Cognitive Engineering : A Distributed Approach to Machine Intelligence

What we profoundly witness these days is a growing number of human-centric systems and a genuine interest in a comprehensive understanding of their underlying paradigms and the development of solid and efficient design practices. We are indeed in the midst of the next information revolution, which very likely brings us into a completely new world of ubiquitous and invisible computing, Ambient Intelligent (AMI), and wearable hardware. This requires a totally new way of thinking in which cognitive aspects of design, cognitive system engineering and distributed approach play a pivotal role. This book fully addresses these timely needs by filling a gap between the two well-established disciplines of cognitive sciences and cognitive systems engineering. As we put succinctly in the preface, with the psychological perspective of human cognition in mind, “the book explores the computational models of reasoning, learning, planning and multi-agent coordination and control of the human moods”. This is an excellent, up to the point description of the book. The treatise is focused on the underlying fundamentals, spans across a vast territory embracing logic perspectives of human cognition, distributed models, parallel computing, expert systems, and intelligent robotics.

Cognitive Engineering: A Distributed Approach to Machine Intelligence explores the design issues of intelligent engineering systems. Beginning with the foundations of psychological modeling of the human mind, the main emphasis is given to parallel and distributed realization of intelligent models for application in reasoning, learning, planning and multi-agent co-ordination problems. The last two chapters provide case studies on human-mood detection and control, and behavioral co-operation of mobile robots. This is the first comprehensive text of its kind, bridging the gap between Cognitive Science and Cognitive Systems Engineering.

Each chapter includes plenty of numerical examples and exercises with sufficient hints, so that the reader can solve the exercises on their own. Computer simulations are also included in most chapters to give a clear idea about the application of the algorithms undertaken in the book. In addition, mathematical analysis on convergence and stability of the neuro-fuzzy models will enable the reader to pursue their research career in cognitive engineering.

Cognitive Engineering: A Distributed Approach to Machine Intelligence is unique in its theme and contents, and includes a Foreword by Professor Witold Pedrycz - written with graduates in mind, this book would also be a valuable resource for researchers in the fields of Cognitive Science, Computer Science and Cognitive Engineering.