1,778 research outputs found
Research in interactive scene analysis
Cooperative (man-machine) scene analysis techniques were developed whereby humans can provide a computer with guidance when completely automated processing is infeasible. An interactive approach promises significant near-term payoffs in analyzing various types of high volume satellite imagery, as well as vehicle-based imagery used in robot planetary exploration. This report summarizes the work accomplished over the duration of the project and describes in detail three major accomplishments: (1) the interactive design of texture classifiers; (2) a new approach for integrating the segmentation and interpretation phases of scene analysis; and (3) the application of interactive scene analysis techniques to cartography
Building Machines That Learn and Think Like People
Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has renewed interest in
building systems that learn and think like people. Many advances have come from
using deep neural networks trained end-to-end in tasks such as object
recognition, video games, and board games, achieving performance that equals or
even beats humans in some respects. Despite their biological inspiration and
performance achievements, these systems differ from human intelligence in
crucial ways. We review progress in cognitive science suggesting that truly
human-like learning and thinking machines will have to reach beyond current
engineering trends in both what they learn, and how they learn it.
Specifically, we argue that these machines should (a) build causal models of
the world that support explanation and understanding, rather than merely
solving pattern recognition problems; (b) ground learning in intuitive theories
of physics and psychology, to support and enrich the knowledge that is learned;
and (c) harness compositionality and learning-to-learn to rapidly acquire and
generalize knowledge to new tasks and situations. We suggest concrete
challenges and promising routes towards these goals that can combine the
strengths of recent neural network advances with more structured cognitive
models.Comment: In press at Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Open call for commentary
proposals (until Nov. 22, 2016).
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/information/calls-for-commentary/open-calls-for-commentar
Research in interactive scene analysis
An interactive scene interpretation system (ISIS) was developed as a tool for constructing and experimenting with man-machine and automatic scene analysis methods tailored for particular image domains. A recently developed region analysis subsystem based on the paradigm of Brice and Fennema is described. Using this subsystem a series of experiments was conducted to determine good criteria for initially partitioning a scene into atomic regions and for merging these regions into a final partition of the scene along object boundaries. Semantic (problem-dependent) knowledge is essential for complete, correct partitions of complex real-world scenes. An interactive approach to semantic scene segmentation was developed and demonstrated on both landscape and indoor scenes. This approach provides a reasonable methodology for segmenting scenes that cannot be processed completely automatically, and is a promising basis for a future automatic system. A program is described that can automatically generate strategies for finding specific objects in a scene based on manually designated pictorial examples
Modulated Floquet Topological Insulators
Floquet topological insulators are topological phases of matter generated by
the application of time-periodic perturbations on otherwise conventional
insulators. We demonstrate that spatial variations in the time-periodic
potential lead to localized quasi-stationary states in two-dimensional systems.
These states include one-dimensional interface modes at the nodes of the
external potential, and fractionalized excitations at vortices of the external
potential. We also propose a setup by which light can induce currents in these
systems. We explain these results by showing a close analogy to px+ipy
superconductors
Cohesion, team mental models, and collective efficacy: Towards an integrated framework of team dynamics in sport
A nomological network on team dynamics in sports consisting of a multi-framework perspective is introduced and tested. The aim was to explore the interrelationship among cohesion, team mental models (TMM), collective-efficacy (CE), and perceived performance potential (PPP). Three hundred and forty college-aged soccer players representing 17 different teams (8 female and 9 male) participated in the study. They responded to surveys on team cohesion, TMM, CE and PPP. Results are congruent with the theoretical conceptualization of a parsimonious view of team dynamics in sports. Specifically, cohesion was found to be an exogenous variable predicting both TMM and CE beliefs. TMM and CE were correlated and predicted PPP, which in turn accounted for 59% of the variance of objective performance scores as measured by teams’ season record. From a theoretical standpoint, findings resulted in a parsimonious view of team dynamics, which may represent an initial step towards clarifying the epistemological roots and nomological network of various team-level properties. From an applied standpoint, results suggest that team expertise starts with the establishment of team cohesion. Following the establishment of cohesiveness, teammates are able to advance team-related schemas and a collective sense of confidence. Limitations and key directions for future research are outlined
Beam Based Alignment of Interaction Region Magnets
In conventional beam based alignment (BBA) procedures, the relative alignment
of a quadrupole to a nearby beam position monitor is determined by finding a
beam position in the quadrupole at which the closed orbit does not change when
the quadrupole field is varied. The final focus magnets of the interaction
regions (IR) of circular colliders often have some specialized properties that
make it difficult to perform conventional beam based alignment procedures. At
the HERA interaction points, for example, these properties are: (a) The
quadrupoles are quite strong and long. Therefore a thin lens approximation is
quite imprecise. (b) The effects of angular magnet offsets become significant.
(c) The possibilities to steer the beam are limited as long as the alignment is
not within specifications. (d) The beam orbit has design offsets and design
angles with respect to the axis of the low-beta quadrupoles. (e) Often
quadrupoles do not have a beam position monitor in their vicinity. Here we
present a beam based alignment procedure that determines the relative offset of
the closed orbit from a quadrupole center without requiring large orbit changes
or monitors next to the quadrupole. Taking into account the alignment angle
allows us to reduce the sensitivity to optical errors by one to two orders of
magnitude. We also show how the BBA measurements of all IR quadrupoles can be
used to determine the global position of the magnets. The sensitivity to errors
of this method is evaluated and its applicability to HERA is shown
Superpixel Convolutional Networks using Bilateral Inceptions
In this paper we propose a CNN architecture for semantic image segmentation.
We introduce a new 'bilateral inception' module that can be inserted in
existing CNN architectures and performs bilateral filtering, at multiple
feature-scales, between superpixels in an image. The feature spaces for
bilateral filtering and other parameters of the module are learned end-to-end
using standard backpropagation techniques. The bilateral inception module
addresses two issues that arise with general CNN segmentation architectures.
First, this module propagates information between (super) pixels while
respecting image edges, thus using the structured information of the problem
for improved results. Second, the layer recovers a full resolution segmentation
result from the lower resolution solution of a CNN. In the experiments, we
modify several existing CNN architectures by inserting our inception module
between the last CNN (1x1 convolution) layers. Empirical results on three
different datasets show reliable improvements not only in comparison to the
baseline networks, but also in comparison to several dense-pixel prediction
techniques such as CRFs, while being competitive in time.Comment: European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 201
Blind Normalization of Speech From Different Channels
We show how to construct a channel-independent representation of speech that
has propagated through a noisy reverberant channel. This is done by blindly
rescaling the cepstral time series by a non-linear function, with the form of
this scale function being determined by previously encountered cepstra from
that channel. The rescaled form of the time series is an invariant property of
it in the following sense: it is unaffected if the time series is transformed
by any time-independent invertible distortion. Because a linear channel with
stationary noise and impulse response transforms cepstra in this way, the new
technique can be used to remove the channel dependence of a cepstral time
series. In experiments, the method achieved greater channel-independence than
cepstral mean normalization, and it was comparable to the combination of
cepstral mean normalization and spectral subtraction, despite the fact that no
measurements of channel noise or reverberations were required (unlike spectral
subtraction).Comment: 25 pages, 7 figure
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