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== The roundabout casestudy ==
== The roundabout case study ==


Está actualmente em curso um estudo de caso com um cenário minimalista para um primeiro teste de alguns dos conceitos da Robótica Institucionalista.
To put to a first test some of the basic concepts of Institutional Robotics, there is an ongoing case study with a minimalist setting.
We want a set of robots to become able to behave as car drivers in an urban traffic scenario. The minimal setup represents several roundabouts connected by a small system of streets. Robots will have to know how to deal with basic aspects of the road code, some traffic signs, and agents playing special roles (police robots).  Some more general rules, typical of human societies (“respect the integrity of other agents”, for example) must also be acknowledged and respected by the robots. Teams of e-pucks (the small robots being used) should be able to act in a “normal”, “conformist” way in the institutional environment while competing for the realization of a particular task (for example, collecting energy). But the robots could also be able, guided by utility-based considerations, to opt for inobservance of the institutional framework. The experiment will address the consequences of that co-existence of "conformist" and "non-conformist" behaviours within the same “robotic society”.  


O objectivo é termos robots capazes de comportar-se como condutores de automóveis num cenário de tráfego urbano: várias rotundas ligadas por um pequeno sistema de ruas. Para isso terão de conhecer, nomeadamente, as normas constantes do código da estrada, os sinais que regulam o trânsito, os agentes com autoridade nesse contexto (polícias de trânsito) – mas também certas normas mais gerais que são aceites nas sociedades humanas (a importância de respeitar a integridade dos outros, por exemplo).
Os pequenos robots que estão a ser utilizados, e-pucks, deverão ser capazes de respeitar – mas também de desrespeitar! – esse ambiente institucional, ao mesmo tempo que são colocados a competir na realização de uma determinada tarefa. Sabendo, por exemplo, que penalizações podem resultar de obedecer ou desobedecer a certas prescrições, terão, a partir de certa altura, a possibilidade de escolher entre serem “conformistas” e “bem comportados” ou “não conformistas” e capazes de desrespeitar as regras para tentarem ser mais eficientes na prossecução da sua tarefa. E aí começam as complicações…


O estudo de caso pretende explorar um aspecto que, sendo essencial em muitas instituições, está também presente numa rotunda como parte do sistema do controlo do trânsito. É que os efeitos da existência da rotunda num cenário de tráfego urbano resultam de uma combinação de dois aspectos. Por um lado, a rotunda, devido apenas às suas características físicas, significa um constrangimento: os veículos não podem seguir em frente, têm de contornar pela direita ou pela esquerda. Mas, para decidir o comportamento adequado face à rotunda, é preciso fazer apelo a uma entidade mental, uma regra: a circulação faz-se contornando pela direita. Essa regra é, como sabe, diferente noutros países. Ora, esta combinação de elementos físicos e elementos mentais nas ferramentas usadas na organização das sociedades é estratégica na compreensão das instituições e das capacidades que têm de ter os agentes para compreenderem as instituições.
The case study explores an aspect that is essential in many institutions. Most of the time, institutions have both material and mental aspects. The roundabout in a traffic scenario instances that property. On the one hand, the roundabout, just due to its physical features, constrains behaviour: vehicles can not move on, drivers must choose either to turn right or to turn left if they want to proceed. Now, doing that (deciding in a conformist way, in Portugal, to go right) implies invoking a mental entity, a rule. It is well known that this rule is not the same in all countries. But it always combines with material features of the roundabout to play its role in a institutional environment.
 





Revision as of 13:21, 17 November 2008

Institutional Robotics is a new strategy to conceptualize multi-robot systems, which takes institutions as the main tool of social life of robots with bounded rationality and bounded autonomy. This institutional approach intends to get inspiration from philosophical and social sciences research on social and collective phenomena, and is mainly inspired by concepts from Institutional Economics, an alternative to mainstream neoclassical economic theory.

The goal is to have multiple robots developing activities in a shared environment with human, in such a way that humans can interact with robots "naturally", intuitively, without a need to learn specific techniques to deal with them. The focus is not one-to-one interaction, but social behaviour in physical and social environments populated with many natural as well as artificial agents. So, the robots must be able to recognize institutions and institutional indicators that humans also recognize as structuring forms of their complex social relationships. This includes, for instance, rules, routines, signs, forms of organization of the material world, social roles, and social forms as organizations or teams.

References:

SILVA, Porfírio, and LIMA, Pedro U., "Institutional Robotics", in Fernando Almeida e Costa et al. (eds.), Advances in Artificial Life. Proceedings of the 9th European Conference, ECAL 2007, Berlim e Heidelbergh, Springer-Verlag, 2007, pp. 595-604 PDF

SILVA, Porfírio, VENTURA, Rodrigo, and LIMA, Pedro,"Institutional Environments", in Proc. of Workshop AT2AI: From agent theory to agent implementation, AAMAS 2008 - 7th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Estoril, Portugal, 2008 PDF


The roundabout case study

To put to a first test some of the basic concepts of Institutional Robotics, there is an ongoing case study with a minimalist setting. We want a set of robots to become able to behave as car drivers in an urban traffic scenario. The minimal setup represents several roundabouts connected by a small system of streets. Robots will have to know how to deal with basic aspects of the road code, some traffic signs, and agents playing special roles (police robots). Some more general rules, typical of human societies (“respect the integrity of other agents”, for example) must also be acknowledged and respected by the robots. Teams of e-pucks (the small robots being used) should be able to act in a “normal”, “conformist” way in the institutional environment while competing for the realization of a particular task (for example, collecting energy). But the robots could also be able, guided by utility-based considerations, to opt for inobservance of the institutional framework. The experiment will address the consequences of that co-existence of "conformist" and "non-conformist" behaviours within the same “robotic society”.


The case study explores an aspect that is essential in many institutions. Most of the time, institutions have both material and mental aspects. The roundabout in a traffic scenario instances that property. On the one hand, the roundabout, just due to its physical features, constrains behaviour: vehicles can not move on, drivers must choose either to turn right or to turn left if they want to proceed. Now, doing that (deciding in a conformist way, in Portugal, to go right) implies invoking a mental entity, a rule. It is well known that this rule is not the same in all countries. But it always combines with material features of the roundabout to play its role in a institutional environment.


"From Human Societies to Artificial Societies"

The series of conferences "From Human Societies to Artificial Societies" are a forum for transdisciplinar reflection on social and collective phenomena, establishing a bridge between Collective Robotics projects under development at ISR/IST and theoretical working on philosophy and social sciences.

The first edition of this series of conferences was hold between April and July 2008. Details (in portuguese) here).

The 2009 edition will be hold on next February and March (program to be announced soon).

Institutional Robotics blog

Institutional Robotics is a weblog edited by Porfírio Silva. "An ongoing scientific, philosophical, and pragmatic research on Collective Robotics. A strategy to conceptualize multi-robot systems, which takes institutions as the main tool of social life of robots." Open to comments, criticism, questions, suggestions.