Matching Items (12)
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- All Subjects: artificial intelligence
- All Subjects: Audits
- Creators: Ben Amor, Heni
Description
Reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful methodology for teaching autonomous agents complex behaviors and skills. A critical component in most RL algorithms is the reward function -- a mathematical function that provides numerical estimates for desirable and undesirable states. Typically, the reward function must be hand-designed by a human expert and, as a result, the scope of a robot's autonomy and ability to safely explore and learn in new and unforeseen environments is constrained by the specifics of the designed reward function. In this thesis, I design and implement a stateful collision anticipation model with powerful predictive capability based upon my research of sequential data modeling and modern recurrent neural networks. I also develop deep reinforcement learning methods whose rewards are generated by self-supervised training and intrinsic signals. The main objective is to work towards the development of resilient robots that can learn to anticipate and avoid damaging interactions by combining visual and proprioceptive cues from internal sensors. The introduced solutions are inspired by pain pathways in humans and animals, because such pathways are known to guide decision-making processes and promote self-preservation. A new "robot dodge ball' benchmark is introduced in order to test the validity of the developed algorithms in dynamic environments.
ContributorsRichardson, Trevor W (Author) / Ben Amor, Heni (Thesis advisor) / Yang, Yezhou (Committee member) / Srivastava, Siddharth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This case study analyzed the internal controls of a real estate company using the widely accepted COSO framework. Testing of the internal environment and controls was completed using the COSO framework. The major internal control problem identified in the study was a lack of ethical standards in the control environment. In addition to this main problem, inadequate documentation, no separation of duties, and unqualified employees were also identified as violations of effective internal controls. The department of real estate ordered a "cease and desist" on August 8, 2013 due to illegal company activities. The company participated in illegal actions regarding: the trust account and company documentation and procedures. Material weaknesses were found in the company's internal controls; therefore the result of this study was an adverse opinion on internal controls.
ContributorsFrederick, Nicole Lorraine (Author) / Munshi, Perseus (Thesis director) / Benali, Kayla (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
The main goal of this study was to understand the awareness of small business owners regarding occupational fraud, meaning fraud committed from within an organization. A survey/questionnaire was used to gather insight into the knowledge and perceptions of small business owners, while also obtaining information about the history of fraud and the internal controls within their business. Twenty-four owners of businesses with less than 100 employees participated in the study. The results suggest that small business owners overestimate their knowledge regarding internal controls and occupational fraud, while also underestimating the risk of fraud within their own business. In fact, 92% of participants were not at all familiar with the popular Internal Control \u2014 Integrated Framework published by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission. The results also show that small business owners tend to overestimate the protection provided by their currently implemented controls in regard to their risk of fraud. Overall, through continued knowledge of internal controls and occupational fraud, business owners can better protect their businesses from the risk of occupational fraud by increasing their awareness of fraud.
ContributorsDennis, Lauren Nicole (Author) / Orpurt, Steven (Thesis director) / Munshi, Perseus (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
Cognitive technology has been at the forefront of the minds of many technology, government, and business leaders, because of its potential to completely revolutionize their fields. Furthermore, individuals in financial statement auditor roles are especially focused on the impact of cognitive technology because of its potential to eliminate many of the tedious, repetitive tasks involved in their profession. Adopting new technologies that can autonomously collect more data from a broader range of sources, turn the data into business intelligence, and even make decisions based on that data begs the question of whether human roles in accounting will be completely replaced. A partial answer: If the ramifications of past technological advances are any indicator, cognitive technology will replace some human audit operations and grow some new and higher order roles for humans. It will shift the focus of accounting professionals to more complex judgment and analysis.
The next question: What do these changes in the roles and responsibilities look like for the auditors of the future? Cognitive technology will assuredly present new issues for which humans will have to find solutions.
• How will humans be able to test the accuracy and completeness of the decisions derived by cognitive systems?
• If cognitive computing systems rely on supervised learning, what is the most effective way to train systems?
• How will cognitive computing fair in an industry that experiences ever-changing industry regulations?
• Will cognitive technology enhance the quality of audits?
In order to answer these questions and many more, I plan on examining how cognitive technologies evolved into their use today. Based on this historic trajectory, stakeholder interviews, and industry research, I will forecast what auditing jobs may look like in the near future taking into account rapid advances in cognitive computing.
The conclusions forecast a future in auditing that is much more accurate, timely, and pleasant. Cognitive technologies allow auditors to test entire populations of transactions, to tackle audit issues on a more continuous basis, to alleviate the overload of work that occurs after fiscal year-end, and to focus on client interaction.
The next question: What do these changes in the roles and responsibilities look like for the auditors of the future? Cognitive technology will assuredly present new issues for which humans will have to find solutions.
• How will humans be able to test the accuracy and completeness of the decisions derived by cognitive systems?
• If cognitive computing systems rely on supervised learning, what is the most effective way to train systems?
• How will cognitive computing fair in an industry that experiences ever-changing industry regulations?
• Will cognitive technology enhance the quality of audits?
In order to answer these questions and many more, I plan on examining how cognitive technologies evolved into their use today. Based on this historic trajectory, stakeholder interviews, and industry research, I will forecast what auditing jobs may look like in the near future taking into account rapid advances in cognitive computing.
The conclusions forecast a future in auditing that is much more accurate, timely, and pleasant. Cognitive technologies allow auditors to test entire populations of transactions, to tackle audit issues on a more continuous basis, to alleviate the overload of work that occurs after fiscal year-end, and to focus on client interaction.
ContributorsWitkop, David (Author) / Dawson, Gregory (Thesis director) / Munshi, Perseus (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Automated planning addresses the problem of generating a sequence of actions that enable a set of agents to achieve their goals.This work investigates two important topics from the field of automated planning, namely model-lite planning and multi-agent planning. For model-lite planning, I focus on a prominent model named Annotated PDDL and it's related application of robust planning. For this model, I try to identify a method of leveraging additional domain information (available in the form of successful plan traces). I use this information to refine the set of possible domains to generate more robust plans (as compared to the original planner) for any given problem. This method also provides us a way of overcoming one of the major drawbacks of the original approach, namely the need for a domain writer to explicitly identify the annotations.
For the second topic, the central question I ask is ``{\em under what conditions are multiple agents actually needed to solve a given planning problem?}''. To answer this question, the multi-agent planning (MAP) problem is classified into several sub-classes and I identify the conditions in each of these sub-classes that can lead to required cooperation (RC). I also identify certain sub-classes of multi-agent planning problems (named DVC-RC problems), where the problems can be simplified using a single virtual agent. This insight is later used to propose a new planner designed to solve problems from these subclasses. Evaluation of this new planner on all the current multi-agent planning benchmarks reveals that most current multi-agent planning benchmarks only belong to a small subset of possible classes of multi-agent planning problems.
For the second topic, the central question I ask is ``{\em under what conditions are multiple agents actually needed to solve a given planning problem?}''. To answer this question, the multi-agent planning (MAP) problem is classified into several sub-classes and I identify the conditions in each of these sub-classes that can lead to required cooperation (RC). I also identify certain sub-classes of multi-agent planning problems (named DVC-RC problems), where the problems can be simplified using a single virtual agent. This insight is later used to propose a new planner designed to solve problems from these subclasses. Evaluation of this new planner on all the current multi-agent planning benchmarks reveals that most current multi-agent planning benchmarks only belong to a small subset of possible classes of multi-agent planning problems.
ContributorsSreedharan, Sarath (Author) / Kambhampati, Subbarao (Thesis advisor) / Zhang, Yu (Thesis advisor) / Ben Amor, Heni (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Robots are often used in long-duration scenarios, such as on the surface of Mars,where they may need to adapt to environmental changes. Typically, robots have been built specifically for single tasks, such as moving boxes in a warehouse or surveying construction sites. However, there is a modern trend away from human hand-engineering and toward robot learning. To this end, the ideal robot is not engineered,but automatically designed for a specific task. This thesis focuses on robots which learn path-planning algorithms for specific environments. Learning is accomplished via genetic programming. Path-planners are represented as Python code, which is optimized via Pareto evolution. These planners are encouraged to explore curiously and efficiently. This research asks the questions: “How can robots exhibit life-long learning where they adapt to changing environments in a robust way?”, and “How can robots learn to be curious?”.
ContributorsSaldyt, Lucas P (Author) / Ben Amor, Heni (Thesis director) / Pavlic, Theodore (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
Enabling robots to physically engage with their environment in a safe and efficient manner is an essential step towards human-robot interaction. To date, robots usually operate as pre-programmed workers that blindly execute tasks in highly structured environments crafted by skilled engineers. Changing the robots’ behavior to cover new duties or handle variability is an expensive, complex, and time-consuming process. However, with the advent of more complex sensors and algorithms, overcoming these limitations becomes within reach. This work proposes innovations in artificial intelligence, language understanding, and multimodal integration to enable next-generation grasping and manipulation capabilities in autonomous robots. The underlying thesis is that multimodal observations and instructions can drastically expand the responsiveness and dexterity of robot manipulators. Natural language, in particular, can be used to enable intuitive, bidirectional communication between a human user and the machine. To this end, this work presents a system that learns context-aware robot control policies from multimodal human demonstrations. Among the main contributions presented are techniques for (a) collecting demonstrations in an efficient and intuitive fashion, (b) methods for leveraging physical contact with the environment and objects, (c) the incorporation of natural language to understand context, and (d) the generation of robust robot control policies. The presented approach and systems are evaluated in multiple grasping and manipulation settings ranging from dexterous manipulation to pick-and-place, as well as contact-rich bimanual insertion tasks. Moreover, the usability of these innovations, especially when utilizing human task demonstrations and communication interfaces, is evaluated in several human-subject studies.
ContributorsStepputtis, Simon (Author) / Ben Amor, Heni (Thesis advisor) / Baral, Chitta (Committee member) / Yang, Yezhou (Committee member) / Lee, Stefan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
This dissertation explores the use of artificial intelligence and machine learningtechniques for the development of controllers for fully-powered robotic prosthetics.
The aim of the research is to enable prosthetics to predict future states and control
biomechanical properties in both linear and nonlinear fashions, with a particular focus
on ergonomics.
The research is motivated by the need to provide amputees with prosthetic devices
that not only replicate the functionality of the missing limb, but also offer a high
level of comfort and usability. Traditional prosthetic devices lack the sophistication to
adjust to a user’s movement patterns and can cause discomfort and pain over time.
The proposed solution involves the development of machine learning-based controllers
that can learn from user movements and adjust the prosthetic device’s movements
accordingly.
The research involves a combination of simulation and real-world testing to evaluate
the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The simulation involves the creation of a
model of the prosthetic device and the use of machine learning algorithms to train
controllers that predict future states and control biomechanical properties. The real-
world testing involves the use of human subjects wearing the prosthetic device to
evaluate its performance and usability.
The research focuses on two main areas: the prediction of future states and the
control of biomechanical properties. The prediction of future states involves the
development of machine learning algorithms that can analyze a user’s movements
and predict the next movements with a high degree of accuracy. The control of
biomechanical properties involves the development of algorithms that can adjust the
prosthetic device’s movements to ensure maximum comfort and usability for the user.
The results of the research show that the use of artificial intelligence and machine
learning techniques can significantly improve the performance and usability of pros-
thetic devices. The machine learning-based controllers developed in this research are
capable of predicting future states and adjusting the prosthetic device’s movements in
real-time, leading to a significant improvement in ergonomics and usability. Overall,
this dissertation provides a comprehensive analysis of the use of artificial intelligence
and machine learning techniques for the development of controllers for fully-powered
robotic prosthetics.
ContributorsCLARK, GEOFFEY M (Author) / Ben Amor, Heni (Thesis advisor) / Dasarathy, Gautam (Committee member) / Papandreou-Suppappola, Antonia (Committee member) / Ward, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Models that learn from data are widely and rapidly being deployed today for real-world use, and have become an integral and embedded part of human lives. While these technological advances are exciting and impactful, such data-driven computer vision systems often fail in inscrutable ways. This dissertation seeks to study and improve the reliability of machine learning models from several perspectives including the development of robust training algorithms to mitigate the risks of such failures, construction of new datasets that provide a new perspective on capabilities of vision models, and the design of evaluation metrics for re-calibrating the perception of performance improvements. I will first address distribution shift in image classification with the following contributions: (1) two methods for improving the robustness of image classifiers to distribution shift by leveraging the classifier's failures into an adversarial data transformation pipeline guided by domain knowledge, (2) an interpolation-based technique for flagging out-of-distribution samples, and (3) an intriguing trade-off between distributional and adversarial robustness resulting from data modification strategies. I will then explore reliability considerations for \textit{semantic vision} models that learn from both visual and natural language data; I will discuss how logical and semantic sentence transformations affect the performance of vision--language models and my contributions towards developing knowledge-guided learning algorithms to mitigate these failures. Finally, I will describe the effort towards building and evaluating complex reasoning capabilities of vision--language models towards the long-term goal of robust and reliable computer vision models that can communicate, collaborate, and reason with humans.
ContributorsGokhale, Tejas (Author) / Yang, Yezhou (Thesis advisor) / Baral, Chitta (Thesis advisor) / Ben Amor, Heni (Committee member) / Anirudh, Rushil (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
There are more than 20 active missions exploring planets and small bodies beyond Earth in our solar system today. Many more have completed their journeys or will soon begin. Each spacecraft has a suite of instruments and sensors that provide a treasure trove of data that scientists use to advance our understanding of the past, present, and future of the solar system and universe. As more missions come online and the volume of data increases, it becomes more difficult for scientists to analyze these complex data at the desired pace. There is a need for systems that can rapidly and intelligently extract information from planetary instrument datasets and prioritize the most promising, novel, or relevant observations for scientific analysis. Machine learning methods can serve this need in a variety of ways: by uncovering patterns or features of interest in large, complex datasets that are difficult for humans to analyze; by inspiring new hypotheses based on structure and patterns revealed in data; or by automating tedious or time-consuming tasks. In this dissertation, I present machine learning solutions to enhance the tactical planning process for the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover and future tactically-planned missions, as well as the science analysis process for archived and ongoing orbital imaging investigations such as the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) at Mars. These include detecting novel geology in multispectral images and active nuclear spectroscopy data, analyzing the intrinsic variability in active nuclear spectroscopy data with respect to elemental geochemistry, automating tedious image review processes, and monitoring changes in surface features such as impact craters in orbital remote sensing images. Collectively, this dissertation shows how machine learning can be a powerful tool for facilitating scientific discovery during active exploration missions and in retrospective analysis of archived data.
ContributorsKerner, Hannah Rae (Author) / Bell, James F. (Thesis advisor) / Ben Amor, Heni (Thesis advisor) / Wagstaff, Kiri L (Committee member) / Hardgrove, Craig J (Committee member) / Shirzaei, Manoochehr (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019