Deep reinforcement learning (RL) represents a data-driven framework for sequential decision making that has demonstrated the ability to solve challenging control tasks. This data-driven, learning-based approach offers the potential to improve operations in complex systems, but only if it can be trusted to produce reliable performance both during training and upon deployment. These requirements have hindered the adoption of deep RL in many real-world applications. In order to overcome the limitations of existing methods, this dissertation introduces reliable deep RL algorithms that deliver (i) stable training from limited data and (ii) robust, safe deployment in the presence of uncertainty. The first part of the dissertation addresses the interactive nature of deep RL, where learning requires data collection from the environment. This interactive process can be expensive, time-consuming, and dangerous in many real-world settings, which motivates the need for reliable and efficient learning. We develop deep RL algorithms that guarantee stable performance throughout training, while also directly considering data efficiency in their design. These algorithms are supported by novel policy improvement lower bounds that account for finite-sample estimation error and sample reuse. The second part of the dissertation focuses on the uncertainty present in real-world applications, which can impact the performance and safety of learned control policies. In order to reliably deploy deep RL in the presence of uncertainty, we introduce frameworks that incorporate safety constraints and provide robustness to general disturbances in the environment. Importantly, these frameworks make limited assumptions on the training process, and can be implemented in settings that require real-world interaction for training. This motivates deep RL algorithms that deliver robust, safe performance at deployment time, while only using standard data collection from a single training environment. Overall, this dissertation contributes new techniques to overcome key limitations of deep RL for real-world decision making and control. Experiments across a variety of continuous control tasks demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms.

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Conventional methods for solving image restoration problems are typically built on an image degradation model and on some priors of the latent image. The model of the degraded image and the prior knowledge of the latent image are necessary because the restoration is an ill posted inverse problem. However, for some applications, such as those addressed in this thesis, the image degradation process is too complex to model precisely; in addition, mathematical priors, such as low rank and sparsity of the image signal, are often too idealistic for real world images. These difficulties limit the performance of existing image restoration algorithms, but they can be, to certain extent, overcome by the techniques of machine learning, particularly deep convolutional neural networks. Machine learning allows large sample statistics far beyond what is available in a single input image to be exploited. More importantly, the big data can be used to train deep neural networks to learn the complex non-linear mapping between the degraded and original images. This circumvents the difficulty of building an explicit realistic mathematical model when the degradation causes are complex and compounded. In this thesis, we design and implement deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) for two challenging image restoration problems: reflection removal and joint demosaicking-deblurring. The first problem is one of blind source separation; its DCNN solution requires a large set of paired clean and mixed images for training. As these paired training images are very difficult, if not impossible, to acquire in the real world, we develop a novel technique to synthesize the required training images that satisfactorily approximate the real ones. For the joint demosaicking-deblurring problem, we propose a new multiscale DCNN architecture consisting of a cascade of subnetworks so that the underlying blind deconvolution task can be broken into smaller subproblems and solved more effectively and robustly. In both cases extensive experiments are carried out. Experimental results demonstrate clear advantages of the proposed DCNN methods over existing ones. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

Haze and smog are among the most common environmental factors impacting image quality and, therefore, image analysis. In this paper, I propose an end-to-end generative method for single image dehazing problem. It is based on fully convolutional network and effective network structures to recognize haze structure in input images and restore clear, haze-free ones. The proposed method is agnostic in the sense that it does not explore the atmosphere scattering model, it makes use of convolutional networks advantage in feature extraction and transfer instead. Somewhat surprisingly, it achieves superior performance relative to all existing state-of-the-art methods for image dehazing even on SOTS outdoor images, which are synthesized using the atmosphere scattering model. In order to improve its weakness in indoor hazy images and enhance the dehazed image's visual quality, a lightweight parallel network is put forward. It employs a different convolution strategy that extracts features with larger reception field to generate a complementary image. With the help of a parallel stream, the fusion of the two outputs performs better in PSNR and SSIM than other methods. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

We propose an end-to-end trainable Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), named GridDehazeNet, for single image dehazing. The GridDehazeNet consists of three modules: pre-processing, backbone, and post-processing. The trainable pre-processing module can generate learned inputs with better diversity and more pertinent features as compared to those derived inputs produced by hand-selected pre-processing methods. The backbone module implements a novel attention-based multi-scale estimation on a grid network, which can effectively alleviate the bottleneck issue often encountered in the conventional multi-scale approach. The post-processing module helps to reduce the artifacts in the final output. Experimental results indicate that the GridDehazeNet outperforms the state-of-the-art on both synthetic and real-world images. The proposed hazing method does not rely on the atmosphere scattering model and we provide an explanation as to why it is not necessarily beneficial to take advantage of the dimension reduction offered by the atmosphere scattering model for image dehazing, even if only the dehazing results on synthetic images are concerned. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

In the simple form, a communication system includes a transmitter and a receiver. In the transmitter, it transforms the one-hot vector message to produce a transmitted signal. In general, the transmitter demands restrictions on the transmitted signal. The channel is defined by the conditional probability distribution function. On receiving of the transmitted signal with noise, the receiver appears to apply the transformation to generate the estimate of one hot vector message. We can regard this simplest communication system as a specific case of autoencoder from a deep learning perspective. In our case, autoencoder used to learn the representations of the one-hot vector which are robust to the noise channel and can be recovered at the receiver with the smallest probability of error. Our task is to make some improvements on the autoencoder systems. We propose different schemes depending on the different cases. We propose a method based on optimization of softmax and introduce the L1/2 regularization in MSE loss function for SISO case and MIMO case, separately. The simulation shows that both our optimized softmax function method and L1/2 regularization loss function have a better performance than the original neural network framework. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

Dissertation (Ph.D.) - Simon Fraser University, 2006. / Theses (School of Kinesiology) / Simon Fraser University. Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1980. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-205).

Memoria para optar al título de Ingeniero Civil Eléctrico / La enfermedad de Parkinson es un trastorno neurodegenerativo y objeto de interés en la comunidad científica, dado que existe una mayor incidencia luego de los 60 años en promedio y además la población mundial posee una alta esperanza de vida, implicando que existirá una mayor cantidad de casos en el futuro. Los tratamientos actuales para este trastorno se componen de un generador de pulsos yelectrodos, en donde se estimula de manera constante una zona del cuerpo (puede ser un área cerebral o parte de la médula) independiente del estado actual del paciente, lo cual conlleva en algunos efectos secundarios no deseados. El presente trabajo de memoria se enfoca en esta problemática, ya que busca un lazode control para estos tratamientos y corresponde a una de las primeras aproximaciones con aprendizaje de máquinas. En particular, se estudia un clasificador de movimiento con incertidumbre a partir de la actividad neural de un modelo animal de rata de 6-OHDA. De esta manera, se realiza la extracción de movimiento a partir de un video y de señales cerebrales de un modelo animal de Parkinson a través de algoritmos de ventanas deslizantes, generando imágenes de potencia en ciertas bandas de frecuencia con una etiqueta respectiva de movimiento a partir del video. Estas imágenes sirven para entrenar a un clasificador de Deep Learning Bayesiano, el cual puede extraer incertidumbre en la clasificación. Así, al utilizar Deep Learning Bayesiano con la forma de evaluación de MC Dropout se llega a obtener un recall de 80 % para la etiqueta de movimiento y la base de datos consistente en una ventana deslizante de medio segundo. Además, esta arquitectura es superior (para esta base de datos) en comparación a la de Deep Learning y evaluación estándar de dropout. Por otro lado, para estos resultados se tiene que con una mejor clasificación se obtiene una menor incertidumbre, lo cual es una de las ventajas al usar Deep Learning Bayesiano pues permite obtener una medida de confianza en la clasificación al realizar evaluaciones estocásticas. Finalmente, cabe destacar que este trabajo puede usarse como base para obtener una estrategia de control para un circuito cerrado específico para cada paciente, el cual posee incertidumbre en predicciones implicando en la confianza que posee el sistema para cambiar un estado específico. Para generar una nueva estrategia más robusta con incertidumbre, se debería repetir este experimento agregando nuevos biomarcadores o indicadores fisiológicos, además de explorar otros algoritmos para extracción de movimiento para el etiquetado de la base de datos. / FONDECYT