pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Robust Stability of Gaussian Process Based Moving Horizon Estimation
Authors: Tobias M. Wolff, Victor G. Lopez, Matthias A. Müller
Date: 2023-04-13 00:00:00
Tasks: Hyperparameter Optimization

In this paper, we introduce a Gaussian process based moving horizon estimation (MHE) framework. The scheme is based on offline collected data and offline hyperparameter optimization. In particular, compared to standard MHE schemes, we replace the mathematical model of the system by the posterior mean of the Gaussian process. To account for the uncertainty of the learned model, we exploit the posterior variance of the learned Gaussian process in the weighting matrices of the cost function of the proposed MHE scheme. We prove practical robust exponential stability of the resulting estimator using a recently proposed Lyapunov-based proof technique. Finally, the performance of the Gaussian process based MHE scheme is illustrated via a nonlinear system.
Altitude-Loss Optimal Glides in Engine Failure Emergencies -- Accounting for Ground Obstacles and Wind
Authors: Daniel Segal, Aharon Bar-Gill, Nahum Shimkin
Date: 2023-04-13 00:00:00
Tasks: Trajectory Planning

Engine failure is a recurring emergency in General Aviation and fixed-wing UAVs, often requiring the pilot or remote operator to carry out carefully planned glides to safely reach a candidate landing strip. We tackle the problem of minimizing the altitude loss of a thrustless aircraft flying towards a designated target position. Extending previous work on optimal glides without obstacles, we consider here trajectory planning of optimal gliding in the the presence of ground obstacles, while accounting for wind effects. Under simplifying model assumptions, in particular neglecting the effect of turns, we characterize the optimal solution as comprising straight glide segments between iteratively-determined extreme points on the obstacles. Consequently, the optimal trajectory is included in an iteratively-defined reduced visibility graph, and can be obtained by a standard graph search algorithm, such as A$^*$. We further quantify the effect of turns to verify a safe near-optimal glide trajectory. We apply our algorithm on a Cessna 172 model, in realistic scenarios, demonstrating both the altitude-loss optimal trajectory calculation, and determination of airstrip reachability.
A robust design of time-varying internal model principle-based control for ultra-precision tracking in a direct-drive servo stage
Authors: Yue Cao, Zhen Zhang
Date: 2023-04-13 00:00:00
Tasks: Robust Design

This paper proposes a robust design of the time-varying internal model principle-based control (TV-IMPC) for tracking sophisticated references generated by linear time-varying (LTV) autonomous systems. The existing TV-IMPC design usually requires a complete knowledge of the plant I/O (input/output) model, leading to the lack of structural robustness. To tackle this issue, we, in the paper, design a gray-box extended state observer (ESO) to estimate and compensate unknown model uncertainties and external disturbances. By means of the ESO feedback, the plant model is kept as nominal, and hence the structural robustness is achieved for the time-varying internal model. It is shown that the proposed design has bounded ESO estimation errors, which can be further adjusted by modifying the corresponding control gains. To stabilize the ESO-based TV-IMPC, a time-varying stabilizer is developed by employing Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs). Extensive simulation and experimental studies are conducted on a direct-drive servo stage to validate the proposed robust TV-IMPC with ultra-precision tracking performance ($\sim 60$nm RMSE out of $\pm80$mm stroke).
Centralised Multimode Power Oscillation Damping Controller for Photovoltaic Plants with Communication Delay Compensation
Authors: Njegos Jankovic, Javier Roldan-Perez, Milan Prodanovic, Luis Rouco
Date: 2023-04-13 00:00:00

Low-frequency oscillations are an inherent phenomena in transmission networks and renewable energy plants should be configured to damp them. Commonly, a centralised controller is used in PV plants to coordinate PV generators via communication channels. However, the communication systems of PV plants introduce delays of a stochastic nature that degrade the performance of centralised control algorithms. Therefore, controllers for oscillation damping may not operate correctly unless the communication channel characteristics are not considered and compensated. In this paper, a centralised controller is proposed for the oscillation damping that uses a PV plant with all the realistic effects of communication channels taken into consideration. The communication channels are modelled based on measurements taken in a laboratory environment. The controller is designed to damp several modes of oscillation by using the open-loop phase shift compensation. Theoretical developments were validated in a laboratory using four converters acting as two PV inverters, a battery and a STATCOM. A real-time processing platform was used to implement the centralised controller and to deploy the communication infrastructure. Experimental results show the communication channels impose severe restrictions on the performance of centralised POD controllers, highlighting the importance of their accurate modelling and consideration during the controller design stage.
Piggyback on Idle Ride-Sourcing Drivers for Integrated On-Demand and Flexible Intracity Parcel Delivery Services
Authors: Yang Liu, Sen Li
Date: 2023-04-13 00:00:00
Tasks: Management

This paper investigates the spatial pricing and fleet management strategies for an integrated platform that provides both ride-sourcing services and intracity parcel delivery services over a transportation network utilizing the idle time of ride-sourcing drivers. Specifically, the integrated platform simultaneously offers on-demand ride-sourcing services for passengers and multiple modes of parcel delivery services for customers, including: (1) on-demand delivery, where drivers immediately pick up and deliver parcels upon receiving a delivery request; and (2) flexible delivery, where drivers can pick up (or drop off) parcels only when they are idle and waiting for the next ride-sourcing request. A continuous-time Markov Chain (CTMC) model is proposed to characterize the status change of drivers under joint movement of passengers and parcels over the transportation network with limited vehicle capacity, where the service quality of ride-sourcing services, on-demand delivery services, and flexible delivery services are rigorously quantified. Building on the CTMC model, incentives for ride-sourcing passengers, delivery customers, drivers, and the platform are captured through an economic equilibrium model, and the optimal spatial pricing decisions of the platform are derived by solving a non-convex profit-maximizing problem. We prove the well-posedness of the model and develop a tailored algorithm to compute the optimal decisions of the platform. Furthermore, we validate the proposed model in a comprehensive case study for San Francisco, demonstrating that joint management of ride-sourcing services and intracity package delivery services can lead to a Pareto improvement that benefits all stakeholders in the integrated ride-sourcing and parcel delivery market under realistic parcel and passenger demand patterns.
Minimal-time Deadbeat Consensus and Individual Disagreement Degree Prediction for High-order Linear Multi-agent Systems
Authors: Fu-Long Hu, Hai-Tao Zhang, Bowen Xu, Zhe Hu, Wei Ren
Date: 2023-04-13 00:00:00
Tasks: Prediction, Value prediction

In this paper, a Hankel matrix-based fully distributed algorithm is proposed to address a minimal-time deadbeat consensus prediction problem for discrete-time high-order multi-agent systems (MASs). Therein, each agent can predict the consensus value with the minimum number of observable historical outputs of its own. Accordingly, compared to most existing algorithms only yielding asymptotic convergence, the present method can attain deadbeat consensus instead. Moreover, based on the consensus value prediction, instant individual disagreement degree value of MASs can be calculated in advance as well. Sufficient conditions are derived to guarantee both the minimal-time deadbeat consensus and the instant individual disagreement degree prediction. Finally, both the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed deadbeat consensus algorithm are substantiated by numerical simulations.
Sub-Optimal Moving Horizon Estimation in Feedback Control of Linear Constrained Systems
Authors: Yujia Yang, Chris Manzie, Ye Pu
Date: 2023-04-13 00:00:00

Moving horizon estimation (MHE) offers benefits relative to other estimation approaches by its ability to explicitly handle constraints, but suffers increased computation cost. To help enable MHE on platforms with limited computation power, we propose to solve the optimization problem underlying MHE sub-optimally for a fixed number of optimization iterations per time step. The stability of the closed-loop system is analyzed using the small-gain theorem by considering the closed-loop controlled system, the optimization algorithm dynamics, and the estimation error dynamics as three interconnected subsystems. By assuming incremental input/output-to-state stability ({\delta}- IOSS) of the system and imposing standard ISS conditions on the controller, we derive conditions on the iteration number such that the interconnected system is input-to-state stable (ISS) w.r.t. the external disturbances. A simulation using an MHE- MPC estimator-controller pair is used to validate the results.
Denoising of discrete-time chaotic signals using echo state networks
Authors: André L. O. Duarte, Marcio Eisencraft
Date: 2023-04-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Denoising

Noise reduction is a relevant topic when considering the application of chaotic signals in practical problems, such as communication systems or modeling biomedical signals. In this paper an echo state network (ESN) is employed to denoise a discrete-time chaotic signal corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise. The choice for applying ESNs in this context is motivated by their successful exploitation for separation and prediction of chaotic signals. The results show that the processing gain of ESN is higher than that of the Wiener filter, especially when the power spectral density of the chaotic signals is white.
Fire responses shape plant communities in a minimal model for fire ecosystems across the world
Authors: Marta Magnani, Rubén Díaz-Sierra, Luke Sweeney, Antonello Provenzale, Mara Baudena
Date: 2023-04-13 00:00:00

Across plant communities worldwide, fire regimes reflect a combination of climatic factors and plant characteristics. To shed new light on the complex relationships between plant characteristics and fire regimes, we developed a new conceptual, mechanistic model that includes plant competition, stochastic fires, and fire-vegetation feedback. Considering a single standing plant functional type, we observed that highly flammable and slowly colonizing plants can persist only when they have a strong fire response, while fast colonizing and less flammable plants can display a larger range of fire responses. At the community level, the fire response of the strongest competitor determines the existence of alternative ecological states, i.e. different plant communities, under the same environmental conditions. Specifically, when the strongest competitor had a very strong fire response, such as in Mediterranean forests, only one ecological state could be achieved. Conversely, when the strongest competitor was poorly fire-adapted, alternative ecological states emerged, for example between tropical humid savannas and forests, or between different types of boreal forests. These findings underline the importance of including the plant fire response when modeling fire ecosystems, e.g. to predict the vegetation response to invasive species or to climate change.
Surface-guided computing to analyze subcellular morphology and membrane-associated signals in 3D
Authors: Felix Y. Zhou, Andrew Weems, Gabriel M. Gihana, Bingying Chen, Bo-Jui Chang, Meghan Driscoll, Gaudenz Danuser
Date: 2023-04-12 00:00:00

Signal transduction and cell function are governed by the spatiotemporal organization of membrane-associated molecules. Despite significant advances in visualizing molecular distributions by 3D light microscopy, cell biologists still have limited quantitative understanding of the processes implicated in the regulation of molecular signals at the whole cell scale. In particular, complex and transient cell surface morphologies challenge the complete sampling of cell geometry, membrane-associated molecular concentration and activity and the computing of meaningful parameters such as the cofluctuation between morphology and signals. Here, we introduce u-Unwrap3D, a framework to remap arbitrarily complex 3D cell surfaces and membrane-associated signals into equivalent lower dimensional representations. The mappings are bidirectional, allowing the application of image processing operations in the data representation best suited for the task and to subsequently present the results in any of the other representations, including the original 3D cell surface. Leveraging this surface-guided computing paradigm, we track segmented surface motifs in 2D to quantify the recruitment of Septin polymers by blebbing events; we quantify actin enrichment in peripheral ruffles; and we measure the speed of ruffle movement along topographically complex cell surfaces. Thus, u-Unwrap3D provides access to spatiotemporal analyses of cell biological parameters on unconstrained 3D surface geometries and signals.
Multi-Contact Force-Sensing Guitar for Training and Therapy
Authors: Zhiyi Ren, Chun-Cheng Hsu, Can Kocabalkanli, Khanh Nguyen, Iulian I. Iordachita, Serap Bastepe-Gray, Nathan Scott
Date: 2023-02-25 00:00:00

Hand injuries from repetitive high-strain and physical overload can hamper or even end a musician's career. To help musicians develop safer playing habits, we developed a multiplecontact force-sensing array that can substitute as a guitar fretboard. The system consists of 72 individual force sensing modules, each containing a flexure and a photointerrupter that measures the corresponding deflection when forces are applied. The system is capable of measuring forces between 0-25 N applied anywhere within the first 12 frets at a rate of 20 Hz with an average accuracy of 0.4 N and a resolution of 0.1 N. Accompanied with a GUI, the resulting prototype was received positively as a useful tool for learning and injury prevention by novice and expert musicians.
A physical neural network training approach toward multi-plane light conversion design
Authors: Zheyuan Zhu, Joe H. Doerr, Guifang Li, Shuo Pang
Date: 2023-04-06 00:00:00

Multi-plane light converter (MPLC) designs supporting hundreds of modes are attractive in high-throughput optical communications. These photonic structures typically comprise >10 phase masks in free space, with millions of independent design parameters. Conventional MPLC design using wavefront matching updates one mask at a time while fixing the rest. Here we construct a physical neural network (PNN) to model the light propagation and phase modulation in MPLC, providing access to the entire parameter set for optimization, including not only profiles of the phase masks and the distances between them. PNN training supports flexible optimization sequences and is a superset of existing MPLC design methods. In addition, our method allows tuning of hyperparameters of PNN training such as learning rate and batch size. Because PNN-based MPLC is found to be insensitive to the number of input and target modes in each training step, we have demonstrated a high-order MPLC design (45 modes) using mini batches that fit into the available computing resources.
Market-Based "Actual" Returns of Investors
Authors: Victor Olkhov
Date: 2023-04-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Time Series

We describe how the market-based average and volatility of the "actual" return, which the investors gain within their market sales, depend on the statistical moments, volatilities, and correlations of the current and past market trade values. We describe three successive approximations. First, we derive the dependence of the market-based average and volatility of a single sale return on market trade statistical moments determined by multiple purchases in the past. Then, we describe the dependence of average and volatility of return that a single investor gains during the "trading day." Finally, we derive the market-based average and volatility of return of different investors during the "trading day" as a function of volatilities and correlations of market trade values. That highlights the distribution of the "actual" return of market trade and can serve as a benchmark for "purchasing" investors.
Rapid Brain Meninges Surface Reconstruction with Layer Topology Guarantee
Authors: Peiyu Duan, Yuan Xue, Shuo Han, Lianrui Zuo, Aaron Carass, Caitlyn Bernhard, Savannah Hays, Peter A. Calabresi, Susan M. Resnick, James S. Duncan, Jerry L. Prince
Date: 2023-04-13 00:00:00
Tasks: Surface Reconstruction

The meninges, located between the skull and brain, are composed of three membrane layers: the pia, the arachnoid, and the dura. Reconstruction of these layers can aid in studying volume differences between patients with neurodegenerative diseases and normal aging subjects. In this work, we use convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to reconstruct surfaces representing meningeal layer boundaries from magnetic resonance (MR) images. We first use the CNNs to predict the signed distance functions (SDFs) representing these surfaces while preserving their anatomical ordering. The marching cubes algorithm is then used to generate continuous surface representations; both the subarachnoid space (SAS) and the intracranial volume (ICV) are computed from these surfaces. The proposed method is compared to a state-of-the-art deformable model-based reconstruction method, and we show that our method can reconstruct smoother and more accurate surfaces using less computation time. Finally, we conduct experiments with volumetric analysis on both subjects with multiple sclerosis and healthy controls. For healthy and MS subjects, ICVs and SAS volumes are found to be significantly correlated to sex (p<0.01) and age (p<0.03) changes, respectively.
Continuous Human Activity Recognition using a MIMO Radar for Transitional Motion Analysis
Authors: John Kobak, Bennett J. Richman, LaJuan Washington Jr., Syed A. Hamza
Date: 2023-04-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Activity Recognition, Human Activity Recognition

The prompt and accurate recognition of Continuous Human Activity (CHAR) is critical in identifying and responding to health events, particularly fall risk assessment. In this paper, we examine a multi-antenna radar system that can process radar data returns for multiple individuals in an indoor setting, enabling CHAR for multiple subjects. This requires combining spatial and temporal signal processing techniques through micro-Doppler (MD) analysis and high-resolution receive beamforming. We employ delay and sum beamforming to capture MD signatures at three different directions of observation. As MD images may contain multiple activities, we segment the three MD signatures using an STA/LTA algorithm. MD segmentation ensures that each MD segment represents a single human motion activity. Finally, the segmented MD image is resized and processed through a convolutional neural network (CNN) to classify motion against each MD segment.
SALSA: A Sequential Alternating Least Squares Approximation Method For MIMO Channel Estimation
Authors: Sepideh Gherekhloo, Khaled Ardah, Martin Haardt
Date: 2023-04-13 00:00:00

In this paper, we consider the channel estimation problem in sub-6 GHz uplink wideband MIMO-OFDM communication systems, where a user equipment with a fully-digital beamforming structure is communicating with a base station having a hybrid analog-digital beamforming structure. A novel channel estimation method called Sequential Alternating Least Squares Approximation (SALSA) is proposed by exploiting a hidden tensor structure in the uplink measurement matrix. Specifically, by showing that any MIMO channel matrix can be approximately decomposed into a summation of R factor matrices having a Kronecker structure, the uplink measurement matrix can be reshaped into a 3-way tensor admitting a Tucker decomposition. Exploiting the tensor structure, the MIMO channel matrix is estimated sequentially using an alternating least squares method. Detailed simulation results are provided showing the effectiveness of the proposed SALSA method as compared to the classical least squares method.
EEG Cortical Source Feature based Hand Kinematics Decoding using Residual CNN-LSTM Neural Network
Authors: Anant Jain, Lalan Kumar
Date: 2023-04-13 00:00:00
Tasks: Brain Computer Interface, EEG, Electroencephalogram (EEG)

Motor kinematics decoding (MKD) using brain signal is essential to develop Brain-computer interface (BCI) system for rehabilitation or prosthesis devices. Surface electroencephalogram (EEG) signal has been widely utilized for MKD. However, kinematic decoding from cortical sources is sparsely explored. In this work, the feasibility of hand kinematics decoding using EEG cortical source signals has been explored for grasp and lift task. In particular, pre-movement EEG segment is utilized. A residual convolutional neural network (CNN) - long short-term memory (LSTM) based kinematics decoding model is proposed that utilizes motor neural information present in pre-movement brain activity. Various EEG windows at 50 ms prior to movement onset, are utilized for hand kinematics decoding. Correlation value (CV) between actual and predicted hand kinematics is utilized as performance metric for source and sensor domain. The performance of the proposed deep learning model is compared in sensor and source domain. The results demonstrate the viability of hand kinematics decoding using pre-movement EEG cortical source data.
Domain Adaptation for Inertial Measurement Unit-based Human Activity Recognition: A Survey
Authors: Avijoy Chakma, Abu Zaher Md Faridee, Indrajeet Ghosh, Nirmalya Roy
Date: 2023-04-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Activity Recognition, Domain Adaptation, Human Activity Recognition, Sports Analytics, Transfer Learning

Machine learning-based wearable human activity recognition (WHAR) models enable the development of various smart and connected community applications such as sleep pattern monitoring, medication reminders, cognitive health assessment, sports analytics, etc. However, the widespread adoption of these WHAR models is impeded by their degraded performance in the presence of data distribution heterogeneities caused by the sensor placement at different body positions, inherent biases and heterogeneities across devices, and personal and environmental diversities. Various traditional machine learning algorithms and transfer learning techniques have been proposed in the literature to address the underpinning challenges of handling such data heterogeneities. Domain adaptation is one such transfer learning techniques that has gained significant popularity in recent literature. In this paper, we survey the recent progress of domain adaptation techniques in the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)-based human activity recognition area, discuss potential future directions.