TY - JOUR A1 - Steinert, Fritjof A1 - Stabernack, Benno T1 - Architecture of a low latency H.264/AVC video codec for robust ML based image classification how region of interests can minimize the impact of coding artifacts JF - Journal of Signal Processing Systems for Signal, Image, and Video Technology N2 - The use of neural networks is considered as the state of the art in the field of image classification. A large number of different networks are available for this purpose, which, appropriately trained, permit a high level of classification accuracy. Typically, these networks are applied to uncompressed image data, since a corresponding training was also carried out using image data of similar high quality. However, if image data contains image errors, the classification accuracy deteriorates drastically. This applies in particular to coding artifacts which occur due to image and video compression. Typical application scenarios for video compression are narrowband transmission channels for which video coding is required but a subsequent classification is to be carried out on the receiver side. In this paper we present a special H.264/Advanced Video Codec (AVC) based video codec that allows certain regions of a picture to be coded with near constant picture quality in order to allow a reliable classification using neural networks, whereas the remaining image will be coded using constant bit rate. We have combined this feature with the ability to run with lowest latency properties, which is usually also required in remote control applications scenarios. The codec has been implemented as a fully hardwired High Definition video capable hardware architecture which is suitable for Field Programmable Gate Arrays. KW - H.264 KW - Advanced Video Codec (AVC) KW - Low Latency KW - Region of Interest KW - Machine Learning KW - Inference KW - FPGA KW - Hardware accelerator Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-021-01727-2 SN - 1939-8018 SN - 1939-8115 VL - 94 IS - 7 SP - 693 EP - 708 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Chen, Junchao A1 - Lange, Thomas A1 - Andjelkovic, Marko A1 - Simevski, Aleksandar A1 - Lu, Li A1 - Krstić, Miloš T1 - Solar particle event and single event upset prediction from SRAM-based monitor and supervised machine learning JF - IEEE transactions on emerging topics in computing / IEEE Computer Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers N2 - The intensity of cosmic radiation may differ over five orders of magnitude within a few hours or days during the Solar Particle Events (SPEs), thus increasing for several orders of magnitude the probability of Single Event Upsets (SEUs) in space-borne electronic systems. Therefore, it is vital to enable the early detection of the SEU rate changes in order to ensure timely activation of dynamic radiation hardening measures. In this paper, an embedded approach for the prediction of SPEs and SRAM SEU rate is presented. The proposed solution combines the real-time SRAM-based SEU monitor, the offline-trained machine learning model and online learning algorithm for the prediction. With respect to the state-of-the-art, our solution brings the following benefits: (1) Use of existing on-chip data storage SRAM as a particle detector, thus minimizing the hardware and power overhead, (2) Prediction of SRAM SEU rate one hour in advance, with the fine-grained hourly tracking of SEU variations during SPEs as well as under normal conditions, (3) Online optimization of the prediction model for enhancing the prediction accuracy during run-time, (4) Negligible cost of hardware accelerator design for the implementation of selected machine learning model and online learning algorithm. The proposed design is intended for a highly dependable and self-adaptive multiprocessing system employed in space applications, allowing to trigger the radiation mitigation mechanisms before the onset of high radiation levels. KW - Machine learning KW - Single event upsets KW - Random access memory KW - monitoring KW - machine learning algorithms KW - predictive models KW - space missions KW - solar particle event KW - single event upset KW - machine learning KW - online learning KW - hardware accelerator KW - reliability KW - self-adaptive multiprocessing system Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/TETC.2022.3147376 SN - 2168-6750 VL - 10 IS - 2 SP - 564 EP - 580 PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers CY - [New York, NY] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bordihn, Henning A1 - Vaszil, György T1 - Reversible parallel communicating finite automata systems JF - Acta informatica N2 - We study the concept of reversibility in connection with parallel communicating systems of finite automata (PCFA in short). We define the notion of reversibility in the case of PCFA (also covering the non-deterministic case) and discuss the relationship of the reversibility of the systems and the reversibility of its components. We show that a system can be reversible with non-reversible components, and the other way around, the reversibility of the components does not necessarily imply the reversibility of the system as a whole. We also investigate the computational power of deterministic centralized reversible PCFA. We show that these very simple types of PCFA (returning or non-returning) can recognize regular languages which cannot be accepted by reversible (deterministic) finite automata, and that they can even accept languages that are not context-free. We also separate the deterministic and non-deterministic variants in the case of systems with non-returning communication. We show that there are languages accepted by non-deterministic centralized PCFA, which cannot be recognized by any deterministic variant of the same type. KW - Finite automata KW - Reversibility KW - Systems of parallel communicating KW - automata Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00236-021-00396-9 SN - 0001-5903 SN - 1432-0525 VL - 58 IS - 4 SP - 263 EP - 279 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ; Heidelberg ; New York, NY ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bordihn, Henning A1 - Holzer, Markus T1 - On the number of active states in finite automata JF - Acta informatica N2 - We introduce a new measure of descriptional complexity on finite automata, called the number of active states. Roughly speaking, the number of active states of an automaton A on input w counts the number of different states visited during the most economic computation of the automaton A for the word w. This concept generalizes to finite automata and regular languages in a straightforward way. We show that the number of active states of both finite automata and regular languages is computable, even with respect to nondeterministic finite automata. We further compare the number of active states to related measures for regular languages. In particular, we show incomparability to the radius of regular languages and that the difference between the number of active states and the total number of states needed in finite automata for a regular language can be of exponential order. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00236-021-00397-8 SN - 0001-5903 SN - 1432-0525 VL - 58 IS - 4 SP - 301 EP - 318 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ; Heidelberg [u.a.] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kreowsky, Philipp A1 - Stabernack, Christian Benno T1 - A full-featured FPGA-based pipelined architecture for SIFT extraction JF - IEEE access : practical research, open solutions / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers N2 - Image feature detection is a key task in computer vision. Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) is a prevalent and well known algorithm for robust feature detection. However, it is computationally demanding and software implementations are not applicable for real-time performance. In this paper, a versatile and pipelined hardware implementation is proposed, that is capable of computing keypoints and rotation invariant descriptors on-chip. All computations are performed in single precision floating-point format which makes it possible to implement the original algorithm with little alteration. Various rotation resolutions and filter kernel sizes are supported for images of any resolution up to ultra-high definition. For full high definition images, 84 fps can be processed. Ultra high definition images can be processed at 21 fps. KW - Field programmable gate arrays KW - Convolution KW - Signal processing KW - algorithms KW - Kernel KW - Image resolution KW - Histograms KW - Feature extraction KW - Scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) KW - field-programmable gate array KW - (FPGA) KW - image processing KW - computer vision KW - parallel processing KW - architecture KW - real-time KW - hardware architecture Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3104387 SN - 2169-3536 VL - 9 SP - 128564 EP - 128573 PB - Inst. of Electr. and Electronics Engineers CY - New York, NY ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Huang, Yizhen A1 - Richter, Eric A1 - Kleickmann, Thilo A1 - Wiepke, Axel A1 - Richter, Dirk T1 - Classroom complexity affects student teachers’ behavior in a VR classroom JF - Computers & education : an international journal N2 - Student teachers often struggle to keep track of everything that is happening in the classroom, and particularly to notice and respond when students cause disruptions. The complexity of the classroom environment is a potential contributing factor that has not been empirically tested. In this experimental study, we utilized a virtual reality (VR) classroom to examine whether classroom complexity affects the likelihood of student teachers noticing disruptions and how they react after noticing. Classroom complexity was operationalized as the number of disruptions and the existence of overlapping disruptions (multidimensionality) as well as the existence of parallel teaching tasks (simultaneity). Results showed that student teachers (n = 50) were less likely to notice the scripted disruptions, and also less likely to respond to the disruptions in a comprehensive and effortful manner when facing greater complexity. These results may have implications for both teacher training and the design of VR for training or research purpose. This study contributes to the field from two aspects: 1) it revealed how features of the classroom environment can affect student teachers' noticing of and reaction to disruptions; and 2) it extends the functionality of the VR environment-from a teacher training tool to a testbed of fundamental classroom processes that are difficult to manipulate in real-life. KW - Augmented and virtual reality KW - Simulations KW - Improving classroom KW - teaching KW - Media in education KW - Pedagogical issues Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.104100 SN - 0360-1315 SN - 1873-782X VL - 163 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gautam, Khem Raj A1 - Zhang, Guoqiang A1 - Landwehr, Niels A1 - Adolphs, Julian T1 - Machine learning for improvement of thermal conditions inside a hybrid ventilated animal building JF - Computers and electronics in agriculture : COMPAG online ; an international journal N2 - In buildings with hybrid ventilation, natural ventilation opening positions (windows), mechanical ventilation rates, heating, and cooling are manipulated to maintain desired thermal conditions. The indoor temperature is regulated solely by ventilation (natural and mechanical) when the external conditions are favorable to save external heating and cooling energy. The ventilation parameters are determined by a rule-based control scheme, which is not optimal. This study proposes a methodology to enable real-time optimum control of ventilation parameters. We developed offline prediction models to estimate future thermal conditions from the data collected from building in operation. The developed offline model is then used to find the optimal controllable ventilation parameters in real-time to minimize the setpoint deviation in the building. With the proposed methodology, the experimental building's setpoint deviation improved for 87% of time, on average, by 0.53 degrees C compared to the current deviations. KW - Animal building KW - Natural ventilation KW - Automatically controlled windows KW - Machine learning KW - Optimization Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2021.106259 SN - 0168-1699 SN - 1872-7107 VL - 187 PB - Elsevier Science CY - Amsterdam [u.a.] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brede, Nuria A1 - Botta, Nicola T1 - On the correctness of monadic backward induction JF - Journal of functional programming N2 - In control theory, to solve a finite-horizon sequential decision problem (SDP) commonly means to find a list of decision rules that result in an optimal expected total reward (or cost) when taking a given number of decision steps. SDPs are routinely solved using Bellman's backward induction. Textbook authors (e.g. Bertsekas or Puterman) typically give more or less formal proofs to show that the backward induction algorithm is correct as solution method for deterministic and stochastic SDPs. Botta, Jansson and Ionescu propose a generic framework for finite horizon, monadic SDPs together with a monadic version of backward induction for solving such SDPs. In monadic SDPs, the monad captures a generic notion of uncertainty, while a generic measure function aggregates rewards. In the present paper, we define a notion of correctness for monadic SDPs and identify three conditions that allow us to prove a correctness result for monadic backward induction that is comparable to textbook correctness proofs for ordinary backward induction. The conditions that we impose are fairly general and can be cast in category-theoretical terms using the notion of Eilenberg-Moore algebra. They hold in familiar settings like those of deterministic or stochastic SDPs, but we also give examples in which they fail. Our results show that backward induction can safely be employed for a broader class of SDPs than usually treated in textbooks. However, they also rule out certain instances that were considered admissible in the context of Botta et al. 's generic framework. Our development is formalised in Idris as an extension of the Botta et al. framework and the sources are available as supplementary material. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956796821000228 SN - 1469-7653 SN - 0956-7968 VL - 31 PB - Cambridge University Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tavakoli, Hamad A1 - Alirezazadeh, Pendar A1 - Hedayatipour, Ava A1 - Nasib, A. H. Banijamali A1 - Landwehr, Niels T1 - Leaf image-based classification of some common bean cultivars using discriminative convolutional neural networks JF - Computers and electronics in agriculture : COMPAG online ; an international journal N2 - In recent years, many efforts have been made to apply image processing techniques for plant leaf identification. However, categorizing leaf images at the cultivar/variety level, because of the very low inter-class variability, is still a challenging task. In this research, we propose an automatic discriminative method based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for classifying 12 different cultivars of common beans that belong to three various species. We show that employing advanced loss functions, such as Additive Angular Margin Loss and Large Margin Cosine Loss, instead of the standard softmax loss function for the classification can yield better discrimination between classes and thereby mitigate the problem of low inter-class variability. The method was evaluated by classifying species (level I), cultivars from the same species (level II), and cultivars from different species (level III), based on images from the leaf foreside and backside. The results indicate that the performance of the classification algorithm on the leaf backside image dataset is superior. The maximum mean classification accuracies of 95.86, 91.37 and 86.87% were obtained at the levels I, II and III, respectively. The proposed method outperforms the previous relevant works and provides a reliable approach for plant cultivars identification. KW - Bean KW - Plant identification KW - Digital image analysis KW - VGG16 KW - Loss KW - functions Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2020.105935 SN - 0168-1699 SN - 1872-7107 VL - 181 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam [u.a.] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hollmann, Susanne A1 - Frohme, Marcus A1 - Endrullat, Christoph A1 - Kremer, Andreas A1 - D’Elia, Domenica A1 - Regierer, Babette A1 - Nechyporenko, Alina T1 - Ten simple rules on how to write a standard operating procedure JF - PLOS Computational Biology N2 - Research publications and data nowadays should be publicly available on the internet and, theoretically, usable for everyone to develop further research, products, or services. The long-term accessibility of research data is, therefore, fundamental in the economy of the research production process. However, the availability of data is not sufficient by itself, but also their quality must be verifiable. Measures to ensure reuse and reproducibility need to include the entire research life cycle, from the experimental design to the generation of data, quality control, statistical analysis, interpretation, and validation of the results. Hence, high-quality records, particularly for providing a string of documents for the verifiable origin of data, are essential elements that can act as a certificate for potential users (customers). These records also improve the traceability and transparency of data and processes, therefore, improving the reliability of results. Standards for data acquisition, analysis, and documentation have been fostered in the last decade driven by grassroot initiatives of researchers and organizations such as the Research Data Alliance (RDA). Nevertheless, what is still largely missing in the life science academic research are agreed procedures for complex routine research workflows. Here, well-crafted documentation like standard operating procedures (SOPs) offer clear direction and instructions specifically designed to avoid deviations as an absolute necessity for reproducibility. Therefore, this paper provides a standardized workflow that explains step by step how to write an SOP to be used as a starting point for appropriate research documentation. Y1 - 2020 VL - 16 IS - 9 PB - PLOS CY - San Francisco ER -