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Thor List

University of Edinburgh, Institute for Perception, Action and Behaviour, Research Fellow

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I am an accomplished technology manager and systems design architect with almost two decades experience in embedded and enterprise software development, artificial intelligence, cellular and wired telecom, private and public wireless network technologies and management of intelligence and evidential data. I specialise in innovative solutions for law enforcement, intelligence agencies and large international organisations.My areas of technology expertise include intelligent event detection, cellular communication and interception and tactical secure infrastructures for bidirectional IP, video and audio communication. I have designed large-scale solutions for a wide range of technologies from IPTV multicast backbones to distributed software for mobile devices. My main focus has been creating real-world operational solutions for the intelligence and surveillance community, working with transmission, storage, search and constructing distributed systems for autonomous analysis of realtime data.

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Papers by Thor List

Artificial Intelligence in Computer Graphics: A Constructionist Approach

The ultimate embodiment of artificial intelligence (AI) has traditionally been seen as physical r... more

Design and Evaluation of Communication Middleware in a Distributed Humanoid Robot Architecture

Abstract—Distributed architectures for implementing tasks on humanoid robots is a design challeng... more Abstract—Distributed architectures for implementing tasks on humanoid robots is a design challenge, both in theory and practice. Although important functionality resides within the component modules of the system, the performance of the middleware – the software for mediating information between modules – is critical to overall system performance. We have designed an architecture serving various functional roles and information exchange within a distributed system, using three different communication subsystems: the Cognitive Map (CogMap), Distributed Operation via Discrete Events (DiODE), and Multimodal Communication (MC). The CogMap is implemented in Psyclone, a framework for constructing large AI systems, and allows sharing and transformation of information streams dynamically between modules. DiODE provides a direct connection between two modules while MC implements a multi-modal server that streams raw sensory data to requesting external (off-board) perceptual modules. These ha...

Exploring Techniques for Behaviour Recognition Via the

Visual analysis tasks are often very difficult and computer systems for tackling them are most ef... more

A Framework for A.I. Integration

A number of present-day problems act to hold back progress in the field of artificial intelligenc... more A number of present-day problems act to hold back progress in the field of artificial intelligence (A.I.), both theoretical and pragmatic. Among the most serious pragmatic issues has to do with integration and large-scale systems construction, as much recent work on humanoids and interactive robots has

An Intelligent and Task-Independent Controller for Video Sequence Analysis

Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on Computer Architecture For Machine Perception, Jul 4, 2005

This paper describes a task-independent controller that allows for an easy implementation of visi... more This paper describes a task-independent controller that allows for an easy implementation of vision systems for processing video sequences. The controller does not have a fixed dataflow or any fixed steps. The dataflow is constructed by the modules by describing themselves for the controller. During operation the modules and their parameters are selected using an independent decision module. This makes the system flexible and allows comparison of different learning techniques and decision strategies. The controller is being used by the CAVIAR system and its current decision module is a rulebased system written in Clips.

Method for dynamic reprogramming dataflow in a distributed system

Authors and Contributors

OpenAIR is a routing and communication protocol based on a publish-subscribe architecture. It is ... more OpenAIR is a routing and communication protocol based on a publish-subscribe architecture. It is intended to be the ”glue ” that allows numerous A.I. researchers to share code more effectively – ”AIR to share”. It is a definition or a blueprint of the ”post office and mail delivery system” for distributed, multi-module systems. OpenAIR provides a core foundation upon which subsequent

Whiteboards: Scheduling blackboards for interactive robots

An increase in systems integration, for example in humanoid robotics and intelligent environments... more An increase in systems integration, for example in humanoid robotics and intelligent environments, has called for better solutions to support multi-module integration. Blackboards can simplify construction of systems with large numbers of heterogeneous components requiring a high number of fine-grained interactions. In this paper we describe the use of a scheduling blackboard used for developing interactive robots. Our blackboards both simplify and extend the blackboard model in a number of ways. Chief among them are: An explicit temporal model; quality of service; publish-subscribe; queries; discrete messaging; streaming data; programming language independence; as well as a number of solutions to practical issues for improving development effort and runtime performance. Whiteboards present a compelling case for the use of scheduling blackboards in robotics, where multiple functionalities and modules need to be integrated into a coherent whole.

OpenAIR 1.0 specification

Design and Evaluation of Communication Middleware in a Distributed Humanoid Robot Architecture

distributed system architectures, we performed a variety of tests on these subsystems under diffe... more distributed system architectures, we performed a variety of tests on these subsystems under different network conditions, operating systems and computational loads. The results indicate that delays due to our middleware is negligible compared to computational costs associated with actual processing within the modules, provided a network with high enough bandwidth. The Cognitive Map appears to be scalable to an increasing number of connected modules with negligible degradation of package delays.

Cognitive Map Architecture Facilitation of Human–Robot Interaction in Humanoid Robots

ion Certain components serve as intermediaries between high-level decision components and low-lev... more ion Certain components serve as intermediaries between high-level decision components and low-level robot behavior. Specifically, they transform high-level directives to low-level expressions of behavior. The Task Matrix allows high-level symbolic commands to be transformed into physically realizable actions. The Multimodal Communication component takes symbolic utterances and coordinates both speech and gestures. Superficially, this role seems similar to the executive layer in layered robot architectures like 3T. However, in our architecture the entire layer has been encapsulated and partitioned into several different components with clear responsibilities. This modularity allows these behaviors to be managed and maintained separately without refactoring other parts of the architecture. For example in the Task Matrix, by employing a plug-in based mechanism for expanding the number of tasks, and providing access to all tasks through a single component interface, a cleaner mechanism ...

Exploring techniques for behaviour recognition via the CAVIAR modular vision framework

Visual analysis tasks are often very difficult and computer systems for tackling them are most ef... more Visual analysis tasks are often very difficult and computer systems for tackling them are most effectively implemented as a network of routines which solve constituent subproblems with well-defined specifications. Most of these tasks do not have a clear-cut best algorithm, particularly dealing with real-world data. The problem arises how to characterise the performance on these sub-tasks in order to choose the best implementation for a given application, particularly when several techniques are used within a dataflow graph, with the output of later algorithms dependent on the output of earlier routines. In this work we look at competing algorithms for a simple behaviour recognition task within the framework of the CAVIAR modular vision platform.

A framework for A.I. integration

INTRODUCTION A number of present-day problems act to hold back progress in the field of artificia... more INTRODUCTION A number of present-day problems act to hold back progress in the field of artificial intelligence (A.I.), both theoretical and pragmatic. Among the most serious pragmatic issues has to do with integration and large-scale systems construction, as much recent work on humanoids and interactive robots has shown (cf. Numerous barriers must be faced by any researcher wanting to reuse systems developed by others in the creation of large integrated A.I. systems. The barriers are caused for example by the use of different programming languages, by different operating assumptions, and by lack of computing power. These barriers prevent integration of isolated efforts and thus the creation of larger, more capable A.I. systems. This paper presents a framework addressing many of the pragmatic issues the field has to deal with and intended to significantly speed up research advances in A.I. The framework addresses three main issues: Building large systems, connecting heterogeneous so...

Whiteboards: Scheduling Blackboards for Semantic Routing of Messages & Streams

This paper presents a type of scheduling blackboard called whiteboards. Blackboards can simplify ... more This paper presents a type of scheduling blackboard called whiteboards. Blackboards can simplify construction of systems with large numbers of heterogeneous components requiring a high number of fine-grained interactions. An increase in systems integration, for example in humanoid robotics and intelligent environments, has called for better solutions to support multi-module integration. Whiteboards extend the blackboard model in a number of significant ways that allow them to fill this role. Chief among their features are: an explicit temporal model; quality of service; both publish-subscribe and querying for data; both discrete and streaming data using the same API; explicit data wrappers; programming language independence; as well as a number of solutions to practical issues for improving development effort and runtime performance. Whiteboards consist of (i) a general-purpose message type format, (ii) ontologically-defined message and data stream types, and (iii) specifications fo...

Two Approaches to a Plug-and-Play Vision Architecture – CAVIAR and Psyclone

This paper compares two solutions for human-like perception using two different modular “plug-and... more This paper compares two solutions for human-like perception using two different modular “plug-and-play” frameworks, CAVIAR (List et al, 2005) and Psyclone (Thorisson et al, 2004, 2005a). Each uses a central point of configuration and requires the modules to be autodescriptive, auto-critical and auto-regulative (Crowley and Reignier, 2003) for fully autonomous configuration of processing and dataflow. This allows new modules to be added to or removed from the system with minimal reconfiguration. CAVIAR uses a centralised global controller (Bins et al, 2005) whereas Psyclone supports a fully distributed control architecture. We implemented a computer vision-based human behaviour tracker for public scenes in the two frameworks. CAVIAR’s global controller uses offline learned knowledge to regulate module parameters and select between competing results whereas in Psyclone dynamic multi-level control modules adjust parameters, data and process flow. Each framework results in two very diff...

Scheduling blackboards for interactive robots

An increase in systems integration, for example in humanoid robotics and intelligent environments... more An increase in systems integration, for example in humanoid robotics and intelligent environments, has called for better solutions to support multi-module integration. Blackboards can simplify construction of systems with large numbers of heterogeneous components requiring a high number of fine-grained interactions. In this paper we describe the use of a scheduling blackboard used for developing interactive robots. Our blackboards both simplify and extend the blackboard model in a number of ways. Chief among them are: An explicit temporal model; quality of service; publish-subscribe; queries; discrete messaging; streaming data; programming language independence; as well as a number of solutions to practical issues for improving development effort and runtime performance. Whiteboards present a compelling case for the use of scheduling blackboards in robotics, where multiple functionalities and modules need to be integrated into a

Artificial intelligence in computer graphics

CVML - an XML-based computer vision markup language

Proceedings of the Pattern Recognition 17th International Conference on Volume 1 Volume 01, 2004

We propose an XML-based Computer Vision Markup Language for use in Cognitive Vision, to enable se... more We propose an XML-based Computer Vision Markup Language for use in Cognitive Vision, to enable separate research groups to collaborate with each other as well as making their research results more available to other areas of science and industry, without having to reveal any proprietary ideas, algorithms or even software. The Computer Vision Markup Language can communicate any type and amount of information, making unavailable functionality accessible to anyone. In this paper we introduce the language and describe how we have implemented it in a very large cognitive vision project. We provide a free open source library for working with this language, which can easily be implemented into existing code providing seamless network communication abilities and multi-platform support. Last we describe the future of CVML and how it might evolve to include other areas of research.

Performance evaluating the evaluator

2005 IEEE International …, 2005

Automated visual surveillance and tracking systems are being developed and deployed in several co... more

Evaluation of Communication Middleware in a Distributed Humanoid Robot Architecture

Artificial Intelligence in Computer Graphics: A Constructionist Approach

The ultimate embodiment of artificial intelligence (AI) has traditionally been seen as physical r... more

Design and Evaluation of Communication Middleware in a Distributed Humanoid Robot Architecture

Abstract—Distributed architectures for implementing tasks on humanoid robots is a design challeng... more Abstract—Distributed architectures for implementing tasks on humanoid robots is a design challenge, both in theory and practice. Although important functionality resides within the component modules of the system, the performance of the middleware – the software for mediating information between modules – is critical to overall system performance. We have designed an architecture serving various functional roles and information exchange within a distributed system, using three different communication subsystems: the Cognitive Map (CogMap), Distributed Operation via Discrete Events (DiODE), and Multimodal Communication (MC). The CogMap is implemented in Psyclone, a framework for constructing large AI systems, and allows sharing and transformation of information streams dynamically between modules. DiODE provides a direct connection between two modules while MC implements a multi-modal server that streams raw sensory data to requesting external (off-board) perceptual modules. These ha...

Exploring Techniques for Behaviour Recognition Via the

Visual analysis tasks are often very difficult and computer systems for tackling them are most ef... more

A Framework for A.I. Integration

A number of present-day problems act to hold back progress in the field of artificial intelligenc... more A number of present-day problems act to hold back progress in the field of artificial intelligence (A.I.), both theoretical and pragmatic. Among the most serious pragmatic issues has to do with integration and large-scale systems construction, as much recent work on humanoids and interactive robots has

An Intelligent and Task-Independent Controller for Video Sequence Analysis

Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on Computer Architecture For Machine Perception, Jul 4, 2005

This paper describes a task-independent controller that allows for an easy implementation of visi... more This paper describes a task-independent controller that allows for an easy implementation of vision systems for processing video sequences. The controller does not have a fixed dataflow or any fixed steps. The dataflow is constructed by the modules by describing themselves for the controller. During operation the modules and their parameters are selected using an independent decision module. This makes the system flexible and allows comparison of different learning techniques and decision strategies. The controller is being used by the CAVIAR system and its current decision module is a rulebased system written in Clips.

Method for dynamic reprogramming dataflow in a distributed system

Authors and Contributors

OpenAIR is a routing and communication protocol based on a publish-subscribe architecture. It is ... more OpenAIR is a routing and communication protocol based on a publish-subscribe architecture. It is intended to be the ”glue ” that allows numerous A.I. researchers to share code more effectively – ”AIR to share”. It is a definition or a blueprint of the ”post office and mail delivery system” for distributed, multi-module systems. OpenAIR provides a core foundation upon which subsequent

Whiteboards: Scheduling blackboards for interactive robots

An increase in systems integration, for example in humanoid robotics and intelligent environments... more An increase in systems integration, for example in humanoid robotics and intelligent environments, has called for better solutions to support multi-module integration. Blackboards can simplify construction of systems with large numbers of heterogeneous components requiring a high number of fine-grained interactions. In this paper we describe the use of a scheduling blackboard used for developing interactive robots. Our blackboards both simplify and extend the blackboard model in a number of ways. Chief among them are: An explicit temporal model; quality of service; publish-subscribe; queries; discrete messaging; streaming data; programming language independence; as well as a number of solutions to practical issues for improving development effort and runtime performance. Whiteboards present a compelling case for the use of scheduling blackboards in robotics, where multiple functionalities and modules need to be integrated into a coherent whole.

OpenAIR 1.0 specification

Design and Evaluation of Communication Middleware in a Distributed Humanoid Robot Architecture

distributed system architectures, we performed a variety of tests on these subsystems under diffe... more distributed system architectures, we performed a variety of tests on these subsystems under different network conditions, operating systems and computational loads. The results indicate that delays due to our middleware is negligible compared to computational costs associated with actual processing within the modules, provided a network with high enough bandwidth. The Cognitive Map appears to be scalable to an increasing number of connected modules with negligible degradation of package delays.

Cognitive Map Architecture Facilitation of Human–Robot Interaction in Humanoid Robots

ion Certain components serve as intermediaries between high-level decision components and low-lev... more ion Certain components serve as intermediaries between high-level decision components and low-level robot behavior. Specifically, they transform high-level directives to low-level expressions of behavior. The Task Matrix allows high-level symbolic commands to be transformed into physically realizable actions. The Multimodal Communication component takes symbolic utterances and coordinates both speech and gestures. Superficially, this role seems similar to the executive layer in layered robot architectures like 3T. However, in our architecture the entire layer has been encapsulated and partitioned into several different components with clear responsibilities. This modularity allows these behaviors to be managed and maintained separately without refactoring other parts of the architecture. For example in the Task Matrix, by employing a plug-in based mechanism for expanding the number of tasks, and providing access to all tasks through a single component interface, a cleaner mechanism ...

Exploring techniques for behaviour recognition via the CAVIAR modular vision framework

Visual analysis tasks are often very difficult and computer systems for tackling them are most ef... more Visual analysis tasks are often very difficult and computer systems for tackling them are most effectively implemented as a network of routines which solve constituent subproblems with well-defined specifications. Most of these tasks do not have a clear-cut best algorithm, particularly dealing with real-world data. The problem arises how to characterise the performance on these sub-tasks in order to choose the best implementation for a given application, particularly when several techniques are used within a dataflow graph, with the output of later algorithms dependent on the output of earlier routines. In this work we look at competing algorithms for a simple behaviour recognition task within the framework of the CAVIAR modular vision platform.

A framework for A.I. integration

INTRODUCTION A number of present-day problems act to hold back progress in the field of artificia... more INTRODUCTION A number of present-day problems act to hold back progress in the field of artificial intelligence (A.I.), both theoretical and pragmatic. Among the most serious pragmatic issues has to do with integration and large-scale systems construction, as much recent work on humanoids and interactive robots has shown (cf. Numerous barriers must be faced by any researcher wanting to reuse systems developed by others in the creation of large integrated A.I. systems. The barriers are caused for example by the use of different programming languages, by different operating assumptions, and by lack of computing power. These barriers prevent integration of isolated efforts and thus the creation of larger, more capable A.I. systems. This paper presents a framework addressing many of the pragmatic issues the field has to deal with and intended to significantly speed up research advances in A.I. The framework addresses three main issues: Building large systems, connecting heterogeneous so...

Whiteboards: Scheduling Blackboards for Semantic Routing of Messages & Streams

This paper presents a type of scheduling blackboard called whiteboards. Blackboards can simplify ... more This paper presents a type of scheduling blackboard called whiteboards. Blackboards can simplify construction of systems with large numbers of heterogeneous components requiring a high number of fine-grained interactions. An increase in systems integration, for example in humanoid robotics and intelligent environments, has called for better solutions to support multi-module integration. Whiteboards extend the blackboard model in a number of significant ways that allow them to fill this role. Chief among their features are: an explicit temporal model; quality of service; both publish-subscribe and querying for data; both discrete and streaming data using the same API; explicit data wrappers; programming language independence; as well as a number of solutions to practical issues for improving development effort and runtime performance. Whiteboards consist of (i) a general-purpose message type format, (ii) ontologically-defined message and data stream types, and (iii) specifications fo...

Two Approaches to a Plug-and-Play Vision Architecture – CAVIAR and Psyclone

This paper compares two solutions for human-like perception using two different modular “plug-and... more This paper compares two solutions for human-like perception using two different modular “plug-and-play” frameworks, CAVIAR (List et al, 2005) and Psyclone (Thorisson et al, 2004, 2005a). Each uses a central point of configuration and requires the modules to be autodescriptive, auto-critical and auto-regulative (Crowley and Reignier, 2003) for fully autonomous configuration of processing and dataflow. This allows new modules to be added to or removed from the system with minimal reconfiguration. CAVIAR uses a centralised global controller (Bins et al, 2005) whereas Psyclone supports a fully distributed control architecture. We implemented a computer vision-based human behaviour tracker for public scenes in the two frameworks. CAVIAR’s global controller uses offline learned knowledge to regulate module parameters and select between competing results whereas in Psyclone dynamic multi-level control modules adjust parameters, data and process flow. Each framework results in two very diff...

Scheduling blackboards for interactive robots

An increase in systems integration, for example in humanoid robotics and intelligent environments... more An increase in systems integration, for example in humanoid robotics and intelligent environments, has called for better solutions to support multi-module integration. Blackboards can simplify construction of systems with large numbers of heterogeneous components requiring a high number of fine-grained interactions. In this paper we describe the use of a scheduling blackboard used for developing interactive robots. Our blackboards both simplify and extend the blackboard model in a number of ways. Chief among them are: An explicit temporal model; quality of service; publish-subscribe; queries; discrete messaging; streaming data; programming language independence; as well as a number of solutions to practical issues for improving development effort and runtime performance. Whiteboards present a compelling case for the use of scheduling blackboards in robotics, where multiple functionalities and modules need to be integrated into a

Artificial intelligence in computer graphics

CVML - an XML-based computer vision markup language

Proceedings of the Pattern Recognition 17th International Conference on Volume 1 Volume 01, 2004

We propose an XML-based Computer Vision Markup Language for use in Cognitive Vision, to enable se... more We propose an XML-based Computer Vision Markup Language for use in Cognitive Vision, to enable separate research groups to collaborate with each other as well as making their research results more available to other areas of science and industry, without having to reveal any proprietary ideas, algorithms or even software. The Computer Vision Markup Language can communicate any type and amount of information, making unavailable functionality accessible to anyone. In this paper we introduce the language and describe how we have implemented it in a very large cognitive vision project. We provide a free open source library for working with this language, which can easily be implemented into existing code providing seamless network communication abilities and multi-platform support. Last we describe the future of CVML and how it might evolve to include other areas of research.

Performance evaluating the evaluator

2005 IEEE International …, 2005

Automated visual surveillance and tracking systems are being developed and deployed in several co... more

Evaluation of Communication Middleware in a Distributed Humanoid Robot Architecture