EPM external input

Intro

Any EPM engine has an internal activity driven significantly by external sources.

The chrono sequence of these external messages form the EPM external input.

Ceptuality (conCeptual ... perCeptual)

The external EPM input may be generated from concepts (conceptual input) or from percepts (perceptual input).

A man watching a flying bird receives conceptual inputs on concepts related to birds, sky, fly,...

A man reading a book on birds receives perceptual inputs on percepts present in the book as words.

Anyway, both are translated into conceptual inputs before being sent to the EPM engine.

Timing

Several time schemes are allowed for external inputs, based on duration, strength, and time function.

• rectangular: defined duration, fixed and permanent strength
• 1-cycle: duration is 1 cycle. Thus it is a variation of rectangular scheme, with minimal duration
• permanent: duration is infinite (or until changed). Thus it is a variation of the rectangular scheme, with infinite duration.
• linear decrease
• exponential decrease

So the generic structured input received by any EPM regarding any concept may be defined with 5 parameters

• the cycle index of the structure insertion
• the initial strength
• the duration (cycle number)
• the geometric decrease (per cycle)
• the linear decrease (per cycle)

The signal disappears when the duration expires, or when the strength is decreased below a critical treshold (excMin)

External input sources

Various sources are likely to generate input messages to an EPM engine

• user interface
• book reader daemons or interface commands
• other EPM engines generating cascading inputs. This would form a chain, a tree, or an unstrutured graph, combining a variable number of EPM engines.

Software implementation

For the user interface based external input, the complexity of the possibilities requires a relatively complex and dedicated set of widgets.