Welcome to the humble homepage of Fredrik Heintz, PhD
Work Information
I am a researcher at the Knowledge Processing Lab [KPLAB] at the division of Artificial Intelligence and Integrated Computer Systems [AIICS] at the Department of Computer and Information Science [IDA] at Linköping university [LiU]. I completed my PhD in March 2009 and my supervisor was Patrick Doherty. I graduated from the Computer Science program in Linköping March 2000.
Download my CV for detailed information.
If you are interested in doing a Master's Thesis (exjobb) then follow this link
Jump directly to my publications.
Research
I do research on how to process and manage dynamic knowledge and
object structures in autonomous systems to support knowledge
representation and reasoning functionalities like execution
monitoring, chronicle recognition, and anchoring symbols to sensor
data. The common theme is high-level reasoning grounded through sensing.
To act rationally, autonomous agents often depend on high level
reasoning components that require crisp, symbolic knowledge about the
environment. Extensive processing at many levels of abstraction is
required to generate such knowledge from noisy, incomplete and
quantitative sensor data. We define knowledge processing
middleware as a systematic approach to integrating and organizing
such processing and argue that connecting processing components with
streams provides essential support for steady and timely flows
of information.
The main result is a stream-based knowledge processing middleware
framework called DyKnow. DyKnow provides both a conceptual
framework and an implementation infrastructure for integrating a wide
variety of knowledge processing components and managing the
information that needs to flow between them. It allows a system to
incrementally process low-level sensor data and generate a coherent
view of the environment at increasing levels of abstraction.
Due to the need for incremental refinement of information at different
levels of abstraction, we model computations and processes within the
knowledge processing framework as active and sustained knowledge
processes. The complexity of such processes may vary greatly,
ranging from simple adaptation of raw sensor data to controllers to
diagnosis algorithms.
Knowledge processing for a physical agent is fundamentally incremental
in nature. Each part and functionality in the system, from sensing up
to deliberation, needs to receive relevant information about the
environment with minimal delay and send processed information to
interested parties as quickly as possible. We have therefore chosen
to model and implement the required flow of data, information, and
knowledge in terms of streams. Each stream is specified by a
declarative policy which gives the stream certain properties
including quality of service guarantees. Streams a very well suited
for asynchronous communication between knowledge processes through the
use of a publish/subscribe architecture.
The input to a knowledge processing application can be provided by a
wide range of distributed information sources on many levels of
abstraction, while output consists of streams representing for example
objects, attributes, relations, and events.
Research Projects
-
Stream-Based
Reasoning Grounded Through Sensing, 2010-present
- Funded by 2.8MSEK from the Center
for Industrial Information Technology at Linköping university, 2010-2016.
- The goal is to extend the theoretical basis for the stream-based
knowledge processing middleware DyKnow, to develop techniques and
algorithms for stream-based reasoning grounded through sensing,
and to explore their use in academic and industrial applications
in cooperation with companies such as Scania and Saab.
- I am the principle investigator for the project.
-
The Linnaeus Center for Control, Autonomy, and Decision-making in
Complex Systems (CADICS), 2008-present
- Funded by 55MSEK from the Swedish Research Council (VR) and
20MSEK from Linköping University, 2008-2018.
- The goal of CADICS is to establish an internationally leading
research environment constituting a sharp and growing
multidisciplinary front prepared to attack the demanding future
research challenges in decision and control.
- I am currently involved in two projects: Flexible and
reconfigurable diagnosis and Semantic segmentation and
classification. I am also the webmaster.
- MOVIII: Modeling, Visualization and Information Integration. A center
for decision support in complex systems, 2006-present
- Funded by 45MSEK from the Swedish
Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF), 2006-2010.
- The mission of MOVIII is to develop tools and techniques for
integrated decision support and autonomy for complex systems,
grounded in experience with a wide spectrum of deployed systems and
applications.
- My main contribution so far is the flexible and reconfigurable
diagnosis framework FlexDx.
- NFFP4-S4203 Cooperative Cognitive Computing with UAVs in a
Network-Centric Perspective, 2006-2008
- Funded by 7.5MSEK from the National Aviation Engineering
Research Programme (NFFP) and 7.5MSEK from SAAB AB, 2006-2008.
- The project resulted in theoretical results and live
demonstrations of heterogeneous UAV platforms working in a
cooperative manner to solve missions for search and rescue and
search and pursuit of moving objects.
- My main contributions are a temporal logic-based execution
monitoring functionality integrated with an existing forward
chaining logic-based planner (TALplanner) and an extension of DyKnow
to support distribution and fusion of knowledge among multiple UAVs
(DyKnow Federations).
- FP6 004381 Multi-sensory
Autonomous Cognitive Systems Interacting with Dynamic Environments
for Perceiving and Using Affordances (MACS), 2004-2006
- Funded by the European Commission 6th Framework Programme within
the Cognitive Systems and Robotics unit, 2004-2007.
- The result of the MACS project is an autonomous mobile robot
prototype acting goal-directedly in a dynamic environment which
explores and exploits the concept of affordances for its design and
implementation.
- My main contributions are the Entity Structure Generation Module
and the Event and Execution Monitor based on my previous work on
DyKnow, chronicle recognition and execution monitoring. Both of
these components are part of the resulting affordance-based
control architecture.
- NFFP3+ 539 Components for Autonomous Systems (COMPAS), 2004-2005
- Funded by 2MSEK from the National Aviation Engineering Research
Programme (NFFP) and 2MSEK from SAAB AB, 2004-2005.
- The project resulted in key components to build systems with
autonomous behavior such as a distributed software architecture, a
probabilistic path planner and a temporal logic-based execution
monitoring component.
- My main contributions are the knowledge processing middleware
framework which is part of the distributed software architecture and
the temporal logic-based execution monitoring component.
- The Wallenberg laboratory
for research on Information Technology and Autonomous Systems
(WITAS), 2000-2005
- Funded by three grants from the Wallenberg Foundation
1997-2005.
- A basic research project in the area of intelligent autonomous
systems. The main result of the project is the development of fully
operational autonomus unmanned aerial vehicles capable of making
rational decisions based on various sources of knowledge including
pre-stored knowledge and knowledge obtained from sensors.
- My main contribution is the knowledge processing middleware
framework DyKnow which is used by the UAV to achieve situational
awareness. The focus was on reasoning about and detecting traffic
situations using chronicle recognition.
RoboCup
One of the results of my master thesis is a framework for developing RoboCup agents, called RoboSoc.
I competed in the RoboCup World Cup at IJCAI'99 in Stockholm in the simulation legaue with the team FCFoo.
I also competed in the first Swedish Championship in Linköping and in the RoboCup European Championship 2000 in Amsterdam with the team NOAI.
On May 9th 2000 I organized the first Swedish Championship in RoboCup simulation held in Linköping in conjunction with the SAIS'2000 conference.
Publications
A complete BIBTEX file with all my publications.
2010
- Fredrik Heintz, Jonas Kvarnström and Patrick Doherty.
Bridging the Sense-Reasoning Gap: DyKnow - Stream-Based Middleware for Knowledge Processing. Journal of Advanced Engineering Informatics 24(1), pages 14-25, January 2010.
- Fredrik Heintz, Jonas Kvarnström and Patrick Doherty.
Stream-Based Middleware Support for Embedded Reasoning.
Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium
on Embedded Reasoning: Intelligence in Embedded Systems,
Stanford, California, March 22-24, 2010.
- Mattias Krysander, Fredrik Heintz, Jacob Roll and Erik Frisk.
FlexDx: A Reconfigurable Diagnosis Framework (DOI link).
Journal of Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence. Forthcoming.
2009
- Fredrik Heintz, Jonas Kvarnström and Patrick Doherty.
A Stream-Based Hierarchical Anchoring Framework. Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), St Louis, Missouri, October 11-15, 2009.
- Fredrik Heintz, Jonas Kvarnström and Patrick Doherty. Stream Reasoning in DyKnow: A Knowledge Processing Middleware System. In Stream Reasoning Workshop, Heraklion, Crete, May 31, 2009.
- Fredrik Heintz and Jonas Kvarnström, editors. Proceedings of the Swedish AI Society Workshop. 2009.
- Patrick Doherty, Jonas Kvarnström and Fredrik Heintz. A Temporal Logic-based Planning and Execution Monitoring Framework for Unmanned Aircraft Systems. Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 19(3), pages 332-377, 2009.
- Fredrik Heintz. DyKnow: A Stream-Based Knowledge Processing Middleware Framework (Cover). PhD Thesis. Linköping Studies in Science and Technology, Dissertation No 1240. Linköpings universitet. Permanent Electronic Press link.
2008
- Mattias Krysander, Fredrik Heintz, Jacob Roll and Erik Frisk. Dynamic Test Selection for Reconfigurable Diagnosis. Proceedings of the 47th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Cancun, Mexico, December 9-11, 2008.
- Fredrik Heintz, Jonas Kvarnström and Patrick Doherty. Knowledge Processing Middleware. Proceedings of the International Conference on Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots (SIMPAR), Venice, Italy, November 3-7, 2008.
- Fredrik Heintz, Jonas Kvarnström and Patrick Doherty. Bridging the Sense-Reasoning Gap: DyKnow - A Middleware Component for Knowledge Processing. Invited paper to the IROS Workshop on Current software frameworks in cognitive robotics integrating different computational paradigms, Nice, France, September 22, 2008.
- Fredrik Heintz, Mattias Krysander, Jacob Roll and Erik Frisk. FlexDx: A Reconfigurable Diagnosis Framework. Proceedings of the 19th International Workshop on Principles of Diagnosis (DX), Blue Mountains, Australia, September 22-24, 2008.
- Jonas Kvarnström, Fredrik Heintz and Patrick Doherty. A Temporal Logic-Based Planning and Execution Monitoring System. Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), Sydney, Australia, September 14-18, 2008.
- Fredrik Heintz and Patrick Doherty. DyKnow Federations: Distributing and Merging Information Among UAVs. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Information Fusion 2008, Cologne, Germany, June 30-July 3, 2008.
2007
- Fredrik Heintz, Piotr Rudol, and Patrick Doherty. Bridging the Sense-Reasoning Gap Using DyKnow: A Knowledge Processing Middleware Framework. Proceedings of the Thirtieth German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Osnabrück, Germany, September 10-13, 2007.
- Fredrik Heintz, Piotr Rudol, and Patrick Doherty. From Images to Traffic Behavior - A UAV Tracking and Monitoring Application. Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Information Fusion 2007, Québec, Canada, July 9-12, 2007.
2006
2005
- Fredrik Heintz and Patrick Doherty. A Knowledge Processing Middleware Framework and its Relation to the JDL Data Fusion Model. Proceedings of the Third Swedish Workshop on Autonomous Robotics (SWAR'05), Stockholm, Sweden, September 1-2, 2005.
- Fredrik Heintz and Patrick Doherty. A Knowledge Processing Middleware Framework and its Relation to the JDL Data Fusion Model. Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information Fusion 2005, Philadelphia, PA, USA, July 25-29, 2005.
- Fredrik Heintz and Patrick Doherty. A Knowledge Processing Middleware Framework and its Relation to the JDL Data Fusion Model. Proceedings of the Swedish Artificial Intelligence and Learning Systems Workshop 2005, Västerås, Sweden, April 12-14, 2005.
2004
- Fredrik Heintz and Patrick Doherty. DyKnow: An Approach to Middleware for Knowledge Processing. Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, no 1, vol 15, 2004.
- Fredrik Heintz and Patrick Doherty. Managing Dynamic Object Structures using Hypothesis Generation and Validation. Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Anchoring Symbols to Sensor Data, San Jose, USA, 2004.
- Patrick Doherty, Patrik Haslum, Fredrik Heintz, Torsten Merz, Per Nyblom, Tommy Persson, Björn Wingman. A Distributed Architecture for Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Experimentation. Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS), Toulouse, France, 2004
- Fredrik Heintz and Patrick Doherty. DyKnow: A Framework for Processing Dynamic Knowledge and Object Structures in Autonomous Systems. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Monitoring, Security, and Rescue Techniques in Multiagent Systems (MSRAS), Plock, Poland, 2004.
- Fredrik Heintz and Patrick Doherty. DyKnow: A Framework for Processing Dynamic Knowledge and Object Structures in Autonomous Systems. Proceedings of the Second Joint SAIS/SSLS Workshop (AILS), Lund, Sweden, 2004.
2001
- Mao Chen, Ehsan Foroughi, Fredrik Heintz, ZhanXiang Huang, Spiros Kapetanakis,
Kostas Kostiadis, Johan Kummeneje, Itsuki Noda, Oliver Obst, Patrick Riley,
Timo Steffens, Yi Wang and Xiang Yin. Soccerserver Manual v7. 2001.
- Fredrik Heintz. Chronicle Recognition in the WITAS UAV Project - A Preliminary Report [PS]. Proceedings of the Swedish AI Society Workshop (SAIS), Skövde, Sweden, 2001.
- Fredrik Heintz, Johan Kummeneje, and Paul Scerri. Simulated RoboCup in University Undergraduate Education [PS]. Proceedings of the Seventh Scandinavian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (SCAI) in Odense, Denmark, 2001.
2000
- Fredrik Heintz, Johan Kummeneje, and Paul Scerri. Simulated RoboCup in University Undergraduate Education. Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on RoboCup at the Fourth RoboCup World Championships in Melbourne, Australia, 2000.
- Fredrik Heintz. RoboSoc a System for Developing RoboCup Agents for Educational Use [PS]. Master's thesis (Examensarbete), Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping university, Sweden, March 2000.
- Fredrik Heintz. FCFoo99. In Manuela Veloso, Enrico Pagello, and Hiroaki Kitano, editors, RoboCup-99: Robot Soccer World Cup III. Springer Verlag, Berlin, 2000.
1999
- Fredrik Heintz. FCFoo a short description. In RoboCup 1999 Team Descriptions: Simulation league. Linköping Electronic Press, 1999.
- Emiel Corten, Klaus Dorer, Fredrik Heintz, Kostas Kostiadis, Johan Kummeneje, Helmut Myritz, Itsuki Noda, Jukka Riekki, Patrick Riley, Peter Stone, Tralvex Yeap. Soccerserver Manual. 1999.
