On the Geometries of Conic Section Representation of Noisy Object Boundaries

This paper studies some geometrical properties of conic sections and the utilization of these properties for the generation of conic section representations of object boundaries in digital images. Several geometrical features of the conic sections, such as the chord, the characteristic point, the guiding triangles, and their appearances under the tessellation and noise corruption of the digital images are discussed. The study leads to a noniterative algorithm that takes advantage of these features in the process of formulating the conic section parameters and generating the approximations of object boundaries from the given sequences of edge pixels in the images. The results can be optimized with respect to certain different criteria of the fittings

Minimum Cross-Entropy Approximation for Modeling of Highly Intertwining Data Sets at Subclass Levels

We study the problem of how to accurately model the data sets that contain a number of highly intertwining sets in terms of their spatial distributions. Applying the Minimum Cross-Entropy minimization technique, the data sets are placed into a minimum number of subclass clusters according to their high intraclass and low interclass similarities. The method leads to a derivation of the probability density functions for the data sets at the subclass levels. These functions then, in combination, serve as an approximation to the underlying functions that describe the statistical features of each data set

Pattern Classification in Dynamic Environments: Tagged Feature-Class Representation and the Classifiers

he classifiers characterized by a tagged feature-class representation, a univariate discrimination approach, a cooperative classification scheme, and a logic-based learning strategy are discussed. Neither of the classifiers bears the constraints to the fixed sets of features and classes. Concepts of the tagged feature-class representation and the properties of feature matching in the dynamic environment are studied. Experimental tests and results of the classifiers are illustrated

Hidden Markov Model for Visual Guidance of Robot Motion in Dynamic Environment

Models and control strategies for dynamic obstacle avoidance in visual guidance of mobile robot are presented. Characteristics that distinguish the visual computation and motion-control requirements in dynamic environments from that in static environments are discussed. Objectives of the vision and motion planning are formulated as: 1) finding a collision-free trajectory that takes account of any possible motions of obstacles in the local environment; 2) such a trajectory should be consistent with a global goal or plan of the motion; and 3) the robot should move at as high a speed as possible, subject to its kinematic constraints. A stochastic motion-control algorithm based on a hidden Markov model (HMM) is developed. Obstacle motion prediction applies a probabilistic evaluation scheme. Motion planning of the robot implements a trajectory-guided parallel-search strategy in accordance with the obstacle motion prediction models. The approach simplifies the control process of robot motion

Topologies of agents interactions in knowledge intensive multi-agentsystems for networked information services

Agents in a multi-agent system (mAS) could interact and cooperate in many different ways. The topology of agent interaction determines how the agents control and communicate with each other, what are the control and communication capabilities of each agent and the whole system, and how efficient the control and communications are. In consequence, the topology affects the agents’ ability to share knowledge, integrate knowledge, and make efficient use of knowledge in MAS. This paper presents an overview of four major MAS topologic models, assesses their advantages and disadvantages in terms of agent autonomy, adaptation, scalability, and efficiency of cooperation. Some insights into the applicability for each of the topologies to different environment and domain specific applications are explored. A design example of the topological models to an information service management application is attempted to illustrate the practical merits of each topology

Incremental procedures for partitioning highly intermixed multi-class datasets into hyper-spherical and hyper-ellipsoidal clusters

Two procedures for partitioning large collections of highly intermixed datasets of different classes into a number of hyper-spherical or hyper-ellipsoidal clusters are presented. The incremental procedures are to generate a minimum numbers of hyper-spherical or hyper-ellipsoidal clusters with each cluster containing a maximum number of data points of the same class. The procedures extend the move-to-front algorithms originally designed for construction of minimum sized enclosing balls or ellipsoids for dataset of a single class. The resulting clusters of the dataset can be used for data modeling, outlier detection, discrimination analysis, and knowledge discovery

A Pseudo Nearest-Neighbor Approach for Missing Data Recovery on Gaussian Random Data Sets

Missing data handling is an important preparation step for most data discrimination or mining tasks. Inappropriate treatment of missing data may cause large errors or false results. In this paper, we study the effect of a missing data recovery method, namely the pseudo- nearest neighbor substitution approach, on Gaussian distributed data sets that represent typical cases in data discrimination and data mining applications. The error rate of the proposed recovery method is evaluated by comparing the clustering results of the recovered data sets to the clustering results obtained on the originally complete data sets. The results are also compared with that obtained by applying two other missing data handling methods, the constant default value substitution and the missing data ignorance (non-substitution) methods. The experiment results provided a valuable insight to the improvement of the accuracy for data discrimination and knowledge discovery on large data sets containing missing values

Min–Max Hyperellipsoidal Clustering for Anomaly Detection in Network Security

A novel hyperellipsoidal clustering technique is presented for an intrusion-detection system in network security. Hyperellipsoidal clusters toward maximum intracluster similarity and minimum intercluster similarity are generated from training data sets. The novelty of the technique lies in the fact that the parameters needed to construct higher order data models in general multivariate Gaussian functions are incrementally derived from the data sets using accretive processes. The technique is implemented in a feedforward neural network that uses a Gaussian radial basis function as the model generator. An evaluation based on the inclusiveness and exclusiveness of samples with respect to specific criteria is applied to accretively learn the output clusters of the neural network. One significant advantage of this is its ability to detect individual anomaly types that are hard to detect with other anomaly-detection schemes. Applying this technique, several feature subsets of the tcptrace network-connection records that give above 95% detection at false-positive rates below 5% were identified

Quantitative object motion prediction by an ART2 and Madaline combined neural network: Concepts and experiments

An ART2 and a Madaline combined neural network is applied to predicting object motions in dynamic environments. The ART2 network extracts a set of coherent patterns of the object motion by its self-organizing and unsupervised learning features. The identified patterns are directed to the Madaline network to generate a quantitative prediction of the future motion states. The method does not require any presumption of the mathematical models, and is applicable to a variety of situations

Near-Duplicate Image Retrieval Based on Contextual Descriptor

The state of the art of technology for near-duplicate image retrieval is mostly based on the Bag-of-Visual-Words model. However, visual words are easy to result in mismatches because of quantization errors of the local features the words represent. In order to improve the precision of visual words matching, contextual descriptors are designed to strengthen their discriminative power and measure the contextual similarity of visual words. This paper presents a new contextual descriptor that measures the contextual similarity of visual words to immediately discard the mismatches and reduce the count of candidate images. The new contextual descriptor encodes the relationships of dominant orientation and spatial position between the referential visual words and their context. Experimental results on benchmark Copydays dataset demonstrate its efficiency and effectiveness for near-duplicate image retrieval