id
stringlengths
9
16
title
stringlengths
4
278
categories
stringlengths
5
104
abstract
stringlengths
6
4.09k
1402.2664
Network-Based Vertex Dissolution
cs.DM cs.DS cs.SI math.CO
We introduce a graph-theoretic vertex dissolution model that applies to a number of redistribution scenarios such as gerrymandering in political districting or work balancing in an online situation. The central aspect of our model is the deletion of certain vertices and the redistribution of their load to neighboring vertices in a completely balanced way. We investigate how the underlying graph structure, the knowledge of which vertices should be deleted, and the relation between old and new vertex loads influence the computational complexity of the underlying graph problems. Our results establish a clear borderline between tractable and intractable cases.
1402.2667
On Zeroth-Order Stochastic Convex Optimization via Random Walks
cs.LG stat.ML
We propose a method for zeroth order stochastic convex optimization that attains the suboptimality rate of $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(n^{7}T^{-1/2})$ after $T$ queries for a convex bounded function $f:{\mathbb R}^n\to{\mathbb R}$. The method is based on a random walk (the \emph{Ball Walk}) on the epigraph of the function. The randomized approach circumvents the problem of gradient estimation, and appears to be less sensitive to noisy function evaluations compared to noiseless zeroth order methods.
1402.2671
Aggregate Characterization of User Behavior in Twitter and Analysis of the Retweet Graph
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
Most previous analysis of Twitter user behavior is focused on individual information cascades and the social followers graph. We instead study aggregate user behavior and the retweet graph with a focus on quantitative descriptions. We find that the lifetime tweet distribution is a type-II discrete Weibull stemming from a power law hazard function, the tweet rate distribution, although asymptotically power law, exhibits a lognormal cutoff over finite sample intervals, and the inter-tweet interval distribution is power law with exponential cutoff. The retweet graph is small-world and scale-free, like the social graph, but is less disassortative and has much stronger clustering. These differences are consistent with it better capturing the real-world social relationships of and trust between users. Beyond just understanding and modeling human communication patterns and social networks, applications for alternative, decentralized microblogging systems-both predicting real-word performance and detecting spam-are discussed.
1402.2673
Real-Time Hand Shape Classification
cs.CV
The problem of hand shape classification is challenging since a hand is characterized by a large number of degrees of freedom. Numerous shape descriptors have been proposed and applied over the years to estimate and classify hand poses in reasonable time. In this paper we discuss our parallel framework for real-time hand shape classification applicable in real-time applications. We show how the number of gallery images influences the classification accuracy and execution time of the parallel algorithm. We present the speedup and efficiency analyses that prove the efficacy of the parallel implementation. Noteworthy, different methods can be used at each step of our parallel framework. Here, we combine the shape contexts with the appearance-based techniques to enhance the robustness of the algorithm and to increase the classification score. An extensive experimental study proves the superiority of the proposed approach over existing state-of-the-art methods.
1402.2676
Ranking via Robust Binary Classification and Parallel Parameter Estimation in Large-Scale Data
stat.ML cs.DC cs.LG stat.CO
We propose RoBiRank, a ranking algorithm that is motivated by observing a close connection between evaluation metrics for learning to rank and loss functions for robust classification. The algorithm shows a very competitive performance on standard benchmark datasets against other representative algorithms in the literature. On the other hand, in large scale problems where explicit feature vectors and scores are not given, our algorithm can be efficiently parallelized across a large number of machines; for a task that requires 386,133 x 49,824,519 pairwise interactions between items to be ranked, our algorithm finds solutions that are of dramatically higher quality than that can be found by a state-of-the-art competitor algorithm, given the same amount of wall-clock time for computation.
1402.2681
Packing and Padding: Coupled Multi-index for Accurate Image Retrieval
cs.CV
In Bag-of-Words (BoW) based image retrieval, the SIFT visual word has a low discriminative power, so false positive matches occur prevalently. Apart from the information loss during quantization, another cause is that the SIFT feature only describes the local gradient distribution. To address this problem, this paper proposes a coupled Multi-Index (c-MI) framework to perform feature fusion at indexing level. Basically, complementary features are coupled into a multi-dimensional inverted index. Each dimension of c-MI corresponds to one kind of feature, and the retrieval process votes for images similar in both SIFT and other feature spaces. Specifically, we exploit the fusion of local color feature into c-MI. While the precision of visual match is greatly enhanced, we adopt Multiple Assignment to improve recall. The joint cooperation of SIFT and color features significantly reduces the impact of false positive matches. Extensive experiments on several benchmark datasets demonstrate that c-MI improves the retrieval accuracy significantly, while consuming only half of the query time compared to the baseline. Importantly, we show that c-MI is well complementary to many prior techniques. Assembling these methods, we have obtained an mAP of 85.8% and N-S score of 3.85 on Holidays and Ukbench datasets, respectively, which compare favorably with the state-of-the-arts.
1402.2695
Visualizing Digital Collections
cs.DL cs.IR
Data visualizations can greatly enhance search in digital collections by providing information about the scope and context of a collection and allowing users to more easily browse and explore the contents. This article discusses the benefits of incorporating visualizations into digital collections based on the experiences of the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) in developing a user-friendly tool for searching and visualizing the project's complex set of historical documents. The paper concludes with a tutorial on using the free Library of Congress tool Viewshare to create visualizations based on real data from the CWIHP Digital Archive.
1402.2696
Information Based Complexity of Networks
nlin.AO cs.SI
Review article of various complexity measures of networks
1402.2699
On the Security of Trustee-based Social Authentications
cs.CR cs.SI
Recently, authenticating users with the help of their friends (i.e., trustee-based social authentication) has been shown to be a promising backup authentication mechanism. A user in this system is associated with a few trustees that were selected from the user's friends. When the user wants to regain access to the account, the service provider sends different verification codes to the user's trustees. The user must obtain at least k (i.e., recovery threshold) verification codes from the trustees before being directed to reset his or her password. In this paper, we provide the first systematic study about the security of trustee-based social authentications. Specifically, we first introduce a novel framework of attacks, which we call forest fire attacks. In these attacks, an attacker initially obtains a small number of compromised users, and then the attacker iteratively attacks the rest of users by exploiting trustee-based social authentications. Then, we construct a probabilistic model to formalize the threats of forest fire attacks and their costs for attackers. Moreover, we introduce various defense strategies. Finally, we apply our framework to extensively evaluate various concrete attack and defense strategies using three real-world social network datasets. Our results have strong implications for the design of more secure trustee-based social authentications.
1402.2704
Sex as Gibbs Sampling: a probability model of evolution
q-bio.PE cs.NE
We show that evolutionary computation can be implemented as standard Markov-chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) sampling. With some care, `genetic algorithms' can be constructed that are reversible Markov chains that satisfy detailed balance; it follows that the stationary distribution of populations is a Gibbs distribution in a simple factorised form. For some standard and popular nonparametric probability models, we exhibit Gibbs-sampling procedures that are plausible genetic algorithms. At mutation-selection equilibrium, a population of genomes is analogous to a sample from a Bayesian posterior, and the genomes are analogous to latent variables. We suggest this is a general, tractable, and insightful formulation of evolutionary computation in terms of standard machine learning concepts and techniques. In addition, we show that evolutionary processes in which selection acts by differences in fecundity are not reversible, and also that it is not possible to construct reversible evolutionary models in which each child is produced by only two parents.
1402.2707
Analysis of Non-Coherent Joint-Transmission Cooperation in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks
cs.IT math.IT
Base station (BS) cooperation is set to play a key role in managing interference in dense heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs). Non-coherent joint transmission (JT) is particularly appealing due to its low complexity, smaller overhead, and ability for load balancing. However, a general analysis of this technique is difficult mostly due to the lack of tractable models. This paper addresses this gap and presents a tractable model for analyzing non-coherent JT in HCNs, while incorporating key system parameters such as user-centric BS clustering and channel-dependent cooperation activation. Assuming all BSs of each tier follow a stationary Poisson point process, the coverage probability for non-coherent JT is derived. Using the developed model, it is shown that for small cooperative clusters of small-cell BSs, non-coherent JT by small cells provides spectral efficiency gains without significantly increasing cell load. Further, when cooperation is aggressively triggered intra-cluster frequency reuse within small cells is favorable over intra-cluster coordinated scheduling.
1402.2708
Game theoretic controller synthesis for multi-robot motion planning Part I : Trajectory based algorithms
cs.MA cs.GT cs.SY math.OC
We consider a class of multi-robot motion planning problems where each robot is associated with multiple objectives and decoupled task specifications. The problems are formulated as an open-loop non-cooperative differential game. A distributed anytime algorithm is proposed to compute a Nash equilibrium of the game. The following properties are proven: (i) the algorithm asymptotically converges to the set of Nash equilibrium; (ii) for scalar cost functionals, the price of stability equals one; (iii) for the worst case, the computational complexity and communication cost are linear in the robot number.
1402.2720
Noise Analysis for Lensless Compressive Imaging
cs.CV
We analyze the signal to noise ratio (SNR) in a recently proposed lensless compressive imaging architecture. The architecture consists of a sensor of a single detector element and an aperture assembly of an array of aperture elements, each of which has a programmable transmittance. This lensless compressive imaging architecture can be used in conjunction with compressive sensing to capture images in a compressed form of compressive measurements. In this paper, we perform noise analysis of this lensless compressive imaging architecture and compare it with pinhole aperture imaging and lens aperture imaging. We will show that the SNR in the lensless compressive imaging is independent of the image resolution, while that in either pinhole aperture imaging or lens aperture imaging decreases as the image resolution increases. Consequently, the SNR in the lensless compressive imaging can be much higher if the image resolution is large enough.
1402.2733
An efficient algorithm for the entropy rate of a hidden Markov model with unambiguous symbols
cs.IT math.IT
We demonstrate an efficient formula to compute the entropy rate $H(\mu)$ of a hidden Markov process with $q$ output symbols where at least one symbol is unambiguously received. Using an approximation to $H(\mu)$ to the first $N$ terms we give a $O(Nq^3$) algorithm to compute the entropy rate of the hidden Markov model. We use the algorithm to estimate the entropy rate when the parameters of the hidden Markov model are unknown.In the case of $q =2$ the process is the output of the Z-channel and we use this fact to give bounds on the capacity of the Gilbert channel.
1402.2735
Optimal Parameter Identification for Discrete Mechanical Systems with Application to Flexible Object Manipulation
cs.RO
We present a method for system identification of flexible objects by measuring forces and displacement during interaction with a manipulating arm. We model the object's structure and flexibility by a chain of rigid bodies connected by torsional springs. Unlike previous work, the proposed optimal control approach using variational integrators allows identification of closed loops, which include the robot arm itself. This allows using the resulting models for planning in configuration space of the robot. In order to solve the resulting problem efficiently, we develop a novel method for fast discrete-time adjoint-based gradient calculation. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated using full physics simulation in trep and using data recorded from a 7-DOF series elastic robot arm.
1402.2773
Noisy Gradient Descent Bit-Flip Decoding for LDPC Codes
cs.IT math.IT
A modified Gradient Descent Bit Flipping (GDBF) algorithm is proposed for decoding Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes on the binary-input additive white Gaussian noise channel. The new algorithm, called Noisy GDBF (NGDBF), introduces a random perturbation into each symbol metric at each iteration. The noise perturbation allows the algorithm to escape from undesirable local maxima, resulting in improved performance. A combination of heuristic improvements to the algorithm are proposed and evaluated. When the proposed heuristics are applied, NGDBF performs better than any previously reported GDBF variant, and comes within 0.5 dB of the belief propagation algorithm for several tested codes. Unlike other previous GDBF algorithms that provide an escape from local maxima, the proposed algorithm uses only local, fully parallelizable operations and does not require computing a global objective function or a sort over symbol metrics, making it highly efficient in comparison. The proposed NGDBF algorithm requires channel state information which must be obtained from a signal to noise ratio (SNR) estimator. Architectural details are presented for implementing the NGDBF algorithm. Complexity analysis and optimizations are also discussed.
1402.2793
Computing Agents for Decision Support Systems
cs.MA
In decision support systems, it is essential to get a candidate solution fast, even if it means resorting to an approximation. This constraint introduces a scalability requirement with regard to the kind of heuristics which can be used in such systems. As execution time is bounded, these algorithms need to give better results and scale up with additional computing resources instead of additional time. In this paper, we show how multi-agent systems can fulfil these requirements. We recall as an example the concept of Evolutionary Multi-Agent Systems, which combine evolutionary and agent computing paradigms. We describe several possible implementations and present experimental results demonstrating how additional resources improve the efficiency of such systems.
1402.2796
PR2: A Language Independent Unsupervised Tool for Personality Recognition from Text
cs.CL
We present PR2, a personality recognition system available online, that performs instance-based classification of Big5 personality types from unstructured text, using language-independent features. It has been tested on English and Italian, achieving performances up to f=.68.
1402.2807
Efficient Truss Maintenance in Evolving Networks
cs.DB cs.SI
Truss was proposed to study social network data represented by graphs. A k-truss of a graph is a cohesive subgraph, in which each edge is contained in at least k-2 triangles within the subgraph. While truss has been demonstrated as superior to model the close relationship in social networks and efficient algorithms for finding trusses have been extensively studied, very little attention has been paid to truss maintenance. However, most social networks are evolving networks. It may be infeasible to recompute trusses from scratch from time to time in order to find the up-to-date $k$-trusses in the evolving networks. In this paper, we discuss how to maintain trusses in a graph with dynamic updates. We first discuss a set of properties on maintaining trusses, then propose algorithms on maintaining trusses on edge deletions and insertions, finally, we discuss truss index maintenance. We test the proposed techniques on real datasets. The experiment results show the promise of our work.
1402.2826
Realtime Multilevel Crowd Tracking using Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles
cs.CV
We present a novel, realtime algorithm to compute the trajectory of each pedestrian in moderately dense crowd scenes. Our formulation is based on an adaptive particle filtering scheme that uses a multi-agent motion model based on velocity-obstacles, and takes into account local interactions as well as physical and personal constraints of each pedestrian. Our method dynamically changes the number of particles allocated to each pedestrian based on different confidence metrics. Additionally, we use a new high-definition crowd video dataset, which is used to evaluate the performance of different pedestrian tracking algorithms. This dataset consists of videos of indoor and outdoor scenes, recorded at different locations with 30-80 pedestrians. We highlight the performance benefits of our algorithm over prior techniques using this dataset. In practice, our algorithm can compute trajectories of tens of pedestrians on a multi-core desktop CPU at interactive rates (27-30 frames per second). To the best of our knowledge, our approach is 4-5 times faster than prior methods, which provide similar accuracy.
1402.2845
Efficient Localization of Discontinuities in Complex Computational Simulations
cs.CE
Surrogate models for computational simulations are input-output approximations that allow computationally intensive analyses, such as uncertainty propagation and inference, to be performed efficiently. When a simulation output does not depend smoothly on its inputs, the error and convergence rate of many approximation methods deteriorate substantially. This paper details a method for efficiently localizing discontinuities in the input parameter domain, so that the model output can be approximated as a piecewise smooth function. The approach comprises an initialization phase, which uses polynomial annihilation to assign function values to different regions and thus seed an automated labeling procedure, followed by a refinement phase that adaptively updates a kernel support vector machine representation of the separating surface via active learning. The overall approach avoids structured grids and exploits any available simplicity in the geometry of the separating surface, thus reducing the number of model evaluations required to localize the discontinuity. The method is illustrated on examples of up to eleven dimensions, including algebraic models and ODE/PDE systems, and demonstrates improved scaling and efficiency over other discontinuity localization approaches.
1402.2863
On the Randomized Kaczmarz Algorithm
cs.SY math.OC
The Randomized Kaczmarz Algorithm is a randomized method which aims at solving a consistent system of over determined linear equations. This note discusses how to find an optimized randomization scheme for this algorithm, which is related to the question raised by \cite{c2}. Illustrative experiments are conducted to support the findings.
1402.2864
Sparse Estimation From Noisy Observations of an Overdetermined Linear System
cs.SY stat.ML
This note studies a method for the efficient estimation of a finite number of unknown parameters from linear equations, which are perturbed by Gaussian noise. In case the unknown parameters have only few nonzero entries, the proposed estimator performs more efficiently than a traditional approach. The method consists of three steps: (1) a classical Least Squares Estimate (LSE), (2) the support is recovered through a Linear Programming (LP) optimization problem which can be computed using a soft-thresholding step, (3) a de-biasing step using a LSE on the estimated support set. The main contribution of this note is a formal derivation of an associated ORACLE property of the final estimate. That is, when the number of samples is large enough, the estimate is shown to equal the LSE based on the support of the {\em true} parameters.
1402.2871
Planning for Decentralized Control of Multiple Robots Under Uncertainty
cs.RO cs.AI cs.MA
We describe a probabilistic framework for synthesizing control policies for general multi-robot systems, given environment and sensor models and a cost function. Decentralized, partially observable Markov decision processes (Dec-POMDPs) are a general model of decision processes where a team of agents must cooperate to optimize some objective (specified by a shared reward or cost function) in the presence of uncertainty, but where communication limitations mean that the agents cannot share their state, so execution must proceed in a decentralized fashion. While Dec-POMDPs are typically intractable to solve for real-world problems, recent research on the use of macro-actions in Dec-POMDPs has significantly increased the size of problem that can be practically solved as a Dec-POMDP. We describe this general model, and show how, in contrast to most existing methods that are specialized to a particular problem class, it can synthesize control policies that use whatever opportunities for coordination are present in the problem, while balancing off uncertainty in outcomes, sensor information, and information about other agents. We use three variations on a warehouse task to show that a single planner of this type can generate cooperative behavior using task allocation, direct communication, and signaling, as appropriate.
1402.2892
Efficient Analysis of Pattern and Association Rule Mining Approaches
cs.DB
The process of data mining produces various patterns from a given data source. The most recognized data mining tasks are the process of discovering frequent itemsets, frequent sequential patterns, frequent sequential rules and frequent association rules. Numerous efficient algorithms have been proposed to do the above processes. Frequent pattern mining has been a focused topic in data mining research with a good number of references in literature and for that reason an important progress has been made, varying from performant algorithms for frequent itemset mining in transaction databases to complex algorithms, such as sequential pattern mining, structured pattern mining, correlation mining. Association Rule mining (ARM) is one of the utmost current data mining techniques designed to group objects together from large databases aiming to extract the interesting correlation and relation among huge amount of data. In this article, we provide a brief review and analysis of the current status of frequent pattern mining and discuss some promising research directions. Additionally, this paper includes a comparative study between the performance of the described approaches.
1402.2925
Modeling Switched Behavior with Hybrid Bond Graph: Application to a Tank system
cs.SY
Different approaches have been used in the development of system models. In addition, modeling and simulation approaches are essential for design, analysis, control, and diagnosis of complex systems. This work presents a Simulink model for systems with mixed continuous and discrete behaviors. The model simulated was developed using the bond graph methodology and we model hybrid systems using hybrid bond graphs (HBGs), that incorporates local switching functions that enable the reconfiguration of energy flow paths. This approach has been implemented as a software tool called the MOdeling and Transformation of HBGs for Simulation (MOTHS) tool suite which incorporates a model translator that create Simulink models. Simulation model of a three-tank system that includes a switching component was developed using the bond graph methodology, and MoTHS software were used to build a Simulink model of the dynamic behavior.
1402.2936
R-dimensional ESPRIT-type algorithms for strictly second-order non-circular sources and their performance analysis
cs.IT math.IT
High-resolution parameter estimation algorithms designed to exploit the prior knowledge about incident signals from strictly second-order (SO) non-circular (NC) sources allow for a lower estimation error and can resolve twice as many sources. In this paper, we derive the R-D NC Standard ESPRIT and the R-D NC Unitary ESPRIT algorithms that provide a significantly better performance compared to their original versions for arbitrary source signals. They are applicable to shift-invariant R-D antenna arrays and do not require a centrosymmetric array structure. Moreover, we present a first-order asymptotic performance analysis of the proposed algorithms, which is based on the error in the signal subspace estimate arising from the noise perturbation. The derived expressions for the resulting parameter estimation error are explicit in the noise realizations and asymptotic in the effective signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), i.e., the results become exact for either high SNRs or a large sample size. We also provide mean squared error (MSE) expressions, where only the assumptions of a zero mean and finite SO moments of the noise are required, but no assumptions about its statistics are necessary. As a main result, we analytically prove that the asymptotic performance of both R-D NC ESPRIT-type algorithms is identical in the high effective SNR regime. Finally, a case study shows that no improvement from strictly non-circular sources can be achieved in the special case of a single source.
1402.2941
Multispectral Palmprint Encoding and Recognition
cs.CV
Palmprints are emerging as a new entity in multi-modal biometrics for human identification and verification. Multispectral palmprint images captured in the visible and infrared spectrum not only contain the wrinkles and ridge structure of a palm, but also the underlying pattern of veins; making them a highly discriminating biometric identifier. In this paper, we propose a feature encoding scheme for robust and highly accurate representation and matching of multispectral palmprints. To facilitate compact storage of the feature, we design a binary hash table structure that allows for efficient matching in large databases. Comprehensive experiments for both identification and verification scenarios are performed on two public datasets -- one captured with a contact-based sensor (PolyU dataset), and the other with a contact-free sensor (CASIA dataset). Recognition results in various experimental setups show that the proposed method consistently outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods. Error rates achieved by our method (0.003% on PolyU and 0.2% on CASIA) are the lowest reported in literature on both dataset and clearly indicate the viability of palmprint as a reliable and promising biometric. All source codes are publicly available.
1402.2959
Local Optima Networks: A New Model of Combinatorial Fitness Landscapes
cs.NE cs.AI
This chapter overviews a recently introduced network-based model of combinatorial landscapes: Local Optima Networks (LON). The model compresses the information given by the whole search space into a smaller mathematical object that is a graph having as vertices the local optima and as edges the possible weighted transitions between them. Two definitions of edges have been proposed: basin-transition and escape-edges, which capture relevant topological features of the underlying search spaces. This network model brings a new set of metrics to characterize the structure of combinatorial landscapes, those associated with the science of complex networks. These metrics are described, and results are presented of local optima network extraction and analysis for two selected combinatorial landscapes: NK landscapes and the quadratic assignment problem. Network features are found to correlate with and even predict the performance of heuristic search algorithms operating on these problems.
1402.2996
Robot Training Under Conditions of Incomplete Information
cs.RO
The development of the works of the author about adaptive algorithms of teaching the robotic systems with the help of operator is described here. An operator is assumed to be an experience decision-maker and sane carrier of a target which the robotic system needs to achieve. The works characteristic is that the behavior of the robotic system is not specified a priori (as standard) but is formed adaptively based on the information about the situation and decisions made by a decision-maker. In this scheme the robotic system and the decision-maker can cooperate in the normal operation mode of the robotic system or in the time sharing mode with the possibility to plan actively the experiment on the robotic system. If the adaptive scheme is chosen, there are teaching stages and operating stages of the robotic system. At that the decision-maker can act slowly having the possibility to weigh the decision made. This way allows the robotic system reacting flexibly by switching between preset models and respond to the environment instability. The data integrity about the environment condition and about target preferences of an operator plays a very important role in robotic system work. The effective work of the robotic system depends on the effective settings of a preference model of the robotic system based on the decisions of the decision-maker and on the effective control. The influence of settings and control factors on the index of effectiveness of the robotic system is subject of this work. The uncertainty may be caused by the data flow limitation received by the operator on the stage of the model setting.
1402.3010
1-D and 2-D Parallel Algorithms for All-Pairs Similarity Problem
cs.IR cs.DC
All-pairs similarity problem asks to find all vector pairs in a set of vectors the similarities of which surpass a given similarity threshold, and it is a computational kernel in data mining and information retrieval for several tasks. We investigate the parallelization of a recent fast sequential algorithm. We propose effective 1-D and 2-D data distribution strategies that preserve the essential optimizations in the fast algorithm. 1-D parallel algorithms distribute either dimensions or vectors, whereas the 2-D parallel algorithm distributes data both ways. Additional contributions to the 1-D vertical distribution include a local pruning strategy to reduce the number of candidates, a recursive pruning algorithm, and block processing to reduce imbalance. The parallel algorithms were programmed in OCaml which affords much convenience. Our experiments indicate that the performance depends on the dataset, therefore a variety of parallelizations is useful.
1402.3022
To react or not to react? Intrinsic stochasticity of human control in virtual stick balancing
physics.bio-ph cs.SY nlin.AO q-bio.NC
Understanding how humans control unstable systems is central to many research problems, with applications ranging from quiet standing to aircraft landing. Increasingly much evidence appears in favor of event-driven control hypothesis: human operators only start actively controlling the system when the discrepancy between the current and desired system states becomes large enough. The event-driven models based on the concept of threshold can explain many features of the experimentally observed dynamics. However, much still remains unclear about the dynamics of human-controlled systems, which likely indicates that humans employ more intricate control mechanisms. The present paper argues that control activation in humans may be not threshold-driven, but instead intrinsically stochastic, noise-driven. Specifically, we suggest that control activation stems from stochastic interplay between the operator's need to keep the controlled system near the goal state on one hand and the tendency to postpone interrupting the system dynamics on the other hand. We propose a model capturing this interplay and show that it matches the experimental data on human balancing of virtual overdamped stick. Our results illuminate that the noise-driven activation mechanism plays a crucial role at least in the considered task, and, hypothetically, in a broad range of human-controlled processes.
1402.3032
Regularization for Multiple Kernel Learning via Sum-Product Networks
stat.ML cs.LG
In this paper, we are interested in constructing general graph-based regularizers for multiple kernel learning (MKL) given a structure which is used to describe the way of combining basis kernels. Such structures are represented by sum-product networks (SPNs) in our method. Accordingly we propose a new convex regularization method for MLK based on a path-dependent kernel weighting function which encodes the entire SPN structure in our method. Under certain conditions and from the view of probability, this function can be considered to follow multinomial distributions over the weights associated with product nodes in SPNs. We also analyze the convexity of our regularizer and the complexity of our induced classifiers, and further propose an efficient wrapper algorithm to optimize our formulation. In our experiments, we apply our method to ......
1402.3040
Event Structure of Transitive Verb: A MARVS perspective
cs.CL
Module-Attribute Representation of Verbal Semantics (MARVS) is a theory of the representation of verbal semantics that is based on Mandarin Chinese data (Huang et al. 2000). In the MARVS theory, there are two different types of modules: Event Structure Modules and Role Modules. There are also two sets of attributes: Event-Internal Attributes and Role-Internal Attributes, which are linked to the Event Structure Module and the Role Module, respectively. In this study, we focus on four transitive verbs as chi1(eat), wan2(play), huan4(change) and shao1(burn) and explore their event structures by the MARVS theory.
1402.3044
Finding a Collective Set of Items: From Proportional Multirepresentation to Group Recommendation
cs.GT cs.AI cs.MA
We consider the following problem: There is a set of items (e.g., movies) and a group of agents (e.g., passengers on a plane); each agent has some intrinsic utility for each of the items. Our goal is to pick a set of $K$ items that maximize the total derived utility of all the agents (i.e., in our example we are to pick $K$ movies that we put on the plane's entertainment system). However, the actual utility that an agent derives from a given item is only a fraction of its intrinsic one, and this fraction depends on how the agent ranks the item among the chosen, available, ones. We provide a formal specification of the model and provide concrete examples and settings where it is applicable. We show that the problem is hard in general, but we show a number of tractability results for its natural special cases.
1402.3067
A Bayesian Characterization of Relative Entropy
cs.IT math-ph math.IT math.MP math.PR quant-ph
We give a new characterization of relative entropy, also known as the Kullback-Leibler divergence. We use a number of interesting categories related to probability theory. In particular, we consider a category FinStat where an object is a finite set equipped with a probability distribution, while a morphism is a measure-preserving function $f: X \to Y$ together with a stochastic right inverse $s: Y \to X$. The function $f$ can be thought of as a measurement process, while s provides a hypothesis about the state of the measured system given the result of a measurement. Given this data we can define the entropy of the probability distribution on $X$ relative to the "prior" given by pushing the probability distribution on $Y$ forwards along $s$. We say that $s$ is "optimal" if these distributions agree. We show that any convex linear, lower semicontinuous functor from FinStat to the additive monoid $[0,\infty]$ which vanishes when $s$ is optimal must be a scalar multiple of this relative entropy. Our proof is independent of all earlier characterizations, but inspired by the work of Petz.
1402.3070
Squeezing bottlenecks: exploring the limits of autoencoder semantic representation capabilities
cs.IR cs.LG stat.ML
We present a comprehensive study on the use of autoencoders for modelling text data, in which (differently from previous studies) we focus our attention on the following issues: i) we explore the suitability of two different models bDA and rsDA for constructing deep autoencoders for text data at the sentence level; ii) we propose and evaluate two novel metrics for better assessing the text-reconstruction capabilities of autoencoders; and iii) we propose an automatic method to find the critical bottleneck dimensionality for text language representations (below which structural information is lost).
1402.3072
Community Detection via Random and Adaptive Sampling
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
In this paper, we consider networks consisting of a finite number of non-overlapping communities. To extract these communities, the interaction between pairs of nodes may be sampled from a large available data set, which allows a given node pair to be sampled several times. When a node pair is sampled, the observed outcome is a binary random variable, equal to 1 if nodes interact and to 0 otherwise. The outcome is more likely to be positive if nodes belong to the same communities. For a given budget of node pair samples or observations, we wish to jointly design a sampling strategy (the sequence of sampled node pairs) and a clustering algorithm that recover the hidden communities with the highest possible accuracy. We consider both non-adaptive and adaptive sampling strategies, and for both classes of strategies, we derive fundamental performance limits satisfied by any sampling and clustering algorithm. In particular, we provide necessary conditions for the existence of algorithms recovering the communities accurately as the network size grows large. We also devise simple algorithms that accurately reconstruct the communities when this is at all possible, hence proving that the proposed necessary conditions for accurate community detection are also sufficient. The classical problem of community detection in the stochastic block model can be seen as a particular instance of the problems consider here. But our framework covers more general scenarios where the sequence of sampled node pairs can be designed in an adaptive manner. The paper provides new results for the stochastic block model, and extends the analysis to the case of adaptive sampling.
1402.3074
Scheduling Advantages of Network Coded Storage in Point-to-Multipoint Networks
cs.IT cs.NI math.IT
We consider scheduling strategies for point-to-multipoint (PMP) storage area networks (SANs) that use network coded storage (NCS). In particular, we present a simple SAN system model, two server scheduling algorithms for PMP networks, and analytical expressions for internal and external blocking probability. We point to select scheduling advantages in NCS systems under normal operating conditions, where content requests can be temporarily denied owing to finite system capacity from drive I/O access or storage redundancy limitations. NCS can lead to improvements in throughput and blocking probability due to increased immediate scheduling options, and complements other well documented NCS advantages such as regeneration, and can be used as a guide for future storage system design.
1402.3080
Software Requirement Specification Using Reverse Speech Technology
cs.CL cs.SD
Speech analysis had been taken to a new level with the discovery of Reverse Speech (RS). RS is the discovery of hidden messages, referred as reversals, in normal speech. Works are in progress for exploiting the relevance of RS in different real world applications such as investigation, medical field etc. In this paper we represent an innovative method for preparing a reliable Software Requirement Specification (SRS) document with the help of reverse speech. As SRS act as the backbone for the successful completion of any project, a reliable method is needed to overcome the inconsistencies. Using RS such a reliable method for SRS documentation was developed.
1402.3096
Relations on FP-Soft Sets Applied to Decision Making Problems
math.LO cs.AI
In this work, we first define relations on the fuzzy parametrized soft sets and study their properties. We also give a decision making method based on these relations. In approximate reasoning, relations on the fuzzy parametrized soft sets have shown to be of a primordial importance. Finally, the method is successfully applied to a problems that contain uncertainties.
1402.3119
Cellular Interference Alignment
cs.IT math.IT
Interference alignment promises that, in Gaussian interference channels, each link can support half of a degree of freedom (DoF) per pair of transmit-receive antennas. However, in general, this result requires to precode the data bearing signals over a signal space of asymptotically large diversity, e.g., over an infinite number of dimensions for time-frequency varying fading channels, or over an infinite number of rationally independent signal levels, in the case of time-frequency invariant channels. In this work we consider a wireless cellular system scenario where the promised optimal DoFs are achieved with linear precoding in one-shot (i.e., over a single time-frequency slot). We focus on the uplink of a symmetric cellular system, where each cell is split into three sectors with orthogonal intra-sector multiple access. In our model, interference is "local", i.e., it is due to transmitters in neighboring cells only. We consider a message-passing backhaul network architecture, in which nearby sectors can exchange already decoded messages and propose an alignment solution that can achieve the optimal DoFs. To avoid signaling schemes relying on the strength of interference, we further introduce the notion of \emph{topologically robust} schemes, which are able to guarantee a minimum rate (or DoFs) irrespectively of the strength of the interfering links. Towards this end, we design an alignment scheme which is topologically robust and still achieves the same optimum DoFs.
1402.3125
Information Theoretical Cryptogenography
cs.CR cs.IT math.IT
We consider problems where $n$ people are communicating and a random subset of them is trying to leak information, without making it clear who are leaking the information. We introduce a measure of suspicion, and show that the amount of leaked information will always be bounded by the expected increase in suspicion, and that this bound is tight. We ask the question: Suppose a large number of people have some information they want to leak, but they want to ensure that after the communication, an observer will assign probability at most $c$ to the events that each of them is trying to leak the information. How much information can they reliably leak, per person who is leaking? We show that the answer is $- \frac{\log(1-c)}{c} -\log(e)$ bits.
1402.3138
Social Networks and the Choices People Make
cs.SI
Social marketing is becoming increasingly important in contemporary business. Central to social marketing is quantifying how consumers choose between alternatives and how they influence each other. This work considers a new but simple multinomial choice model for multiple agents connected in a recommendation network based on the explicit modeling of choice adoption behavior. Efficiently computable closed-form solutions, absent from analyses of threshold/cascade models, are obtained together with insights on how the network affects aggregate decision making. A stylized "brand ambassador" selection problem is posed to model targeting in social marketing. Therein, it is shown that a greedy selection strategy leads to solutions achieving at least $1-1/e$ of the optimal value. In an extended example of imposing exogenous controls, a pricing problem is considered wherein it is shown that the single player profit optimization problem is concave, implying the existence of pure strategy equilibria for the associated pricing game.
1402.3144
A Robust Ensemble Approach to Learn From Positive and Unlabeled Data Using SVM Base Models
stat.ML cs.LG
We present a novel approach to learn binary classifiers when only positive and unlabeled instances are available (PU learning). This problem is routinely cast as a supervised task with label noise in the negative set. We use an ensemble of SVM models trained on bootstrap resamples of the training data for increased robustness against label noise. The approach can be considered in a bagging framework which provides an intuitive explanation for its mechanics in a semi-supervised setting. We compared our method to state-of-the-art approaches in simulations using multiple public benchmark data sets. The included benchmark comprises three settings with increasing label noise: (i) fully supervised, (ii) PU learning and (iii) PU learning with false positives. Our approach shows a marginal improvement over existing methods in the second setting and a significant improvement in the third.
1402.3173
Homogenization of coupled heat and moisture transport in masonry structures including interfaces
cs.CE
Homogenization of a simultaneous heat and moisture flow in a masonry wall is presented in this paper. The principle objective is to examine an impact of the assumed imperfect hydraulic contact on the resulting homogenized properties. Such a contact is characterized by a certain mismatching resistance allowing us to represent a discontinuous evolution of temperature and moisture fields across the interface, which is in general attributed to discontinuous capillary pressures caused by different pore size distributions of the adjacent porous materials. In achieving this, two particular laboratory experiments were performed to provide distributions of temperature and relative humidity in a sample of the masonry wall, which in turn served to extract the corresponding jumps and subsequently to obtain the required interface transition parameters by matching numerical predictions and experimental results. The results suggest a low importance of accounting for imperfect hydraulic contact for the derivation of macroscopic homogenized properties. On the other hand, they strongly support the need for a fully coupled multi-scale analysis due to significant dependence of the homogenized properties on actual moisture gradients and corresponding values of both macroscopic temperature and relative humidity.
1402.3174
Modeling of Degradation Processes in Historical Mortars
cs.CE
The aim of presented paper is modeling of degradation processes in historical mortars exposed to moisture impact during freezing. Internal damage caused by ice crystallization in pores is one of the most important factors limiting the service life of historical structures. Coupling the transport processes with the mechanical part will allow us to address the impact of moisture on the durability, strength and stiffness of mortars. This should be accomplished with the help of a complex thermo-hygro-mechanical model representing one of the prime objectives of this work. The proposed formulation is based on the extension of the classical poroelasticity models with the damage mechanics. An example of two-dimensional moisture transport in the environment with temperature below freezing point is presented to support the theoretical derivations.
1402.3175
Information-Geometric Equivalence of Transportation Polytopes
cs.IT math.CO math.IT
This paper deals with transportation polytopes in the probability simplex (that is, sets of categorical bivariate probability distributions with prescribed marginals). Information projections between such polytopes are studied, and a sufficient condition is described under which these mappings are homeomorphisms.
1402.3193
Characterizations and Kullback-Leibler Divergence of Gompertz Distributions
cs.IT math.IT
In this note, we characterize the Gompertz distribution in terms of extreme value distributions and point out that it implicitly models the interplay of two antagonistic growth processes. In addition, we derive a closed form expressions for the Kullback-Leibler divergence between two Gompertz Distributions. Although the latter is rather easy to obtain, it seems not to have been widely reported before.
1402.3210
On the Convergence of Approximate Message Passing with Arbitrary Matrices
cs.IT math.IT
Approximate message passing (AMP) methods and their variants have attracted considerable recent attention for the problem of estimating a random vector $\mathbf{x}$ observed through a linear transform $\mathbf{A}$. In the case of large i.i.d. zero-mean Gaussian $\mathbf{A}$, the methods exhibit fast convergence with precise analytic characterizations on the algorithm behavior. However, the convergence of AMP under general transforms $\mathbf{A}$ is not fully understood. In this paper, we provide sufficient conditions for the convergence of a damped version of the generalized AMP (GAMP) algorithm in the case of quadratic cost functions (i.e., Gaussian likelihood and prior). It is shown that, with sufficient damping, the algorithm is guaranteed to converge, although the amount of damping grows with peak-to-average ratio of the squared singular values of the transforms $\mathbf{A}$. This result explains the good performance of AMP on i.i.d. Gaussian transforms $\mathbf{A}$, but also their difficulties with ill-conditioned or non-zero-mean transforms $\mathbf{A}$. A related sufficient condition is then derived for the local stability of the damped GAMP method under general cost functions, assuming certain strict convexity conditions.
1402.3213
Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Robotics Challenges and Vision (RCV2013)
cs.RO
Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Robotics Challenges and Vision (RCV2013)
1402.3215
Analysis of Compressed Sensing with Spatially-Coupled Orthogonal Matrices
cs.IT math.IT
Recent development in compressed sensing (CS) has revealed that the use of a special design of measurement matrix, namely the spatially-coupled matrix, can achieve the information-theoretic limit of CS. In this paper, we consider the measurement matrix which consists of the spatially-coupled \emph{orthogonal} matrices. One example of such matrices are the randomly selected discrete Fourier transform (DFT) matrices. Such selection enjoys a less memory complexity and a faster multiplication procedure. Our contributions are the replica calculations to find the mean-square-error (MSE) of the Bayes-optimal reconstruction for such setup. We illustrate that the reconstruction thresholds under the spatially-coupled orthogonal and Gaussian ensembles are quite different especially in the noisy cases. In particular, the spatially coupled orthogonal matrices achieve the faster convergence rate, the lower measurement rate, and the reduced MSE.
1402.3225
Market-Based Power Allocation for a Differentially Priced FDMA System
cs.IT cs.GT cs.NI math.IT
In this paper, we study the problem of differential pricing and QoS assignment by a broadband data provider. In our model, the broadband data provider decides on the power allocated to an end-user not only based on parameters of the transmission medium, but also based on the price the user is willing to pay. In addition, end-users bid the price that they are willing to pay to the BTS based on their channel condition, the throughput they require, and their belief about other users' parameters. We will characterize the optimum power allocation by the BTS which turns out to be a modification of the solution to the well-known water-filling problem. We also characterize the optimum bidding strategy of end-users using the belief of each user about the cell condition.
1402.3247
Learning-Based Optimization of Cache Content in a Small Cell Base Station
cs.IT math.IT
Optimal cache content placement in a wireless small cell base station (sBS) with limited backhaul capacity is studied. The sBS has a large cache memory and provides content-level selective offloading by delivering high data rate contents to users in its coverage area. The goal of the sBS content controller (CC) is to store the most popular contents in the sBS cache memory such that the maximum amount of data can be fetched directly form the sBS, not relying on the limited backhaul resources during peak traffic periods. If the popularity profile is known in advance, the problem reduces to a knapsack problem. However, it is assumed in this work that, the popularity profile of the files is not known by the CC, and it can only observe the instantaneous demand for the cached content. Hence, the cache content placement is optimised based on the demand history. By refreshing the cache content at regular time intervals, the CC tries to learn the popularity profile, while exploiting the limited cache capacity in the best way possible. Three algorithms are studied for this cache content placement problem, leading to different exploitation-exploration trade-offs. We provide extensive numerical simulations in order to study the time-evolution of these algorithms, and the impact of the system parameters, such as the number of files, the number of users, the cache size, and the skewness of the popularity profile, on the performance. It is shown that the proposed algorithms quickly learn the popularity profile for a wide range of system parameters.
1402.3261
Hand-Eye and Robot-World Calibration by Global Polynomial Optimization
cs.CV math.OC
The need to relate measurements made by a camera to a different known coordinate system arises in many engineering applications. Historically, it appeared for the first time in the connection with cameras mounted on robotic systems. This problem is commonly known as hand-eye calibration. In this paper, we present several formulations of hand-eye calibration that lead to multivariate polynomial optimization problems. We show that the method of convex linear matrix inequality (LMI) relaxations can be used to effectively solve these problems and to obtain globally optimal solutions. Further, we show that the same approach can be used for the simultaneous hand-eye and robot-world calibration. Finally, we validate the proposed solutions using both synthetic and real datasets.
1402.3264
Polynomial Time Attack on Wild McEliece Over Quadratic Extensions
cs.CR cs.IT math.IT math.NT
We present a polynomial time structural attack against the McEliece system based on Wild Goppa codes from a quadratic finite field extension. This attack uses the fact that such codes can be distinguished from random codes to compute some filtration, that is to say a family of nested subcodes which will reveal their secret algebraic description.
1402.3281
Partitioning Complex Networks via Size-constrained Clustering
cs.DC cs.DS cs.SI
The most commonly used method to tackle the graph partitioning problem in practice is the multilevel approach. During a coarsening phase, a multilevel graph partitioning algorithm reduces the graph size by iteratively contracting nodes and edges until the graph is small enough to be partitioned by some other algorithm. A partition of the input graph is then constructed by successively transferring the solution to the next finer graph and applying a local search algorithm to improve the current solution. In this paper, we describe a novel approach to partition graphs effectively especially if the networks have a highly irregular structure. More precisely, our algorithm provides graph coarsening by iteratively contracting size-constrained clusterings that are computed using a label propagation algorithm. The same algorithm that provides the size-constrained clusterings can also be used during uncoarsening as a fast and simple local search algorithm. Depending on the algorithm's configuration, we are able to compute partitions of very high quality outperforming all competitors, or partitions that are comparable to the best competitor in terms of quality, hMetis, while being nearly an order of magnitude faster on average. The fastest configuration partitions the largest graph available to us with 3.3 billion edges using a single machine in about ten minutes while cutting less than half of the edges than the fastest competitor, kMetis.
1402.3288
Two Steps to Obfuscation
cs.SI physics.soc-ph
This note addresses the historical antecedents of the 1998 PageRank measure of centrality. An identity relation links it to 1990-1991 models of Friedkin and Johnsen.
1402.3301
Privacy and National Security Issues in Social Networks: The Challenges
cs.SI cs.CY
Online social networks are becoming a major growth point of the internet, as individuals, companies and governments constantly desire to interact with one another, the ability of the internet to deliver this networking capabilities grows stronger. In this paper, we looked at the structure and components of the member profile and the challenges of privacy issues faced by individuals and governments that participate in social networking. We also looked at how it can be used to distort national security, how it became the new weapons of mass mobilization and also how social networks have became the rallying forces for revolutions and social justice.
1402.3314
Distributed synthesis for acyclic architectures
cs.LO cs.SY
The distributed synthesis problem is about constructing cor- rect distributed systems, i.e., systems that satisfy a given specification. We consider a slightly more general problem of distributed control, where the goal is to restrict the behavior of a given distributed system in order to satisfy the specification. Our systems are finite state machines that communicate via rendez-vous (Zielonka automata). We show decidability of the synthesis problem for all omega-regular local specifications, under the restriction that the communication graph of the system is acyclic. This result extends a previous decidability result for a restricted form of local reachability specifications.
1402.3317
Multiple Window Moving Horizon Estimation
cs.SY
Long horizon lengths in Moving Horizon Estimation are desirable to reach the performance limits of the full information estimator. However, the conventional MHE technique suffers from a number of deficiencies in this respect. First, the problem complexity scales at least linearly with the horizon length selected, which restrains from selecting long horizons if computational limitations are present. Second, there is no monitoring of constraint activity/inactivity which results in conducting redundant constrained minimizations even when no constraints are active. In this study we develop a Multiple-Window Moving Horizon Estimation strategy (MW-MHE) that exploits constraint inactivity to reduce the problem size in long horizon estimation problems. The arrival cost is approximated using the unconstrained full information estimator arrival cost to guarantee stability of the technique. A new horizon length selection criteria is developed based on maximum sensitivity between remote states in time. The development will be in terms of general causal descriptor systems, which includes the standard state space representation as a special case. The potential of the new estimation algorithm will be demonstrated with an example showing a significant reduction in both computation time and numerical errors compared to conventional MHE.
1402.3329
Differential Privacy: An Economic Method for Choosing Epsilon
cs.DB
Differential privacy is becoming a gold standard for privacy research; it offers a guaranteed bound on loss of privacy due to release of query results, even under worst-case assumptions. The theory of differential privacy is an active research area, and there are now differentially private algorithms for a wide range of interesting problems. However, the question of when differential privacy works in practice has received relatively little attention. In particular, there is still no rigorous method for choosing the key parameter $\epsilon$, which controls the crucial tradeoff between the strength of the privacy guarantee and the accuracy of the published results. In this paper, we examine the role that these parameters play in concrete applications, identifying the key questions that must be addressed when choosing specific values. This choice requires balancing the interests of two different parties: the data analyst and the prospective participant, who must decide whether to allow their data to be included in the analysis. We propose a simple model that expresses this balance as formulas over a handful of parameters, and we use our model to choose $\epsilon$ on a series of simple statistical studies. We also explore a surprising insight: in some circumstances, a differentially private study can be more accurate than a non-private study for the same cost, under our model. Finally, we discuss the simplifying assumptions in our model and outline a research agenda for possible refinements.
1402.3331
L-infinity Norm Design of Linear-phase Robust Broadband Beamformers using Constrained Optimization
cs.SY cs.IT math.IT
A new method for the design of linear-phase robust far-field broadband beamformers using constrained optimization is proposed. In the method, the maximum passband ripple and minimum stopband attenuation are ensured to be within prescribed levels, while at the same time maintaining a good linear-phase characteristic at a prescribed group delay in the passband. Since the beamformer is intended primarily for small-sized microphone arrays where the microphone spacing is small relative to the wavelength at low frequencies, the beamformer can become highly sensitive to spatial white noise and array imperfections if a direct minimization of the error is performed. Therefore, to limit the sensitivity of the beamformer the optimization is carried out by constraining a sensitivity parameter, namely, the white noise gain (WNG) to be above prescribed levels across the frequency band. Two novel design variants have been developed. The first variant is formulated as a convex optimization problem where the maximum error in the passband is minimized, while the second variant is formulated as an iterative optimization problem and has the advantage of significantly improving the linear-phase characteristics of the beamformer under any prescribed group delay or linear-array configuration. In the second variant, the passband group-delay deviation is minimized while ensuring that the maximum passband ripple and stopband attenuation are within prescribed levels. To reduce the computational effort in carrying out the optimization, a nonuniform variable sampling approach over the frequency and angular dimensions is used to compute the required parameters. Experiment results show that beamformers designed using the proposed methods have much smaller passband group-delay deviation for similar passband ripple and stopband attenuation than a modified version of an existing method.
1402.3337
Zero-bias autoencoders and the benefits of co-adapting features
stat.ML cs.CV cs.LG cs.NE
Regularized training of an autoencoder typically results in hidden unit biases that take on large negative values. We show that negative biases are a natural result of using a hidden layer whose responsibility is to both represent the input data and act as a selection mechanism that ensures sparsity of the representation. We then show that negative biases impede the learning of data distributions whose intrinsic dimensionality is high. We also propose a new activation function that decouples the two roles of the hidden layer and that allows us to learn representations on data with very high intrinsic dimensionality, where standard autoencoders typically fail. Since the decoupled activation function acts like an implicit regularizer, the model can be trained by minimizing the reconstruction error of training data, without requiring any additional regularization.
1402.3344
Intrinsically Motivated Learning of Visual Motion Perception and Smooth Pursuit
cs.CV q-bio.NC
We extend the framework of efficient coding, which has been used to model the development of sensory processing in isolation, to model the development of the perception/action cycle. Our extension combines sparse coding and reinforcement learning so that sensory processing and behavior co-develop to optimize a shared intrinsic motivational signal: the fidelity of the neural encoding of the sensory input under resource constraints. Applying this framework to a model system consisting of an active eye behaving in a time varying environment, we find that this generic principle leads to the simultaneous development of both smooth pursuit behavior and model neurons whose properties are similar to those of primary visual cortical neurons selective for different directions of visual motion. We suggest that this general principle may form the basis for a unified and integrated explanation of many perception/action loops.
1402.3346
Geometry and Expressive Power of Conditional Restricted Boltzmann Machines
cs.NE cs.LG stat.ML
Conditional restricted Boltzmann machines are undirected stochastic neural networks with a layer of input and output units connected bipartitely to a layer of hidden units. These networks define models of conditional probability distributions on the states of the output units given the states of the input units, parametrized by interaction weights and biases. We address the representational power of these models, proving results their ability to represent conditional Markov random fields and conditional distributions with restricted supports, the minimal size of universal approximators, the maximal model approximation errors, and on the dimension of the set of representable conditional distributions. We contribute new tools for investigating conditional probability models, which allow us to improve the results that can be derived from existing work on restricted Boltzmann machine probability models.
1402.3352
Improved Design Method for Nearly Linear-Phase IIR Filters Using Constrained Optimization
cs.SY
A new optimization method for the design of nearly linear-phase IIR digital filters that satisfy prescribed specifications is proposed. The group-delay deviation is minimized under the constraint that the passband ripple and stopband attenuation are within the prescribed specifications and either a prescribed or an optimized group delay can be achieved. By representing the filter in terms of a cascade of second-order sections, a non-restrictive stability constraint characterized by a set of linear inequality constraints can be incorporated in the optimization algorithm. An additional feature of the method, which is very useful in certain applications, is that it provides the capability of constraining the maximum gain in transition bands to be below a prescribed level. Experimental results show that filters designed using the proposed method have much lower group-delay deviation for the same passband ripple and stopband attenuation when compared with corresponding filters designed with several state-of-the-art competing methods.
1402.3364
Metric tree-like structures in real-life networks: an empirical study
cs.SI cs.DS
Based on solid theoretical foundations, we present strong evidences that a number of real-life networks, taken from different domains like Internet measurements, biological data, web graphs, social and collaboration networks, exhibit tree-like structures from a metric point of view. We investigate few graph parameters, namely, the tree-distortion and the tree-stretch, the tree-length and the tree-breadth, the Gromov's hyperbolicity, the cluster-diameter and the cluster-radius in a layering partition of a graph, which capture and quantify this phenomenon of being metrically close to a tree. By bringing all those parameters together, we not only provide efficient means for detecting such metric tree-like structures in large-scale networks but also show how such structures can be used, for example, to efficiently and compactly encode approximate distance and almost shortest path information and to fast and accurately estimate diameters and radii of those networks. Estimating the diameter and the radius of a graph or distances between its arbitrary vertices are fundamental primitives in many data and graph mining algorithms.
1402.3371
An evaluative baseline for geo-semantic relatedness and similarity
cs.CL
In geographic information science and semantics, the computation of semantic similarity is widely recognised as key to supporting a vast number of tasks in information integration and retrieval. By contrast, the role of geo-semantic relatedness has been largely ignored. In natural language processing, semantic relatedness is often confused with the more specific semantic similarity. In this article, we discuss a notion of geo-semantic relatedness based on Lehrer's semantic fields, and we compare it with geo-semantic similarity. We then describe and validate the Geo Relatedness and Similarity Dataset (GeReSiD), a new open dataset designed to evaluate computational measures of geo-semantic relatedness and similarity. This dataset is larger than existing datasets of this kind, and includes 97 geographic terms combined into 50 term pairs rated by 203 human subjects. GeReSiD is available online and can be used as an evaluation baseline to determine empirically to what degree a given computational model approximates geo-semantic relatedness and similarity.
1402.3382
Machine Learning of Phonologically Conditioned Noun Declensions For Tamil Morphological Generators
cs.CL
This paper presents machine learning solutions to a practical problem of Natural Language Generation (NLG), particularly the word formation in agglutinative languages like Tamil, in a supervised manner. The morphological generator is an important component of Natural Language Processing in Artificial Intelligence. It generates word forms given a root and affixes. The morphophonemic changes like addition, deletion, alternation etc., occur when two or more morphemes or words joined together. The Sandhi rules should be explicitly specified in the rule based morphological analyzers and generators. In machine learning framework, these rules can be learned automatically by the system from the training samples and subsequently be applied for new inputs. In this paper we proposed the machine learning models which learn the morphophonemic rules for noun declensions from the given training data. These models are trained to learn sandhi rules using various learning algorithms and the performance of those algorithms are presented. From this we conclude that machine learning of morphological processing such as word form generation can be successfully learned in a supervised manner, without explicit description of rules. The performance of Decision trees and Bayesian machine learning algorithms on noun declensions are discussed.
1402.3384
A Minimax Distortion View of Differentially Private Query Release
cs.CR cs.DB cs.IT math.IT
We consider the problem of differentially private query release through a synthetic database approach. Departing from the existing approaches that require the query set to be specified in advance, we advocate to devise query-set independent mechanisms, with an ambitious goal of providing accurate answers, while meeting the privacy constraints, for all queries in a general query class. Specifically, a differentially private mechanism is constructed to "encode" rich stochastic structure into the synthetic database, and "customized" companion estimators are then derived to provide accurate answers by making use of all available information, including the mechanism (which is public information) and the query functions. Accordingly, the distortion under the best of this kind of mechanisms at the worst-case query in a general query class, so called the minimax distortion, provides a fundamental characterization of differentially private query release. For the general class of statistical queries, we prove that with the squared-error distortion measure, the minimax distortion is $O(1/n)$ by deriving asymptotically tight upper and lower bounds in the regime that the database size $n$ goes to infinity. The upper bound is achievable by a mechanism $\mathcal{E}$ and its corresponding companion estimators, which points directly to the feasibility of the proposed approach in large databases. We further evaluate the mechanism $\mathcal{E}$ and the companion estimators through experiments on real datasets from Netflix and Facebook. Experimental results show improvement over the state-of-art MWEM algorithm and verify the scaling behavior $O(1/n)$ of the minimax distortion.
1402.3392
Interleaved entropy coders
cs.IT math.IT
The ANS family of arithmetic coders developed by Jarek Duda has the unique property that encoder and decoder are completely symmetric in the sense that a decoder reading bits will be in the exact same state that the encoder was in when writing those bits---all "buffering" of information is explicitly part of the coder state and identical between encoder and decoder. As a consequence, the output from multiple ABS/ANS coders can be interleaved into the same bitstream without any additional metadata. This allows for very efficient encoding and decoding on CPUs supporting superscalar execution or SIMD instructions, as well as GPU implementations. We also show how interleaving without additional metadata can be implemented for any entropy coder, at some increase in encoder complexity.
1402.3405
Authorship Analysis based on Data Compression
cs.CL cs.DL cs.IR stat.ML
This paper proposes to perform authorship analysis using the Fast Compression Distance (FCD), a similarity measure based on compression with dictionaries directly extracted from the written texts. The FCD computes a similarity between two documents through an effective binary search on the intersection set between the two related dictionaries. In the reported experiments the proposed method is applied to documents which are heterogeneous in style, written in five different languages and coming from different historical periods. Results are comparable to the state of the art and outperform traditional compression-based methods.
1402.3427
Indian Buffet Process Deep Generative Models for Semi-Supervised Classification
cs.LG
Deep generative models (DGMs) have brought about a major breakthrough, as well as renewed interest, in generative latent variable models. However, DGMs do not allow for performing data-driven inference of the number of latent features needed to represent the observed data. Traditional linear formulations address this issue by resorting to tools from the field of nonparametric statistics. Indeed, linear latent variable models imposed an Indian Buffet Process (IBP) prior have been extensively studied by the machine learning community; inference for such models can been performed either via exact sampling or via approximate variational techniques. Based on this inspiration, in this paper we examine whether similar ideas from the field of Bayesian nonparametrics can be utilized in the context of modern DGMs in order to address the latent variable dimensionality inference problem. To this end, we propose a novel DGM formulation, based on the imposition of an IBP prior. We devise an efficient Black-Box Variational inference algorithm for our model, and exhibit its efficacy in a number of semi-supervised classification experiments. In all cases, we use popular benchmark datasets, and compare to state-of-the-art DGMs.
1402.3435
Generalized Huffman Coding for Binary Trees with Choosable Edge Lengths
cs.IT cs.DS math.CO math.IT
In this paper we study binary trees with choosable edge lengths, in particular rooted binary trees with the property that the two edges leading from every non-leaf to its two children are assigned integral lengths $l_1$ and $l_2$ with $l_1+l_2 =k$ for a constant $k\in\mathbb{N}$. The depth of a leaf is the total length of the edges of the unique root-leaf-path. We present a generalization of the Huffman Coding that can decide in polynomial time if for given values $d_1,...,d_n\in\mathbb{N}_{\geq 0}$ there exists a rooted binary tree with choosable edge lengths with $n$ leaves having depths at most $d_1,..., d_n$.
1402.3470
Designing an Ontology for the Data Documentation Initiative
cs.IR cs.DL
An ontology of the DDI 3 data model will be designed by following the ontology engineering methodology to be evolved based on state-of-the-art methodologies. Hence DDI 3 data and metadata can be represented in form of a standard web interchange format RDF and processed by highly available RDF tools. As a consequence the DDI community has the possibility to publish and link LOD data sets to become part of the LOD cloud.
1402.3483
News Cohesiveness: an Indicator of Systemic Risk in Financial Markets
cs.SI physics.soc-ph q-fin.ST
Motivated by recent financial crises significant research efforts have been put into studying contagion effects and herding behaviour in financial markets. Much less has been said about influence of financial news on financial markets. We propose a novel measure of collective behaviour in financial news on the Web, News Cohesiveness Index (NCI), and show that it can be used as a systemic risk indicator. We evaluate the NCI on financial documents from large Web news sources on a daily basis from October 2011 to July 2013 and analyse the interplay between financial markets and financially related news. We hypothesized that strong cohesion in financial news reflects movements in the financial markets. Cohesiveness is more general and robust measure of systemic risk expressed in news, than measures based on simple occurrences of specific terms. Our results indicate that cohesiveness in the financial news is highly correlated with and driven by volatility on the financial markets.
1402.3484
Simulation and Bisimulation over Multiple Time Scales in a Behavioral Setting
cs.SY
This paper introduces a new behavioral system model with distinct external and internal signals possibly evolving on different time scales. This allows to capture abstraction processes or signal aggregation in the context of control and verification of large scale systems. For this new system model different notions of simulation and bisimulation are derived, ensuring that they are, respectively, preorders and equivalence relations for the system class under consideration. These relations can capture a wide selection of similarity notions available in the literature. This paper therefore provides a suitable framework for their comparison
1402.3488
A Unifying Model for Representing Time-Varying Graphs
cs.DS cs.DM cs.SI
Graph-based models form a fundamental aspect of data representation in Data Sciences and play a key role in modeling complex networked systems. In particular, recently there is an ever-increasing interest in modeling dynamic complex networks, i.e. networks in which the topological structure (nodes and edges) may vary over time. In this context, we propose a novel model for representing finite discrete Time-Varying Graphs (TVGs), which are typically used to model dynamic complex networked systems. We analyze the data structures built from our proposed model and demonstrate that, for most practical cases, the asymptotic memory complexity of our model is in the order of the cardinality of the set of edges. Further, we show that our proposal is an unifying model that can represent several previous (classes of) models for dynamic networks found in the recent literature, which in general are unable to represent each other. In contrast to previous models, our proposal is also able to intrinsically model cyclic (i.e. periodic) behavior in dynamic networks. These representation capabilities attest the expressive power of our proposed unifying model for TVGs. We thus believe our unifying model for TVGs is a step forward in the theoretical foundations for data analysis of complex networked systems.
1402.3490
D numbers theory: a generalization of Dempster-Shafer theory
cs.AI
Dempster-Shafer theory is widely applied to uncertainty modelling and knowledge reasoning due to its ability of expressing uncertain information. However, some conditions, such as exclusiveness hypothesis and completeness constraint, limit its development and application to a large extend. To overcome these shortcomings in Dempster-Shafer theory and enhance its capability of representing uncertain information, a novel theory called D numbers theory is systematically proposed in this paper. Within the proposed theory, uncertain information is expressed by D numbers, reasoning and synthesization of information are implemented by D numbers combination rule. The proposed D numbers theory is an generalization of Dempster-Shafer theory, which inherits the advantage of Dempster-Shafer theory and strengthens its capability of uncertainty modelling.
1402.3506
Constructing (Bi)Similar Finite State Abstractions using Asynchronous $l$-Complete Approximations
cs.SY
This paper constructs a finite state abstraction of a possibly continuous-time and infinite state model in two steps. First, a finite external signal space is added, generating a so called $\Phi$-dynamical system. Secondly, the strongest asynchronous $l$-complete approximation of the external dynamics is constructed. As our main results, we show that (i) the abstraction simulates the original system, and (ii) bisimilarity between the original system and its abstraction holds, if and only if the original system is $l$-complete and its state space satisfies an additional property.
1402.3511
A Clockwork RNN
cs.NE cs.LG
Sequence prediction and classification are ubiquitous and challenging problems in machine learning that can require identifying complex dependencies between temporally distant inputs. Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) have the ability, in theory, to cope with these temporal dependencies by virtue of the short-term memory implemented by their recurrent (feedback) connections. However, in practice they are difficult to train successfully when the long-term memory is required. This paper introduces a simple, yet powerful modification to the standard RNN architecture, the Clockwork RNN (CW-RNN), in which the hidden layer is partitioned into separate modules, each processing inputs at its own temporal granularity, making computations only at its prescribed clock rate. Rather than making the standard RNN models more complex, CW-RNN reduces the number of RNN parameters, improves the performance significantly in the tasks tested, and speeds up the network evaluation. The network is demonstrated in preliminary experiments involving two tasks: audio signal generation and TIMIT spoken word classification, where it outperforms both RNN and LSTM networks.
1402.3520
Spatially-Coupled LDPC Codes for Decode-and-Forward Relaying of Two Correlated Sources over the BEC
cs.IT math.IT
We present a decode-and-forward transmission scheme based on spatially-coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) codes for a network consisting of two (possibly correlated) sources, one relay, and one destination. The links between the nodes are modeled as binary erasure channels. Joint source-channel coding with joint channel decoding is used to exploit the correlation. The relay performs network coding. We derive analytical bounds on the achievable rates for the binary erasure time-division multiple-access relay channel with correlated sources. We then design bilayer SC-LDPC codes and analyze their asymptotic performance for this scenario. We prove analytically that the proposed coding scheme achieves the theoretical limit for symmetric channel conditions and uncorrelated sources. Using density evolution, we furthermore demonstrate that our scheme approaches the theoretical limit also for non-symmetric channel conditions and when the sources are correlated, and we observe the threshold saturation effect that is typical for spatially-coupled systems. Finally, we give simulation results for large block lengths, which validate the DE analysis.
1402.3557
Improving Streaming Video Segmentation with Early and Mid-Level Visual Processing
cs.CV
Despite recent advances in video segmentation, many opportunities remain to improve it using a variety of low and mid-level visual cues. We propose improvements to the leading streaming graph-based hierarchical video segmentation (streamGBH) method based on early and mid level visual processing. The extensive experimental analysis of our approach validates the improvement of hierarchical supervoxel representation by incorporating motion and color with effective filtering. We also pose and illuminate some open questions towards intermediate level video analysis as further extension to streamGBH. We exploit the supervoxels as an initialization towards estimation of dominant affine motion regions, followed by merging of such motion regions in order to hierarchically segment a video in a novel motion-segmentation framework which aims at subsequent applications such as foreground recognition.
1402.3578
Learning-assisted Theorem Proving with Millions of Lemmas
cs.AI cs.DL cs.LG cs.LO
Large formal mathematical libraries consist of millions of atomic inference steps that give rise to a corresponding number of proved statements (lemmas). Analogously to the informal mathematical practice, only a tiny fraction of such statements is named and re-used in later proofs by formal mathematicians. In this work, we suggest and implement criteria defining the estimated usefulness of the HOL Light lemmas for proving further theorems. We use these criteria to mine the large inference graph of the lemmas in the HOL Light and Flyspeck libraries, adding up to millions of the best lemmas to the pool of statements that can be re-used in later proofs. We show that in combination with learning-based relevance filtering, such methods significantly strengthen automated theorem proving of new conjectures over large formal mathematical libraries such as Flyspeck.
1402.3588
Outdoor flocking and formation flight with autonomous aerial robots
cs.RO cs.MA
We present the first decentralized multi-copter flock that performs stable autonomous outdoor flight with up to 10 flying agents. By decentralized and autonomous we mean that all members navigate themselves based on the dynamic information received from other robots in the vicinity. We do not use central data processing or control; instead, all the necessary computations are carried out by miniature on-board computers. The only global information the system exploits is from GPS receivers, while the units use wireless modules to share this positional information with other flock members locally. Collective behavior is based on a decentralized control framework with bio-inspiration from statistical physical modelling of animal swarms. In addition, the model is optimized for stable group flight even in a noisy, windy, delayed and error-prone environment. Using this framework we successfully implemented several fundamental collective flight tasks with up to 10 units: i) we achieved self-propelled flocking in a bounded area with self-organized object avoidance capabilities and ii) performed collective target tracking with stable formation flights (grid, rotating ring, straight line). With realistic numerical simulations we demonstrated that the local broadcast-type communication and the decentralized autonomous control method allows for the scalability of the model for much larger flocks.
1402.3606
Routing and Staffing when Servers are Strategic
cs.GT cs.SY math.OC
Traditionally, research focusing on the design of routing and staffing policies for service systems has modeled servers as having fixed (possibly heterogeneous) service rates. However, service systems are generally staffed by people. Furthermore, people respond to workload incentives; that is, how hard a person works can depend both on how much work there is, and how the work is divided between the people responsible for it. In a service system, the routing and staffing policies control such workload incentives; and so the rate servers work will be impacted by the system's routing and staffing policies. This observation has consequences when modeling service system performance, and our objective is to investigate those consequences. We do this in the context of the M/M/N queue, which is the canonical model for large service systems. First, we present a model for "strategic" servers that choose their service rate in order to maximize a trade-off between an "effort cost", which captures the idea that servers exert more effort when working at a faster rate, and a "value of idleness", which assumes that servers value having idle time. Next, we characterize the symmetric Nash equilibrium service rate under any routing policy that routes based on the server idle time. We find that the system must operate in a quality-driven regime, in which servers have idle time, in order for an equilibrium to exist, which implies that the staffing must have a first-order term that strictly exceeds that of the common square-root staffing policy. Then, within the class of policies that admit an equilibrium, we (asymptotically) solve the problem of minimizing the total cost, when there are linear staffing costs and linear waiting costs. Finally, we end by exploring the question of whether routing policies that are based on the service rate, instead of the server idle time, can improve system performance.
1402.3610
Potential Games are Necessary to Ensure Pure Nash Equilibria in Cost Sharing Games
cs.GT cs.MA cs.SY math.CO
We consider the problem of designing distribution rules to share "welfare" (cost or revenue) among individually strategic agents. There are many known distribution rules that guarantee the existence of a (pure) Nash equilibrium in this setting, e.g., the Shapley value and its weighted variants; however, a characterization of the space of distribution rules that guarantee the existence of a Nash equilibrium is unknown. Our work provides an exact characterization of this space for a specific class of scalable and separable games, which includes a variety of applications such as facility location, routing, network formation, and coverage games. Given arbitrary local welfare functions W, we prove that a distribution rule guarantees equilibrium existence for all games (i.e., all possible sets of resources, agent action sets, etc.) if and only if it is equivalent to a generalized weighted Shapley value on some "ground" welfare functions W', which can be distinct from W. However, if budget-balance is required in addition to the existence of a Nash equilibrium, then W' must be the same as W. We also provide an alternate characterization of this space in terms of "generalized" marginal contributions, which is more appealing from the point of view of computational tractability. A possibly surprising consequence of our result is that, in order to guarantee equilibrium existence in all games with any fixed local welfare functions, it is necessary to work within the class of potential games.
1402.3613
Finding Coordinated Paths for Multiple Holonomic Agents in 2-d Polygonal Environment
cs.AI cs.RO
Avoiding collisions is one of the vital tasks for systems of autonomous mobile agents. We focus on the problem of finding continuous coordinated paths for multiple mobile disc agents in a 2-d environment with polygonal obstacles. The problem is PSPACE-hard, with the state space growing exponentially in the number of agents. Therefore, the state of the art methods include mainly reactive techniques and sampling-based iterative algorithms. We compare the performance of a widely-used reactive method ORCA with three variants of a popular planning algorithm RRT* applied to multi-agent path planning and find that an algorithm combining reactive collision avoidance and RRT* planning, which we call ORCA-RRT* can be used to solve instances that are out of the reach of either of the techniques. We experimentally show that: 1) the reactive part of the algorithm can efficiently solve many multi-agent path finding problems involving large number of agents, for which RRT* algorithm is often unable to find a solution in limited time and 2) the planning component of the algorithm is able to solve many instances containing local minima, where reactive techniques typically fail.
1402.3626
Strong converse for the quantum capacity of the erasure channel for almost all codes
quant-ph cs.IT math.IT
A strong converse theorem for channel capacity establishes that the error probability in any communication scheme for a given channel necessarily tends to one if the rate of communication exceeds the channel's capacity. Establishing such a theorem for the quantum capacity of degradable channels has been an elusive task, with the strongest progress so far being a so-called "pretty strong converse". In this work, Morgan and Winter proved that the quantum error of any quantum communication scheme for a given degradable channel converges to a value larger than $1/\sqrt{2}$ in the limit of many channel uses if the quantum rate of communication exceeds the channel's quantum capacity. The present paper establishes a theorem that is a counterpart to this "pretty strong converse". We prove that the large fraction of codes having a rate exceeding the erasure channel's quantum capacity have a quantum error tending to one in the limit of many channel uses. Thus, our work adds to the body of evidence that a fully strong converse theorem should hold for the quantum capacity of the erasure channel. As a side result, we prove that the classical capacity of the quantum erasure channel obeys the strong converse property.
1402.3631
Privately Solving Linear Programs
cs.DS cs.CR cs.LG
In this paper, we initiate the systematic study of solving linear programs under differential privacy. The first step is simply to define the problem: to this end, we introduce several natural classes of private linear programs that capture different ways sensitive data can be incorporated into a linear program. For each class of linear programs we give an efficient, differentially private solver based on the multiplicative weights framework, or we give an impossibility result.
1402.3634
Collective Decision-Making in Ideal Networks: The Speed-Accuracy Tradeoff
math.OC cs.MA cs.SY
We study collective decision-making in a model of human groups, with network interactions, performing two alternative choice tasks. We focus on the speed-accuracy tradeoff, i.e., the tradeoff between a quick decision and a reliable decision, for individuals in the network. We model the evidence aggregation process across the network using a coupled drift diffusion model (DDM) and consider the free response paradigm in which individuals take their time to make the decision. We develop reduced DDMs as decoupled approximations to the coupled DDM and characterize their efficiency. We determine high probability bounds on the error rate and the expected decision time for the reduced DDM. We show the effect of the decision-maker's location in the network on their decision-making performance under several threshold selection criteria. Finally, we extend the coupled DDM to the coupled Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model for decision-making in two alternative choice tasks with recency effects, and to the coupled race model for decision-making in multiple alternative choice tasks.
1402.3648
Auto Spell Suggestion for High Quality Speech Synthesis in Hindi
cs.CL cs.SD
The goal of Text-to-Speech (TTS) synthesis in a particular language is to convert arbitrary input text to intelligible and natural sounding speech. However, for a particular language like Hindi, which is a highly confusing language (due to very close spellings), it is not an easy task to identify errors/mistakes in input text and an incorrect text degrade the quality of output speech hence this paper is a contribution to the development of high quality speech synthesis with the involvement of Spellchecker which generates spell suggestions for misspelled words automatically. Involvement of spellchecker would increase the efficiency of speech synthesis by providing spell suggestions for incorrect input text. Furthermore, we have provided the comparative study for evaluating the resultant effect on to phonetic text by adding spellchecker on to input text.
1402.3653
Crowdsourcing Swarm Manipulation Experiments: A Massive Online User Study with Large Swarms of Simple Robots
cs.RO
Micro- and nanorobotics have the potential to revolutionize many applications including targeted material delivery, assembly, and surgery. The same properties that promise breakthrough solutions---small size and large populations---present unique challenges to generating controlled motion. We want to use large swarms of robots to perform manipulation tasks; unfortunately, human-swarm interaction studies as conducted today are limited in sample size, are difficult to reproduce, and are prone to hardware failures. We present an alternative. This paper examines the perils, pitfalls, and possibilities we discovered by launching SwarmControl.net, an online game where players steer swarms of up to 500 robots to complete manipulation challenges. We record statistics from thousands of players, and use the game to explore aspects of large-population robot control. We present the game framework as a new, open-source tool for large-scale user experiments. Our results have potential applications in human control of micro- and nanorobots, supply insight for automatic controllers, and provide a template for large online robotic research experiments.
1402.3654
Temperature Control using Fuzzy Logic
cs.SY
The aim of the temperature control is to heat the system up todelimitated temperature, afterwardhold it at that temperature in insured manner. Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) is best way in which this type of precision control can be accomplished by controller. During past twenty yearssignificant amount of research using fuzzy logichas done in this field of control of non-linear dynamical system. Here we have developed temperature control system using fuzzy logic. Control theory techniques are the root from which convention controllers are deducted. The desired response of the output can be guaranteed by the feedback controller.
1402.3656
Analysis of Carrier Frequency Selective Offset Estimation - Using Zero-IF and ZCZIn MC-DS-CDMA
cs.NI cs.IT math.IT
A new method for frequency synchronization based upon Zero-Intermediate Frequency Zero-IF receiver and characteristics of the received signal s power spectrum for MC-DSCDMA Up link system is proposed in this paper. In addition to this, employing Zero Correlation Zone (ZCZ) sequences, designed specifically for quasi synchronous up link transmissions, is proposed to exploit frequency and temporal diversity in frequency-selective block fading channels. The variance for Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) estimators of MC DS CDMA Uplink is compared with that of an OFDM system to estimate the CFO. Our study and results show that the MC DS CDMA system is outperforming the OFDM method
1402.3657
A Narrative Vehicle Protection Representation for Vehicle Speed Regulator Under Driver Exhaustion -- A Study
cs.CV cs.HC
Driver fatigue is one of the important factors that cause traffic accidents, and the ever-increasing number due to diminished drivers vigilance level has become a problem of serious concern to society. Drivers with a diminished vigilance level suffer from a marked decline in their abilities of perception, recognition, and vehicle control, and therefore pose serious danger to their own life and the lives of other people. Exhaustion resulting from sleep deprivation or sleep disorders is an important factor in the creasing number of accidents. In this projected work, we discuss the various methods of the existing and the proposed method based on a real time online safety prototype that controls the vehicle speed under driver fatigue. The purpose of such a model is to advance a system to detect fatigue symptoms in drivers and control the speed of vehicle to avoid accidents. This system was tested adequately with subjects of different technology of various researchers finally the validity of the proposed model for vehicle speed controller based on driver fatigue detection is shown.
1402.3664
Parameter estimation based on interval-valued belief structures
cs.AI
Parameter estimation based on uncertain data represented as belief structures is one of the latest problems in the Dempster-Shafer theory. In this paper, a novel method is proposed for the parameter estimation in the case where belief structures are uncertain and represented as interval-valued belief structures. Within our proposed method, the maximization of likelihood criterion and minimization of estimated parameter's uncertainty are taken into consideration simultaneously. As an illustration, the proposed method is employed to estimate parameters for deterministic and uncertain belief structures, which demonstrates its effectiveness and versatility.
1402.3689
Sound Representation and Classification Benchmark for Domestic Robots
cs.SD cs.RO
We address the problem of sound representation and classification and present results of a comparative study in the context of a domestic robotic scenario. A dataset of sounds was recorded in realistic conditions (background noise, presence of several sound sources, reverberations, etc.) using the humanoid robot NAO. An extended benchmark is carried out to test a variety of representations combined with several classifiers. We provide results obtained with the annotated dataset and we assess the methods quantitatively on the basis of their classification scores, computation times and memory requirements. The annotated dataset is publicly available at https://team.inria.fr/perception/nard/.
1402.3718
Simulating urban expansion in the parcel level for all Chinese cities
cs.MA
Large-scale models are generally associated with big modelling units in space, like counties or super grids (several to dozens km2). Few applied urban models can pursue large-scale extent with fine-level units simultaneously due to data availability and computation load. The framework of automatic identification and characterization parcels developed by Long and Liu (2013) makes such an ideal model possible by establishing existing urban parcels using road networks and points of interest for a super large area (like a country or a continent). In this study, a mega-vector-parcels cellular automata model (MVP-CA) is developed for simulating urban expansion in the parcel level for all 654 Chinese cities. Existing urban parcels in 2012, for initiating MVP-CA, are generated using multi-levelled road networks and ubiquitous points of interest, followed by simulating parcel-based urban expansion of all cities during 2012-2017. Reflecting national spatial development strategies discussed extensively by academics and decision makers, the baseline scenario and other two simulated urban expansion scenarios have been tested and compared horizontally. As the first fine-scale urban expansion model from the national scope, its academic contributions, practical applications, and potential biases are discussed in this paper as well.