WEB-SNAP: POMDP-based Knowledge Engineering for Assistive Systems

Software implemented by Marek Grzes
A tool for designing POMDP-based assistive systems by people who are not experts in artificial intelligence. No POMDP related knowledge is required. The designer works with an easy to use web interface were domain details can be specified. After that the full POMDP model (in the SPUDD/SymbolicPerseus format) is generated automatically and it can be used for decision making in prompting/assistive systems.
Written in Java and PHP and requires a web-server (e.g., Apache) and a PostgreSQL database.
Download the source code

hg clone https://bitbucket.org/mgrzes/web-snap
Very detailed installation instructions (include configurations of Apache, PHP, and PostgreSQL in Ubuntu 12.04) can be found in the README file.

There is a short video guide on Youtube.

The Underlying Methodology

The following paper explains this software and the underlying methodology that should be followed when this software is used. Section 4 contains a quite detailed case study which shows step-by-step how to create a working model using this software.

Marek Grzes, Jesse Hoey, Shehroz Khan, Alex Mihailidis, Stephen Czarnuch, Dan Jackson and Andrew Monk: Relational Approach to Knowledge Engineering for POMDP-based Assistance Systems as a Translation of a Psychological Model. International Journal of Approximate Reasoning (IJAR). Special Issue of Applications of Bayesian Networks. Elsevier, 2013. [pdf] [doi]

Screen-shots

The first screen after logging in. The snap instance to work with has to be selected here. One snap instance (i.e., one logical database in PostgreSQL) corresponds to one particular model, and one model corresponds to one POMDP file that can be generated by the software. (png)
The main window after selecting an instance to work with. It allows backing up and copying instances. (png)
Task and environment features. Here, environment variables and their values are specified. (png)
A window to specify abilities (png) and default probabilities for abilities (png).
Behaviours (png), effects of behaviours (png), their preconditions (png), and STRIPS-like summary (png). Behaviours are represented as a special variable in the POMDP where values of that variable correspond to behaviours of the person.
Rewards (png) and specification of states for those rewards (png). These two things should be really specified in one window. Now, rewards are specified per groups of states (table t_rewards) whereas groups of states are defined in table t_rewards_desc.
The sensor model (png) specifies the observation function for the POMDP.
The IU table: view (png) and edit (png) modes. NB: Entries in every column need to be saved individually.
SNAP generator (png). Here, search for the "Generate" button. Once clicked, the POMDP model should be generated and you can save the output on your local machine.

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