Adaptive Wavelet Neural Network for Terrestrial Laser Scanner-Based Crack Detection

Objective, accurate, and fast assessment of civil infrastructure conditions is critical to timely assess safety risks. Current practices rely on visual observations and manual interpretation of reports and sketches prepared by inspectors in the field, which are labor intensive, subject to personal judgment and experience, and prone to error. Terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) are promising for automatically identifying structural condition indicators, as they are capable of providing coverage for large areas with accuracy at long ranges. Major challenges in using this technology are in storing significant amount of data and extracting appropriate features enabling condition assessment. This paper proposes a novel adaptive wavelet neural network (WNN)-based approach to compress data into a combination of low- and high-resolution surfaces, and automatically detect concrete cracks and other forms of damage. The adaptive WNN is designed to sequentially self-organize and self-adapt in order to construct an optimized representation. The architecture of the WNN is based on a single-layer neural network consisting of Mexican hat wavelet functions. The strategy is to first construct a low-resolution representation of the point cloud, then detect and localize anomalies, and finally construct a high-resolution representation around these anomalies to enhance their characterization. The approach was verified on four cracked concrete specimens. The experimental results show that the proposed approach was capable of fitting the point cloud, and of detecting and fitting the crack. The results demonstrated data compression of 99.4%, 72.2%, 92.4% and 78.9% for the four specimens when using low resolution fit for crack detection. For specimens 1, 2 and 3, 97.1%, 42.5% and 63.9% compression of data were obtained for crack localization, which is a significant improvement over previous TLS based crack detection and measurement approaches. Using the proposed method for crack detection would enable automatic and remote assessment of structural conditions. This would, in turn, result in reducing costs associated with infrastructure management, and improving the overall quality of our infrastructure by enhancing maintenance operations

Application-aware optimization of Artificial Intelligence for deployment on resource constrained devices

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing people's everyday life. AI techniques such as Deep Neural Networks (DNN) rely on heavy computational models, which are in principle designed to be executed on powerful HW platforms, such as desktop or server environments. However, the increasing need to apply such solutions in people's everyday life has encouraged the research for methods to allow their deployment on embedded, portable and stand-alone devices, such as mobile phones, which exhibit relatively low memory and computational resources. Such methods targets both the development of lightweight AI algorithms and their acceleration through dedicated HW. This thesis focuses on the development of lightweight AI solutions, with attention to deep neural networks, to facilitate their deployment on resource constrained devices. Focusing on the computer vision field, we show how putting together the self learning ability of deep neural networks with application-specific knowledge, in the form of feature engineering, it is possible to dramatically reduce the total memory and computational burden, thus allowing the deployment on edge devices. The proposed approach aims to be complementary to already existing application-independent network compression solutions. In this work three main DNN optimization goals have been considered: increasing speed and accuracy, allowing training at the edge, and allowing execution on a microcontroller. For each of these we deployed the resulting algorithm to the target embedded device and measured its performance

A path for microsecond structural health monitoring for high-rate nonstationary time-varying systems

In this dissertation, a new area of research identified as high-rate state estimation is established along with its associated research challenges, and a path for a solution is provided. High-rate dynamic systems are defined as systems being exposed to highly dynamic environments that are comprised of high-rate and high-amplitude events (greater than 100 g for a duration under 100 ms). Engineering systems experiencing high-rate dynamic events, including airbag, debris detection, and active blast protection systems, could benefit from real-time observability for enhanced performance. This task of high-rate state estimation is particularly challenging for real-time applications, where the rate of an observer\u27s convergence needs to be in the microsecond range. On the other hand, the benefits include a high potential to reduce economic loss and save lives. The problem is discussed in-depth addressing the fundamental challenges of high-rate systems. A survey of applications and methods for estimators that have the potential to produce accurate estimations for a complex system experiencing highly dynamic events is presented. It is argued that adaptive observers are important to this research. In particular, adaptive data-driven observers are found to be advantageous due to their adaptability to complex problems and lack of dependence on system model. An adaptive neuro-observer is designed to examine the particular challenges in selecting an appropriate input space for high-rate state estimation to increase convergence rates of adaptive observers. It is found that the choice of inputs has a more significant influence on the observer\u27s performance for high-rate dynamics when compared against a lower rate environment. Additionally, misrepresentation of a system dynamics through incorrect input spaces produces large errors in the estimation, which could potentially trick the decision making process in a closed-loop system in making bad judgments. A novel adaptive wavelet neural network (WNN)-based approach to compress data into a combination of low- and high-resolution surfaces is proposed to automatically detect concrete cracks and other forms of damage. The adaptive WNN is designed to sequentially self-organize and self-adapt in order to construct an optimized representation. The architecture of the WNN is based on a single-layer neural network consisting of Mexican hat wavelet functions. The approach was verified on four cracked concrete specimens. A variable input space concept is proposed for incorporating data history of high-rate dynamics, with the objective to produce an optimal representation of the system of interest minimizing convergence times of adaptive observers. Using the embedding theory, the algorithm sequentially selects and adapts a vector of inputs that preserves the essential dynamics of the high-rate system. The variable input space is integrated with a WNN, which constitutes a variable input observer. The observer is simulated using experimental data from a high-rate system. Different input space adaptation methods are studied and the performance is compared against an optimized fixed input strategy. The variable input observer is further studied in a hybrid model-/data-driven formulation, and results demonstrate significant improvement in performance gained from the added physical knowledge. An experimental test bed, developed to validate high-rate structural health monitoring (SHM) methods in a controllable and repeatable laboratory environment, is modeled as a clamped-pinned-free beam with mass at the free end. The Euler-Bernoulli beam theory is applied to this unique configuration to develop analytical solutions of the system. The transverse vibration of a clamped-pinned-free beam with a point mass at the free end is discussed in detail. Results are derived for varying pin locations and mass values. Eigenvalue plots of the first five modes are presented along with their respective mode shapes. The theoretical calculations are experimentally validated and discussed

Affect recognition & generation in-the-wild

Affect recognition based on a subject’s facial expressions has been a topic of major research in the attempt to generate machines that can understand the way subjects feel, act and react. In the past, due to the unavailability of large amounts of data captured in real-life situations, research has mainly focused on controlled environments. However, recently, social media and platforms have been widely used. Moreover, deep learning has emerged as a means to solve visual analysis and recognition problems. This Ph.D. Thesis exploits these advances and makes significant contributions for affect analysis and recognition in-the-wild. We tackle affect analysis and recognition as a dual knowledge generation problem: i) we create new, large and rich in-the-wild databases and ii) we design and train novel deep neural architectures that are able to analyse affect over these databases and to successfully generalise their performance on other datasets. At first, we present the creation of Aff-Wild database annotated according to valence-arousal and an end-to-end CNN-RNN architecture, AffWildNet. Then we use AffWildNet as a robust prior for dimensional and categorical affect recognition and extend it by extracting low-/mid-/high-level latent information and analysing this via multiple RNNs. Additionally, we propose a novel loss function for DNN-based categorical affect recognition. Next, we generate Aff-Wild2, the first database containing annotations for all main behavior tasks: estimate Valence-Arousal; classify into Basic Expressions; detect Action Units. We develop multi-task and multi-modal extensions of AffWildNet by fusing these tasks and propose a novel holistic approach that utilises all existing databases with non-overlapping annotations and couples them through co-annotation and distribution matching. Finally, we present an approach for valence-arousal, or basic expressions’ facial affect synthesis. We generate an image with a given affect, or a sequence of images with evolving affect, by annotating a 4-D database and utilising a 3-D morphable model.Open Acces

Sensor Signal and Information Processing II

In the current age of information explosion, newly invented technological sensors and software are now tightly integrated with our everyday lives. Many sensor processing algorithms have incorporated some forms of computational intelligence as part of their core framework in problem solving. These algorithms have the capacity to generalize and discover knowledge for themselves and learn new information whenever unseen data are captured. The primary aim of sensor processing is to develop techniques to interpret, understand, and act on information contained in the data. The interest of this book is in developing intelligent signal processing in order to pave the way for smart sensors. This involves mathematical advancement of nonlinear signal processing theory and its applications that extend far beyond traditional techniques. It bridges the boundary between theory and application, developing novel theoretically inspired methodologies targeting both longstanding and emergent signal processing applications. The topic ranges from phishing detection to integration of terrestrial laser scanning, and from fault diagnosis to bio-inspiring filtering. The book will appeal to established practitioners, along with researchers and students in the emerging field of smart sensors processing

A neural network based retrainable framework for robust object recognition with application to mobile robotics

In this paper, we address object recognition for a mobile robot which is deployed in a multistory building. To move to another floor, a mobile robot should recognize various objects related to an elevator, e.g., elevator control, call buttons, and LED displays. To this end, we propose a neural network based retrainable framework for object recognition, which consists of four components-preprocessing, binary classification, object identification, and outlier rejection. The binary classifier, a key component of our system, is a neural network that can be retrained, the motivation of which is to adapt to varying environments, especially with illuminations. Without incurring any extra process to prepare new training samples for retraining, they are freely obtained as a result of the outlier rejection component, being extracted on-line. To realize a practical system, we adopt a parallel architecture integrating both recognition and retraining processes for seamless object recognition, and furthermore detect and cope with the deterioration of a retrained neural network to ensure high reliability. We demonstrate the positive effect of retraining on the object recognition performance by conducting experiments over hundreds of images obtained in daytime and nighttime.X111517sciescopu