David M.W. Powers

This book highlights current research into virtual tutoring software and presents a case study of the design and application of a social tutor for children with autism. Best practice guidelines for developing software-based educational interventions are discussed, with a major emphasis on facilitating the generalisation of skills to contexts outside of the software itself, and on maintaining these skills over time. Further, the book presents the software solution Thinking Head Whiteboard, which provides a framework for families and educators to create unique educational activities utilising virtual character technology and customised to match learners’ needs and interests. In turn, the book describes the development and evaluation of a social tutor incorporating multiple life-like virtual humans, leading to an exploration of the lessons learned and recommendations for the future development of related technologies.

This book highlights current research into virtual tutoring software and presents a case study of the design and application of a social tutor for children with autism. Best practice guidelines for developing software-based educational interventions are discussed, with a major emphasis on facilitating the generalisation of skills to contexts outside of the software itself, and on maintaining these skills over time. Further, the book presents the software solution Thinking Head Whiteboard, which provides a framework for families and educators to create unique educational activities utilising virtual character technology and customised to match learners’ needs and interests. In turn, the book describes the development and evaluation of a social tutor incorporating multiple life-like virtual humans, leading to an exploration of the lessons learned and recommendations for the future development of related technologies.

This book addresses higher–lower level decision autonomy for autonomous vehicles, and discusses the addition of a novel architecture to cover both levels. The proposed framework’s performance and stability are subsequently investigated by employing different meta-heuristic algorithms. The performance of the proposed architecture is shown to be largely independent of the algorithms employed; the use of diverse algorithms (subjected to the real-time performance of the algorithm) does not negatively affect the system’s real-time performance. By analyzing the simulation results, the book demonstrates that the proposed model provides perfect mission timing and task management, while also guaranteeing secure deployment. Although mainly intended as a research work, the book’s review chapters and the new approaches developed here are also suitable for use in courses for advanced undergraduate or graduate students.

This book addresses higher–lower level decision autonomy for autonomous vehicles, and discusses the addition of a novel architecture to cover both levels. The proposed framework’s performance and stability are subsequently investigated by employing different meta-heuristic algorithms. The performance of the proposed architecture is shown to be largely independent of the algorithms employed; the use of diverse algorithms (subjected to the real-time performance of the algorithm) does not negatively affect the system’s real-time performance. By analyzing the simulation results, the book demonstrates that the proposed model provides perfect mission timing and task management, while also guaranteeing secure deployment. Although mainly intended as a research work, the book’s review chapters and the new approaches developed here are also suitable for use in courses for advanced undergraduate or graduate students.

We met because we both share the same views of language. Language is a living organism, produced by neural mechanisms relating in large numbers as a society. Language exists between minds, as a way of communicating between them, not as an autonomous process. The logical 'rules' seem to us an epiphe­ nomena ·of the neural mechanism, rather than an essential component in language. This view of language has been advocated by an increasing number of workers, as the view that language is simply a collection of logical rules has had less and less success. People like Yorick Wilks have been able to show in paper after paper that almost any rule which can be devised can be shown to have exceptions. The meaning does not lie in the rules. David Powers is a teacher of computer science. Christopher Turk, like many workers who have come into the field of AI (Artificial Intelligence) was originally trained in literature. He moved into linguistics, and then into computational linguistics. In 1983 he took a sabbatical in Roger Shank's AI project in the Computer Science Department at Yale University. Like an earlier visitor to the project, John Searle from California, Christopher Turk was increasingly uneasy at the view of language which was used at Yale.