A linear optimization based method for data privacy in statistical tabular data

National Statistical Agencies routinely disseminate large amounts of data. Prior to dissemination these data have to be protected to avoid releasing confidential information. Controlled tabular adjustment (CTA) is one of the available methods for this purpose. CTA formulates an optimization problem that looks for the safe table which is closest to the original one. The standard CTA approach results in a mixed integer linear optimization (MILO) problem, which is very challenging for current technology. In this work we present a much less costly variant of CTA that formulates a multiobjective linear optimization (LO) problem, where binary variables are pre-fixed, and the resulting continuous problem is solved by lexicographic optimization. Extensive computational results are reported using both commercial (CPLEX and XPRESS) and open source (Clp) solvers, with either simplex or interior-point methods, on a set of real instances. Most instances were successfully solved with the LO-CTA variant in less than one hour, while many of them are computationally very expensive with the MILO-CTA formulation. The interior-point method outperformed simplex in this particular application.Peer ReviewedPreprin

On assessing the disclosure risk of controlled adjustment methods for statistical tabular data

Minimum distance controlled tabular adjustment is a recent perturbative approach for statistical disclosure control in tabular data. Given a table to be protected, it looks for the closest safe table, using some particular distance. Con trolled adjustment is known to provide high data utility. However, the disclosure risk has only been partially analyzed using theoretical results from optimization. This work ext ends these previous results, providing both a more detailed theoretical analysis, and an extensive empirical assess- ment of the disclosure risk of the method. A set of 25 instance s from the literature and four different attacker scenarios are considered, with sever al random replications for each scenario, both for L 1 and L 2 distances. This amounts to the solution of more than 2000 optimization problems. The analysis of the results shows th at the approach has low dis- closure risk when the attacker has no good information on the bounds of the optimization problem. On the other hand, when the attacker has good estima tes of the bounds, and the only uncertainty is in the objective function (which is a very strong assumption), the disclosure risk of controlled adjustment is high and it s hould be avoided.Peer ReviewedPreprin

Proceedings of the XIII Global Optimization Workshop: GOW'16

[Excerpt] Preface: Past Global Optimization Workshop shave been held in Sopron (1985 and 1990), Szeged (WGO, 1995), Florence (GO’99, 1999), Hanmer Springs (Let’s GO, 2001), Santorini (Frontiers in GO, 2003), San José (Go’05, 2005), Mykonos (AGO’07, 2007), Skukuza (SAGO’08, 2008), Toulouse (TOGO’10, 2010), Natal (NAGO’12, 2012) and Málaga (MAGO’14, 2014) with the aim of stimulating discussion between senior and junior researchers on the topic of Global Optimization. In 2016, the XIII Global Optimization Workshop (GOW’16) takes place in Braga and is organized by three researchers from the University of Minho. Two of them belong to the Systems Engineering and Operational Research Group from the Algoritmi Research Centre and the other to the Statistics, Applied Probability and Operational Research Group from the Centre of Mathematics. The event received more than 50 submissions from 15 countries from Europe, South America and North America. We want to express our gratitude to the invited speaker Panos Pardalos for accepting the invitation and sharing his expertise, helping us to meet the workshop objectives. GOW’16 would not have been possible without the valuable contribution from the authors and the International Scientific Committee members. We thank you all. This proceedings book intends to present an overview of the topics that will be addressed in the workshop with the goal of contributing to interesting and fruitful discussions between the authors and participants. After the event, high quality papers can be submitted to a special issue of the Journal of Global Optimization dedicated to the workshop. [...

A tool for analyzing and fixing infeasible RCTA instances

Minimum-distance controlled tabular adjustment methods (CTA), and its restricted variants (RCTA), is a recent perturbative approach for tabular data protection. Given a table to be protected, the purpose of RCTA is to find the closest table that guarantees protection levels for the sensitive cells. This is achieved by adding slight adjustments to the remaining cells, possibly excluding a subset of them (usually, the total cells) which preserve their original values. If either protection levels are large, or the bounds for cell deviations are tight, or too many cell values have to be preserved, the resulting mixed integer linear problem may be reported as infeasible. This work describes a tool developed for analyzing infeasible instances. The tool is based on a general elastic programming approach, which considers an artificial problem obtained by relaxing constraints and bounds through the addition of extra elastic variables. The tool allows selecting the subset of constraints and bounds to be relaxed, such that an elastic filter method can be applied for isolating a subset of infeasible table relations, protection levels, and cell bounds. Some computational experiments are reported using real-world instances

Reactive Planning With Legged Robots In Unknown Environments

Unlike the problem of safe task and motion planning in a completely known environment, the setting where the obstacles in a robot\u27s workspace are not initially known and are incrementally revealed online has so far received little theoretical interest, with existing algorithms usually demanding constant deliberative replanning in the presence of unanticipated conditions. Moreover, even though recent advances show that legged platforms are becoming better at traversing rough terrains and environments, legged robots are still mostly used as locomotion research platforms, with applications restricted to domains where interaction with the environment is usually not needed and actively avoided. In order to accomplish challenging tasks with such highly dynamic robots in unexplored environments, this research suggests with formal arguments and empirical demonstration the effectiveness of a hierarchical control structure, that we believe is the first provably correct deliberative/reactive planner to engage an unmodified general purpose mobile manipulator in physical rearrangements of its environment. To this end, we develop the mobile manipulation maneuvers to accomplish each task at hand, successfully anchor the useful kinematic unicycle template to control our legged platforms, and integrate perceptual feedback with low-level control to coordinate each robot\u27s movement. At the same time, this research builds toward a useful abstraction for task planning in unknown environments, and provides an avenue for incorporating partial prior knowledge within a deterministic framework well suited to existing vector field planning methods, by exploiting recent developments in semantic SLAM and object pose and triangular mesh extraction using convolutional neural net architectures. Under specific sufficient conditions, formal results guarantee collision avoidance and convergence to designated (fixed or slowly moving) targets, for both a single robot and a robot gripping and manipulating objects, in previously unexplored workspaces cluttered with non-convex obstacles. We encourage the application of our methods by providing accompanying software with open-source implementations of our algorithms

Abstracts on Radio Direction Finding (1899 - 1995)

The files on this record represent the various databases that originally composed the CD-ROM issue of "Abstracts on Radio Direction Finding" database, which is now part of the Dudley Knox Library's Abstracts and Selected Full Text Documents on Radio Direction Finding (1899 - 1995) Collection. (See Calhoun record https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/57364 for further information on this collection and the bibliography). Due to issues of technological obsolescence preventing current and future audiences from accessing the bibliography, DKL exported and converted into the three files on this record the various databases contained in the CD-ROM. The contents of these files are: 1) RDFA_CompleteBibliography_xls.zip [RDFA_CompleteBibliography.xls: Metadata for the complete bibliography, in Excel 97-2003 Workbook format; RDFA_Glossary.xls: Glossary of terms, in Excel 97-2003 Workbookformat; RDFA_Biographies.xls: Biographies of leading figures, in Excel 97-2003 Workbook format]; 2) RDFA_CompleteBibliography_csv.zip [RDFA_CompleteBibliography.TXT: Metadata for the complete bibliography, in CSV format; RDFA_Glossary.TXT: Glossary of terms, in CSV format; RDFA_Biographies.TXT: Biographies of leading figures, in CSV format]; 3) RDFA_CompleteBibliography.pdf: A human readable display of the bibliographic data, as a means of double-checking any possible deviations due to conversion

Manipulador aéreo con brazos antropomórficos de articulaciones flexibles

[Resumen] Este artículo presenta el primer robot manipulador aéreo con dos brazos antropomórficos diseñado para aplicarse en tareas de inspección y mantenimiento en entornos industriales de difícil acceso para operarios humanos. El robot consiste en una plataforma aérea multirrotor equipada con dos brazos antropomórficos ultraligeros, así como el sistema de control integrado de la plataforma y los brazos. Una de las principales características del manipulador es la flexibilidad mecánica proporcionada en todas las articulaciones, lo que aumenta la seguridad en las interacciones físicas con el entorno y la protección del propio robot. Para ello se ha introducido un compacto y simple mecanismo de transmisión por muelle entre el eje del servo y el enlace de salida. La estructura en aluminio de los brazos ha sido cuidadosamente diseñada de forma que los actuadores estén aislados frente a cargas radiales y axiales que los puedan dañar. El manipulador desarrollado ha sido validado a través de experimentos en base fija y en pruebas de vuelo en exteriores.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; DPI2014-5983-C2-1-