A speaker classification framework for non-intrusive user modeling : speech-based personalization of in-car services

Speaker Classification, i.e. the automatic detection of certain characteristics of a person based on his or her voice, has a variety of applications in modern computer technology and artificial intelligence: As a non-intrusive source for user modeling, it can be employed for personalization of human-machine interfaces in numerous domains. This dissertation presents a principled approach to the design of a novel Speaker Classification system for automatic age and gender recognition which meets these demands. Based on literature studies, methods and concepts dealing with the underlying pattern recognition task are developed. The final system consists of an incremental GMM-SVM supervector architecture with several optimizations. An extensive data-driven experiment series explores the parameter space and serves as evaluation of the component. Further experiments investigate the language-independence of the approach. As an essential part of this thesis, a framework is developed that implements all tasks associated with the design and evaluation of Speaker Classification in an integrated development environment that is able to generate efficient runtime modules for multiple platforms. Applications from the automotive field and other domains demonstrate the practical benefit of the technology for personalization, e.g. by increasing local danger warning lead time for elderly drivers.Die Sprecherklassifikation, also die automatische Erkennung bestimmter Merkmale einer Person anhand ihrer Stimme, besitzt eine Vielzahl von Anwendungsmöglichkeiten in der modernen Computertechnik und Künstlichen Intelligenz: Als nicht-intrusive Wissensquelle für die Benutzermodellierung kann sie zur Personalisierung in vielen Bereichen eingesetzt werden. In dieser Dissertation wird ein fundierter Ansatz zum Entwurf eines neuartigen Sprecherklassifikationssystems zur automatischen Bestimmung von Alter und Geschlecht vorgestellt, welches diese Anforderungen erfüllt. Ausgehend von Literaturstudien werden Konzepte und Methoden zur Behandlung des zugrunde liegenden Mustererkennungsproblems entwickelt, welche zu einer inkrementell arbeitenden GMM-SVM-Supervector-Architektur mit diversen Optimierungen führen. Eine umfassende datengetriebene Experimentalreihe dient der Erforschung des Parameterraumes und zur Evaluierung der Komponente. Weitere Studien untersuchen die Sprachunabhängigkeit des Ansatzes. Als wesentlicher Bestandteil der Arbeit wird ein Framework entwickelt, das alle im Zusammenhang mit Entwurf und Evaluierung von Sprecherklassifikation anfallenden Aufgaben in einer integrierten Entwicklungsumgebung implementiert, welche effiziente Laufzeitmodule für verschiedene Plattformen erzeugen kann. Anwendungen aus dem Automobilbereich und weiteren Domänen demonstrieren den praktischen Nutzen der Technologie zur Personalisierung, z.B. indem die Vorlaufzeit von lokalen Gefahrenwarnungen für ältere Fahrer erhöht wird

Reducing non-recurrent urban traffic congestion using vehicle re-routing

Recently, with the trend of world-wide urbanization, some of the accompanying problems are getting serious, including road traffic congestion. To deal with this problem, city planners now resort to the application of the latest information and communications technologies. One example is the adaptive traffic signal control system (e.g. SCATS, SCOOT). To increase the throughput of each main intersection, it dynamically adjusts the traffic light phases according to real-time traffic conditions collected by widely deployed induction loops and sensors. Another typical application is the on-board vehicle navigation system. It can provide drivers with a personalized route according to their preferences (e.g. shortest/fastest/easiest), utilizing comprehensive geo-map data and floating car data. Dynamic traffic assignment is also one of the key proposed methodologies, as it not only benefits the individual driver, but can also provide a route assignment solution for all vehicles with guaranteed minimum average travel time. However, the non-recurrent road traffic congestion problem is still not addressed properly. Unlike the recurrent traffic congestion, which is predictable by capturing the daily traffic pattern, unexpected road traffic congestion caused by unexpected en-route events (e.g. road maintenance, an unplanned parade, car crashes, etc.), often propagates to larger areas in very short time. Consequently, the congestion level of areas around the event location will be significantly degraded. Unfortunately, the three aforementioned methods cannot reduce this unexpected congestion in real time. The contribution of this thesis firstly lies in emphasizing the importance of the dynamic time constraint for vehicle rerouting. Secondly, a framework for evaluating the performance of vehicle route planning algorithms is proposed along with a case study on the simulated scenario of Cologne city. Thirdly, based on the multi-agent architecture of SCATS, the next road rerouting (NRR) system is introduced. Each agent in NRR can use the locally available information to provide the most promising next road guidance in the face of the unexpected urban traffic congestion. In the last contribution of this thesis, further performance improvement of NRR is achieved by the provision of high-resolution, high update frequency traffic information using vehicular ad hoc networks. Moreover, NRR includes an adaptation mechanism to dynamically determine the algorithmic (i.e. factors in the heuristic routing cost function) and operational (i.e. group of agents which must be enabled) parameters. The simulation results show that in the realistic urban scenario, compared to the existing solutions, NRR can significantly reduce the average travel time and improve the travel time reliability. The results also indicate that for both rerouted and non-rerouted vehicles, NRR does not bring any obvious unfairness issue where some vehicles overwhelmingly sacrifice their own travel time to obtain global benefits for other vehicles

Data Science and Knowledge Discovery

Data Science (DS) is gaining significant importance in the decision process due to a mix of various areas, including Computer Science, Machine Learning, Math and Statistics, domain/business knowledge, software development, and traditional research. In the business field, DS's application allows using scientific methods, processes, algorithms, and systems to extract knowledge and insights from structured and unstructured data to support the decision process. After collecting the data, it is crucial to discover the knowledge. In this step, Knowledge Discovery (KD) tasks are used to create knowledge from structured and unstructured sources (e.g., text, data, and images). The output needs to be in a readable and interpretable format. It must represent knowledge in a manner that facilitates inferencing. KD is applied in several areas, such as education, health, accounting, energy, and public administration. This book includes fourteen excellent articles which discuss this trending topic and present innovative solutions to show the importance of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery to researchers, managers, industry, society, and other communities. The chapters address several topics like Data mining, Deep Learning, Data Visualization and Analytics, Semantic data, Geospatial and Spatio-Temporal Data, Data Augmentation and Text Mining