Webber, Bonnie L

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  • Publication
    Flexible Support for Trauma Management Through Goal-Directed Reasoning and Planning
    (1991-07-01) Webber, Bonnie L.; Rymon, Ron; Clarke, John R.
    We describe a system, TraumAID, which has been designed to provide decision support throughout the initial definitive management of severely injured patients (i.e., after their initial evaluation, resuscitation, and stabilization). Over the course of initial definitive management, TraumAID recommends appropriate procedures to be carried out, based on currently available evidence and on the complexity and urgency of the situation. TraumAID's ability to deal flexibly with complex and often urgent situations comes from its ability to reason separately about the management goals that should be achieved and about the means that are situationally appropriate for achieving them. In this paper, we describe TraumAID's approach to trauma management in more detail, showing in particular how it enables TraumAID to adapt its reasoning and recommendations to the urgency with which a patient's condition must be addressed.
  • Publication
    Integrating Anatomy and Physiology for Behavior Modeling
    (1995) DeCarlo, Douglas; Kaye, Jonathan; Metaxas, Dimitris; Webber, Bonnie L.; Clarke, John R.; Badler, Norman I
    In producing realistic, animatable models of the human body, we see much to be gained from developing a functional anatomy that links the anatomical and physiological behavior of the body through fundamental causal principles. This paper describes our current Finite Element Method implementation of a simplified lung and chest cavity during normal quiet breathing and then disturbed by a simple pneumothorax. The lung model interacts with the model of the chest cavity through applied forces. The models are modular, and a second lung and more complex chest wall model can be added without disturbing the model of the other lung. During inhalation, a breathing force (corresponding to exertion of the diaphragm and chest wall muscles) is applied, causing the chest cavity to expand. When this force is removed (at the start of exhalation), the stretched lung recoils, applying pressure forces to the chest wall which cause the chest cavity to contract. To simulate a simple pneumothorax, the intrapleural pressure is set to atmospheric pressure, which removes pressure forces holding the lung close to the chest cavity and results in the lung returning to its unstretched shape.
  • Publication
    Discourse Deixis: Reference to Discourse Segments
    (1988-04-01) Webber, Bonnie L
    Computational approaches to discourse understanding have a two-part goal: (1) to identify those aspects of discourse understanding that require process-based accounts, and (2)to characterize the processes and data structures they involve. To date, in the area of reference, process-based accounts have been developed for subsequent reference via anaphoric pronouns and reference via definite descriptors. In this paper, I propose and argue for a process-based account of subsequent reference via deictic expressions. A significant feature of this account if that it attributes distinct mental reality to units of text often called discourse segments, a reality that is distinct from that of the entities described therein.
  • Publication
    Simulated Casualties and Medics for Emergency Training
    (1997) Chi, Diane M; Kokkevis, Evangelos; Ogunyemi, Omolola; Bindiganavale, Ramamani; Hollick, Michael J; Webber, Bonnie L; Clarke, John R; Badler, Norman I
    The MediSim system extends virtual environment technology to allow medical personnel to interact with and train on simulated casualties. The casualty model employs a three-dimensional animated human body that displays appropriate physical and behavioral responses to injury and/or treatment. Medical corpsmen behaviors were developed to allow the actions of simulated medical personnel to conform to both military practice and medical protocols during patient assessment and stabilization. A trainee may initiate medic actions through a mouse and menu interface; a VR interface has also been created by Stansfield's research group at Sandia National Labs.
  • Publication
    The Penn Discourse TreeBank 1.0 Annotation Manual
    (2006-03-29) Prasad, Rashmi; Miltsakaki, Eleni; Lee, Alan; Joshi, Aravind; Webber, Bonnie L; Dinesh, Nikhil
  • Publication
    Planning and Parallel Transition Networks: Animation's New Frontiers
    (1995) Badler, Norman I; Webber, Bonnie L; Becket, Welton; Geib, Christopher W; Moore, Michael B; Pelachaud, Catherine; Reich, Barry D; Stone, Matthew
    Animating realistic human agents involves more than just creating movements that look "real". A principal characteristic of humans is their ability to plan and make decisions based on intentions and the local environmental context. "Animated agents" must therefore react to and deliberate about their environment and other agents. Our agent animation uses various low-level behaviors, sense-control-action loops, high-level planning, and parallel task networks. Several systems we developed will illustrate how these components contribute to the realism and efficacy of human agent animation.
  • Publication
    Living Up to Expectations: Computing Expert Responses
    (2007-01-01) Joshi, Aravind K; Webber, Bonnie L; Weischedel, Ralph
    In cooperative man-machine interaction, it is necessary but not sufficient for a system to respond truthfully and informatively to a user's question. In particular, if the system has reason to believe that its planned response might mislead the user, then it must block that conclusion by modifying its response. This paper focuses on identifying and avoiding potentially misleading responses by acknowledging types of 'informing behavior' usually expected of an expert. We attempt to give a formal account of several types of assertions that should be included in response to questions concerning the achievement of some goal (in addition to the simple answer), lest the questioner otherwise be misled.
  • Publication
    Anaphora and Discourse Semantics
    (2001-01-01) Webber, Bonnie L; Stone, Matthew; Joshi, Aravind; Knott, Alistair
    We argue in this paper that many common adverbial phrases generally taken to be discourse connectives signalling discourse relations between adjacent discourse units are instead anaphors. We do this by (i) demonstrating their behavioral similarity with more common anaphors (pronouns and definite NPs); (ii) presenting a general framework for understanding anaphora into which they nicely fit; (iii) showing the interpretational benefits of understanding discourse adverbials as anaphors; and (iv) sketching out a lexicalised grammar that facilitates discourse interpretation as a product of compositional rules, anaphor resolution and inference.
  • Publication
    Towards Personalities for Animated Agents With Reactive and Planning Behaviors
    (1995-12-06) Badler, Norman I; Webber, Bonnie L; Reich, Barry D
    We describe a framework for creating animated simulations of virtual human agents. The framework allows us to capture flexible patterns of activity, reactivity to a changing environment, and certain aspects of an agent personality model. Each leads to variation in how an animated simulation will be realized. As different parts of an activity make different demands oil an agent's resources and decision-making, our framework allows special-purpose reasoners and planners to be associated with only those phases of an activity where they are needed. Personality is reflected in locomotion choices which are guided by an agent model that interacts with the other components of the framework.
  • Publication
    Towards Goal-Directed Diagnosis (Preliminary Report)
    (1991-09-01) Rymon, Ron; Webber, Bonnie L; Clarke, John R
    Recent research has abstracted diagnosis away from the activity needed to acquire information and to act on diagnosed disorders. In some problem domains, however, such abstraction is counter-productive and does not reflect real-life practice, which integratesdiagnostic and therapeutic activity. Trauma management is a case in point. Here, we discuss a formalization of the integrated approach taken in TraumAID, a system we have developed to serve as an artificial aide to residents and physicians dealing with multiple trauma. Among other things, the active pursuit of information raises the question of what is and what is not worth pursuing. In TraumAID 2.0, we take the view that the process of diagnosis should continue only as long as it is likely to make a difference to future actions. That view is formalized in the goal-directed diagnostic paradigm (GDD). Unlike other diagnostic paradigms, goal-directed diagnosis is first and foremost concerned with setting goals based on its conclusions. It regards the traditional construction of an explanation for the faulty behavior as secondary. In order to explicitly represent goal-directedness, the diagnostic process is viewed as search in a space of attitude-beliefs. From this, we derive a high-level algorithm that produces appropriate requests for action while searching for an explanation. A complete explanation, however, is not the criterion for terminating action. Such a criterion, we argue, is better treated in terms of goal-means tradeoffs. TraumAID's architecture, in so far as it embodies this goal-directed approach, assigns to a complementary planner the resolution of such tradeoffs.