Optimizing Engagement Simulations Through the Advanced Framework for Simulation, Integration, and Modeling (AFSIM) Software

The ability to effectively model and simulate military missions holds the potential to save lives, money, and resources for the United States. The Advanced Framework for Simulation, Integration, and Modeling (AFSIM) software is a tool used to rapidly simulate and model new technologies and mission level scenarios. In this thesis, our objective is to integrate a closed loop optimization routine with AFSIM to identify an effective objective function to assess optimal inputs for engagement scenarios. Given the many factors which impact a mission level engagement, we developed a tool which interfaces with AFSIM to observe the effects from multiple inputs in an engagement scenario. Our tool operates under the assumption that simulation results have met an acceptable convergence threshold. The objective function evaluates the effectiveness and associated cost with a scenario using a genetic algorithm and a particle swarm optimization algorithm. From this, a statistical analysis was performed to assess risk from the distribution of effectiveness and cost at each point. The method allows an optimal set of inputs to be selected for a desired result from the selected engagement scenario.No embargoAcademic Major: Mechanical Engineerin

Hybrid Evolutionary Shape Manipulation for Efficient Hull Form Design Optimisation

‘Eco-friendly shipping’ and fuel efficiency are gaining much attention in the maritime industry due to increasingly stringent environmental regulations and volatile fuel prices. The shape of hull affects the overall performance in efficiency and stability of ships. Despite the advantages of simulation-based design, the application of a formal optimisation process in actual ship design work is limited. A hybrid approach which integrates a morphing technique into a multi-objective genetic algorithm to automate and optimise the hull form design is developed. It is envisioned that the proposed hybrid approach will improve the hydrodynamic performance as well as overall efficiency of the design process

SpecAttack: Specification-Based Adversarial Training for Deep Neural Networks

Safety specification-based adversarial training aims to generate examples violating a formal safety specification and therefore provides approaches for repair. The need for maintaining high prediction accuracy while ensuring the save behavior remains challenging. Thus we present SpecAttack, a query-efficient counter-example generation and repair method for deep neural networks. Using SpecAttack allows specifying safety constraints on the model to find inputs that violate these constraints. These violations are then used to repair the neural network via re-training such that it becomes provably safe. We evaluate SpecAttack's performance on the task of counter-example generation and repair. Our experimental evaluation demonstrates that SpecAttack is in most cases more query-efficient than comparable attacks, yields counter-examples of higher quality, with its repair technique being more efficient, maintaining higher functional correctness, and provably guaranteeing safety specification compliance

Light scattering by the Martian dust analog, palagonite, modeled with ellipsoids

We have investigated the suitability of the ellipsoidal model particles to mimic scattering by Martian dust particles by comparing simulations against laboratory data for palagonite, a Mars analog sample. By optimizing the shape distribution of ellipsoids, a very good match with a laboratory-measured scattering matrix was obtained. Even an equiprobable distribution of ellipsoids performed well. The asymmetry parameter and single-scattering albedo were found to depend on the assumed shape distribution as much as on the typical uncertainties associated with refractive indices and size, suggesting that shape is an important parameter that potentially influences remote retrievals of dust particle properties

Algorithms for the continuous nonlinear resource allocation problem---new implementations and numerical studies

Patriksson (2008) provided a then up-to-date survey on the continuous,separable, differentiable and convex resource allocation problem with a single resource constraint. Since the publication of that paper the interest in the problem has grown: several new applications have arisen where the problem at hand constitutes a subproblem, and several new algorithms have been developed for its efficient solution. This paper therefore serves three purposes. First, it provides an up-to-date extension of the survey of the literature of the field, complementing the survey in Patriksson (2008) with more then 20 books and articles. Second, it contributes improvements of some of these algorithms, in particular with an improvement of the pegging (that is, variable fixing) process in the relaxation algorithm, and an improved means to evaluate subsolutions. Third, it numerically evaluates several relaxation (primal) and breakpoint (dual) algorithms, incorporating a variety of pegging strategies, as well as a quasi-Newton method. Our conclusion is that our modification of the relaxation algorithm performs the best. At least for problem sizes up to 30 million variables the practical time complexity for the breakpoint and relaxation algorithms is linear

A new two-stage algorithm for solving optimization problems

Optimization seeks to find inputs for an objective function that result in a maximum or minimum. Optimization methods are divided into exact and approximate (algorithms). Several optimization algorithms imitate natural phenomena, laws of physics, and behavior of living organisms. Optimization based on algorithms is the challenge that underlies machine learning, from logistic regression to training neural networks for artificial intelligence. In this paper, a new algorithm called two-stage optimization (TSO) is proposed. The TSO algorithm updates population members in two steps at each iteration. For this purpose, a group of good population members is selected and then two members of this group are randomly used to update the position of each of them. This update is based on the first selected good member at the first stage, and on the second selected good member at the second stage. We describe the stages of the TSO algorithm and model them mathematically. Performance of the TSO algorithm is evaluated for twenty-three standard objective functions. In order to compare the optimization results of the TSO algorithm, eight other competing algorithms are considered, including genetic, gravitational search, grey wolf, marine predators, particle swarm, teaching-learning-based, tunicate swarm, and whale approaches. The numerical results show that the new algorithm is superior and more competitive in solving optimization problems when compared with other algorithms

Turkish music generation using deep learning

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by IEEE in 28th IEEE Conference on Signal Processing and Communications Applications (SIU), available online at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9302283 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Bu çalı¸smada derin ögrenme ile Türkçe ¸sarkı bes- ˘ teleme üzerine yeni bir model tanıtılmaktadır. ¸Sarkı sözlerinin Tekrarlı Sinir Agları kullanan bir dil modeliyle otomatik olarak ˘ olu¸sturuldugu, melodiyi meydana getiren notaların da benzer ˘ ¸sekilde nöral dil modeliyle olu¸sturuldugu ve sözler ile melodinin ˘ bütünle¸stirilerek ¸sarkı sentezlemenin gerçekle¸stirildigi bu çalı¸sma ˘ Türkçe ¸sarkı besteleme için yapılan ilk çalı¸smadır. In this work, a new model is introduced for Turkish song generation using deep learning. It will be the first work on Turkish song generation that makes use of Recurrent Neural Networks to generate the lyrics automatically along with a language model, where the melody is also generated by a neural language model analogously, and then the singing synthesis is performed by combining the lyrics with the melody. It will be the first work on Turkish song generation

Performance Analyses of Graph Heuristics and Selected Trajectory Metaheuristics on Examination Timetable Problem

Examination timetabling problem is hard to solve due to its NP-hard nature, with a large number of constraints having to be accommodated. To deal with the problem effectually, frequently heuristics are used for constructing feasible examination timetable while meta-heuristics are applied for improving the solution quality. This paper presents the performances of graph heuristics and major trajectory metaheuristics or S-metaheuristics for addressing both capacitated and un-capacitated examination timetabling problem. For constructing the feasible solution, six graph heuristics are used. They are largest degree (LD), largest weighted degree (LWD), largest enrolment degree (LE), and three hybrid heuristic with saturation degree (SD) such as SD-LD, SD-LE, and SD-LWD. Five trajectory algorithms comprising of tabu search (TS), simulated annealing (SA), late acceptance hill climbing (LAHC), great deluge algorithm (GDA), and variable neighborhood search (VNS) are employed for improving the solution quality. Experiments have been tested on several instances of un-capacitated and capacitated benchmark datasets, which are Toronto and ITC2007 dataset respectively. Experimental results indicate that, in terms of construction of solution of datasets, hybridizing of SD produces the best initial solutions. The study also reveals that, during improvement, GDA, SA, and LAHC can produce better quality solutions compared to TS and VNS for solving both benchmark examination timetabling datasets

SINGLE VERSUS MULTIPLE TRIAL VECTORS IN CLASSICAL DIFFERENTIAL EVOLUTION FOR OPTIMIZING THE QUANTIZATION TABLE IN JPEG BASELINE ALGORITHM

Quantization Table is responsible for compression / quality trade-off in baseline Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) algorithm and therefore it is viewed as an optimization problem. In the literature, it has been found that Classical Differential Evolution (CDE) is a promising algorithm to generate the optimal quantization table. However, the searching capability of CDE could be limited due to generation of single trial vector in an iteration which in turn reduces the convergence speed. This paper studies the performance of CDE by employing multiple trial vectors in a single iteration. An extensive performance analysis has been made between CDE and CDE with multiple trial vectors in terms of Optimization process, accuracy, convergence speed and reliability. The analysis report reveals that CDE with multiple trial vectors improves the convergence speed of CDE and the same is confirmed using a statistical hypothesis test (t-test)