Related papers: Tactical Patterns for Grassroots Urban Repair

Population mobility can be studied readily and cheaply using cellphone data, since people's mobility can be approximately mapped into tower-mobile registries. We model people moving in a grid-like city, where edges of the grid are weighted…

This paper sets out a process of app analysis intended to support understanding of use but also redesign. From usage logs we infer activity patterns - Markov models - and employ probabilistic formal analysis to ask questions about the use…

This paper presents new methods for analyzing and evaluating generalized plans that can solve broad classes of related planning problems. Although synthesis and learning of generalized plans has been a longstanding goal in AI, it remains…

Motivated by a potential application in economics, we investigate a simple dynamical scheme to produce planted solutions in optimization problems with continuous variables. We consider the perceptron model as a prototypical model. Starting…

Nonprehensile actions such as pushing are crucial for addressing multi-object rearrangement problems. Many traditional methods generate robot-centric actions, which differ from intuitive human strategies and are typically inefficient. To…

Most current planners assume complete domain models and focus on generating correct plans. Unfortunately, domain modeling is a laborious and error-prone task. While domain experts cannot guarantee completeness, often they are able to…

As intelligent agents transition from controlled to uncontrolled environments, they face challenges that sometimes exceed their operational capabilities. In many scenarios, they rely on assistance from bystanders to overcome those…

The globalization of trade and the organization of work are currently causing a large migratory flow towards the cities. This growth of cities requires new urban planning where digital tools take a preponderant place to capture data and…

This position paper looks briefly at the way we attempt to program robotic AI systems. Many AI systems are based on the idea of trying to improve the performance of one individual system to beyond so-called human baselines. However, these…

The main deficiency of the algorithms running on digital computers nowadays is their inability to change themselves during the execution. In line with this, the paper introduces the so-called replicated algorithms, inspired by the concept…

Goals for planning problems are typically conceived of as subsets of the state space. However, for many practical planning problems in robotics, we expect the robot to predict goals, e.g. from noisy sensors or by generalizing learned models…

Artificial intelligence researchers have proposed various data-driven algorithms to improve the processes that match individuals experiencing homelessness to scarce housing resources. It remains unclear whether and how these algorithms are…

To solve multi-step manipulation tasks in the real world, an autonomous robot must take actions to observe its environment and react to unexpected observations. This may require opening a drawer to observe its contents or moving an object…

An important feature of pervasive, intelligent assistance systems is the ability to dynamically adapt to the current needs of their users. Hence, it is critical for such systems to be able to recognize those goals and needs based on…

Regulations govern many aspects of citizens' daily lives. Governments and businesses routinely automate these in the form of coded rules (e.g., to check a citizen's eligibility for specific benefits). However, the path to automation is long…

Realistic visual renderings of street-design scenarios are essential for public engagement in active transportation planning. Traditional approaches are labor-intensive, hindering collective deliberation and collaborative decision-making.…

We address the problem of effectively composing skills to solve sparse-reward tasks in the real world. Given a set of parameterized skills (such as exerting a force or doing a top grasp at a location), our goal is to learn policies that…

Dark patterns in mobile apps take advantage of cognitive biases of end-users and can have detrimental effects on people's lives. Despite growing research in identifying remedies for dark patterns and established solutions for desktop…

Cities across the United States are implementing information communication technologies in an effort to improve government services. One such innovation in e-government is the creation of 311 systems, offering a centralized platform where…

Achieving joint objectives by teams of cooperative planning agents requires significant coordination and communication efforts. For a single-agent system facing a plan failure in a dynamic environment, arguably, attempts to repair the…