Toward a Computing Model Dealing with Complex Phenomena: Interactive Granular Computing

This paper is a continuation of our earlier works in establishing the need for introducing Interactive Granular Computing (IGrC) in developing Intelligent Systems (IS's) and/or Decision Support Systems (DSS's) dealing with complex phenomena. Among several crucial points, this paper argues in favour of the necessity to provide tools for learning models of complex vague concepts based on the perceived situations, where perception about the situation itself should be relativized based on the particular spatio-temporal windows of the physical world and real physical interactions among objects lying in the scope of those windows. The main idea is to develop a computing model which can link the abstract theory with its physical semantics in a way where the information about the world is grounded in the physical process of obtaining it and learning that information requires a proper implementation of interactions among real physical objects. The basic objects in IGrC are known as the complex granules (c-granules, for short). They make it possible to link the abstract and physical worlds, and help to realize the paths of judgments starting from generating a plan for obtaining sensory measurement or perception about a particular fragment of the physical world, to translating the plan to real physical interactions and verifying the properties obtained thereby with available knowledge. The c-granules, which are extended by information layers, are called informational c-granules (ic-granules, for short), and they can create the basis for modeling a notion of control conducting the whole process of computation over the c-granules. In this process an important role is played by so called implementational ic-granules responsible for the real physical realisation of the formal specification available in the information layer. Moreover, the networks of c-granules with distributed control are introduced and their role in IS's dealing with complex phenomena is discussed.