PLANT SPECIE CLASSIFICATION USING SINUOSITY COEFFICIENTS OF LEAVES

Forests are the lungs of our planet. Conserving the plants may require the development of an automated system that will identify plants using leaf features such as shape, color, and texture. In this paper, a leaf shape descriptor based on sinuosity coefficients is proposed. The sinuosity coefficients are defined using the sinuosity measure, which is a measure expressing the degree of meandering of a curve. The initial empirical experiments performed on the LeafSnap dataset on the usage of four sinuosity coefficients to characterize the leaf images using the Radial Basis Function Neural Network (RBF) and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) classifiers achieved accurate classification rates of 88% and 65%, respectively. The proposed feature extraction technique is further enhanced through the addition of leaf geometrical features, and the accurate classification rates of 93% and 82% were achieved using RBF and MLP, respectively. The overall results achieved showed that the proposed feature extraction technique based on the sinuosity coefficients of leaves, complemented with geometrical features improve the accuracy rate of plant classification using leaf recognition

A Robotic System for Learning Visually-Driven Grasp Planning (Dissertation Proposal)

We use findings in machine learning, developmental psychology, and neurophysiology to guide a robotic learning system\u27s level of representation both for actions and for percepts. Visually-driven grasping is chosen as the experimental task since it has general applicability and it has been extensively researched from several perspectives. An implementation of a robotic system with a gripper, compliant instrumented wrist, arm and vision is used to test these ideas. Several sensorimotor primitives (vision segmentation and manipulatory reflexes) are implemented in this system and may be thought of as the innate perceptual and motor abilities of the system. Applying empirical learning techniques to real situations brings up such important issues as observation sparsity in high-dimensional spaces, arbitrary underlying functional forms of the reinforcement distribution and robustness to noise in exemplars. The well-established technique of non-parametric projection pursuit regression (PPR) is used to accomplish reinforcement learning by searching for projections of high-dimensional data sets that capture task invariants. We also pursue the following problem: how can we use human expertise and insight into grasping to train a system to select both appropriate hand preshapes and approaches for a wide variety of objects, and then have it verify and refine its skills through trial and error. To accomplish this learning we propose a new class of Density Adaptive reinforcement learning algorithms. These algorithms use statistical tests to identify possibly interesting regions of the attribute space in which the dynamics of the task change. They automatically concentrate the building of high resolution descriptions of the reinforcement in those areas, and build low resolution representations in regions that are either not populated in the given task or are highly uniform in outcome. Additionally, the use of any learning process generally implies failures along the way. Therefore, the mechanics of the untrained robotic system must be able to tolerate mistakes during learning and not damage itself. We address this by the use of an instrumented, compliant robot wrist that controls impact forces

Handshape recognition using principal component analysis and convolutional neural networks applied to sign language

Handshape recognition is an important problem in computer vision with significant societal impact. However, it is not an easy task, since hands are naturally deformable objects. Handshape recognition contains open problems, such as low accuracy or low speed, and despite a large number of proposed approaches, no solution has been found to solve these open problems. In this thesis, a new image dataset for Irish Sign Language (ISL) recognition is introduced. A deeper study using only 2D images is presented on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) in two stages. A comparison between approaches that do not need features (known as end-to-end) and feature-based approaches is carried out. The dataset was collected by filming six human subjects performing ISL handshapes and movements. Frames from the videos were extracted. Afterwards the redundant images were filtered with an iterative image selection process that selects the images which keep the dataset diverse. The accuracy of PCA can be improved using blurred images and interpolation. Interpolation is only feasible with a small number of points. For this reason two-stage PCA is proposed. In other words, PCA is applied to another PCA space. This makes the interpolation possible and improves the accuracy in recognising a shape at a translation and rotation unknown in the training stage. Finally classification is done with two different approaches: (1) End-to-end approaches and (2) feature-based approaches. For (1) Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and other classifiers are tested directly over raw pixels, whereas for (2) PCA is mostly used to extract features and again different algorithms are tested for classification. Finally, results are presented showing accuracy and speed for (1) and (2) and how blurring affects the accuracy

Vibration Monitoring: Gearbox identification and faults detection

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

Pattern Recognition

A wealth of advanced pattern recognition algorithms are emerging from the interdiscipline between technologies of effective visual features and the human-brain cognition process. Effective visual features are made possible through the rapid developments in appropriate sensor equipments, novel filter designs, and viable information processing architectures. While the understanding of human-brain cognition process broadens the way in which the computer can perform pattern recognition tasks. The present book is intended to collect representative researches around the globe focusing on low-level vision, filter design, features and image descriptors, data mining and analysis, and biologically inspired algorithms. The 27 chapters coved in this book disclose recent advances and new ideas in promoting the techniques, technology and applications of pattern recognition