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One of the most challenging tasks in project management is estimating the duration of a project. The unknowns that accompany projects, the different risks, the uniqueness of each project, and the differences between organizations' culture and management techniques, hinder the ability to build one project duration prediction tool that can fit all types of projects and organizations. When machine learning (ML) techniques are used for project duration prediction, the challenge is even greater, as each organization has a different dataset structure, different features, and different quality of data. This hinders the ability to create one ML model that fits all types of organizations. This paper presents a new dynamic ML tool for improving the prediction accuracy of project duration. The tool is based on an artificial neural network (ANN) which is automatically adapted and optimized to different types of prediction methods and different datasets. The tool trains the ANN model multiple times with different architectures and uses a genetic algorithm to eventually choose the architecture which gives the most accurate prediction results. The validation process of the prediction accuracy is performed by using real-life project datasets supplied by two different organizations which have different project management approaches, different project types, and different project features. The results show that the proposed tool significantly improved the prediction accuracy for both organizations despite the major differences in the size, type, and structure of their datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the paper, visual navigation of a drone is considered. The drone navigation problem consists of two parts. The first part is finding the real position and orientation of the drone. The second part is finding the difference between desirable and real position and orientation of the drone and creation of the correspondent control signal for decreasing the difference. For the first part of the drone navigation problem, the paper presents a method for determining the coordinates of the drone camera with respect to known three-dimensional (3D) ground objects using deep learning. The algorithm has two stages. It causes the algorithm to be easy for interpretation by artificial neural network (ANN) and consequently increases its accuracy. At the first stage, we use the first ANN to find coordinates of the object origin projection. At the second stage, we use the second ANN to find the drone camera position and orientation. The algorithm has high accuracy (these errors were found for the validation set of images as differences between positions and orientations, obtained from a pretrained artificial neural network, and known positions and orientations), it is not sensitive to interference associated with changes in lighting, the appearance of external moving objects and the other phenomena where other methods of visual navigation are not effective. For the second part of the drone navigation problem, the paper presents a method for stabilization of drone flight controlled by autopilot with time delay. Indeed, image processing for navigation demands a lot of time and results in a time delay. However, the proposed method allows to get stable control in the presence of this time delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, machine learning (ML) has received growing attention and it has been used in a wide range of applications. However, the ML application in renewable energies systems such as fuel cells is still limited. In this paper, a prognostic framework based on artificial neural network (ANN) is designed to predict the performance of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell system, aiming to investigate the effect of temperature and humidity on the stack characteristics and on tracking control improvements. A large part of the experimental database for various operating conditions has been used in the training operation to achieve an accurate model. Extensive tests with various ANN parameters such as number of neurons, number of hidden layers, selection of training dataset, etc., are performed to obtain the best fit in terms of prediction accuracy. The effect of temperature and humidity based on the predicted model are investigated and compared to the ones obtained from real-time experiments. The control design based on the predicted model is performed to keep the stack operating point at an adequate power stage with high-performance tracking. Experimental results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed model for performance improvements of PEM fuel cell system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]