15,681 research outputs found
Facility layout problem: Bibliometric and benchmarking analysis
Facility layout problem is related to the location of departments in a facility area, with the aim of determining the most effective configuration. Researches based on different approaches have been published in the last six decades and, to prove the effectiveness of the results obtained, several instances have been developed. This paper presents a general overview on the extant literature on facility layout problems in order to identify the main research trends and propose future research questions. Firstly, in order to give the reader an overview of the literature, a bibliometric analysis is presented. Then, a clusterization of the papers referred to the main instances reported in literature was carried out in order to create a database that can be a useful tool in the benchmarking procedure for researchers that would approach this kind of problems
An evolutionary approach to the optimisation of autonomous pod distribution for application in an urban transportation service
For autonomous vehicles (AVs), which when deployed in urban areas are called “pods”, to be used as part of a commercially viable low-cost urban transport system, they will need to operate efficiently. Among ways to achieve efficiency, is to minimise time vehicles are not serving users. To reduce the amount of wasted time, this paper presents a novel approach for distribution of AVs within an urban environment. Our approach uses evolutionary computation, in the form of a genetic algorithm (GA), which is applied to a simulation of an intelligent transportation service, operating in the city of Coventry, UK. The goal of the GA is to optimise distribution of pods, to reduce the amount of user waiting time. To test the algorithm, real-world transport data was obtained for Coventry, which in turn was processed to generate user demand patterns. Results from the study showed a 30% increase in the number of successful journeys completed in a 24 hours, compared to a random distribution. The implications of these findings could yield significant benefits for fleet management companies. These include increases in profits per day, a decrease in capital cost, and better energy efficiency. The algorithm could also be adapted to any service offering pick up and drop of points, including package delivery and transportation of goods
Edge Potential Functions (EPF) and Genetic Algorithms (GA) for Edge-Based Matching of Visual Objects
Edges are known to be a semantically rich representation of the contents of a digital image. Nevertheless, their use in practical applications is sometimes limited by computation and complexity constraints. In this paper, a new approach is presented that addresses the problem of matching visual objects in digital images by combining the concept of Edge Potential Functions (EPF) with a powerful matching tool based on Genetic Algorithms (GA). EPFs can be easily calculated starting from an edge map and provide a kind of attractive pattern for a matching contour, which is conveniently exploited by GAs. Several tests were performed in the framework of different image matching applications. The results achieved clearly outline the potential of the proposed method as compared to state of the art methodologies. (c) 2007 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works
Automatic annotation for weakly supervised learning of detectors
PhDObject detection in images and action detection in videos are among the most widely studied
computer vision problems, with applications in consumer photography, surveillance, and automatic
media tagging. Typically, these standard detectors are fully supervised, that is they require
a large body of training data where the locations of the objects/actions in images/videos have
been manually annotated. With the emergence of digital media, and the rise of high-speed internet,
raw images and video are available for little to no cost. However, the manual annotation
of object and action locations remains tedious, slow, and expensive. As a result there has been
a great interest in training detectors with weak supervision where only the presence or absence
of object/action in image/video is needed, not the location. This thesis presents approaches for
weakly supervised learning of object/action detectors with a focus on automatically annotating
object and action locations in images/videos using only binary weak labels indicating the presence
or absence of object/action in images/videos.
First, a framework for weakly supervised learning of object detectors in images is presented.
In the proposed approach, a variation of multiple instance learning (MIL) technique for automatically
annotating object locations in weakly labelled data is presented which, unlike existing
approaches, uses inter-class and intra-class cue fusion to obtain the initial annotation. The initial
annotation is then used to start an iterative process in which standard object detectors are used to
refine the location annotation. Finally, to ensure that the iterative training of detectors do not drift
from the object of interest, a scheme for detecting model drift is also presented. Furthermore,
unlike most other methods, our weakly supervised approach is evaluated on data without manual
pose (object orientation) annotation.
Second, an analysis of the initial annotation of objects, using inter-class and intra-class cues,
is carried out. From the analysis, a new method based on negative mining (NegMine) is presented
for the initial annotation of both object and action data. The NegMine based approach is a
much simpler formulation using only inter-class measure and requires no complex combinatorial
optimisation but can still meet or outperform existing approaches including the previously pre3
sented inter-intra class cue fusion approach. Furthermore, NegMine can be fused with existing
approaches to boost their performance.
Finally, the thesis will take a step back and look at the use of generic object detectors as prior
knowledge in weakly supervised learning of object detectors. These generic object detectors are
typically based on sampling saliency maps that indicate if a pixel belongs to the background
or foreground. A new approach to generating saliency maps is presented that, unlike existing
approaches, looks beyond the current image of interest and into images similar to the current
image. We show that our generic object proposal method can be used by itself to annotate the
weakly labelled object data with surprisingly high accuracy
Searching for test data with feature diversity
There is an implicit assumption in software testing that more diverse and
varied test data is needed for effective testing and to achieve different types
and levels of coverage. Generic approaches based on information theory to
measure and thus, implicitly, to create diverse data have also been proposed.
However, if the tester is able to identify features of the test data that are
important for the particular domain or context in which the testing is being
performed, the use of generic diversity measures such as this may not be
sufficient nor efficient for creating test inputs that show diversity in terms
of these features. Here we investigate different approaches to find data that
are diverse according to a specific set of features, such as length, depth of
recursion etc. Even though these features will be less general than measures
based on information theory, their use may provide a tester with more direct
control over the type of diversity that is present in the test data. Our
experiments are carried out in the context of a general test data generation
framework that can generate both numerical and highly structured data. We
compare random sampling for feature-diversity to different approaches based on
search and find a hill climbing search to be efficient. The experiments
highlight many trade-offs that needs to be taken into account when searching
for diversity. We argue that recurrent test data generation motivates building
statistical models that can then help to more quickly achieve feature
diversity.Comment: This version was submitted on April 14th 201
Microarray sub-grid detection: A novel algorithm
This is the post print version of the article. The official published version can be obtained from the link below - Copyright 2007 Taylor & Francis LtdA novel algorithm for detecting microarray subgrids is proposed. The only input to the algorithm is the raw microarray image, which can be of any resolution, and the subgrid detection is performed with no prior assumptions. The algorithm consists of a series of methods of spot shape detection, spot filtering, spot spacing estimation, and subgrid shape detection. It is shown to be able to divide images of varying quality into subgrid regions with no manual interaction. The algorithm is robust against high levels of noise and high percentages of poorly expressed or missing spots. In addition, it is proved to be effective in locating regular groupings of primitives in a set of non-microarray images, suggesting potential application in the general area of image processing
- …