This paper describes an agent-based software infrastructure for agile industrial production. This production is done on special devices called equiplets. A grid of these equiplets connected by a fast network is capable of producing a variety of different products in parallel. The multi-agent-based underlying systems uses two kinds of agents: an agent representing the product and an agent representing the equiplet.
MULTIFILE
Post-partum hemorrhaging is a medical emergency that occurs during childbirth and, in extreme cases, can be life-threatening. It is the number one cause of maternal mortality worldwide. High-quality training of medical staff can contribute to early diagnosis and work towards preventing escalation towards more serious cases. Healthcare education uses manikin-based simulators to train obstetricians for various childbirth scenarios before training on real patients. However, these medical simulators lack certain key features portraying important symptoms and are incapable of communicating with the trainees. The authors present a digital embodiment agent that can improve the current state of the art by providing a specification of the requirements as well as an extensive design and development approach. This digital embodiment allows educators to respond and role-play as the patient in real time and can easily be integrated with existing training procedures. This research was performed in collaboration with medical experts, making a new contribution to medical training by bringing digital humans and the representation of affective interfaces to the field of healthcare.
This paper describes a concept where products are equipped with agents that will assist in recycling and repairing the product. These so-called product agents represent the product in cyberspace and are capable to negotiate with other products in case of recycling or repair. Some product agents of broken products will offer spare parts, other agents will look for spare parts to repair a broken product. On the average this will enlarge the lifetime of a product and in some cases prevent wasting resources. Apart from reuse of spare parts these agents will also help to locate rare elements in a device, so these elements can be recycled more easily.
The project proposal focuses on Virtual Humans (VHs) emerging as a Key Enabling Technology (KET) for societal prosperity. VHs (or embodied, digital, intelligent agents) are highly realistic and highly interactive digital representations of humans in entertainment of serious applications. Most known examples – beyond video games and virtual media productions – are virtual influencers, virtual instructors, virtual news readers, and virtual doctors/patients in health care or therapy. It is increasingly difficult for academic and applied researchers, let alone for users and policymakers, to keep up with the technological developments, societal uses, and risks of VHs. Due to its expertise in game technology, immersive media, and applied AI, BUas is one of the leading partners of the regional Virtual Human Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) agenda. MindLabs coordinates this agenda with BUas, Fontys Uas, and Tilburg University as principal partners. The multidisciplinary RDI agenda integrates design and engineering research, use case applications and evaluation as well as ethics and critical societal reflection. This regional Virtual Humans agenda, however, is not (yet) linked to the EU RDI agenda. Collaboration on Virtual Humans RDI is not yet well established in EU institutions and networks. The aim of this project is to 1) strengthen (our) European-knowledge position on VHs by joining and building networks to find out what the research and innovation agenda on VHs looks like; 2) Conduct one or more experimental studies on empathic interaction between real- and virtual humans to develop a multidisciplinary R&D agenda (pilot title: 'Virtual Humans – Real Emotions'); 3) Develop the ideas, content and partnerships for strong EU-funded RDI proposals In the VESPER project, we partner up with researchers and knowledge institutes the Humbolt University and the University of Bremen in Germany and Howest in Belgium.
