Fast and robust curve skeletonization for real-world elongated objects

We consider the problem of extracting curve skeletons of three-dimensional, elongated objects given a noisy surface, which has applications in agricultural contexts such as extracting the branching structure of plants. We describe an efficient and robust method based on breadth-first search that can determine curve skeletons in these contexts. Our approach is capable of automatically detecting junction points as well as spurious segments and loops. All of that is accomplished with only one user-adjustable parameter. The run time of our method ranges from hundreds of milliseconds to less than four seconds on large, challenging datasets, which makes it appropriate for situations where real-time decision making is needed. Experiments on synthetic models as well as on data from real world objects, some of which were collected in challenging field conditions, show that our approach compares favorably to classical thinning algorithms as well as to recent contributions to the field.Comment: 47 pages; IEEE WACV 2018, main paper and supplementary materia

The Patch-Levy-Based Bees Algorithm Applied to Dynamic Optimization Problems

Many real-world optimization problems are actually of dynamic nature. These problems change over time in terms of the objective function, decision variables, constraints, and so forth. Therefore, it is very important to study the performance of a metaheuristic algorithm in dynamic environments to assess the robustness of the algorithm to deal with real-word problems. In addition, it is important to adapt the existing metaheuristic algorithms to perform well in dynamic environments. This paper investigates a recently proposed version of Bees Algorithm, which is called Patch-Levy-based Bees Algorithm (PLBA), on solving dynamic problems, and adapts it to deal with such problems. The performance of the PLBA is compared with other BA versions and other state-of-the-art algorithms on a set of dynamic multimodal benchmark problems of different degrees of difficulties. The results of the experiments show that PLBA achieves better results than the other BA variants. The obtained results also indicate that PLBA significantly outperforms some of the other state-of-the-art algorithms and is competitive with others

Cost-Sensitive Classification: Empirical Evaluation of a Hybrid Genetic Decision Tree Induction Algorithm

This paper introduces ICET, a new algorithm for cost-sensitive classification. ICET uses a genetic algorithm to evolve a population of biases for a decision tree induction algorithm. The fitness function of the genetic algorithm is the average cost of classification when using the decision tree, including both the costs of tests (features, measurements) and the costs of classification errors. ICET is compared here with three other algorithms for cost-sensitive classification - EG2, CS-ID3, and IDX - and also with C4.5, which classifies without regard to cost. The five algorithms are evaluated empirically on five real-world medical datasets. Three sets of experiments are performed. The first set examines the baseline performance of the five algorithms on the five datasets and establishes that ICET performs significantly better than its competitors. The second set tests the robustness of ICET under a variety of conditions and shows that ICET maintains its advantage. The third set looks at ICET's search in bias space and discovers a way to improve the search.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for any accompanying file

Real-time Learning and Planning in Environments with Swarms:A Hierarchical and a Parameter-based Simulation Approach

Swarms can be applied in many relevant domains, such as patrolling or rescue. They usually follow simple local rules, leading to complex emergent behavior. Given their wide applicability, an agent may need to take decisions in an environment containing a swarm that is not under its control, and that may even be an antagonist. Predicting the behavior of each swarm member is a great challenge, and must be done under real time constraints, since they usually move constantly following quick reactive algorithms. We propose the first two solutions for this novel problem, showing integrated on-line learning and planning for decision-making with unknown swarms: (i) we learn an ellipse abstraction of the swarm based on statistical models, and predict its future parameters using time-series; (ii) we learn algorithm parameters followed by each swarm member, in order to directly simulate them. We find in our experiments that we are significantly faster to reach an objective than local repulsive forces, at the cost of success rate in some situations. Additionally, we show that this is a challenging problem for reinforcement learning

An enhanced classifier system for autonomous robot navigation in dynamic environments

In many cases, a real robot application requires the navigation in dynamic environments. The navigation problem involves two main tasks: to avoid obstacles and to reach a goal. Generally, this problem could be faced considering reactions and sequences of actions. For solving the navigation problem a complete controller, including actions and reactions, is needed. Machine learning techniques has been applied to learn these controllers. Classifier Systems (CS) have proven their ability of continuos learning in these domains. However, CS have some problems in reactive systems. In this paper, a modified CS is proposed to overcome these problems. Two special mechanisms are included in the developed CS to allow the learning of both reactions and sequences of actions. The learning process has been divided in two main tasks: first, the discrimination between a predefined set of rules and second, the discovery of new rules to obtain a successful operation in dynamic environments. Different experiments have been carried out using a mini-robot Khepera to find a generalised solution. The results show the ability of the system to continuous learning and adaptation to new situations.Publicad

A System for Induction of Oblique Decision Trees

This article describes a new system for induction of oblique decision trees. This system, OC1, combines deterministic hill-climbing with two forms of randomization to find a good oblique split (in the form of a hyperplane) at each node of a decision tree. Oblique decision tree methods are tuned especially for domains in which the attributes are numeric, although they can be adapted to symbolic or mixed symbolic/numeric attributes. We present extensive empirical studies, using both real and artificial data, that analyze OC1's ability to construct oblique trees that are smaller and more accurate than their axis-parallel counterparts. We also examine the benefits of randomization for the construction of oblique decision trees.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for an online appendix and other files accompanying this articl