grenzen ein. Auf einer spezifischeren Ebene beschäftigt sich Sarah Stumpf mit digitalen bzw. mediendidaktischen Kompetenzen im Lehramtsstudium und stellt ein Framework für die Förderung ebensolcher Kompetenzen bei angehenden Lehrkräften vor.
Der Einsatz von E-Learning birgt noch einige Herausforderungen. Dabei geht es oft um die Verbindung von Didaktik und Technik, den Erhalt von Aufmerksamkeit oder den Aufwand für das Erstellen von interaktiven Lehr- und Lerninhalten. Drei Beiträge in diesem Tagungsband beschäftigen sich mit dieser Thematik in unterschiedlichen Kontexten und zeigen Best-Practices und Lösungsansätze auf: Der Beitrag von Martina Wahl und Michael Hölscher behandelt den besonderen Kontext von Blended Learning-Szenarien in berufsbegleitenden Studiengängen. Um die Veröffentlichung eines global frei verfügbaren Onlinekurses abseits der großen MOOC Plattformen und den didaktischen Herausforderungen auch hinsichtlich der Motivation geht es im Beitrag von Ennio Marani und Isabel Jaisli. Schließlich schlagen Gregor Damnik et al. die automatische Erzeugung von Aufgaben zur Erhöhung von Interaktivität und Adaptivität in digitalen Lernressourcen vor, um den teilweise erheblichen Erstellungsaufwand zu reduzieren.
Zum Thema E-Learning zählen auch immer mobile Apps bzw. Spiele. Gleich zwei Beiträge beschäftigen sich mit dem Einsatz von E-Learning-Tools im Gesundheitskontext: Anna Tscherejkina und Anna Morgiel stellen in ihrem Beitrag Minispiele zum Training von sozio-emotionalen Kompetenzen für Menschen mit Autismus vor, und Stephanie Herbstreit et al. berichten vom Einsatz einer mobilen Lern-App zur Verbesserung von klinisch-praktischem Unterricht.
Die 8. Fachtagung für Hochschuldidaktik der Informatik (HDI) fand im September 2018 zusammen mit der Deutschen E-Learning Fachtagung Informatik (DeLFI) unter dem gemeinsamen Motto „Digitalisierungswahnsinn? - Wege der Bildungstransformationen“ in Frankfurt statt.
Dabei widmet sich die HDI allen Fragen der informatischen Bildung im Hochschulbereich. Schwerpunkte bildeten in diesem Jahr u. a.:
- Analyse der Inhalte und anzustrebenden Kompetenzen in Informatikveranstaltungen
- Programmieren lernen & Einstieg in Softwareentwicklung
- Spezialthemen: Data Science, Theoretische Informatik und Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten
Die Fachtagung widmet sich ausgewählten Fragestellungen dieser Themenkomplexe, die durch Vorträge ausgewiesener Experten und durch eingereichte Beiträge intensiv behandelt werden.
Solving problems combining task and motion planning requires searching across a symbolic search space and a geometric search space. Because of the semantic gap between symbolic and geometric representations, symbolic sequences of actions are not guaranteed to be geometrically feasible. This compels us to search in the combined search space, in which frequent backtracks between symbolic and geometric levels make the search inefficient.We address this problem by guiding symbolic search with rich information extracted from the geometric level through culprit detection mechanisms.
Dieses Lehrvideo zeigt aus der Perspektive einer Übertischkamera den fiktiven informatischen Hochleister Tom bei der Bearbeitung eines schwierigen Färbeproblems. Dabei kann man die fortlaufend von ihm angefertigten Skizzen beobachten und seine Gedankengänge genau verfolgen. Denn dieser Problemlöser arbeitet unter lautem Denken, d. h. er spricht alle seine Gedankengänge laut aus. Man kann zuschauen, wie Tom zunächst die Aufgabe analysiert und die dadurch gewonnenen Erkenntnisse in der anschließenden Problembearbeitung gewinnbringend einsetzt. Der Zuschauer wird dabei aber nicht allein gelassen. An markanten Stellen wird das Video unterbrochen und Toms zurückliegende Aktivitäten mit animierten Bildsequenzen vertiefend erläutert. Schwache Problemlöser können so die in Unterricht oder Vorlesung vermittelten Kenntnisse über informatische Problemlösemethoden vertiefen und deren Anwendung durch einen starken Problemlöser beispielhaft miterleben. Entstanden ist dieses Video aus einer Vergleichsstudie mit starken und schwachen Problemlösern. Die effizienten Methoden der Hochleister wurden didaktisch aufgearbeitet und zu einem modellhaften Problemlöseprozess zusammengesetzt. Der wissenschaftliche Hintergrund des Lehrvideos wird durch eine als Bildergeschichte erzählte Rahmenhandlung verdeutlicht. Bei Erstsemesterstudenten der Informatik, denen dieses Video zur Bewertung vorgespielt wurde, fand dieses Konzept große Zustimmung. Tenor: Unterhaltsam und lehrreich zugleich.
Die Projektierung und Abwicklung sowie die statische und dynamische Analyse von Geschäftsprozessen im Bereich des Verwaltens und Regierens auf kommunaler, Länder- wie auch Bundesebene mit Hilfe von Informations- und Kommunikationstechniken beschäftigen Politiker und Strategen für Informationstechnologie ebenso wie die Öffentlichkeit seit Langem. Der hieraus entstandene Begriff E-Government wurde in der Folge aus den unterschiedlichsten technischen, politischen und semantischen Blickrichtungen beleuchtet.
Die vorliegende Arbeit konzentriert sich dabei auf zwei Schwerpunktthemen:
> Das erste Schwerpunktthema behandelt den Entwurf eines hierarchischen Architekturmodells, für welches sieben hierarchische Schichten identifiziert werden können. Diese erscheinen notwendig, aber auch hinreichend, um den allgemeinen Fall zu beschreiben. Den Hintergrund hierfür liefert die langjährige Prozess- und Verwaltungserfahrung als Leiter der EDV-Abteilung der Stadtverwaltung Landshut, eine kreisfreie Stadt mit rund 69.000 Einwohnern im Nordosten von München. Sie steht als Repräsentant für viele Verwaltungsvorgänge in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und ist dennoch als Analyseobjekt in der Gesamtkomplexität und Prozessquantität überschaubar. Somit können aus der Analyse sämtlicher Kernabläufe statische und dynamische Strukturen extrahiert und abstrakt modelliert werden. Die Schwerpunkte liegen in der Darstellung der vorhandenen Bedienabläufe in einer Kommune. Die Transformation der Bedienanforderung in einem hierarchischen System, die Darstellung der Kontroll- und der Operationszustände in allen Schichten wie auch die Strategie der Fehlererkennung und Fehlerbehebung schaffen eine transparente Basis für umfassende Restrukturierungen und Optimierungen. Für die Modellierung wurde FMC-eCS eingesetzt, eine am Hasso-Plattner-Institut für Softwaresystemtechnik GmbH (HPI) im Fachgebiet Kommunikationssysteme entwickelte Methodik zur Modellierung zustandsdiskreter Systeme unter Berücksichtigung möglicher Inkonsistenzen
>Das zweite Schwerpunktthema widmet sich der quantitativen Modellierung und Optimierung von E-Government-Bediensystemen, welche am Beispiel des Bürgerbüros der Stadt Landshut im Zeitraum 2008 bis 2015 durchgeführt wurden. Dies erfolgt auf Basis einer kontinuierlichen Betriebsdatenerfassung mit aufwendiger Vorverarbeitung zur Extrahierung mathematisch beschreibbarer Wahrscheinlichkeitsverteilungen. Der hieraus entwickelte Dienstplan wurde hinsichtlich der erzielbaren Optimierungen im dauerhaften Echteinsatz verifiziert.
Services that operate over the Internet are under constant threat of being exposed to fraudulent use. Maintaining good user experience for legitimate users often requires the classification of entities as malicious or legitimate in order to initiate countermeasures. As an example, inbound email spam filters decide for spam or non-spam. They can base their decision on both the content of each email as well as on features that summarize prior emails received from the sending server. In general, discriminative classification methods learn to distinguish positive from negative entities. Each decision for a label may be based on features of the entity and related entities. When labels of related entities have strong interdependencies---as can be assumed e.g. for emails being delivered by the same user---classification decisions should not be made independently and dependencies should be modeled in the decision function. This thesis addresses the formulation of discriminative classification problems that are tailored for the specific demands of the following three Internet security applications. Theoretical and algorithmic solutions are devised to protect an email service against flooding of user inboxes, to mitigate abusive usage of outbound email servers, and to protect web servers against distributed denial of service attacks.
In the application of filtering an inbound email stream for unsolicited emails, utilizing features that go beyond each individual email's content can be valuable. Information about each sending mail server can be aggregated over time and may help in identifying unwanted emails. However, while this information will be available to the deployed email filter, some parts of the training data that are compiled by third party providers may not contain this information. The missing features have to be estimated at training time in order to learn a classification model. In this thesis an algorithm is derived that learns a decision function that integrates over a distribution of values for each missing entry. The distribution of missing values is a free parameter that is optimized to learn an optimal decision function.
The outbound stream of emails of an email service provider can be separated by the customer IDs that ask for delivery. All emails that are sent by the same ID in the same period of time are related, both in content and in label. Hijacked customer accounts may send batches of unsolicited emails to other email providers, which in turn might blacklist the sender's email servers after detection of incoming spam emails. The risk of being blocked from further delivery depends on the rate of outgoing unwanted emails and the duration of high spam sending rates. An optimization problem is developed that minimizes the expected cost for the email provider by learning a decision function that assigns a limit on the sending rate to customers based on the each customer's email stream.
Identifying attacking IPs during HTTP-level DDoS attacks allows to block those IPs from further accessing the web servers. DDoS attacks are usually carried out by infected clients that are members of the same botnet and show similar traffic patterns. HTTP-level attacks aim at exhausting one or more resources of the web server infrastructure, such as CPU time. If the joint set of attackers cannot increase resource usage close to the maximum capacity, no effect will be experienced by legitimate users of hosted web sites. However, if the additional load raises the computational burden towards the critical range, user experience will degrade until service may be unavailable altogether. As the loss of missing one attacker depends on block decisions for other attackers---if most other attackers are detected, not blocking one client will likely not be harmful---a structured output model has to be learned. In this thesis an algorithm is developed that learns a structured prediction decoder that searches the space of label assignments, guided by a policy.
Each model is evaluated on real-world data and is compared to reference methods. The results show that modeling each classification problem according to the specific demands of the task improves performance over solutions that do not consider the constraints inherent to an application.
Personal fabrication tools, such as 3D printers, are on the way of enabling a future in which non-technical users will be able to create custom objects. However, while the hardware is there, the current interaction model behind existing design tools is not suitable for non-technical users. Today, 3D printers are operated by fabricating the object in one go, which tends to take overnight due to the slow 3D printing technology. Consequently, the current interaction model requires users to think carefully before printing as every mistake may imply another overnight print. Planning every step ahead, however, is not feasible for non-technical users as they lack the experience to reason about the consequences of their design decisions.
In this dissertation, we propose changing the interaction model around personal fabrication tools to better serve this user group. We draw inspiration from personal computing and argue that the evolution of personal fabrication may resemble the evolution of personal computing: Computing started with machines that executed a program in one go before returning the result to the user. By decreasing the interaction unit to single requests, turn-taking systems such as the command line evolved, which provided users with feedback after every input. Finally, with the introduction of direct-manipulation interfaces, users continuously interacted with a program receiving feedback about every action in real-time. In this dissertation, we explore whether these interaction concepts can be applied to personal fabrication as well.
We start with fabricating an object in one go and investigate how to tighten the feedback-cycle on an object-level: We contribute a method called low-fidelity fabrication, which saves up to 90% fabrication time by creating objects as fast low-fidelity previews, which are sufficient to evaluate key design aspects. Depending on what is currently being tested, we propose different conversions that enable users to focus on different parts: faBrickator allows for a modular design in the early stages of prototyping; when users move on WirePrint allows quickly testing an object's shape, while Platener allows testing an object's technical function. We present an interactive editor for each technique and explain the underlying conversion algorithms.
By interacting on smaller units, such as a single element of an object, we explore what it means to transition from systems that fabricate objects in one go to turn-taking systems. We start with a 2D system called constructable: Users draw with a laser pointer onto the workpiece inside a laser cutter. The drawing is captured with an overhead camera. As soon as the the user finishes drawing an element, such as a line, the constructable system beautifies the path and cuts it--resulting in physical output after every editing step. We extend constructable towards 3D editing by developing a novel laser-cutting technique for 3D objects called LaserOrigami that works by heating up the workpiece with the defocused laser until the material becomes compliant and bends down under gravity. While constructable and LaserOrigami allow for fast physical feedback, the interaction is still best described as turn-taking since it consists of two discrete steps: users first create an input and afterwards the system provides physical output.
By decreasing the interaction unit even further to a single feature, we can achieve real-time physical feedback: Input by the user and output by the fabrication device are so tightly coupled that no visible lag exists. This allows us to explore what it means to transition from turn-taking interfaces, which only allow exploring one option at a time, to direct manipulation interfaces with real-time physical feedback, which allow users to explore the entire space of options continuously with a single interaction. We present a system called FormFab, which allows for such direct control. FormFab is based on the same principle as LaserOrigami: It uses a workpiece that when warmed up becomes compliant and can be reshaped. However, FormFab achieves the reshaping not based on gravity, but through a pneumatic system that users can control interactively. As users interact, they see the shape change in real-time.
We conclude this dissertation by extrapolating the current evolution into a future in which large numbers of people use the new technology to create objects. We see two additional challenges on the horizon: sustainability and intellectual property. We investigate sustainability by demonstrating how to print less and instead patch physical objects. We explore questions around intellectual property with a system called Scotty that transfers objects without creating duplicates, thereby preserving the designer's copyright.