FCT Relatório Científico 2008 [LABORATÓRIO
DE INTELIGÊNCIA ARTIFICIAL E CIÊNCIA DE COMPUTADORES]
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General Information |
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Name of Research
Unit: |
(COMP-Norte-Porto-27) |
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Coordinator: |
Eugénio da
Costa Oliveira |
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Main Scientific Domain: |
Engenharia
Electrotécnica e Informática |
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Other Subdomains: |
n/a |
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Host Institutions |
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Leading Host Institution: |
Universidade
do Porto |
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Other Institutions Involved: |
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Objectives
& Achievements |
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Unit Description |
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The Laboratory of Artificial
Intelligence and Computer Science (LIACC) at the University of Porto started
in 1988 with 5 researchers holding a PhD. In 2008 this number has increased
to 23 and there were four research groups (Advanced Programming Systems,
Distributed Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Formal Models of
Computation, Complexity and Cryptography) mainly residing in the Faculty of
Sciences and the Faculty of Engineering. The management of LIACC is
done according to the FCT Multi-year Funding Program rules, through a Coordinating
Board, a Scientific Council and an external Advisory Board. The Coordinating Board is
composed by senior researchers, one of which is the LIACC Coordinator, and
the other researchers are usually elected among the heads of the research
groups. The Scientific Council, responsible for the approval of annual
reports and plans, is composed by all the researchers holding a PhD. LIACC
activities are periodically reviewed by an external Advisory Board whose
members are invited among internationally recognized outstanding experts. Until December 2009 the
following researchers will be in charge: - LIACC Coordinator:
Eugénio Oliveira - LIACC Coordinating
Board: Eugénio Oliveira, Miguel Filgueiras,
Luís Damas, Armando Matos, Ana Paula Tomás, Luís
Paulo Reis - Advisory
Board: Claude Kirchner (INRIA, France), Carles Sierra (IIA, CSIC, Barcelona). LIACC team actualization on
31 December 2008, gave the following numbers: a total of 50 members, 23 of
which holding a PhD, 15 holding a master degree and the remaining 12 have
just finished their graduation. However, none of the PhDs is doing research
full-time, as it is the case with most of the other researchers. In order to make the
research unit more coherent, LIACC proposed to FCT, in May 2009, a new
structure with only two research groups, one of which resulting from joining
three of the previous ones. This proposal is still under
evaluation. |
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General Objectives |
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LIACC aims at helping to
solve the following general problems: - Software reliability Reliable software is still
the main challenge in computer science; software engineering approaches
failed in general; formal approaches based on logic specifications and
theorem proving have trouble handling real programs with a loose
specification; unit tests improve the reliability of parts of the program but
fail to guarantee reliability of the whole; design by contract approaches
(e.g. ruby, spec-#) combined with type inference can improve reliability but
do not guarantee correctness; may be a combination of different approaches
should be used. - Distributed, Dynamic and
Decentralized (DDD) problems We aim at addressing classes
of problems that are inherently of a Distributed, Dynamic and Decentralized
nature as those which occur when different and heterogeneous
entities/partners need to inter-operate over a computer network. To deal with
this kind of organizational problems, Electronic Institutions assume a
relevant role by providing services like negotiation mediation, ontology
mapping, contract drafting, monitoring and enforcement, as well as evaluation
of trust and reputation indicators for consortia and Virtual
Organizations\Enterprises life-cycle automatic assistance. Also, the Traffic
management domain, both in terrestrial and aerial environments can be seen as
DDD problems. Both at individual level and group level activities, these
problems are better addressed through Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent
Systems (MAS) paradigm. However improvements are
required both on the theoretical and practical aspects, in order to achieve
better interoperability, decision making, agents and team coordination.
Approaches to this include the use of Negotiation and Adaptation
capabilities, defining Normative environments, advanced cognitive and
Emotion-like architectures for agents and agent-based simulation platforms.
Selected application domains for Multi-agent Systems are Electronic
Institutions for B2B, agents’ team coordination strategies, Intelligent Text
Mining, air lines operations’ disruption management and ontology developments
- Security Security of software and of
communication is currently a major concern. Public key cryptography
techniques are based on the computational intractability of the associated code
breaking problem. However this is normally judged on worst case complexity
and better measures of security are needed. One possible approach is the use
of time bounded versions of Kolmogorov complexity. Another problem arises
from the need to execute foreign code that may open the door to attacks. One
solution is to force foreign code to include a proof that it will not break
security. This however requires support for the development of proofs of
program properties. - Information processing
reliability Representation of
information is a major problem of computer science. Coherence and reliability
of information is still almost completely left to programmers; e.g.
information migration between representations is done without enforcing any
kind of reversibility and can lead to loss of information; standards like XML
ignore this kind of problem. There is a strong need for models (e.g. like
reversible languages) and tools to achieve reliability in information
processing. |
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Main Achievements during the
year of 2008 |
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- Electronic Institution: A
platform facilitating Virtual Organizations life cycle; implementation of the
platform, integrating negotiation, ontology services, norms for contracts
formation and enforcement, and Computational Trust and Reputation - MAS applied to the Traffic
management domain, both in terrestrial and aerial environments. Concerning
Air Traffic Disruption Management we started cooperating with NASA AMES
Research Center and with an AI-based company (SISCOG). We also stated the grounds
for an agent oriented software engineering method - DIVERT traffic simulator
at the microscopic level supporting a large number of vehicles and vehicle to
vehicle communication - definition of a feasible
efficient reduction strategy for linear based languages - a realistic cost-aware
operational semantics for lazy functional programming languages - encoding of regular
expressions, regular languages, Kleene algebra, Kleene algebra with tests and
the deductive rules of propositional Hoare logic as Kleene algebra with tests
theorems - comparative study of Hoare
based approach to the safety of programs - a canonical form for
acyclic deterministic finite automata and an exact enumeration algorithm for
them - creation of a a database
for random samples of deterministic and non-deterministic finite automata,
and of regular expressions - the decision problem
associated with the problem of finding the maximum area of a monochromatic
combinatorial rectangle of a given colored square was shown to be NP-complete - an appropriate definition
of sophistication for infinite sequences was obtained - new indexing mechanisms
for Prolog predicates for improving support for vectorial spatial databases - development of a network
simulator for the analysis of the security properties of peer-to-peer
protocols - EcoSimNet: A complete
Multi-Agent Simulation System capable of very realistic simulation of costal
ecological environments has been developed - ACORD/FC Portugal: A
software common framework suitable for implementing an agent-based software
to control different robots for several cooperative robotic tasks including
in Robotic Soccer has been developed - Web services for
Portuguese text analysis: "LSP", a semantic lexicon for
Portuguese,"ASP" for shallow semantic text analysis,
"Verbatim", for quotations extraction from on-line news and
respective topic classification. We start collaboration with SAPO company for
possible commercial use of both "Verbatim" and a web advertisement
suggestions system - Adaptive control MAS and
SOA-based solutions for automation and manufacturing systems, lead to the
pre-registration of 3 patents. Research contract with Schneider Electric GmbH
is produced very good results - A patent was approved
concerning the development of algorithms and methods for inferring precise
measures on scene models after computer vision partial information (anatomic
features extraction). Applied to the Calibration of Spine Bi-planar Radiography |
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Activities |
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Integrative/multidisciplinary
activities during the year of 2008 |
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--- with foreign entities Google Labs [Text
information extraction and retrieval] Institute for Transport
Studies, University of Leeds, UK [Terrestrial Transports] University of Amsterdam
(UvA), ILPS Group [Information and Language Processing Systems] --- with
Portuguese entities CEMAS- Centro de Modelação e Análise de Sistemas
Ambientais da Universidade Fernando Pessoa [Environmental
systems, Agent-based simulation] Centre of Research,
Education Innovation and Intervention in Sport-UP [AI in collective sports] CIAGEB -Global Change,
Energy, Environment and Bioengineering RDID&D Unit, in the University
Fernando Pessoa (UFP). [Environmental systems, Agent-based simulation] CIDTFF – Centro de Investigação Didáctica e Tecnologia
na Formação de Formadores da Universidade de Aveiro [e-learning] IDIT - Instituto de Desenvolvimento e Inovação
Tecnológica [Automation, Manufacturing] IEETA – Instituto de Engenharia Electrónica e
Telemática da Universidade de Aveiro [robot teams’ coordination] INESC-Porto [information
extraction for automatic tagging for musical items] ISR- Instituto de Sistemas e Robótica, Porto
[Hardware, Automated guided
vehicles] National Functional Brain
Imaging Network (BIN), a Portuguese national network of four Portuguese
Universities (Aveiro, Coimbra, Minho and Porto) [Brain Imaging] Universidade de Coimbra, Faculdade de Psicologia e
Ciências da Educação [Handling of
structured documents] Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Letras [Handling of structured
documents] Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Medicina [Medical Informatics] Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Psicologia e
Ciências da Educação [Handling of
structured documents] |
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Outreach activities during
the year of 2008 |
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- LIACC was officially
accepted in 2008 as a potential partner in QREN-funded actions: Information
and Communication Technologies; Management and Information; Communication
Technologies and Digital Economy - joint research activities
with: *TAP - Transportes Aéreos
Portugueses: Disruption Management control *SAPO (PT Group):
information retrieval *Enabler WiPro: Oracle
Warehouse Builder; Oracle Retail Merchandise System *Qimonda S.A: Project
FATADesk, Report Center Module; Sensor and Equipment Control and Monitoring *Geolink: traffic simulation
and spatial databases *Alert Life Science: HL7
Clinical Document Architecture Template Tools *MOG - Media Objects and
Gadgets, S.A.: Advanced Rich Internet Applications Devlopment *Parque Natural da Ria Formosa: simulation of ecologic activities *Sistemas de Informação Lda.:
development of the International FrontEnd Kronos *on traffic
simulation: Câmara Municipal do Porto, STCP, Metro
do Porto, Assoc Nac de Transportadores
Rodoviários de Pesados de Passageiros, Optimização e Planeamento de
Transportes, FCUP, FEUP - systems for disabled
people: *wheelchair with intelligent
control, under development in collaboration with APCC, Society for Cerebral
Paralysis *translator from
mathematical expressions in LaTeX into Braille, Portuguese variant, publicly
available as a Web service; in collaboration with Atractor, Interactive
Mathematics - software with wide
distribution: *GPSMan: a graphical manager
of GPS data, 1998-2008, Linux Debian and Ubuntu distributions, FreeBSD Unix
distribution, and GIS-Knoppix and AI9NL Linux Live-CDs; part of the Free-GIS
CD *Yap: state-of-the-art
Prolog implementation with support for spatial data-bases, in collaboration
with CRACS - collaboration in
postgraduate actions: Doctoral PhD Programmes on: * Computer Science,
University of Porto * Informatics Engineering,
University of Porto * Informatics (MAPI),
Universities of Aveiro, Minho and Porto * Telecommunications
(MAPTele), Universities of Aveiro, Minho and Porto Master of Science Programmes
on: * Computer Science * Informatics Engineering - science dissemination: collaboration with Atractor,
Interactive Mathematics, an association for the diffusion of Mathematics, in
the development of interactive modules - presentations of LIACC
activities to the board of ERCIM European Research Consortium for Informatics
and Mathematics , at "Fórum Empresas 08", and to Softwell
Solutions, Brasil, BLB Engenharia, Lda and AdI- Agência de Inovação - presentations and other
activities for the general public: * two talks in the series
"On the limits of Science" organized by the Health Sciences
Institute, Porto * talk at International
Seminar on "Contemporary Architectural Challenges", Faculty of
Architecture, University of Porto * participation in the
European 2008 Researchers Night in the Scientists Speed Dating event, Porto * demos and talk at Open
Week to Secondary Schools, FEUP * talk at Senior University
(PEUS) * participation in
"Learning Robotics using LEGO" in the scope of "Youth
Scientific Holydays Activities", Ciência Viva * organization of Reading
Groups with the Faculties of Fine-Arts and of Arts of the University of Porto * analysis of collaborative involvement
of high-school students using MediaWiki, L-Escola |
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Research Groups |
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