An optimal time–space algorithm for dense stereo matching

The increasing demand for higher resolution images and higher frame rate videos will always pose a challenge to computational power when real-time performance is required to solve the stereo-matching problem in 3D reconstruction applications. Therefore, the use of asymptotic analysis is necessary to measure the time and space performance of stereo-matching algorithms regardless of the size of the input and of the computational power available. In this paper, we survey several classic stereo-matching algorithms with regard to time–space complexity. We also report running time experiments for several algorithms that are consistent with our complexity analysis. We present a new dense stereo-matching algorithm based on a greedy heuristic path computation in disparity space. A procedure which improves disparity maps in depth discontinuity regions is introduced. This procedure works as a post-processing step for any technique that solves the dense stereo-matching problem. We prove that our algorithm and post-processing procedure have optimal O(n) time–space complexity, where n is the size of a stereo image. Our algorithm performs only a constant number of computations per pixel since it avoids a brute force search over the disparity range. Hence, our algorithm is faster than “real-time” techniques while producing comparable results when evaluated with ground-truth benchmarks. The correctness of our algorithm is demonstrated with experiments in real and synthetic data.     

SmartGantt – An intelligent system for real time rescheduling based on relational reinforcement learning

With the current trend towards cognitive manufacturing systems to deal with unforeseen events and disturbances that constantly demand real-time repair decisions, learning/reasoning skills and interactive capabilities are important functionalities for rescheduling a shop-floor on the fly taking into account several objectives and goal states. In this work, the automatic generation and update through learning of rescheduling knowledge using simulated transitions of abstract schedule states is proposed. Deictic representations of schedules based on focal points are used to define a repair policy which generates a goal-directed sequence of repair operators to face unplanned events and operational disturbances. An industrial example where rescheduling is needed due to the arrival of a new/rush order, or whenever raw material delay/shortage or machine breakdown events occur are discussed using the SmartGantt prototype for interactive rescheduling in real-time. SmartGantt demonstrates that due date compliance of orders-in-progress, negotiating delivery conditions of new orders and ensuring distributed production control can be dramatically improved by means of relational reinforcement learning and a deictic representation of rescheduling tasks.     

‘Big time’: An examination of temporal complexity and business value in analytics

Time is central to the purported business value of analytics. Yet, research has adopted a simplistic, ‘clock’ interpretation of time, ignoring its complex and socially embedded nature. There is also an overemphasis on analytics software and not on the people using them. Although analytics may be ‘fast’ to realise business value, it must cater to temporal complexities of organisations and people using it. Drawing on the temporality theory, this study develops temporal factors to examine the value of analytics. We also develop a research agenda that identifies opportunities to examine time, temporal personalities and other factors when people use analytics in the organisation.     

An alternative model for integrated vendor–buyer inventory under controllable lead time and its heuristic solution

Researchers have given a lot of attention to the integrated vendor–buyer problem. Both deterministic and stochastic models on the subject are available in the literature. Most of the models have appeared with the need and requirement of a Just-in-Time (JIT) system environment. The close tie between a vendor and a buyer helps to deliver products in a shorter lead time with reduced inventory cost. Based on this idea, recently, some researchers have presented such a stochastic model with equal sized batch (part of a lot) transfer under controllable lead time. They have shown that their model provides a lower total cost for a numerical problem. To enrich the JIT system literature, considering transportation cost of a batch, this article develops an alternative model of the problem with equal or unequal sized batches transfer under controllable lead time. Then it develops a heuristic solution technique of the model and applying it solves the same numerical example to show a reasonable cost reduction.     

An evolutionary search procedure for optimizing time–cost performance of projects under multiple renewable resource constraints

This paper presents an effective procedure for optimizing time–cost performance of multi-mode resource constrained project scheduling problems in which activities are subject to finish-start precedence constraints under renewable limited resources. Associated with each execution mode of activities, there exists a direct cost, a processing time, and a set of required renewable resources. In optimizing time–cost performance, the procedure treats the cost as a non-renewable resource whose limit can affect the duration of the project and balances cost versus time through the notion of priority-rank. This is performed by the use of a module which handles multimode projects, and since the procedure has to call this module with different limits on the cost, the effectiveness of this module plays a key role in the overall efficiency. For this reason, an effective evolutionary search technique has been developed to create the basis of this module. For testing its effectiveness, this module has been tested on 552 largest multimode benchmark instances of the PSPLIB and the results are promising: For over 98% of instances, the module finds the best available solutions in the literature. The module also produces a solution for one of these benchmark instances that is better than all of the current solutions in the literature.     

fun time新闻

针对大量个人、家庭用户对笔记本电脑的强烈需求,方正科技日前宣布,推出全新的方正佳和H系列家用笔记本产品线,包括方正佳和H100/H500两款笔记本,其中方正佳和H500系列是国内第一款具有“超线程”技术的笔记本电脑。     

Fun time News

Linux由于公开了源代码,成为世界许多公司和众多人士都具备其知识的全球性操作系统。松下电器于去年12月份宣布与索尼就共同开发面向数码家电的Linux一事达成了协议。该公司还表示,正在探讨邀请日立制作所、夏普、美国IBM以及荷兰皇家飞利普电子等大型企业加盟,成立数码家电的Linux论坛。 目前松下电器集团的家     

Fun time News

苹果公司在2003年的“笔记本电脑年”中表现出色,新款PowerBook取得了巨大成功,包括17英寸PowerBook(世界第一台17英寸笔记本电脑)和12英寸PowerBook(世界最小巧的全功能笔记本电脑)。 在苹果公司上个季度售出的电脑系统中,笔记本电脑占了42％,取得了业界领先的骄人业绩。通过提供创新的功能、先进的无线技术、出色的移动     

fun time新闻

11月11日,诺基亚在题为“爱写就写”的新品发布会上,全球首发“妙笔”诺基亚3108。达达乐队以充满活力的现场演绎,凸显出诺基亚3108的特性——青春、动感、个性与自我表达。 诺基亚3108是市场表现     

fun time新闻

9月5日,尼康香港有限公司在北京国际饭店召开了尼康高端数码单反相机Nikon D2H的发布会。这款数码单反相机拥有许多出众的特性。该机型采用尼康自主研发的影像传感器“JFET LBCAST”,和传统的CMOS影像传感器相比,具备更快的反应速度和更高的数据输     

Fun time News

拥有丰富彩信核心技术的世界著名电讯制造商阿尔卡特在充分准备后,重锤出击,准备在下半年内连续推出三款彩屏、彩信手机产品。打响头炮是在七月下旬问世的首款阿尔卡特彩信手机OT535,另外带摄像头的OT735和时尚的OT332亦将在年内推出,期望为追求时     

An analytic solution for the space–time fractional advection–dispersion equation using the optimal homotopy asymptotic method

We present an analytic algorithm to solve the space–time fractional advection–dispersion equation (FADE) based on the optimal homotopy asymptotic method (OHAM), which has the advantage of controlling the region and rate of convergence of the solution series via several auxiliary parameters over the traditional homotopy analysis method (HAM) having only one auxiliary parameter. Furthermore, our proposed algorithm gives better results compared to the Adomian decomposition method (ADM) and the homotopy perturbation method (HPM) in the sense that fewer iterations are required to get a sufficiently accurate solution and the solution has a greater radius of convergence. We find that the iterations obtained by the proposed method converge to the numerical/exact solution of the ADE as the fractional orders $\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma$ tend to their integral values. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the proposed algorithm. The figures and tables show the superiority of the OHAM over the HAM.     

An efficient numerical technique based on the extended cubic B-spline functions for solving time fractional Black–Scholes model

Financial theory could introduce a fractional differential equation (FDE) that presents new theoretical research concepts, methods and practical implementations. Due to the memory factor of fractional derivatives, physical pathways with storage and inherited properties can be best represented by FDEs. For that purpose, reliable and effective techniques are required for solving FDEs. Our objective is to generalize the collocation method for solving time fractional Black–Scholes European option pricing model using the extended cubic B-spline. The key feature of the strategy is that it turns these type of problems into a system of algebraic equations which can be appropriate for computer programming. This is not only streamlines the problems but speed up the computations as well. The Fourier stability and convergence analysis of the scheme are examined. A proposed numerical scheme having second-order accuracy via spatial direction is also constructed. The numerical and graphical results indicate that the suggested approach for the European option prices agree well with the analytical solutions.

     

Day- and shiftworkers’ leisure time

Cross-sectional studies of working and living conditions were conducted in two Brazilian petrochemical plants between 1988-1989. This paper presents analyses of reported activities undertaken during day- and shiftworkers’ leisure time. One hundred and sixteen workers (67 continuous shiftworkers) daily logged standard protocols of all leisure activities, for three consecutive weeks. Workers logged 11957 instances grouped in 27 different activities. The 14 most commonly mentioned leisure activities were analysed. Those most reported were meals with the family (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) and home TV viewing. Usingχ² statistics, the results showed that the two factors studied—activities and work schedules (day and shift)—were not related. Analysing estimated coefficients of a second order log linear model, only a very few of the 14 activities most mentioned, did not differ in their frequencies between day and shiftworkers of the same plant. The same happened with the 12 activities most-mentioned of both plants: shiftworkers and dayworkers showed significant differences (p<0.0001) on almost all frequencies of those activities mentioned. Hypotheses are made to explain some of the results. Home placement, and types of shiftwork schedules (weekly or swiftly rotating shifts) can be responsible for some of the activities performed during the workers’ leisure time. Further investigation of those activities which are disturbed or cannot be performed due to work schedules is suggested.     

Control with stochastic stopping time†

The usual (non-stochastic stopping) control problem is extended to the case of random terminal time. The more general model presented hero should be particularly useful when a system will change while being controlled. Systems which are otherwise deterministic, and systems with additive noise in the dynamic equation are considered.

Results concerning the relevant aspects of reliability and Markov process theories are presented. We show that stochastically stopped control optimality conditions are simply extensions of the usual conditions and that the limits of the criteria and optimal control, as the variance of the stopping probability distribution approaches zero, are the corresponding quantities for the non-stochastic problem.     

An analysis of the time integration algorithms for the finite element solutions of incompressible Navier–Stokes equations based on a stabilised formulation

This work is concerned with the analysis of time integration procedures for the stabilised finite element formulation of unsteady incompressible fluid flows governed by the Navier–Stokes equations. The stabilisation technique is combined with several different implicit time integration procedures including both finite difference and finite element schemes. Particular attention is given to the generalised-α method and the linear discontinuous in time finite element scheme. The time integration schemes are first applied to two model problems, represented by a first order differential equation in time and the one dimensional advection–diffusion equation, and subjected to a detailed mathematical analysis based on the Fourier series expansion. In order to establish the accuracy and efficiency of the time integration schemes for the Navier–Stokes equations, a detailed computational study is performed of two standard numerical examples: unsteady flow around a cylinder and flow across a backward facing step. It is concluded that the semi-discrete generalised-α method provides a viable alternative to the more sophisticated and expensive space–time methods for simulations of unsteady flows of incompressible fluids governed by the Navier–Stokes equations.     

An Inference Microprocessor Design

This paper is concerned with the design of an inference microprocessor for production rule systems.Its implementation is based on both exact and inexact (fuzzy logic) reasoning,so it can be used for building various production rule systems.The methods of translating linguistically expressed rules into numerical representations are described and the hardware implementations are discussed.Finally, a parallel architecture for the inference microprocessor is presented.