Dipartimento di Informatica

Research interests are centred on the exploration of the use of rewriting systems for the specification of
computational processes, performed by individual agents as well as by populations of communicating
agents. In particular Conditional Attributed Rewriting Systems are used to define the metalevel dynamics
of image interpretation strategies and the distributed planning of activities in a multi-agent enviroment.
Rewriting systems also allow the specification of the visual languages defining the set of images and
associated meanings that agents have to interpret or through which they communicate with the user.

The rigorous definition of visual computations generalises known proposals in literature, based on
extensions of the traditional notion of concatenation
to two dimensions. Two different total operations, called shift and sup, are instead proposed which allow
the
generation of all possibile images. These operations provide a uniform basis for generation of
languages in any number of dimensions.

In this algebraic framework, visual languages are defined as morphisms between sets of images and
sets of descriptions.
Special types of rewriting systems allow the definition of visual languages
in a way which preserves importante properties for the adequacy of the communication between user
and computer. Moreover, they provide a formal basis for the automatic generation of visual interactive
environments.

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