No-Reference Video Quality Assessment using novel hybrid features and two-stage hybrid regression for score level fusion

This paper presents a novel No-Reference Video Quality Assessment (NR-VQA) model that utilizes proposed 3D steerable wavelet transform-based Natural Video Statistics (NVS) features as well as human perceptual features. Additionally, we proposed a novel two-stage regression scheme that significantly improves the overall performance of quality estimation. In the first stage, transform-based NVS and human perceptual features are separately passed through the proposed hybrid regression scheme: Support Vector Regression (SVR) followed by Polynomial curve fitting. The two visual quality scores predicted from the first stage are then used as features for the similar second stage. This predicts the final quality scores of distorted videos by achieving score level fusion. Extensive experiments were conducted using five authentic and four synthetic distortion databases. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms other published state-of-the-art benchmark methods on synthetic distortion databases and is among the top performers on authentic distortion databases. The source code is available at https://github.com/anishVNIT/two-stage-vqa.     

Classification of the cardiotocogram data for anticipation of fetal risks using machine learning techniques

The aim of the research is evaluating the classification performances of eight different machine-learning methods on the antepartum cardiotocography (CTG) data. The classification is necessary to predict newborn health, especially for the critical cases. Cardiotocography is used for assisting the obstetricians’ to obtain detailed information during the pregnancy as a technique of measuring fetal well-being, essentially in pregnant women having potential complications. The obstetricians describe CTG shortly as a continuous electronic record of the baby's heart rate took from the mother's abdomen. The acquired information is necessary to visualize unhealthiness of the embryo and gives an opportunity for early intervention prior to happening a permanent impairment to the embryo. The aim of the machine learning methods is by using attributes of data obtained from the uterine contraction (UC) and fetal heart rate (FHR) signals to classify as pathological or normal. The dataset contains 1831 instances with 21 attributes, examined by applying the methods. In the paper, the highest accuracy displayed as 99.2%.     

A new decomposition based evolutionary algorithm with uniform designs for many-objective optimization

For many-objective optimization problems, how to get a set of solutions with good convergence and diversity is a difficult and challenging work. In this paper, a new decomposition based evolutionary algorithm with uniform designs is proposed to achieve the goal. The proposed algorithm adopts the uniform design method to set the weight vectors which are uniformly distributed over the design space, and the size of the weight vectors neither increases nonlinearly with the number of objectives nor considers a formulaic setting. A crossover operator based on the uniform design method is constructed to enhance the search capacity of the proposed algorithm. Moreover, in order to improve the convergence performance of the algorithm, a sub-population strategy is used to optimize each sub-problem. Comparing with some efficient state-of-the-art algorithms, e.g., NSGAII-CE, MOEA/D and HypE, on six benchmark functions, the proposed algorithm is able to find a set of solutions with better diversity and convergence.     

Application of higher order spectral features and support vector machines for bearing faults classification

Condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of rolling element bearings timely and accurately are very important to ensure the reliability of rotating machinery. This paper presents a novel pattern classification approach for bearings diagnostics, which combines the higher order spectra analysis features and support vector machine classifier. The use of non-linear features motivated by the higher order spectra has been reported to be a promising approach to analyze the non-linear and non-Gaussian characteristics of the mechanical vibration signals. The vibration bi-spectrum (third order spectrum) patterns are extracted as the feature vectors presenting different bearing faults. The extracted bi-spectrum features are subjected to principal component analysis for dimensionality reduction. These principal components were fed to support vector machine to distinguish four kinds of bearing faults covering different levels of severity for each fault type, which were measured in the experimental test bench running under different working conditions. In order to find the optimal parameters for the multi-class support vector machine model, a grid-search method in combination with 10-fold cross-validation has been used. Based on the correct classification of bearing patterns in the test set, in each fold the performance measures are computed. The average of these performance measures is computed to report the overall performance of the support vector machine classifier. In addition, in fault detection problems, the performance of a detection algorithm usually depends on the trade-off between robustness and sensitivity. The sensitivity and robustness of the proposed method are explored by running a series of experiments. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve made the results more convincing. The results indicated that the proposed method can reliably identify different fault patterns of rolling element bearings based on vibration signals.     

Improving the prediction of petroleum reservoir characterization with a stacked generalization ensemble model of support vector machines

The ensemble learning paradigm has proved to be relevant to solving most challenging industrial problems. Despite its successful application especially in the Bioinformatics, the petroleum industry has not benefited enough from the promises of this machine learning technology. The petroleum industry, with its persistent quest for high-performance predictive models, is in great need of this new learning methodology. A marginal improvement in the prediction indices of petroleum reservoir properties could have huge positive impact on the success of exploration, drilling and the overall reservoir management portfolio. Support vector machines (SVM) is one of the promising machine learning tools that have performed excellently well in most prediction problems. However, its performance is a function of the prudent choice of its tuning parameters most especially the regularization parameter, C. Reports have shown that this parameter has significant impact on the performance of SVM. Understandably, no specific value has been recommended for it. This paper proposes a stacked generalization ensemble model of SVM that incorporates different expert opinions on the optimal values of this parameter in the prediction of porosity and permeability of petroleum reservoirs using datasets from diverse geological formations. The performance of the proposed SVM ensemble was compared to that of conventional SVM technique, another SVM implemented with the bagging method, and Random Forest technique. The results showed that the proposed ensemble model, in most cases, outperformed the others with the highest correlation coefficient, and the lowest mean and absolute errors. The study indicated that there is a great potential for ensemble learning in petroleum reservoir characterization to improve the accuracy of reservoir properties predictions for more successful explorations and increased production of petroleum resources. The results also confirmed that ensemble models perform better than the conventional SVM implementation.     

Experimental optimization of power-function-shaped drive pulse for stick-slip piezo actuators

Motion of a stick-slip piezo actuator is generally controlled by the parameters related to its mechanical design and characteristics of the driving pulses applied to piezoceramic shear plates. The goal of the proposed optimization method is to find the driving pulse parameters leading to the fastest and the most reliable actuator operation. In the paper the method is tested on a rotary stick-slip piezo actuating system utilized in an atomic force microscope.The optimization is based on the measurement of the actuator response to driving pulses of different shapes and repetition frequencies at various load forces. To provide it, a computer controlled testing system generating the driving pulses, and detecting and recording the corresponding angular motion response of the actuator by a position sensitive photo detector (PSPD) in real time has been developed. To better understand and interpret the experimental results, supportive methods based on a simple analytical model and numerical simulations were used as well.In this way the shapes of the single driving pulses and values of the load force providing the biggest actuator steps were determined. Generally, the maximal steps were achieved for such a combination of the pulse shapes and load forces providing high velocities at the end of the sticking mode of the actuator motion and, at the same time, lower decelerations during the slipping mode.As for the multiple driving pulses, the pulse shapes and values of repetition frequency ensuring the sticking mode of the actuator motion during the pulse rise time together with the maximum average angular rotor velocity were specified. In this way the effective and stable operation conditions of the actuator were provided.In principle, the presented method can be applied for the testing and optimization of any linear or angular stick-slip actuator.     

Benchmark value determination of energy efficiency indexes for coal-fired power units based on data mining methods

The operational optimisation of coal-fired power units is important for saving energy and reducing losses in the electric power industry. One of the key issues is how to determine the benchmark values of the energy efficiency indexes of the units. Therefore, a new framework for determining these benchmark values is proposed, based on data mining methods. First, the energy efficiency key performance indicators (KPIs) associated with the net coal consumption rate (NCCR) were selected based on the domain knowledge. Second, the decision-making samples with minimal NCCR were acquired with the fuzzy C-means (FCM) clustering algorithm, and the corresponding clustering centres were employed as the benchmark values. Finally, based on the support vector regression (SVR) algorithm, the target values of the NCCR were obtained with the KPIs as input, and the energy saving potential was evaluated by comparing the target values with the historical values of the NCCR. An actual on-duty 1000 MW unit was taken as study unit, and the results show that the energy saving potential is remarkable when the operators adjust the KPIs based on the calculated benchmark values.     

Using electroencephalogram to continuously discriminate feelings of personal thermal comfort between uncomfortably hot and comfortable environments

Thermal comfort is an important factor for the design of buildings. Although it has been well recognized that many physiological parameters are linked to the state of thermal comfort or discomfort of humans, how to use physiological signal to judge the state of thermal comfort has not been well studied. In this paper, the feasibility of continuously determining feelings of personal thermal comfort was discussed by using electroencephalogram (EEG) signals in private space. In the study, 22 subjects were exposed to thermally comfortable and uncomfortably hot environments, and their EEG signals were recorded. Spectral power features of the EEG signals were extracted, and an ensemble learning method using linear discriminant analysis or support vector machine as a sub-classifier was used to build the discriminant model. The results show that an average discriminate accuracy of 87.9% can be obtained within a detection window of 60 seconds. This study indicates that it is feasible to distinguish whether a person feels comfortable or too hot in their private space by multi-channel EEG signals without interruption and suggests possibility for further applications in neuroergonomics.     

Stereo matching cost computation based on nonsubsampled contourlet transform

A new matching cost computation method based on nonsubsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) for stereo image matching is proposed in this paper. Firstly, stereo image is decomposed into high frequency sub-band images at different scales and along different directions by NSCT. Secondly, by utilizing coefficients in high frequency domain and grayscales in RGB color space, the computation model of weighted matching cost between two pixels is designed based on the gestalt laws. Lastly, two types of experiments are carried out with standard stereopairs in the Middlebury benchmark. One of the experiments is to confirm optimum values of NSCT scale and direction parameters, and the other is to compare proposed matching cost with nine known matching costs. Experimental results show that the optimum values of scale and direction parameters are respectively 2 and 3, and the matching accuracy of the proposed matching cost is twice higher than that of traditional NCC cost.     

低觉醒脑电识别与唤醒的可穿戴系统研究

为智能化地识别警戒作业人员出现的低觉醒、注意力下降的生理状态，本文介绍了一种基于FPGA和脑电信号处理的低觉醒状态检测与唤醒系统，系统通过传感器从大脑头皮采集脑电信号，转换为数字信号，经傅里叶变换获取了脑电信号的θ相对能量、α相对能量、重心频率、谱熵等4个特征量，由4个特征量表征低觉醒状态并运用支持向量机对低警戒状态进行识别，当识别出低觉醒状态时采用声音报警模块发出声音，唤醒警戒作业人员。设计系统能够较好地识别出低觉醒状态，识别率达90.8%，可为提高警戒作业工作绩效提供一种可穿戴的智能装备。