Distributed estimation over a low-cost sensor network: a review of state-of-the-art

Proliferation of low-cost, lightweight, and power efficient sensors and advances in networked systems enable the employment of multiple sensors. Distributed estimation provides a scalable and fault-robust fusion framework with a peer-to-peer communication architecture. For this reason, there seems to be a real need for a critical review of existing and, more importantly, recent advances in the domain of distributed estimation over a low-cost sensor network. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art solutions in this research area, exploring their characteristics, advantages, and challenging issues. Additionally, several open problems and future avenues of research are highlighted

Factoring a priori classifier performance into decision fusion

In this paper we present methods to enhance the classification rate in decision fusion with partially redundant information by manipulating the input to the fusion scheme using a priori performance information. Intuitively, it seems to make sense to trust a more reliable tool more than a less reliable one without discounting the less reliable one completely. For a multi-class classifier, the reliability per class must be considered. In addition, complete ignorance for any given class must also be factored into the fusion process to ensure that all faults are equally well represented. However, overly trusting the best classifier will not permit the fusion tool to achieve results that rate beyond the best classifiers performance. We assume that the performance of classifiers to be fused is known, and show how to take advantage of this information. In particular, we glean pertinent performance information from the classifier confusion matrices and their cousin, the relevance matrix. We further demonstrate how to integrate a priori performance information within an hierarchical fusion architecture. We investigate several schemes for these operations and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each. We then apply the concepts introduced to the diagnostic realm where we aggregate the output of several different diagnostic tools. We present results motivated from diagnosing on-board faults in aircraft engines

Distributed decision fusion using empirical estimation

The problem of optimal data fusion in multiple detection systems is studied in the case where training examples are available, but no a priori information is available about the probability distributions of errors committed by the individual detectors. Earlier solutions to this problem require some knowledge of the error distributions of the detectors, for example, either in a parametric form or in a closed analytical form. Here the authors show that, given a sufficiently large training sample, an optimal fusion rule can be implemented with an arbitrary level of confidence. They first consider the classical cases of Bayesian rule and Neyman-Pearson test for a system of independent detectors. Then they show a general result that any test function with a suitable Lipschitz property can be implemented with arbitrary precision, based on a training sample whose size is a function of the Lipschitz constant, number of parameters, and empirical measures. The general case subsumes the cases of non-independent and correlated detectors

Design and implementation of a relative localization system for ground and aerial robotic teams

The main focus of this thesis is to address the relative localization problem of a heterogenous team which comprises of both ground and micro aerial vehicle robots. This team configuration allows to combine the advantages of increased accessibility and better perspective provided by aerial robots with the higher computational and sensory resources provided by the ground agents, to realize a cooperative multi robotic system suitable for hostile autonomous missions. However, in such a scenario, the strict constraints in flight time, sensor pay load, and computational capability of micro aerial vehicles limits the practical applicability of popular map-based localization schemes for GPS denied navigation. Therefore, the resource limited aerial platforms of this team demand simpler localization means for autonomous navigation. Relative localization is the process of estimating the formation of a robot team using the acquired inter-robot relative measurements. This allows the team members to know their relative formation even without a global localization reference, such as GPS or a map. Thus a typical robot team would benefit from a relative localization service since it would allow the team to implement formation control, collision avoidance, and supervisory control tasks, independent of a global localization service. More importantly, a heterogenous team such as ground robots and computationally constrained aerial vehicles would benefit from a relative localization service since it provides the crucial localization information required for autonomous operation of the weaker agents. This enables less capable robots to assume supportive roles and contribute to the more powerful robots executing the mission. Hence this study proposes a relative localization-based approach for ground and micro aerial vehicle cooperation, and develops inter-robot measurement, filtering, and distributed computing modules, necessary to realize the system. The research study results in three significant contributions. First, the work designs and validates a novel inter-robot relative measurement hardware solution which has accuracy, range, and scalability characteristics, necessary for relative localization. Second, the research work performs an analysis and design of a novel nonlinear filtering method, which allows the implementation of relative localization modules and attitude reference filters on low cost devices with optimal tuning parameters. Third, this work designs and validates a novel distributed relative localization approach, which harnesses the distributed computing capability of the team to minimize communication requirements, achieve consistent estimation, and enable efficient data correspondence within the network. The work validates the complete relative localization-based system through multiple indoor experiments and numerical simulations. The relative localization based navigation concept with its sensing, filtering, and distributed computing methods introduced in this thesis complements system limitations of a ground and micro aerial vehicle team, and also targets hostile environmental conditions. Thus the work constitutes an essential step towards realizing autonomous navigation of heterogenous teams in real world applications

Uncertainty Minimization in Robotic 3D Mapping Systems Operating in Dynamic Large-Scale Environments

This dissertation research is motivated by the potential and promise of 3D sensing technologies in safety and security applications. With specific focus on unmanned robotic mapping to aid clean-up of hazardous environments, under-vehicle inspection, automatic runway/pavement inspection and modeling of urban environments, we develop modular, multi-sensor, multi-modality robotic 3D imaging prototypes using localization/navigation hardware, laser range scanners and video cameras. While deploying our multi-modality complementary approach to pose and structure recovery in dynamic real-world operating conditions, we observe several data fusion issues that state-of-the-art methodologies are not able to handle. Different bounds on the noise model of heterogeneous sensors, the dynamism of the operating conditions and the interaction of the sensing mechanisms with the environment introduce situations where sensors can intermittently degenerate to accuracy levels lower than their design specification. This observation necessitates the derivation of methods to integrate multi-sensor data considering sensor conflict, performance degradation and potential failure during operation. Our work in this dissertation contributes the derivation of a fault-diagnosis framework inspired by information complexity theory to the data fusion literature. We implement the framework as opportunistic sensing intelligence that is able to evolve a belief policy on the sensors within the multi-agent 3D mapping systems to survive and counter concerns of failure in challenging operating conditions. The implementation of the information-theoretic framework, in addition to eliminating failed/non-functional sensors and avoiding catastrophic fusion, is able to minimize uncertainty during autonomous operation by adaptively deciding to fuse or choose believable sensors. We demonstrate our framework through experiments in multi-sensor robot state localization in large scale dynamic environments and vision-based 3D inference. Our modular hardware and software design of robotic imaging prototypes along with the opportunistic sensing intelligence provides significant improvements towards autonomous accurate photo-realistic 3D mapping and remote visualization of scenes for the motivating applications

Probabilistic multiple kernel learning

The integration of multiple and possibly heterogeneous information sources for an overall decision-making process has been an open and unresolved research direction in computing science since its very beginning. This thesis attempts to address parts of that direction by proposing probabilistic data integration algorithms for multiclass decisions where an observation of interest is assigned to one of many categories based on a plurality of information channels

Ensemble diversity for class imbalance learning

This thesis studies the diversity issue of classification ensembles for class imbalance learning problems. Class imbalance learning refers to learning from imbalanced data sets, in which some classes of examples (minority) are highly under-represented comparing to other classes (majority). The very skewed class distribution degrades the learning ability of many traditional machine learning methods, especially in the recognition of examples from the minority classes, which are often deemed to be more important and interesting. Although quite a few ensemble learning approaches have been proposed to handle the problem, no in-depth research exists to explain why and when they can be helpful. Our objectives are to understand how ensemble diversity affects the classification performance for a class imbalance problem according to single-class and overall performance measures, and to make best use of diversity to improve the performance. As the first stage, we study the relationship between ensemble diversity and generalization performance for class imbalance problems. We investigate mathematical links between single-class performance and ensemble diversity. It is found that how the single-class measures change along with diversity falls into six different situations. These findings are then verified in class imbalance scenarios through empirical studies. The impact of diversity on overall performance is also investigated empirically. Strong correlations between diversity and the performance measures are found. Diversity shows a positive impact on the recognition of the minority class and benefits the overall performance of ensembles in class imbalance learning. Our results help to understand if and why ensemble diversity can help to deal with class imbalance problems. Encouraged by the positive role of diversity in class imbalance learning, we then focus on a specific ensemble learning technique, the negative correlation learning (NCL) algorithm, which considers diversity explicitly when creating ensembles and has achieved great empirical success. We propose a new learning algorithm based on the idea of NCL, named AdaBoost.NC, for classification problems. An ``ambiguity" term decomposed from the 0-1 error function is introduced into the training framework of AdaBoost. It demonstrates superiority in both effectiveness and efficiency. Its good generalization performance is explained by theoretical and empirical evidences. It can be viewed as the first NCL algorithm specializing in classification problems. Most existing ensemble methods for class imbalance problems suffer from the problems of overfitting and over-generalization. To improve this situation, we address the class imbalance issue by making use of ensemble diversity. We investigate the generalization ability of NCL algorithms, including AdaBoost.NC, to tackle two-class imbalance problems. We find that NCL methods integrated with random oversampling are effective in recognizing minority class examples without losing the overall performance, especially the AdaBoost.NC tree ensemble. This is achieved by providing smoother and less overfitting classification boundaries for the minority class. The results here show the usefulness of diversity and open up a novel way to deal with class imbalance problems. Since the two-class imbalance is not the only scenario in real-world applications, multi-class imbalance problems deserve equal attention. To understand what problems multi-class can cause and how it affects the classification performance, we study the multi-class difficulty by analyzing the multi-minority and multi-majority cases respectively. Both lead to a significant performance reduction. The multi-majority case appears to be more harmful. The results reveal possible issues that a class imbalance learning technique could have when dealing with multi-class tasks. Following this part of analysis and the promising results of AdaBoost.NC on two-class imbalance problems, we apply AdaBoost.NC to a set of multi-class imbalance domains with the aim of solving them effectively and directly. Our method shows good generalization in minority classes and balances the performance across different classes well without using any class decomposition schemes. Finally, we conclude this thesis with how the study has contributed to class imbalance learning and ensemble learning, and propose several possible directions for future research that may improve and extend this work