Research

AAAI@AQ: Autonomous Agents and Artificial Intelligence at L'AQuila

Research work of this group concerns on the one hand computational logic, non-monotonic reasoning and meta-reasoning and knowledge representation, and on the other hand various forms of machine learning and data science applications. A main research-and-development result is the new agent-oriented logic programming language DALI, which is a “Prolog for agents” equipped with many advanced features for Complex Event Processing (CEP). Research work on Complex Event Processing includes improving the definition of what a complex event is, exploiting reinforcement learning in order to learn and rate new definitions, exploiting CEP for agents’ run-time self-checking and self-improvement. The group has also contributed to the theory and practice and of Answer Set Programming (ASP), which is a relatively recent though well-established and successful logic programming paradigm, able to cope with uncertainty by producing all consistent alternative answers, and to the theory and practice of Multi-Context Systems, which is an architecture to integrate distributed heterogeneous sources. The group has contributed to define RASP, which extends ASP with resources and preferences. DALI features plugins to invoke ASP and RASP modules for planning and reasoning. The group is also studying Epistemic Logics to model Multi-Agent Systems behavior, also representing aspects of the “Thery of Mind” in order to be able to reason about own and others’ mental states. Some of the applications of research results are in the fields of Machine Ethics, energy-saving in Smart Buildings, personal assistants for user-centered planning in Smart Cities, fault-detection in integrated circuits manufacturing, cognitive robotics, integrated systems for eHealth and assistive robotics, Digital Forensics. Group members are involved in several international projects and partnerships with other Universities, and in mentoring and teaching young people in these topics.

Group Members:

Stefania Costantini, leader, Full Professor

Giovanni Stilo, Associate Professor

Fabio Persia RTD-B

Pasquale Caianiello, Assistant Professor

Giovanni De Gasperis, Assistant Professor

Abeer Dyoub, RTD-A

Valentina Pitoni, Post-doc researcher

Ph.D. students: Andrea Rafanelli, Andrea Monaldini

Former Ph.D. Students: Domenico Bertoncelli, Raffaele Olivieri, Giulio Nazzicone, Arianna Tocchio, Panagiota Tsintza, Alessio Paolucci, Valentina Pitoni, Lorenzo De Lauretis.