An evidential reasoning mechanism based on the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence is introduced. Its performance in real-world image analysis is compared with other mechanisms based on the Bayesian formalism and a simple weight combination method.

One of the problems usually discussed in autonomous mobile robot navigation is how to build a map of the environment where the robot is navigating. In the case of indoor navigation, a suitable method to do this mapping is the fusion of the data that are gathered from the several sensors, which are mounted on the robot. Here, a mobile robot equipped just with range finding sensors has been suppo...

The drawbacks of pure probabilistic methods and of the certainty factor model have led us in recent years to consider alternate approaches. Particularly appealing is the mathematical theory of evidence developed by Arthur Dempster. We are convinced it merits careful study and interpretation in the context of expert systems. This theory was first set forth by Dempster in the 1960s and subsequent...

Probabilistic Argumentation Systems is an alternative approach for non-monotonic reasoning under uncertainty. It can judge an unknown question in terms of the degree of support and that of possibility about probabilistic entailment. The resulting degree of support and degree of possibility correspond to belief and plausibility, respectively, in the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence. But the sy...

This paper introduces an evidential reasoning-based approach for recognizing and extracting manufacturing features from solid model description of objects. A major di4culty faced by previously proposed methods for feature extraction has been the interaction between features due to non-uniqueness and ambiguousness in feature representation. To overcome this di4culty, we introduce a Dempster–Shaf...

This reply to papers by Pearl and Shafer focuses on two issues underlying the debate on the validity o f using Dempster-Shafer theory, namely the requirement of a process-independent semantics and the a priori need for multiple uncertainty calculi. Pearl shows deficiencies of Dempster-Shafer theory in dealing with several instances o f commonsense reasoning in a process-independent manner. Alth...

Traditional Dempster Shafer belief theory does not provide a simple method for judging the effect of statistical and probabilistic data on belief functions and vice versa. This puts belief theory in isolation from probability theory and hinders fertile cross-disciplinary developments, both from a theoretic and an application point of view. It can be shown that a bijective mapping exists between...

This paper introduces the idea of using the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence with qualitative values. Dempster-Shafer theory is a formalism for reasoning under uncertainty which may be viewed as a generalisation of probability theory with special advantages in its treatment of ambiguous data and the ignorance arising from it. Here we are interested in applying the theory when the numbers that...

How to measure gain from the use of intelligent inference ? How can the complexity of the recognition/ classification task be estimated? What is the type of evidence which best suits an .inference mechanism? These questions are addressed here in their theoretical and methodological aspects. Their practical implications are demonstrated with 'real' crop mapping task. For this purpose, simple rul...