IBM smart surveillance system (S3): event based video surveillance system with an open and extensible framework

The increasing need for sophisticated surveillance systems and the move to a digital infrastructure has transformed surveillance into a large scale data analysis and management challenge. Smart surveillance systems use automatic image understanding techniques to extract information from the surveillance data. While the majority of the research and commercial systems have focused on the information extraction aspect of the challenge, very few systems have explored the use of extracted information in the search, retrieval, data management and investigation context. The IBM smart surveillance system (S3) is one of the few advanced surveillance systems which provides not only the capability to automatically monitor a scene but also the capability to manage the surveillance data, perform event based retrieval, receive real time event alerts thru standard web infrastructure and extract long term statistical patterns of activity. The IBM S3 is easily customized to fit the requirements of different applications by using an open-standards based architecture for surveillance.     

Remote mobile manipulation with the centauro robot: Full‐body telepresence and autonomous operator assistance

Solving mobile manipulation tasks in inaccessible and dangerous environments is an important application of robots to support humans. Example domains are construction and maintenance of manned and unmanned stations on the moon and other planets. Suitable platforms require flexible and robust hardware, a locomotion approach that allows for navigating a wide variety of terrains, dexterous manipulation capabilities, and respective user interfaces. We present the CENTAURO system which has been designed for these requirements and consists of the Centauro robot and a set of advanced operator interfaces with complementary strength enabling the system to solve a wide range of realistic mobile manipulation tasks. The robot possesses a centaur‐like body plan and is driven by torque‐controlled compliant actuators. Four articulated legs ending in steerable wheels allow for omnidirectional driving as well as for making steps. An anthropomorphic upper body with two arms ending in five‐finger hands enables human‐like manipulation. The robot perceives its environment through a suite of multimodal sensors. The resulting platform complexity goes beyond the complexity of most known systems which puts the focus on a suitable operator interface. An operator can control the robot through a telepresence suit, which allows for flexibly solving a large variety of mobile manipulation tasks. Locomotion and manipulation functionalities on different levels of autonomy support the operation. The proposed user interfaces enable solving a wide variety of tasks without previous task‐specific training. The integrated system is evaluated in numerous teleoperated experiments that are described along with lessons learned.     

Innovation in the creative industries: Linking the founder's creative and business orientation to innovation outcomes

Creative industries contain paradoxes because conflicting tensions arise between the market and the arts. Entrepreneurs need to find and maintain a balance between those two sides to create innovation. This study tests the interaction between business and creative orientations of a founder in their influence on innovation in the context of creative entrepreneurial firms and provides recommendations for how creative agents can leverage and manage their innovations based on their creative visions. Determinants on the individual level, such as the founder's creative or business orientations, have a lasting impact on the practices and process of their venture. To trace the imprinting influence of the founder's orientation on innovation, the empirical setting is a time-lagged study of German firm owners in the cultural and creative industries surveyed 5 years apart. The results show a significant relationship between creative orientation and innovation, whereas business orientation does not significantly relate to innovation. However, creative and business orientations reveal a negative interaction effect. This study contributes empirical evidence to the paradox theory and the interaction between the opposite poles. Our findings provide valuable insights about the relevance of creative orientation and its visionary impact on the firms' innovation process. Furthermore, the results shed new light on the tension between art and the market, as different compositions of the two orientation poles seem to have a varying impact on the degree of innovation. Thus, the study reveals the complexity of creative entrepreneurship and provides managerial guidance for other knowledge-based industries.     

Element signature analysis: its validation as a tool for geographic authentication of the origin of dried beef and poultry meat

Element concentrations of 56 poultry meat and 53 dried beef samples were determined and statistically analyzed using analysis of variance and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) to identify the single or combination of elements with the highest potential to determine the geographic origin. In order to validate the applicability of this technique, the results were additionally combined with data from an earlier assessment including 25 poultry meat and 23 dried beef samples. Validation was performed by estimating the origin of the first samples based on the data of the second, larger, dataset. Elements significantly discriminating among countries were As, Na, Rb, Se, Sr, and Tl for poultry meat and As, B, Ba, Ca, Cd, Cu, Dy, Er, Fe, Li, Mn, Pd, Rb, Se, Sr, Te, Tl, U, and V for dried beef out of about 50 elements each. The LDA gave mean correct classification rates of 77 and 79% for poultry meat and dried beef, respectively. Validation allowed identifying some, but not all, origins. For a higher discriminative power, this method should be combined with other ways of authentication.     

DNA chips for species identification and biological phylogenies

The codeword design problem is an important problem in DNA computing and its applications. Several theoretical analyses as well as practical solutions for short oligonucleotides (up to 20-mers) have been generated recently. These solutions have, in turn, suggested new applications to DNA-based indexing and natural language processing, in addition to the obvious applications to the problems of reliability and scalability that generated them. Here we continue the exploration of this type of DNA-based indexing for biological applications and show that DNA noncrosshybridizing (nxh) sets can be successfully applied to infer ab initio phylogenetic trees by providing a way to measure distances among different genomes indexed by sets of short oligonucleotides selected so as to minimize crosshybridization. These phylogenies are solidly established and well accepted in biology. The new technique is much more effective in terms of signal-to-noise ratio, cost and time than current methods. Second, it is demonstrated that DNA indexing does provide novel and principled insights into the phylogenesis of organisms hitherto inaccessible by current methods, such as a prediction of the origin of the Salmonella plasmid 50 as being acquired horizontally, likely from some bacteria somewhat related to Yesinia. Finally, DNA indexing can be scaled up to newly available universal DNA chips readily available both in vitro and in silico. In particular, we show how a recently obtained such set of nxh 16-mers can be used as a universal coordinate system in DNA spaces to characterize very large groups (families, genera, and even phylla) of organisms on a uniform biomarker reference system, a veritable and comprehensive “Atlas of Life”, as it is or as it could be on earth.     

Robust H �� Filtering for Uncertain Nonlinear Stochastic Systems with Mode-dependent Time-delays and Markovian Jump Parameters

This paper investigates the problem of robust H _∞ filtering for a class of uncertain nonlinear stochastic time-delay systems with Markovian jump parameters. The system under consideration contains parameter uncertainties, It?-type stochastic disturbances, unknown nonlinearities as well as time-varying delays, which vary in a range and dependent on the mode of the operation. We aim to design a full-order Markovian jump filter such that, for all admissible uncertainties, the filtering error system is robustly asymptotically stable in the mean square, and a prescribed H _∞ disturbance attenuation level is guaranteed. By using the Lyapunov stability theory and It? differential rule, some sufficient conditions in terms of linear matrix inequality (LMI) are proposed to guarantee the existence of the desired H _∞ filter. Then, the explicit expressions of the desired filter parameters are given. Illustrative examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed method.