TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you are given a part of an article. Your task is to generate headline (title) for this text. Preferred headlines are under fifteen words.
PROBLEM: We present a probabilistic generative model for inferring a description of coordinated, recursively structured group activities at multiple levels of temporal granularity based on observations of individuals' trajectories. The model accommodates: (1) hierarchically structured groups, (2) activities that are temporally and compositionally recursive, (3) component roles assigning different subactivity dynamics to subgroups of participants, and (4) a nonparametric Gaussian Process model of trajectories. We present an MCMC sampling framework for performing joint inference over recursive activity descriptions and assignment of trajectories to groups, integrating out continuous parameters. We demonstrate the model's expressive power in several simulated and complex real-world scenarios from the VIRAT and UCLA Aerial Event video data sets.

SOLUTION: Bayesian Inference of Recursive Sequences of Group Activities from Tracks

PROBLEM: In this paper, we model the trajectory of sea vessels and provide a service that predicts in near-real time the position of any given vessel in 4', 10', 20' and 40' time intervals. We explore the necessary tradeoffs between accuracy, performance and resource utilization are explored given the large volume and update rates of input data. We start with building models based on well-established machine learning algorithms using static datasets and multi-scan training approaches and identify the best candidate to be used in implementing a single-pass predictive approach, under real-time constraints. The results are measured in terms of accuracy and performance and are compared against the baseline kinematic equations. Results show that it is possible to efficiently model the trajectory of multiple vessels using a single model, which is trained and evaluated using an adequately large, static dataset, thus achieving a significant gain in terms of resource usage while not compromising accuracy.

SOLUTION: Employing traditional machine learning algorithms for big data streams analysis: the case of object trajectory prediction

PROBLEM: In this paper, we study the use of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) for modeling and forecasting time series. We first illustrate the fact that standard sequence-to-sequence RNNs neither capture well periods in time series nor handle well missing values, even though many real life times series are periodic and contain missing values. We then propose an extended attention mechanism that can be deployed on top of any RNN and that is designed to capture periods and make the RNN more robust to missing values. We show the effectiveness of this novel model through extensive experiments with multiple univariate and multivariate datasets.

SOLUTION:
Time Series Forecasting using RNNs: an Extended Attention Mechanism to Model Periods and Handle Missing Values