Talk by Dr. Fredrik Heintz

Dear colleagues

Fredrik Heintz, researcher from the Linköping University will give a talk about "DyKnow: A Stream-Based Knowledge Processing Middleware Framework".

The talk will take place on Tuesday, the 9.6.2009 at 15:30 o'clock in Garching (Mathematics/Computer Science building), room 02.09.023.



Title:
"DyKnow: A Stream-Based Knowledge Processing Middleware Framework
- Bridging the Sense-Reasoning Gap in Autonomous UAV Applications"


Abstract:
To achieve complex missions an autonomous UAV operating in dynamic
environments must create and maintain situational awareness. This
requires a steady flow of information from sensors to high level
reasoning components. However, while sensors tend to generate noisy and
incomplete quantitative data, reasoning often requires crisp symbolic
knowledge. The gap between sensing and reasoning is quite wide, and
cannot in general be bridged in a single step. Instead, this task
requires a more general approach to integrating and organizing multiple
forms of information and knowledge processing on different levels of
abstraction in a structured and principled manner. We propose knowledge
processing middleware as a systematic approach for organizing such
processing.

In talk I will present how DyKnow, a stream-based knowledge processing
middleware framework, can bridge the gap in a concrete UAV traffic
monitoring application. In the presented example, sequences of color
and thermal images are used to construct and maintain qualitative object
structures modeling the parts of the environment necessary to recognize
the traffic behavior of the tracked vehicles in real-time. The system
has been implemented and tested both in simulation and on data collected
during test flights.


Short Bio:
Dr Fredrik Heintz received his PhD in 2009 from Linköping University where he worked with Patrick Doherty on knowledge representation and reasoning techniques for unmanned aircraft systems. He is currently a researcher at Linköping University.