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Companion Technology pp 17–36Cite as

Multi-level Knowledge Processing in Cognitive Technical Systems

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Part of the book series: Cognitive Technologies ((COGTECH))

Abstract

Companion-Systems are composed of different modules that have to share a single, sound estimate of the current situation. While the long-term decision-making of automated planning requires knowledge about the user’s goals, short-term decisions, like choosing among modes of user-interaction, depend on properties such as lighting conditions. In addition to the diverse scopes of the involved models, a large portion of the information required within such a system cannot be directly observed, but has to be inferred from background knowledge and sensory data—sometimes via a cascade of abstraction layers, and often resulting in uncertain predictions. In this contribution, we interpret an existing cognitive technical system under the assumption that it solves a factored, partially observable Markov decision process. Our interpretation heavily draws from the concepts of probabilistic graphical models and hierarchical reinforcement learning, and fosters a view that cleanly separates between inference and decision making. The results are discussed and compared to those of existing approaches from other application domains.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    \(\mathcal{P}(X)\) is the set of all probability mass functions (or density functions) over the set X.

  2. 2.

    This is also called model-free reinforcement learning, as the model has to be learned together with a policy.

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Acknowledgements

This work was done within the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre SFB/TRR 62 “Companion-Technology for Cognitive Technical Systems” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany

    Thomas Geier & Susanne Biundo

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  1. Thomas Geier
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  2. Susanne Biundo
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Correspondence to Thomas Geier .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Universität Ulm, Ulm, Germany

    Susanne Biundo

  2. Cognitive Systems Group, Institute for Information Technology and Communications (IIKT) and Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences (CBBS), Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany

    Andreas Wendemuth

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Geier, T., Biundo, S. (2017). Multi-level Knowledge Processing in Cognitive Technical Systems. In: Biundo, S., Wendemuth, A. (eds) Companion Technology. Cognitive Technologies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43665-4_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43665-4_2

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