Information Fusion
Enhancing Social Robot Navigation with Integrated Motion Prediction and Trajectory Planning in Dynamic Human Environments
Canh, Thanh Nguyen, HoangVan, Xiem, Chong, Nak Young
Navigating safely in dynamic human environments is crucial for mobile service robots, and social navigation is a key aspect of this process. In this paper, we proposed an integrative approach that combines motion prediction and trajectory planning to enable safe and socially-aware robot navigation. The main idea of the proposed method is to leverage the advantages of Socially Acceptable trajectory prediction and Timed Elastic Band (TEB) by incorporating human interactive information including position, orientation, and motion into the objective function of the TEB algorithms. In addition, we designed social constraints to ensure the safety of robot navigation. The proposed system is evaluated through physical simulation using both quantitative and qualitative metrics, demonstrating its superior performance in avoiding human and dynamic obstacles, thereby ensuring safe navigation. The implementations are open source at: \url{https://github.com/thanhnguyencanh/SGan-TEB.git}
Mitigating Matching Biases Through Score Calibration
Moslemi, Mohammad Hossein, Milani, Mostafa
Record matching, the task of identifying records that correspond to the same real-world entities across databases, is critical for data integration in domains like healthcare, finance, and e-commerce. While traditional record matching models focus on optimizing accuracy, fairness issues, such as demographic disparities in model performance, have attracted increasing attention. Biased outcomes in record matching can result in unequal error rates across demographic groups, raising ethical and legal concerns. Existing research primarily addresses fairness at specific decision thresholds, using bias metrics like Demographic Parity (DP), Equal Opportunity (EO), and Equalized Odds (EOD) differences. However, threshold-specific metrics may overlook cumulative biases across varying thresholds. In this paper, we adapt fairness metrics traditionally applied in regression models to evaluate cumulative bias across all thresholds in record matching. We propose a novel post-processing calibration method, leveraging optimal transport theory and Wasserstein barycenters, to balance matching scores across demographic groups. This approach treats any matching model as a black box, making it applicable to a wide range of models without access to their training data. Our experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the calibration method in reducing demographic parity difference in matching scores. To address limitations in reducing EOD and EO differences, we introduce a conditional calibration method, which empirically achieves fairness across widely used benchmarks and state-of-the-art matching methods. This work provides a comprehensive framework for fairness-aware record matching, setting the foundation for more equitable data integration processes.
Conditional Controllable Image Fusion
Cao, Bing, Xu, Xingxin, Zhu, Pengfei, Wang, Qilong, Hu, Qinghua
Image fusion aims to integrate complementary information from multiple input images acquired through various sources to synthesize a new fused image. Existing methods usually employ distinct constraint designs tailored to specific scenes, forming fixed fusion paradigms. However, this data-driven fusion approach is challenging to deploy in varying scenarios, especially in rapidly changing environments. To address this issue, we propose a conditional controllable fusion (CCF) framework for general image fusion tasks without specific training. Due to the dynamic differences of different samples, our CCF employs specific fusion constraints for each individual in practice. Given the powerful generative capabilities of the denoising diffusion model, we first inject the specific constraints into the pre-trained DDPM as adaptive fusion conditions. The appropriate conditions are dynamically selected to ensure the fusion process remains responsive to the specific requirements in each reverse diffusion stage. Thus, CCF enables conditionally calibrating the fused images step by step.
Multi Modal Information Fusion of Acoustic and Linguistic Data for Decoding Dairy Cow Vocalizations in Animal Welfare Assessment
Jobarteh, Bubacarr, Mincu, Madalina, Dinu, Gavojdian, Neethirajan, Suresh
Understanding animal vocalizations through multi-source data fusion is crucial for assessing emotional states and enhancing animal welfare in precision livestock farming. This study aims to decode dairy cow contact calls by employing multi-modal data fusion techniques, integrating transcription, semantic analysis, contextual and emotional assessment, and acoustic feature extraction. We utilized the Natural Language Processing model to transcribe audio recordings of cow vocalizations into written form. By fusing multiple acoustic features frequency, duration, and intensity with transcribed textual data, we developed a comprehensive representation of cow vocalizations. Utilizing data fusion within a custom-developed ontology, we categorized vocalizations into high frequency calls associated with distress or arousal, and low frequency calls linked to contentment or calmness. Analyzing the fused multi dimensional data, we identified anxiety related features indicative of emotional distress, including specific frequency measurements and sound spectrum results. Assessing the sentiment and acoustic features of vocalizations from 20 individual cows allowed us to determine differences in calling patterns and emotional states. Employing advanced machine learning algorithms, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and Recurrent Neural Networks, we effectively processed and fused multi-source data to classify cow vocalizations. These models were optimized to handle computational demands and data quality challenges inherent in practical farm environments. Our findings demonstrate the effectiveness of multi-source data fusion and intelligent processing techniques in animal welfare monitoring. This study represents a significant advancement in animal welfare assessment, highlighting the role of innovative fusion technologies in understanding and improving the emotional wellbeing of dairy cows.
Transfer data from your Android phone to your Windows PC: The ultimate guide
Nowadays, smartphones replace the (video) camera on holiday, acts as a portable music player, has space for all WhatsApp media, and holds audio plays, e-books, and documents. To avoid losing such data, you should create regular backups and your home Windows PC is ideal for this. The home computer is also a good data source, as it often houses downloads, music libraries, and video archives. However, if you want to transfer music, videos, or images between your smartphone and a Windows PC, you are spoiled for choice. There are a whole range of different methods available for this data transfer. The simplest and quickest method of connecting an Android device to your Windows PC is the classic USB cable.
Clustering ensemble algorithm with high-order consistency learning
Gan, Jianwen, Chen, Yan, Zhou, Peng, Du, Liang
Most of the research on clustering ensemble focuses on designing practical consistency learning algorithms.To solve the problems that the quality of base clusters varies and the low-quality base clusters have an impact on the performance of the clustering ensemble, from the perspective of data mining, the intrinsic connections of data were mined based on the base clusters, and a high-order information fusion algorithm was proposed to represent the connections between data from different dimensions, namely Clustering Ensemble with High-order Consensus learning (HCLCE). Firstly, each high-order information was fused into a new structured consistency matrix. Then, the obtained multiple consistency matrices were fused together. Finally, multiple information was fused into a consistent result. Experimental results show that LCLCE algorithm has the clustering accuracy improved by an average of 7.22%, and the Normalized Mutual Information (NMI) improved by an average of 9.19% compared with the suboptimal Locally Weighted Evidence Accumulation (LWEA) algorithm. It can be seen that the proposed algorithm can obtain better clustering results compared with clustering ensemble algorithms and using one information alone.
Novel Architecture for Distributed Travel Data Integration and Service Provision Using Microservices
Barua, Biman, Kaiser, M. Shamim
This paper introduces a microservices architecture for the purpose of enhancing the flexibility and performance of an airline reservation system. The architectural design incorporates Redis cache technologies, two different messaging systems (Kafka and RabbitMQ), two types of storages (MongoDB, and PostgreSQL). It also introduces authorization techniques, including secure communication through OAuth2 and JWT which is essential with the management of high-demand travel services. According to selected indicators, the architecture provides an impressive level of data consistency at 99.5% and a latency of data propagation of less than 75 ms allowing rapid and reliable intercommunication between microservices. A system throughput of 1050 events per second was achieved so that the acceptability level was maintained even during peak time. Redis caching reduced a 92% cache hit ratio on the database thereby lowering the burden on the database and increasing the speed of response. Further improvement of the systems scalability was done through the use of Docker and Kubernetes which enabled services to be expanded horizontally to cope with the changes in demand. The error rates were very low, at 0.2% further enhancing the efficiency of the system in handling real-time data integration. This approach is suggested to meet the specific needs of the airline reservation system. It is secure, fast, scalable, all serving to improve the user experience as well as the efficiency of operations. The low latency and high data integration levels and prevaiing efficient usage of the resources demonstrates the architecture ability to offer continued support in the ever growing high demand situations.
Graph Integration for Diffusion-Based Manifold Alignment
Rhodes, Jake S., Rustad, Adam G.
Data from individual observations can originate from various sources or modalities but are often intrinsically linked. Multimodal data integration can enrich information content compared to single-source data. Manifold alignment is a form of data integration that seeks a shared, underlying low-dimensional representation of multiple data sources that emphasizes similarities between alternative representations of the same entities. Semi-supervised manifold alignment relies on partially known correspondences between domains, either through shared features or through other known associations. In this paper, we introduce two semi-supervised manifold alignment methods. The first method, Shortest Paths on the Union of Domains (SPUD), forms a unified graph structure using known correspondences to establish graph edges. By learning inter-domain geodesic distances, SPUD creates a global, multi-domain structure. The second method, MASH (Manifold Alignment via Stochastic Hopping), learns local geometry within each domain and forms a joint diffusion operator using known correspondences to iteratively learn new inter-domain correspondences through a random-walk approach. Through the diffusion process, MASH forms a coupling matrix that links heterogeneous domains into a unified structure. We compare SPUD and MASH with existing semi-supervised manifold alignment methods and show that they outperform competing methods in aligning true correspondences and cross-domain classification. In addition, we show how these methods can be applied to transfer label information between domains.
Unsupervised Multimodal Fusion of In-process Sensor Data for Advanced Manufacturing Process Monitoring
McKinney, Matthew, Garland, Anthony, Cillessen, Dale, Adamczyk, Jesse, Bolintineanu, Dan, Heiden, Michael, Fowler, Elliott, Boyce, Brad L.
Effective monitoring of manufacturing processes is crucial for maintaining product quality and operational efficiency. Modern manufacturing environments generate vast amounts of multimodal data, including visual imagery from various perspectives and resolutions, hyperspectral data, and machine health monitoring information such as actuator positions, accelerometer readings, and temperature measurements. However, interpreting this complex, high-dimensional data presents significant challenges, particularly when labeled datasets are unavailable. This paper presents a novel approach to multimodal sensor data fusion in manufacturing processes, inspired by the Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training (CLIP) model. We leverage contrastive learning techniques to correlate different data modalities without the need for labeled data, developing encoders for five distinct modalities: visual imagery, audio signals, laser position (x and y coordinates), and laser power measurements. By compressing these high-dimensional datasets into low-dimensional representational spaces, our approach facilitates downstream tasks such as process control, anomaly detection, and quality assurance. We evaluate the effectiveness of our approach through experiments, demonstrating its potential to enhance process monitoring capabilities in advanced manufacturing systems. This research contributes to smart manufacturing by providing a flexible, scalable framework for multimodal data fusion that can adapt to diverse manufacturing environments and sensor configurations.
Efficient Bilinear Attention-based Fusion for Medical Visual Question Answering
Zhang, Zhilin, Wang, Jie, Zhu, Ruiqi, Gong, Xiaoliang
Medical Visual Question Answering (MedVQA) has gained increasing attention at the intersection of computer vision and natural language processing. Its capability to interpret radiological images and deliver precise answers to clinical inquiries positions MedVQA as a valuable tool for supporting diagnostic decision-making for physicians and alleviating the workload on radiologists. While recent approaches focus on using unified pre-trained large models for multi-modal fusion like cross-modal Transformers, research on more efficient fusion methods remains relatively scarce within this discipline. In this paper, we introduce a novel fusion model that integrates Orthogonality loss, Multi-head attention and Bilinear Attention Network (OMniBAN) to achieve high computational efficiency and strong performance without the need for pre-training. We conduct comprehensive experiments and clarify aspects of how to enhance bilinear attention fusion to achieve performance comparable to that of large models. Experimental results show that OMniBAN outperforms traditional models on key MedVQA benchmarks while maintaining a lower computational cost, which indicates its potential for efficient clinical application in radiology and pathology image question answering.