Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

Contributions to Monte Carlo Search

This research is motivated by improving decision making under uncertainty and in particular for games and symbolic regression. The present dissertation gathers research contributions in the field of Monte Carlo Search. These contributions are focused around the selection, the simulation and the recommendation policies. Moreover, we develop a methodology to automatically generate an MCS algorithm for a given problem. For the selection policy, in most of the bandit literature, it is assumed that there is no structure or similarities between arms. Thus each arm is independent from one another. In several instances however, arms can be closely related. We show both theoretically and empirically, that a significant improvement over the state-of-the-art selection policies is possible. For the contribution on simulation policy, we focus on the symbolic regression problem and ponder on how to consistently generate different expressions by changing the probability to draw each symbol. We formalize the situation into an optimization problem and try different approaches. We show a clear improvement in the sampling process for any length. We further test the best approach by embedding it into a MCS algorithm and it still shows an improvement. For the contribution on recommendation policy, we study the most common in combination with selection policies. A good recommendation policy is a policy that works well with a given selection policy. We show that there is a trend that seems to favor a robust recommendation policy over a riskier one. We also present a contribution where we automatically generate several MCS algorithms from a list of core components upon which most MCS algorithms are built upon and compare them to generic algorithms. The results show that it often enables discovering new variants of MCS that significantly outperform generic MCS algorithms

Characteristics of generatable games

We address the problem of generating complete games, rather than content for existing games. In particular, we try to an- swer the question which types of games it would be realistic or even feasible to generate. To begin to answer the question, we rst list the di erent ways we see that games could be generated, and then try to discuss what characterises games that would be comparatively easy or hard to generate. The discussion is structured according to a subset of the charac- teristics discussed in the book Characteristics of Games by Elias, Gar eld and Gutschera.peer-reviewe

New Swarm-Based Metaheuristics for Resource Allocation and Schwduling Problems

Tesis doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Escuela Politécnica Superior, Departamento de Ingeniería Informática. Fecha de lectura : 10-07-2017Esta tesis tiene embargado el acceso al texto completo hasta el 10-01-201

Optimisation, Optimal Control and Nonlinear Dynamics in Electrical Power, Energy Storage and Renewable Energy Systems

The electrical power system is undergoing a revolution enabled by advances in telecommunications, computer hardware and software, measurement, metering systems, IoT, and power electronics. Furthermore, the increasing integration of intermittent renewable energy sources, energy storage devices, and electric vehicles and the drive for energy efficiency have pushed power systems to modernise and adopt new technologies. The resulting smart grid is characterised, in part, by a bi-directional flow of energy and information. The evolution of the power grid, as well as its interconnection with energy storage systems and renewable energy sources, has created new opportunities for optimising not only their techno-economic aspects at the planning stages but also their control and operation. However, new challenges emerge in the optimization of these systems due to their complexity and nonlinear dynamic behaviour as well as the uncertainties involved.This volume is a selection of 20 papers carefully made by the editors from the MDPI topic “Optimisation, Optimal Control and Nonlinear Dynamics in Electrical Power, Energy Storage and Renewable Energy Systems”, which was closed in April 2022. The selected papers address the above challenges and exemplify the significant benefits that optimisation and nonlinear control techniques can bring to modern power and energy systems

Deteção de patologia cardíaca usando machine learning

Segundo a Organização Mundial da Saúde, as doenças cardiovasculares (DCV) representam 32% do número de mortes no mundo. A redução deste valor pode ser atingida através da deteção precoce que pode levar a um tratamento mais preciso, melhorando a expectativa de vida do paciente. A ausculta cardíaca é a principal técnica utilizada pelos profissionais de saúde para identificar muitas DCV. No entanto, a auscultação dos sons cardíacos é um procedimento difícil, já que muitos sons são fracos e difíceis de detetar, sendo necessário um processo de treino contínuo. Os estetoscópios modernos podem amplificar os sons cardíacos, reduzir o ruído de ambiente, melhorar a percepção do usuário e, mais importante, converter um sinal acústico em digital. Isto permitiu o desenvolvimento de sistemas de decisão assistidos por computador baseados na auscultação. Este documento apresenta uma metodologia que pode detectar automaticamente a existência de DCV através de sons cardíacos obtidos de diferentes partes do coração. Diversas tecnologias foram analisadas, assim como projetos que tentam resolver parte do problema em questão e a partir deles, três alternativas diferentes foram elaboradas e documentadas, assim como a divisão do dataset e métricas a serem usadas nos testes. Essas alternativas visam classificar anomalias na auscultação cardíaca dos pacientes. Vários modelos das duas primeiras alternativas foram implementados e seus resultados apresentados. Também é feita uma comparação entre as experiências desenvolvidas entre si, também com experiências básicas que não utilizam mecanismos inteligentes e com outros trabalhos que tenham o mesmo objetivo. O melhor resultado obtido foi pela primeira abordagem com uma exatidão de 94%, precisão de 81% e recall de 67%.According to World Health Organization, the cardiovascular diseases (CVD) represent 32% of the number of deaths worldwide. Early detection leads to a more accurate treatment plan and improves the patient’s life expectancy. Cardiac auscultation is the main technique used by health professionals to identify many CVD. Nevertheless, heart sound auscultation is a difficult procedure, since it requires continuous training and many heart sounds are faint and hard to detect. However, modern stethoscopes can amplify heart sounds, reduce the environment noise, improve the user’s perception and, more importantly, convert an acoustic signal to a digital one. This allowed, the development of computer assisted decision systems based on auscultation. This document presents a methodology that can automatically detect the existence of CVD through cardiac sounds obtained from different parts of the heart. Several technologies were analysed, as well as projects that try to solve part of the problem in question and from them, three different alternatives were elaborated and documented, as well as the division of test data and the metrics for their evaluation. These alternatives are intended to classify anomalies in patients' cardiac auscultation. Several models of the first two alternatives were implemented and their results presented. A comparison is also made between the experiences developed among themselves, also with basic experiments that do not use intelligent mechanisms and with other works that have the same objective. The best result obtained was by the first approach with an accuracy of 94%, precision of 81% and recall of 67%

Learning to Unknot

We introduce natural language processing into the study of knot theory, as made natural by the braid word representation of knots. We study the UNKNOT problem of determining whether or not a given knot is the unknot. After describing an algorithm to randomly generate N-crossing braids and their knot closures and discussing the induced prior on the distribution of knots, we apply binary classification to the UNKNOT decision problem. We find that the Reformer and shared-QK Transformer network architectures outperform fully-connected networks, though all perform well. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that accuracy increases with the length of the braid word, and that the networks learn a direct correlation between the confidence of their predictions and the degree of the Jones polynomial. Finally, we utilize reinforcement learning (RL) to find sequences of Markov moves and braid relations that simplify knots and can identify unknots by explicitly giving the sequence of unknotting actions. Trust region policy optimization (TRPO) performs consistently well for a wide range of crossing numbers and thoroughly outperformed other RL algorithms and random walkers. Studying these actions, we find that braid relations are more useful in simplifying to the unknot than one of the Markov moves