This dissertation presents solutions to two open problems in estimation theory. The first is a tractable analytical solution for problems in multi-target filtering which are too complex to solve using traditional techniques. The second explores a new approach to the nonlinear filtering problem for a general class of models. The approach to the multi-target filtering problem which involves jointly estimating a random process of the number of targets and their state, developed using the probability hypothesis density (PHD) filter alleviates the intractability of the problem by avoiding explicit data association. Moreover, the notion of linear jump Markov systems is generalized to the multiple target case to accommodate births, deaths and switching dynamics to derive a closed form solution to the PHD recursion for this so-called linear Gaussian jump Markov multi-target model. The proposed solution is general enough to accommodate a broad class of practical problems which are deemed intractable using traditional techniques. Based on this closed form solution, an efficient method is developed for tracking multiple maneuvering targets that switch between multiple models without the need for gating, track initiation and termination, or clustering for extracting state estimates. The approach to the nonlinear filtering problem explores the framework of the virtual linear fractional transformation (LFT) model which localizes the nonlinearity to the feedback with a simple and sparse structure. The LFT is an exact representation for any differentiable nonlinear mapping and therefore amenable to a general class of problems. An alternative analytical approximation method is presented which avoids linearization of the state space model. The uncorrelated structure of the feedback connection gives of the state space model. The uncorrelated structure of the feedback connection gives better second-order moment approximation of the nonlinearly mapped variables. By arranging the unscented transform in the feedback, the prediction and estimation steps are derived in closed form. The proposed filters for the discrete-time model and continuous-time dynamics with sampled-data measurements respectively are shown to be robust under highly nonlinear and uncertain conditions where standard analytical approximation based filters diverge. Moreover, the LFT based filters are efficient for online implementation. In addition, the LFT framework is applied to extend the closed form solution of the PHD recursion to the nonlinear jump Markov multi-target model.

abstract: Human operators have difficulty driving cranes quickly, accurately, and safely because of the slow response of heavy crane structures, non-intuitive control interfaces, and payload oscillations. Recently, a novel hand-motion crane control system has been proposed to improve performance by coupling an intuitive control interface with an element that reduces the complex oscillatory behavior of the payload. Hand-motion control allows operators to drive a crane by simply moving a hand-held radio-frequency tag through the desired path. Real-time location sensors are used to track the movements of the tag and the tag position is used in a feedback control loop to drive the crane. An input shaper is added to eliminate dangerous payload oscillations. However, tag position measurements are corrupted by noise. It is important to understand the noise properties so that appropriate filters can be designed to mitigate the effects of noise and improve tracking accuracy. This work discusses implementing filtering techniques to address the issue of noise in the operating environment. Five different filters are used on experimentally-acquired tag trajectories to reduce noise. The filtered trajectories are then used to drive crane simulations. Filter performance is evaluated with respect to the energy usage of the crane trolley, the settling time of the crane payload oscillations, and the safety corridor of the crane trajectory. The effects of filter window lengths on these parameters are also investigated. An adaptive filtering technique, namely the Kalman filter, adapts to the noise characteristics of the workspace to minimize the tag tracking error and performs better than the other filtering techniques examined. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Bioengineering 2012

Esta dissertação apresenta novos resultados para a solução de problemas de implementação computacional na estimativa de sistemas singulares e sistemas Markovianos. São apresentados algoritmos alternativos para problemas de filtragem de maneira a minimizar problemas causados principalmente por erros de arredondamento e mal condicionamento de matrizes. O trabalho envolve basicamente algoritmos array e filtragem de informação para a estimativa de sistemas singulares nominais e robustos. Também é deduzido um algoritmo array para a filtragem de sistemas lineares sujeitos a saltos Markovianos. / This dissertation presents new results to solve computational implementation problems to estimate singular and Markovian systems. Alternative algorithms to handle computational filtering errors due rounding errors and ill-conditioned matrices are developed. This dissertation comprehends basically array algorithms and information filters for the estimate of nominal and robust singular systems. Also, it is developed an array algorithm for Markovian jump linear systems filtering.

Detaljhandeln i fysiska butiker är utsatt av konkurrens från en betydligt mer innovationsrik e-handel och har därför ett behov av att vidareutvecklas. Ett sätt för detaljhandeln att utvecklas är att utnyttja tekniker som visats fungera bra inom e-handeln. Rekommendationssystem som ger rekommendationer till sina användare har nått stora framgångar och används av i stort sett alla företag inom e-handeln. Den mest använda tekniken för att ta fram rekommendationer kallas för collaborative filtering. Inom detaljhandel används dock inte detta i någon större utsträckning. Det finns därför förhållandevis lite kunskap om vad kunder anser om rekommendationer i butik. Syftet med studien är därför att utvärdera hur ett rekommendationssystem baserat på collaborative filtering presterar i en fysisk butik. Utvärderingen sker genom att mäta träffsäkerheten på rekommendationerna kunder får i en butik samt vad kunderna anser om dessa. Studien ämnar även att ta reda på hur kunder förhåller sig till automatiska rekommendationer i butik. I studien används två forskningsmetodiker för att uppnå dess forskningsmål. Design science har tillämpats för att utvärdera hur ett rekommendationssystem baserat på collaborative filtering presterar i en fysisk butik. En prototyp baserat på collaborative filtering utvecklades för att generera rekommendationer. Prototypen användes sedan i ett användartest som genomfördes i en butiksmiljö. För att belysa hur kunder förhåller sig till automatiska rekommendationer i butik användes en enkätundersökning som utfördes i samband med studiens användartest. Studiens resultat visar att prototypen gav rekommendationer med en hög träffsäkerhet där deltagarna upplevde rekommendationerna som bra och relevanta. Resultaten visar även att deltagarna i studien var positivt inställda till att få rekommendationer i butik. Detta leder till slutsatsen att rekommendationssystem baserat på collaborative filtering kan prestera väl i butiker vilket ger en indikation om att detta kan vara ett sätt för butiker att vidareutveckla handeln. / Retail stores are challenged by competition from the more innovative retailers in e-commerce and thus needs to adapt and evolve in order to stay competitive. This could be accomplished by using technology which has been proven successful in e-commerce. Recommender systems that produces recommendations to its users has been used successfully and is used by essentially all businesses involved in e-commerce. The most common method employed in these recommender systems is called collaborative filtering. Recommender systems have however not yet found its way into retail stores to a greater extent. This has led to a gap in knowledge regarding customer’s opinions of recommendations in retail stores. The purpose of this study is therefore to evaluate how recommender system based on collaborative filtering performs when used in retail stores. The evaluation is performed by measuring the accuracy of the recommendations a customer receives in a retail store as well as what the customer thinks of the recommendation. This study also intends to explore and shed light on people’s opinions concerning automatic recommendations in retail stores. Two different research methods have been used in this study. Design science is being used in order to evaluate how a recommender system based on collaborative filtering performs when used in retail stores. A prototype based on collaborative filtering was developed in order to generate recommendations. The prototype was then used in a user-test taking place in a retail-like environment. In order to shed light on people’s opinions regarding automatic recommendations in retail stores a questionnaire was handed out to the participants in conjunction with the user-test. The results of the study show that the prototype could produce high accuracy recommendations where the participants perceived the recommendations as good and relevant. The results also show that the participants of the study have positive attitude and were in favor of receiving automatic recommendations in retail stores. This leads to the conclusion that recommendations based on collaborative filtering could indeed perform well in retail stores. This indicates that recommender systems using collaborative filtering is one possible way for retail stores to evolve their business.

The aim was to test the methods for suppression 50 Hz noise with adaptive filtering. When using the general scheme of adaptive and deterministic scheme to suppress hum. The work is a theoretical derivation of adaptive algorithms and some examples of modeling in MATLAB.

No description available.

Topic management is the task of gathering, evaluating, organizing, and sharing a set of web sites for a specific topic. Current web tools do not provide adequate support for this task. We created and continue to develop the TopicShop system to address this need. TopicShop includes (1) a web crawler/analyzer that discovers relevant web sites and builds site profiles, and (2) user interfaces for information workspaces. We conducted an empirical pilot study comparing user performance with TopicShop vs. Yahooï . Results from this study were used to improve the design of TopicShop. A number of key design changes were incorporated into a second version of TopicShop based on results and user comments of the pilot study including (1) the tasks of evaluation and organization are treated as integral instead of separable, (2) spatial organization is important to users and must be well supported in the interface, and (3) distinct user and global datasets help users deal with the large quantity of information available on the web. A full empirical study using the second iteration of TopicShop covered more areas of the World Wide Web and validated results from the pilot study. Across the two studies, TopicShop subjects found over 80% more high-quality sites (where quality was determined by independent expert judgements) while browsing only 81% as many sites and completing their task in 89% of the time. The site profile data that TopicShop provide -- in particular, the number of pages on a site and the number of other sites that link to it -- were the key to these results, as users exploited them to identify the most promising sites quickly and easily. We also evaluated a number of link- and content-based algorithms using a dataset of web documents rated for quality by human topic experts. Link-based metrics did a good job of picking out high-quality items. Precision at 5 (the common information retrieval metric indicating the percentage of high quality items selected that are actually high quality) is about 0.75, and precision at 10 is about 0.55; this is in a dataset where 32% of all documents were of high quality. Surprisingly, a simple content-based metric, which ranked documents by the total number of pages on their containing site, performed nearly as well. These studies give insight into users' needs for the task of topic management, and provide empirical evidence of the effectiveness of task-specific interfaces (such as TopicShop) for managing topical collections. / Ph. D.

Durch die Vielzahl von heterogenen Informationsquellen sehen sich viele Nutzer einer kaum überschaubaren Informationsflut gegenüber. Aus diesem Grund werden durch diese Arbeit die gängigen Nachrichtenformate analysiert und der aktuelle Stand der Technik im Bereich der Nachrichtenaggregatoren dargelegt. Dabei werden diese Analysen immer mit Blick auf die Möglichkeiten einer personalisierten Filterung der Inhalte durchgeführt. Anschließend wird eine im Rahmen dieser Arbeit entstandene Infrastruktur für die Aggregation, personalisierte Filterung und kollaborative Empfehlung von Inhalten aus heterogenen Nachrichtenquellen vorgestellt. Dabei wird detailiert auf die zu Grunde liegenden Konzepte eingegangen und deren praktische Umsetzung beschrieben.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-23T14:07:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 helio parte1.pdf: 1713469 bytes, checksum: 8508da763de16f05e303b27a5e2f576c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-07-20 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Em siderúrgicas que utilizam o processo de laminação de tiras a quente, é muito comum o uso de cicloconversores com potências nominais da ordem de megawatts, para o acionamento de motores síncronos. Os cicloconversores absorvem uma corrente distorcida da rede elétrica, causando assim uma distorção de tensão no ponto de acoplamento comum (PAC) e inúmeros problemas de qualidade da energia elétrica. Uma solução muito utilizada para a mitigação harmônica nesta aplicação é obtida através do uso de filtros passivos, com vários estágios de filtragem. Porém esta é uma solução que pode causar ressonância harmônica, aumentando assim a distorção harmônica no sistema elétrico e causando sobrecarga no sistema de filtragem. Neste trabalho é apresentado um estudo de caso em uma grande siderúrgica, localizada na Grande Vitória. Por meio de medições na subestação do laminador de tiras a quente, são apresentadas as principais formas de onda das correntes e tensões, em conjunto com seus espectros harmônicos, que comprovam a existência do fenômeno da ressonância harmônica. Como está prevista uma expansão de 30% na carga do laminador, torna-se necessário um estudo do comportamento do sistema elétrico por meio de simulação, pois o fenômeno da amplificação harmônica pode aumentar os níveis de distorção e afetar o desempenho do sistema de filtragem passiva. Foi utilizado um modelo para o sistema sob estudo desenvolvido, o qual apresenta forte grau de correlação com o sistema real. De posse do modelo é realizada uma análise comparativa por meio de simulação entre duas topologias de filtragem híbrida, o filtro híbrido série e o paralelo, para a filtragem harmônica e amortecimento da ressonância. Os resultados obtidos mostram que o filtro híbrido série é a topologia que permite realizar o amortecimento harmônico e melhorar as características de compensação harmônica do sistema de filtragem passiva, com um filtro ativo de menor potência nominal, quando comparado a um filtro híbrido paralelo. Porém, esta estrutura não possui boas características de filtragem em elevada frequência, função que o filtro híbrido paralelo pode realizar, porém com um filtro ativo de elevada potência nominal. Por final é mostrado que um filtro híbrido série, composto por um filtro ativo e banco de capacitores aplicado ao sistema elétrico do laminador, pode proporcionar os mesmos resultados de compensação harmônica e amortecimento da ressonância, com um filtro ativo de menor potência, quando comparado à estrutura híbrida tradicional, composta pela associação série entre um filtro ativo e passivo.

A solution to the vehicle state estimation problem is given using the Kalman filtering and the Particle filtering theories. Vehicle states are necessary for an active or a semi-active suspension control system, which is intended to enhance ride comfort, road handling and stability of the vehicle. Due to a lack of information on road disturbances, conventional estimation techniques fail to provide accurate estimates of all the required states. The proposed estimation algorithm, named Supervisory Kalman Filter (SKF), consists of a Kalman filter with an extra update step which is inspired by the particle filtering technique. The extra step, called a supervisory layer, operates on the portion of the state vector that cannot be estimated by the Kalman filter. First, it produces N randomly generated state vectors, the particles, which are distributed based on the Kalman filter’s last updated estimate. Then, a resampling stage is implemented to collect the particles with higher probability. The effectiveness of the SKF is demonstrated by comparing its estimation results with that of the Kalman filter and the particle filter when a test vehicle is passing over a bump. The estimation results confirm that the SKF precisely estimates those states of the vehicle that cannot be estimated by either the Kalman filter or the particle filter, without any direct measurement of the road disturbance inputs. Once the vehicle states are provided, a suspension control law, the Skyhook strategy, processes the current states and adjusts the damping forces accordingly to provide a better and safer ride for the vehicle passengers. This thesis presents a novel systematic and practical methodology for the design and implementation of the Skyhook control strategy for vehicle’s semi-active suspension systems. Typically, the semi-active control strategies (including the Skyhook strategy) have switching natures. This makes the design process difficult and highly dependent on extensive trial and error. The proposed methodology maps the discontinuous control system model to a continuous linear region, where all the time/frequency design techniques, established in the conventional control system theory, can be applied. If the semiactive control law is designed to satisfy ride and stability requirements, an inverse mapping offers the ultimate control law. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology in the design of a semi-active suspension control system for a Cadillac SRX 2005 is demonstrated by real-time road tests. The road tests results verify that the use of the newly developed systematic design methodology reduces the required time and effort in real industrial problems.