School of Computer Science and Statistics
BRIEFLY: for pairs of languages there seem to be ‘sound substitutions’ that systematically map words of one language to words of similar meaning in another, something explicable by supposing that the words in question languages are descended from a common ancestor, with systematic and divergent sound evolutions along the way. Working with pencil-and-paper in a … Read more
There is a theoretical and implementational field ‘Game Theory’ (GT), originating in the 1940s, concerned with ‘games’: situations where players interact with each other and possibly some other objects in a very formalised way, gaining individual ‘pay-offs’ when the ‘game’ ends. Tic-Tac-Toe is a so-called ‘2-person zero-sum game’ and GT is concerned with what are … Read more
Individuals in a species (esp. humans) may cooperate and they may communicate. Recent decades have seen quite a lot of efforts to use computational simulation — so-called individual/agent-based modelling — to investigate what cooperation is , and how communication factors into it, striving to fit this into a general picture of varying levels of survival … Read more
Imagine visiting a virtual museum as a family after closing time, where the exhibits have mysteriously come to life and an AI-driven virtual museum guide needs your group’s help to discover what has happened. This project will develop a short multiplayer VR experience for 3–4 players, in which a MetaHuman guide dynamically responds to the … Read more
Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) is emerging as a powerful paradigm for building intelligent agents capable of operating in the physical world. Most existing MBRL algorithms assume that the environment is stationary, i.e., that its behaviour doesn’t change so that the learnt world model and the strategies than depend on it remain optimal over time. But … Read more
Human imagination allows people both to relive past events and to simulate future possibilities, in some sense, to see the world as it is not [1]. In fact, the ability to simulate events in our minds is also crucial to reliving past events allowing some elements of the event to be memorized and gaps to … Read more
An ideal bus route would offer highly predictable inter-bus arrival times to travellers, in particular, overcoming the well-known ‘bus bunching’ phenomenon – “I waited ages then three came together!”. There are many sources of variability in journey times such as traffic conditions, the impact of traffic lights, and interference between buses themselves, e.g., queueing at … Read more
Poor travel-time reliability (TTR) in our cities means that travel times for the same journey are both highly variable and unpredictable, and also gives rise to similar negative impacts on the environment and the economy as does traffic congestion. Being able to offer a high degree of TTR is therefore highly desirable for travellers and … Read more
The Research Ireland funded ClearWay1 project is investigating new models of road management is which each vehicle is allocated a so-called ‘slot’ in which to travel for the duration of its journey. Adherence to travelling in its allocated slot ensures congestion-free travel from source to destination for each vehicle (in the absence of unexpected events). … Read more
Parking in busy locations eg at large-scale events (such as concerts and mass-participation sporting events) or in shopping centres at busy times (eg during ‘Christmas shopping’) often results in traffic congestion in surrounding areas (see, for example, [1], for an extreme example!). This may arise due to vehicles searching for, entering, and leaving parking spaces … Read more