Matilde Santos

Intelligent fuzzy controller of a quadrotor

The aim of this work is to describe an intelligent system based on fuzzy logic that is developed to control a quadrotor. A quadrotor is a helicopter with four rotors, that make the vehicle more stable but more complex to model and to control. The quadrotor has been used as a testing platform in the last years for various universities and research centres. A quadrotor has six degrees of freedom, three of them regarding the position: height, horizontal and vertical motions; and the other three are related to the orientation: pitch, roll and yaw. A fuzzy control is designed and implemented to control a simulation model of the quadrotor. The inputs are the desired values of the height, roll, pitch and yaw. The outputs are the power of each of the four rotors that is necessary to reach the specifications. Simulation results prove the efficiency of this intelligent control strategy.

Orthogonal variant moments features in image analysis

Moments are statistical measures used to obtain relevant information about a certain object under study (e.g., signals, images or waveforms), e.g., to describe the shape of an object to be recognized by a pattern recognition system. Invariant moments (e.g., the Hu invariant set) are a special kind of these statistical measures designed to remain constant after some transformations, such as object rotation, scaling, translation, or image illumination changes, in order to, e.g., improve the reliability of a pattern recognition system. The classical moment invariants methodology is based on the determination of a set of transformations (or perturbations) for which the system must remain unaltered. Although very well established, the classical moment invariants theory has been mainly used for processing single static images (i.e. snapshots) and the use of image moments to analyze images sequences or video, from a dynamic point of view, has not been sufficiently explored and is a subject of much interest nowadays. In this paper, we propose the use of variant moments as an alternative to the classical approach. This approach presents clear differences compared to the classical moment invariants approach, that in specific domains have important advantages. The difference between the classical invariant and the proposed variant approach is mainly (but not solely) conceptual: invariants are sensitive to any image change or perturbation for which they are not invariant, so any unexpected perturbation will affect the measurements (i.e. is subject to uncertainty); on the contrary, a variant moment is designed to be sensitive to a specific perturbation, i.e., to measure a transformation, not to be invariant to it, and thus if the specific perturbation occurs it will be measured; hence any unexpected disturbance will not affect the objective of the measurement confronting thus uncertainty. Furthermore, given the fact that the proposed variant moments are orthogonal (i.e. uncorrelated) it is possible to considerably reduce the total inherent uncertainty. The presented approach has been applied to interesting open problems in computer vision such as shape analysis, image segmentation, tracking object deformations and object motion tracking, obtaining encouraging results and proving the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

FPGA-Based Multimodal Embedded Sensor System Integrating Low- and Mid-Level Vision

Motion estimation is a low-level vision task that is especially relevant due to its wide range of applications in the real world. Many of the best motion estimation algorithms include some of the features that are found in mammalians, which would demand huge computational resources and therefore are not usually available in real-time. In this paper we present a novel bioinspired sensor based on the synergy between optical flow and orthogonal variant moments. The bioinspired sensor has been designed for Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) using properties of the mammalian cortical motion pathway. This sensor combines low-level primitives (optical flow and image moments) in order to produce a mid-level vision abstraction layer. The results are described trough experiments showing the validity of the proposed system and an analysis of the computational resources and performance of the applied algorithms.

Fuzzy Specification in Real Estate Market Decision Making

In this paper we present a software tool designed as a decision aid system for all actors being involved when buying or selling real state, client and realtor, where a main objective for the commercial is to concentrate the client preferences into few alternatives. Since the required previous analysis implies a number of fuzzy concepts, the general procedure here presented considers fuzzy logic to deal with specifications. As a consequence, time devoted to elicitation and requirement analysis is reduced.

A method to learn the inverse kinematics of multi-link robots by evolving neuro-controllers

A general method to learn the inverse kinematic of multi-link robots by means of neuro-controllers is presented. We can find analytical solutions for the most used and well-known robots in the literature. However, these solutions are specific to a particular robot configuration and are not generally applicable to other robot morphologies. The proposed method is general in the sense that it is independent of the robot morphology. The method is based on the evolutionary computation paradigm and works obtaining incrementally better neuro-controllers. Furthermore, the proposed method solves some specific issues in robotic neuro-controller learning: it avoids any neural network learning algorithm which relies on the classical supervised input-target learning scheme and hence it lets to obtain neuro-controllers without providing targets. It can converge beyond local optimal solutions, which is one of the main drawbacks of some neural network training algorithms based on gradient descent when applied to highly redundant robot morphologies. Furthermore, using learning algorithms such as the neuro-evolution of augmenting topologies it is also possible to learn the neural network topology which is a common source of empirical testing in neuro-controllers design. Finally, experimental results are provided when applying the method to two multi-link robot learning tasks and a comparison between structural and parametric evolutionary strategies on neuro-controllers is shown.

Dyna-H: A heuristic planning reinforcement learning algorithm applied to role-playing game strategy decision systems

In a Role-Playing Game, finding optimal trajectories is one of the most important tasks. In fact, the strategy decision system becomes a key component of a game engine. Determining the way in which decisions are taken (online, batch or simulated) and the consumed resources in decision making (e.g. execution time, memory) will influence, in mayor degree, the game performance. When classical search algorithms such as A* can be used, they are the very first option. Nevertheless, such methods rely on precise and complete models of the search space, and there are many interesting scenarios where their application is not possible. Then, model free methods for sequential decision making under uncertainty are the best choice. In this paper, we propose a heuristic planning strategy to incorporate the ability of heuristic-search in path-finding into a Dyna agent. The proposed Dyna-H algorithm, as A* does, selects branches more likely to produce outcomes than other branches. Besides, it has the advantages of being a model-free online reinforcement learning algorithm. The proposal was evaluated against the one-step Q-Learning and Dyna-Q algorithms obtaining excellent experimental results: Dyna-H significantly overcomes both methods in all experiments. We suggest also, a functional analogy between the proposed sampling from worst trajectories heuristic and the role of dreams (e.g. nightmares) in human behavior.

TJ-II wave forms analysis with wavelets and support vector machines

Since the fusion plasma experiment generates hundreds of signals, it is essential to have automatic mechanisms for searching similarities and retrieving of specific data in the wave form database. Wavelet transform (WT) is a transformation that allows one to map signals to spaces of lower dimensionality. Support vector machine (SVM) is a very effective method for general purpose pattern recognition. Given a set of input vectors which belong to two different classes, the SVM maps the inputs into a high-dimensional feature space through some nonlinear mapping, where an optimal separating hyperplane is constructed. In this work, the combined use of WT and SVM is proposed for searching and retrieving similar wave forms in the TJ-II database. In a first stage, plasma signals will be preprocessed by WT to reduce their dimensionality and to extract their main features. In the next stage, and using the smoothed signals produced by the WT, SVM will be applied to show up the efficiency of the proposed method to dea...

Control of a cryogenic process using a fuzzy PID scheduler

Abstract A fuzzy gain scheduling control strategy is developed that controls the temperature in a liquid helium cryostat. The behaviour of the system has a strong dependence on the operating temperature and is highly non-linear. The process operation is partitioned into fuzzy operating regions and, within each region, a linear PID controller is used to control the process. A method of relating the choice of the PID parameters to the open-loop characteristics of the system is explained. Experimental results are presented that show how the fuzzy scheduler performs in practice.

Search and retrieval of plasma wave forms: Structural pattern recognition approach

Databases for fusion experiments are designed to store several million wave forms. Temporal evolution signals show the same patterns under the same plasma conditions and, therefore, pattern recognition techniques can allow identification of similar plasma behaviors. Further developments in this area must be focused on four aspects: large databases, feature extraction, similarity function, and search/retrieval efficiency. This article describes an approach for pattern searching within wave forms. The technique is performed in three stages. Firstly, the signals are filtered. Secondly, signals are encoded according to a discrete set of values (code alphabet). Finally, pattern recognition is carried out via string comparisons. The definition of code alphabets enables the description of wave forms as strings, instead of representing the signals in terms of multidimensional data vectors. An alphabet of just five letters can be enough to describe any signal. In this way, signals can be stored as a sequence of ch...

Digital image sensor-based assessment of the status of oat (Avena sativa L.) crops after frost damage.

The aim of this paper is to classify the land covered with oat crops, and the quantification of frost damage on oats, while plants are still in the flowering stage. The images are taken by a digital colour camera CCD-based sensor. Unsupervised classification methods are applied because the plants present different spectral signatures, depending on two main factors: illumination and the affected state. The colour space used in this application is CIELab, based on the decomposition of the colour in three channels, because it is the closest to human colour perception. The histogram of each channel is successively split into regions by thresholding. The best threshold to be applied is automatically obtained as a combination of three thresholding strategies: (a) Otsu’s method, (b) Isodata algorithm, and (c) Fuzzy thresholding. The fusion of these automatic thresholding techniques and the design of the classification strategy are some of the main findings of the paper, which allows an estimation of the damages and a prediction of the oat production.