Hierarchical spatial-temporal state machine for vehicle instrument cluster manufacturing

The vehicle instrument cluster is one of the most advanced and complicated electronic embedded control systems used in modern vehicles providing a driver with an interface to control and determine the status of the vehicle. In this paper, we develop a novel hybrid approach called Hierarchical Spatial-Temporal State Machine (HSTSM). The approach addresses a problem of spatial-temporal inference in complex dynamic systems. It is based on a memory-prediction framework and Deep Neural Networks (DNN) which is used for fault detection and isolation in automatic inspection and manufacturing of vehicle instrument cluster. The technique has been compared with existing methods namely rule-based, template-based, Bayesian, restricted Boltzmann machine and hierarchical temporal memory methods. Results show that the proposed approach can successfully diagnose and locate multiple classes of faults under real-time working conditions

Super-resolution of car plate images using generative adversarial networks

Car plate recognition is used in traffic monitoring and control systems such as intelligent parking lot management, finding stolen vehicles, and automated highway toll. Car plate recognition consists of several stages of processing namely, car plate localization, extraction, and recognition which consists of Optical Character Recognition (OCR). However, in practice, Low-Resolution (LR) images or videos are widely used in surveillance systems. In low resolution surveillance systems, the car plate text is often illegible. Other than that, small car plate due to the distance and illumination cause the car plate recognition to fail as well. Super-Resolution (SR) techniques can be used to improve the car plate quality by processing a series of LR images into a single High-Resolution (HR) image. Today, the best upscaling algorithms cannot effectively reconstruct data that does not exist. Recovering the HR image from a single LR is still an ill-conditioned problem for SR. Previous methods always minimize the mean square loss in order to improve the peak signal to noise ratio(PSNR). However, minimizing the mean square loss leads to overly smoothed reconstructed image. In this project, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) based SR is proposed to reconstruct the LR images into HR images. Besides that, perceptual loss is proposed to solve the smoothing issue. The quality of the GAN based SR generated images will be compared to existing techniques such as bicubic, nearest and Super-Resolution Convolution Neural Network (SRCNN). The results show that the reconstructed images using GANs based SR achieve better results in term of perceptual quality compared to previous methods

Single-shot compressed ultrafast photography: a review

Compressed ultrafast photography (CUP) is a burgeoning single-shot computational imaging technique that provides an imaging speed as high as 10 trillion frames per second and a sequence depth of up to a few hundred frames. This technique synergizes compressed sensing and the streak camera technique to capture nonrepeatable ultrafast transient events with a single shot. With recent unprecedented technical developments and extensions of this methodology, it has been widely used in ultrafast optical imaging and metrology, ultrafast electron diffraction and microscopy, and information security protection. We review the basic principles of CUP, its recent advances in data acquisition and image reconstruction, its fusions with other modalities, and its unique applications in multiple research fields

Super resolution of car plate images using generative adversarial networks

Car plate recognition is used in traffic monitoring and control systems such as intelligent parking lot management, finding stolen vehicles, and automated highway toll. In practice, Low-Resolution (LR) images or videos are widely used in surveillance systems. In low resolution surveillance systems, the car plate text is often illegible. Super-Resolution (SR) techniques can be used to improve the car plate quality by processing a series of LR images into a single High-Resolution (HR) image. Recovering the HR image from a single LR is still an ill-conditioned problem for SR. Previous methods always minimize the mean square loss in order to improve the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR). However, minimizing the mean square loss leads to overly smoothed reconstructed image. In this paper, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) based SR is proposed to reconstruct the LR images into HR images. Besides that, perceptual loss is proposed to solve the smoothing issue. The quality of the GAN based SR generated images is compared to existing techniques such as bicubic, nearest and Super-Resolution Convolution Neural Network (SRCNN). The results show that the reconstructed images using GANs based SR achieve better results in term of perceptual quality compared to previous methods

Sensors for Vital Signs Monitoring

Sensor technology for monitoring vital signs is an important topic for various service applications, such as entertainment and personalization platforms and Internet of Things (IoT) systems, as well as traditional medical purposes, such as disease indication judgments and predictions. Vital signs for monitoring include respiration and heart rates, body temperature, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, electrocardiogram, blood glucose concentration, brain waves, etc. Gait and walking length can also be regarded as vital signs because they can indirectly indicate human activity and status. Sensing technologies include contact sensors such as electrocardiogram (ECG), electroencephalogram (EEG), photoplethysmogram (PPG), non-contact sensors such as ballistocardiography (BCG), and invasive/non-invasive sensors for diagnoses of variations in blood characteristics or body fluids. Radar, vision, and infrared sensors can also be useful technologies for detecting vital signs from the movement of humans or organs. Signal processing, extraction, and analysis techniques are important in industrial applications along with hardware implementation techniques. Battery management and wireless power transmission technologies, the design and optimization of low-power circuits, and systems for continuous monitoring and data collection/transmission should also be considered with sensor technologies. In addition, machine-learning-based diagnostic technology can be used for extracting meaningful information from continuous monitoring data

Imaging Sensors and Applications

In past decades, various sensor technologies have been used in all areas of our lives, thus improving our quality of life. In particular, imaging sensors have been widely applied in the development of various imaging approaches such as optical imaging, ultrasound imaging, X-ray imaging, and nuclear imaging, and contributed to achieve high sensitivity, miniaturization, and real-time imaging. These advanced image sensing technologies play an important role not only in the medical field but also in the industrial field. This Special Issue covers broad topics on imaging sensors and applications. The scope range of imaging sensors can be extended to novel imaging sensors and diverse imaging systems, including hardware and software advancements. Additionally, biomedical and nondestructive sensing applications are welcome