Performance comparison of tracking filters in terms of predicted hitting point

This article describes the performance comparison of several tracking filters from the viewpoint of gun fire control. It is common that filter performance can be represented by the RMSE of the current state. However, for the design of a gun fire control system, the performance of the tracking filter in terms of prediction is more important since the current state proceeds with a designed dynamic model to a certain future which is used for the final gun order. It is shown that the predicted results amplify the current state RMSE and can be a good measure.     

Vehicle license plate tilt correction based on the straight line fitting method and minimizing variance of coordinates of projection points

Tilt correction is a very crucial and inevitable task in the automatic recognition of the vehicle license plate (VLP). In this paper, according to the least square fitting with perpendicular offsets (LSFPO), the VLP region is fitted to a straight line. After the line slope is obtained, rotation angle of the VLP is estimated. Then the whole image is rotated for tilt correction in horizontal direction by this angle. Tilt correction in vertical direction by minimizing the variance of coordinates of the projection points is proposed. Character segmentation is performed after horizontal correction and character points are projected along the vertical direction after shear transform. Despite the success of VLP detection approaches in the past decades, a few of them can effectively locate license plate (LP), even when vehicle bodies and LPs have similar color. A common drawback of color-based VLP detection is the failure to detect the boundaries or border of LPs. In this paper, we propose a modified recursive labeling algorithm for solving this problem and detecting candidate regions. According to different colored LP, these candidate regions may include LP regions. Geometrical properties of the LP such as area, bounding box and aspect-ratio are then used for classification. Various LP images were used with a variety of conditions to test the proposed method and results are presented to prove its effectiveness.     

Non-symmetric unscented transformation with application to in-flight alignment

To overcome the extended Kalman Filter (EKF) limitation, the unscented transformation (UT) was developed as a method to propagate mean and covariance information through nonlinear transformation. However, the ordinary UT has both local and global sampling problems. In this paper, non-symmetric unscented transformation (NSUT) is proposed to solve these problems. The sigma point sets of the NSUT are non-symmetrically located with respect to the zeroth sigma point set which is equal to the prior mean. Then, the weights of the sigma points are derived by using some conditions for mean and covariance. The non-symmetric unscented Kalman filter (NSUKF) based on the sigma points and weights of the NSUT are applied to the in-flight alignment (IFA) with a large heading error. With a low cost MEMS IMU, the simulations are carried out at an S-type trajectory to analyze the performance of the proposed method.     

Fire detection based on hidden Markov models

In this paper, a novel method of real-time fire detection based on HMMs is presented. First, we present an analysis of fire characteristics that provides evidence supporting the use of HMMs to detect fire; second, we propose an algorithm for detecting candidate fire pixels that entails the detection of moving pixels, fire-color inspection, and pixels clustering. The main contribution of this paper is the establishment and application of a hidden Markov fire model by combining the state transition between fire and non-fire with fire motion information to reduce data redundancy. The final decision is based on this model which includes training and application; the training provides parameters for the HMM application. The experimental results show that the method provides both a high detection rate and a low false alarm rate. Furthermore, real-time detection has been effectively realized via the learned parameters of the HMM, since the most time-consuming components such as HMM training are performed off-line.     

Modeling and simulation of powered hip orthosis by pneumatic actuators

In this study, a simulation model for a powered hip orthosis (PHO) with air muscles to predict the gait of paraplegics is presented which can be used as a design tool for hip orthoses. Before simulation, mathematical models for a human dummy with an orthosis and a pneumatic muscle actuator were generated. For the air muscle, coefficients required were obtained by static and dynamic experiments of the air muscle and experiments for the valve controlling the air pressure. The computation was conducted on the ADAMS package together with MATLAB. Computer simulation of the flexion of hip joints by the pneumatic muscle results in similar values to those from gait analysis. With the development of a simulation model for a PHO, the gait simulation model using pneumatic muscles can be used to analyze and evaluate the characteristics and efficiency of a PHO by setting the input and boundary conditions.     

Adaptive product tracking in RFID-enabled large-scale supply chain

The Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is gradually being adopted and deployed for product flow management in the supply chain. In order to track RFID-tagged products efficiently in the RFID-enabled, large-scale supply chain, this paper first presents the design of a product tracking system that can collaborate with the EPC Network, a suite of network services for RFID data management in the supply chain. Next, we explain a product monitoring procedure that is performed by comparing the actual path of a product with its planned path. Finally, we develop an adaptive product search algorithm based on a reinforcement learning technique to efficiently locate a product deviated from its planned path. Experiment results are provided to show the performance of the search algorithm.     

Self-adaptive and dynamic clustering for online anomaly detection

As recent Internet threats are evolving more rapidly than ever before, one of the major challenges in designing an intrusion detection system is to provide early and accurate detection of emerging threats. In this study, a novel framework is developed for fully unsupervised training and online anomaly detection. The framework is designed so that an initial model is constructed and then it gradually evolves according to the current state of online data without any human intervention. In the framework, a self-organizing map (SOM) that is seamlessly combined with K-means clustering is transformed into an adaptive and dynamic algorithm suitable for real-time processing. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated through experiments using the well-known KDD Cup 1999 data set and further experiments using the honeypot data recently collected from Kyoto University. It is shown that the proposed approach can significantly increase the detection rate while the false alarm rate remains low. In particular, it is capable of detecting new types of attacks at the earliest possible time.     

Intelligent adaptive process control using dynamic deadband for semiconductor manufacturing

This paper proposes an efficient control method to minimize process error and to reduce process variance in semiconductor manufacturing. The photolithography (photo) process forms a complex semiconductor circuit and is important for quality. Obstacles to the process include the facility itself, vibration, wear and tear, product/process changes and environmental influences. Control methodologies being currently used to address these issues often amplify the variation of the process by failing to perform adequate process control. Therefore, this paper proposes an effective process control method to reduce process variance by quickly detecting and identifying process disturbances and accurately reflecting the degree of change to process control. This study proposes dynamic deadband control that uses a region (band) to detect the status of a process change. It adjusts the process control based on the changes detected. In this research, the semiconductor manufacturing company is supported to perform control that is more precise and reduces fluctuations by producing products of uniform quality. In addition, it can contribute to yield due to the quality incentive and increased process control of semiconductor manufacturing.     

Logistic regression in sealed-bid auctions with multiple rounds: Application in Korean court auction

This paper proposes a forecasting method for court auction information system using logistic regression model with heterogeneity across the multiple round. The goal is to predict whether an individual auction item in a certain round will be sold or not. A simple linear regression and the least angle regression (LARS) containing random effect terms were used to select meaningful variables for our logit model. The link function of the proposed logit model is represented by two bundles of parameters. The former part consists of the parameters whose values do not change over rounds. The latter part has parameters whose values interact with rounds. The observed data corresponding to an appraiser price as well as an intercept term reflecting local characteristics are used without any change. Data that corresponds to all the other parameters is not directly used, but transformed based on similarities between the original item and the surrounding auction items being recommended by the court auction experts. We tested the Bayesian logistic regression by establishing different priors: Dunson’s prior, Gelman’s prior and Ansari’s prior. Dunson’s prior was found to perform the best. Little significant difference was found between the results of the other two priors. These findings indicate that logistic regression taking the heterogeneity of multi-round into account performs better than a one-layered neural network over all time periods.     

Analysis of an unobservable queue using arrival and departure times

Suppose one wants to assess the efficiency of a queueing system but is unable to observe directly its internal operations. This situation might arise if one works with a restricted set of historical data or because secrecy restricts access to the queueing facility. One might still be able to observe, from outside the system, the exact arrival and departure times of each customer. Using observations of arrival and departure times and knowledge of whether the service discipline is either first-come-first-served or last-come-first-served, one can exactly reconstruct the unobserved queue delays and service times of any sequence of arrivals during busy periods when the number of customers is greater than the number of servers. If the number of servers is also unknown, it too can be estimated. In this paper, we propose optimization models which determine the unknown number of servers.