Automatic camera pose initialization, using scale, rotation and luminance invariant natural feature tracking

The solution to the camera registration and tracking problem serves Augmented Reality, in order to provide an enhancement to the user’s cognitive perception of the real world and his/her situational awareness. By analyzing the five most representative tracking and feature detection techniques, we have concluded that the Camera Pose Initialization (CPI) problem, a relevant sub-problem in the overall camera tracking problem, is still far from being solved using straightforward and non-intrusive methods. The assessed techniques often use user inputs (i.e. mouse clicking) or auxiliary artifacts (i.e. fiducial markers) to solve the CPI problem. This paper presents a novel approach to real-time scale, rotation and luminance invariant natural feature tracking, in order to solve the CPI problem using totally automatic procedures. The technique is applicable for the case of planar objects with arbitrary topologies and natural textures, and can be used in Augmented Reality. We also present a heuristic method for feature clustering, which has revealed to be efficient and reliable. The presented work uses this novel feature detection technique as a baseline for a real-time and robust planar texture tracking algorithm, which combines optical flow, backprojection and template matching techniques. The paper presents also performance and precision results of the proposed technique

A systematic literature review using text mining and bibliometric analysis

109 “Consumo SMART” https://www.simplex.gov.pt/medidas. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.The high level of energy consumption of buildings is significantly influencing occupant behavior changes towards improved energy efficiency. This paper introduces a systematic literature review with two objectives: to understand the more relevant factors affecting energy consumption of buildings and to find the best intelligent computing (IC) methods capable of classifying and predicting energy consumption of different types of buildings. Adopting the PRISMA method, the paper analyzed 822 manuscripts from 2013 to 2020 and focused on 106, based on title and abstract screening and on manuscripts with experiments. A text mining process and a bibliometric map tool (VOS viewer) were adopted to find the most used terms and their relationships, in the energy and IC domains. Our approach shows that the terms “consumption,” “residential,” and “electricity” are the more relevant terms in the energy domain, in terms of the ratio of important terms (TITs), whereas “cluster” is the more commonly used term in the IC domain. The paper also shows that there are strong relations between “Residential Energy Consumption” and “Electricity Consumption,” “Heating” and “Climate. Finally, we checked and analyzed 41 manuscripts in detail, summarized their major contributions, and identified several research gaps that provide hints for further research.publishersversionpublishe

Evaluating Energy Performance Certificate Data with Data Science

Anastasiadou, M., Santos, V., & Dias, M. S. (2021). Evaluating Energy Performance Certificate Data with Data Science. In 2021 International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Energy Technologies (ICECET) (pp. 1-5). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICECET52533.2021.9698806The related problems of improving existing buildings' energy performance, reducing energy consumption, and improving indoor comfort and their many consequences are well known. Considering increasing urbanization and climate change, governments define strategies to enhance and measure buildings' energy performance and energy efficiency. This work aims to contribute to the improvement of buildings' characteristics by conducting a thorough systematic literature review and adopting a data science approach to these problems, presenting initial results with an open-access energy performance certificate dataset from the Lombardy Region, in Italy. We provide a pre-processing method to the data, applicable for future research, aiming to address challenges such as automatic classification of existing buildings' energy performance certification, and predicting energy-efficient retrofit measures, using machine learning techniques. The analysis of this dataset is challenging because of the high variability and dimensionality of this dataset. For this purpose, a robust iterative process was developed. First, the data dimensionality was reduced with Pearson Correlation to find the best set of variables against the non-renewable global energy performance index (EPgl, nren). Then, the outliers were handled by utilizing Box Plot and Isolation Forest algorithms. The main contribution is to inform private and public building sectors on dealing with high dimensional data to achieve enhanced energy performance and predict energy-efficient retrofit measures to improve their energy performance.authorsversionpublishe

A systematic literature review

Albuquerque, V., Dias, M. S., & Bacao, F. (2021). Machine learning approaches to bike-sharing systems: A systematic literature review. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 10(2), 1-25. [62]. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi10020062Cities are moving towards new mobility strategies to tackle smart cities’ challenges such as carbon emission reduction, urban transport multimodality and mitigation of pandemic hazards, emphasising on the implementation of shared modes, such as bike-sharing systems. This paper poses a research question and introduces a corresponding systematic literature review, focusing on machine learning techniques’ contributions applied to bike-sharing systems to improve cities’ mobility. The preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) method was adopted to identify specific factors that influence bike-sharing systems, resulting in an analysis of 35 papers published between 2015 and 2019, creating an outline for future research. By means of systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis, machine learning algorithms were identified in two groups: classification and prediction.publishersversionpublishe

A Proposed Intelligent Model with Optimization Algorithm for Clustering Energy Consumption in Public Buildings

Abdelaziz, A., Santos, V., & Dias, M. S. (2023). A Proposed Intelligent Model with Optimization Algorithm for Clustering Energy Consumption in Public Buildings. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 14(9), 136-152. [15]. https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2023.0140915 --- This work has been supported by Portuguese funds through FCT-Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Instituto Público (IP), under the project FCT UIDB/04466/2020 by Information Sciences and Technologies and Architecture Research Center (ISTAR-IUL), and this work has also been supported by Information Management Research Center (MagIC)-Information Management School of NOVA University LisbonRecently, intelligent applications gained a significant role in the energy management of public buildings due to their ability to enhance energy consumption performance. Energy management of these buildings represents a big challenge due to their unexpected energy consumption characteristics and the deficiency of design guidelines for energy efficiency and sustainability solutions. Therefore, an analysis of energy consumption patterns in public buildings becomes necessary. This reveals the significance of understanding and classifying energy consumption patterns in these buildings. This study seeks to find the optimal intelligent technique for classifying energy consumption of public buildings into levels (e.g., low, medium, and high), find the critical factors that influence energy consumption, and finally, find the scientific rules (If-Then rules) to help decision-makers for determining the energy consumption level in each building. To achieve the objectives of this study, correlation coefficient analysis was used to determine critical factors that influence on energy consumption of public buildings; two intelligent models were used to determine the number of clusters of energy consumption patterns which are Self Organizing Map (SOM) and Batch-SOM based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA). SOM outperforms Batch-SOM in terms of quantization error. The quantization error of SOM and Batch-SOM is 8.97 and 9.24, respectively. K-means with a genetic algorithm were used to predict cluster levels in each building. By analyzing cluster levels, If-Then rules have been extracted, so needs that decision-makers determine the most energyconsuming buildings. In addition, this study helps decisionmakers in the energy field to rationalize the consumption of occupants of public buildings in the times that consume the most energy and change energy suppliers to those buildings.publishersversionpublishe

Convolutional Neural Network with Genetic Algorithm for Predicting Energy Consumption in Public Buildings

Abdelaziz, A., Santos, V., & Dias, M. S. (2023). Convolutional Neural Network with Genetic Algorithm for Predicting Energy Consumption in Public Buildings. IEEE Access. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3284470---This work has been supported by Portuguese funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P., under the project FCT UIDB/04466/2020, and this work has been supported by Information Management Research Center (MagIC) - NOVA Information Management School.Due to their capacity to improve energy consumption performance, intelligent applications have recently assumed a pivotal position in the energy management of public buildings. Because of their irregular energy consumption patterns and the lack of design criteria for energy efficiency and sustainability solutions, keeping these buildings’ energy consumption under control is a significant issue. As a result, it is important to analyze public building energy consumption patterns and forecast future energy demands. Evidence like this highlights the need to identify and categorize energy use trends in commercial and institutional structures. This research aims to identify the most effective intelligent method for categorizing and forecasting the energy consumption levels of public buildings and, ultimately, to identify the scientific rules (If-Then rules) that will aid decision-makers in establishing the energy consumption level in each building. The goals of this research were accomplished by employing two intelligent models, the Elbow technique and the Davis and Boulden approach, to count the number of clusters of energy consumption patterns. It was determined what the clustering levels would be in each structure using K-means and a genetic algorithm. In this step, the genetic algorithm was utilized to find the best centroid points for each cluster, allowing the fitting model to function better. Determining which buildings use the most energy has been made easier thanks to the extraction of If-Then rules from cluster analysis. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and CNNs combined with a genetic algorithm were also employed as intelligent models for energy consumption forecasting. At this point, we utilized a genetic algorithm to fine-tune some of CNN’s settings. CNN with genetic algorithm outperforms on CNN model in terms of accuracy and standard error. Using a genetic algorithm, CNN achieves a 99.01% accuracy on the training dataset and a 97.74% accuracy on the validation dataset, with accuracy and an error of 0.02 and 0.09, respectively. CNN achieves a 98.03% accuracy and a 0.05 standard error on the training dataset and a 94.91% accuracy and a 0.26 standard error on the validation dataset. This research is useful for policymakers in the energy sector because it allows them to make informed decisions about the timing of energy supply and demand for public buildings.authorsversionepub_ahead_of_prin

Machine Learning Techniques Focusing on the Energy Performance of Buildings: A Dimensions and Methods Analysis

109 “Consumo SMART”. This work is partially funded by national funds through FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., under the project FCT UIDB/04466/2020.The problem of energy consumption and the importance of improving existing buildings’ energy performance are notorious. This work aims to contribute to this improvement by identifying the latest and most appropriate machine learning or statistical techniques, which analyze this problem by looking at large quantities of building energy performance certification data and other data sources. PRISMA, a well-established systematic literature review and meta-analysis method, was used to detect specific factors that influence the energy performance of buildings, resulting in an analysis of 35 papers published between 2016 and April 2021, creating a baseline for further inquiry. Through this systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis, machine learning and statistical approaches primarily based on building energy certification data were identified and analyzed in two groups: (1) automatic evaluation of buildings’ energy performance and, (2) prediction of energy-efficient retrofit measures. The main contribution of our study is a conceptual and theoretical framework applicable in the analysis of the energy performance of buildings with intelligent computational methods. With our framework, the reader can understand which approaches are most used and more appropriate for analyzing the energy performance of different types of buildings, discussing the dimensions that are better used in such approaches.publishersversionpublishe

On the development of an automatic voice pleasantness classification and intensity estimation system

In the last few years, the number of systems and devices that use voice based interaction has grown significantly. For a continued use of these systems, the interface must be reliable and pleasant in order to provide an optimal user experience. However there are currently very few studies that try to evaluate how pleasant is a voice from a perceptual point of view when the final application is a speech based interface. In this paper we present an objective definition for voice pleasantness based on the composition of a representative feature subset and a new automatic voice pleasantness classification and intensity estimation system. Our study is based on a database composed by European Portuguese female voices but the methodology can be extended to male voices or to other languages. In the objective performance evaluation the system achieved a 9.1% error rate for voice pleasantness classification and a 15.7% error rate for voice pleasantness intensity estimation.Work partially supported by ERDF funds, the Spanish Government (TEC2009-14094-C04-04), and Xunta de Galicia (CN2011/019, 2009/062

Bike-sharing mobility patterns: a data-driven analysis for the city of Lisbon

Albuquerque, V., Andrade, F., Ferreira, J. C., Dias, M. S., & Bacao, F. (2021). Bike-sharing mobility patterns: a data-driven analysis for the city of Lisbon. EAI Endorsed Transactions on Smart Cities, 5(16), 1-20. [169580]. https://doi.org/10.4108/eai.4-5-2021.169580New technologies applied to transportation services in the city, enable the shift to sustainable transportation modes making bike-sharing systems (BSS) more popular in the urban mobility scenario. This study focuses on understanding the spatiotemporal station and trip activity patterns in the Lisbon BSS, based in 2018 data taken as the baseline, and understand trip rate changes in such system, that happened in the following years of 2019 and 2020. Furthermore, our paper aims to understand the COVID-19 pandemic impact in BSS mobility patterns. In this paper, we analyzed large datasets adopting a CRISP-DM data mining method. By studying and identifying spatiotemporal distribution of trips through stations, combined with weather factors, we looked at BSS improvements more suitable to accommodate users’ demand. Our major contribution was a new insight on how people move in the city using bikes, via a data science approach using BSS network usage data. Major findings show that most bike trips occur on weekdays, with no precipitation, and we observed a substantial growth of trip count, during the observed time frame, although cut short by the pandemic. We believe that our approach can be applied to any city with available urban mobility data.publishersversionpublishe