Search

With the increasing emphasis on machine learning and artificial intelligence to drive knowledge discovery in the agricultural sciences, spatial internet of things (IoT) technologies have become increasingly important for collecting real-time, high resolution data for these models. However, managing large fleets of devices while maintaining high data quality remains an ongoing challenge as scientists iterate from prototype to mature end-to-end applications. Here, we provide a set of case studies using the framework of technology readiness levels for an open source spatial IoT system. The spatial IoT systems underwent 3 major and 14 minor system versions, had over 2,727 devices manufactured both in academic and commercial contexts, and are either in active or planned deployment across four continents. Our results show the evolution of a generalizable, open source spatial IoT system designed for agricultural scientists, and provide a model for academic researchers to overcome the challenges that exist in going from one-off prototypes to thousands of internet-connected devices., Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, 1 table

Next-generation Wi-Fi networks are looking forward to introducing new features like multi-link operation (MLO) to both achieve higher throughput and lower latency. However, given the limited number of available channels, the use of multiple links by a group of contending Basic Service Sets (BSSs) can result in higher interference and channel contention, thus potentially leading to lower performance and reliability. In such a situation, it could be better for all contending BSSs to use less links if that contributes to reduce channel access contention. Recently, reinforcement learning (RL) has proven its potential for optimizing resource allocation in wireless networks. However, the independent operation of each wireless network makes difficult -- if not almost impossible -- for each individual network to learn a good configuration. To solve this issue, in this paper, we propose the use of a Federated Reinforcement Learning (FRL) framework, i.e., a collaborative machine learning approach to train models across multiple distributed agents without exchanging data, to collaboratively learn the the best MLO-Link Allocation (LA) strategy by a group of neighboring BSSs. The simulation results show that the FRL-based decentralized MLO-LA strategy achieves a better throughput fairness, and so a higher reliability -- because it allows the different BSSs to find a link allocation strategy which maximizes the minimum achieved data rate -- compared to fixed, random and RL-based MLO-LA schemes., Comment: 6 pages and 7 figures, IEEE Conference format

Automatic Number Plate Recognition System (ANPRS) is a mass surveillance embedded system that recognizes the number plate of the vehicle. This system is generally used for traffic management applications. It should be very efficient in detecting the number plate in noisy as well as in low illumination and also within required time frame. This paper proposes a number plate recognition method by processing vehicle's rear or front image. After image is captured, processing is divided into four steps which are Pre-Processing, Number plate localization, Character segmentation and Character recognition. Pre-Processing enhances the image for further processing, number plate localization extracts the number plate region from the image, character segmentation separates the individual characters from the extracted number plate and character recognition identifies the optical characters by using random forest classification algorithm. Experimental results reveal that the accuracy of this method is 90.9%.

This paper aims to improve the performance and positioning accuracy of a robot by using the particle filter method. The laser range information is a wireless navigation system mainly used to measure, position, and control autonomous robots. Its localization is more flexible to control than wired guidance systems. However, the navigation through the laser range finder occurs with a large positioning error while it moves or turns fast. For solving this problem, the paper proposes a method to improve the positioning accuracy of a robot in an indoor environment by using a particle filter with robust characteristics in a nonlinear or non-Gaussian system. In this experiment, a robot is equipped with a laser range finder, two encoders, and a gyro for navigation to verify the positioning accuracy and performance. The positioning accuracy and performance could improve by approximately 85.5% in this proposed method., Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, conference

Environment mapping is an essential prerequisite for mobile robots to perform different tasks such as navigation and mission planning. With the availability of low-cost 2D LiDARs, there are increasing applications of such 2D LiDARs in industrial environments. However, environment mapping in an unknown and feature-less environment with such low-cost 2D LiDARs remains a challenge. The challenge mainly originates from the short-range of LiDARs and complexities in performing scan matching in these environments. In order to resolve these shortcomings, we propose to fuse the ultra-wideband (UWB) with 2D LiDARs to improve the mapping quality of a mobile robot. The optimization-based approach is utilized for the fusion of UWB ranging information and odometry to first optimize the trajectory. Then the LiDAR-based loop closures are incorporated to improve the accuracy of the trajectory estimation. Finally, the optimized trajectory is combined with the LiDAR scans to produce the occupancy map of the environment. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated in an indoor feature-less environment with a size of 20m*20m. Obtained results show that the mapping error of the proposed scheme is 85.5% less than that of the conventional GMapping algorithm with short-range LiDAR (for example Hokuyo URG-04LX in our experiment with a maximum range of 5.6m)., Comment: Accepted by IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS

The primary objective of this paper is to present an approach for recommender systems that can assimilate ranking to the voters or rankers so that recommendation can be made by giving priority to experts suggestion over usual recommendation. To accomplish this, we have incorporated the concept of human-centric aggregation via Ordered Weighted Aggregation (OWA). Here, we are advocating ranked recommendation where rankers are assigned weights according to their place in the ranking. Further, the recommendation process which is presented here for the recommendation of books to university students exploits linguistic data summaries and Ordered Weighted Aggregation (OWA) technique. In the suggested approach, the weights are assigned in a way that it associates higher weights to best ranked university. The approach has been evaluated over eight different parameters. The superiority of the proposed approach is evident from the evaluation results. We claim that proposed scheme saves storage spaces required in traditional recommender systems as well as it does not need users prior preferences and hence produce a solution for cold start problem. This envisaged that the proposed scheme can be very useful in decision making problems, especially for recommender systems. In addition, it emphasizes on how human-centric aggregation can be useful in recommendation researches, and also it gives a new direction about how various human specific tasks can be numerically aggregated.

In recent years, 5G is widely used in parallel with IoT networks to enable massive data connectivity and exchange with ultra-reliable and low latency communication (URLLC) services. The internet requirements from user's perspective have shifted from simple human to human interactions to different communication paradigms and information-centric networking (ICN). ICN distributes the content among the users based on their trending requests. ICN is responsible not only for the routing and caching but also for naming the network's content. ICN considers several parameters such as cache-hit ratio, content diversity, content redundancy, and stretch to route the content. ICN enables name-based caching of the required content according to the user's request based on the router's interest table. The stretch shows the path covered while retrieving the content from producer to consumer. Reduction in path length also leads to a reduction in end-to-end latency and better data rate availability. ICN routers must have the minimum stretch to obtain a better system efficiency. Reinforcement learning (RL) is widely used in networks environment to increase agent efficiency to make decisions. In ICN, RL can aid to increase caching and stretch efficiency. This paper investigates a stretch reduction strategy for ICN routers by formulating the stretch reduction problem as a Markov decision process. The evaluation of the proposed stretch reduction strategy's accuracy is done by employing Q-Learning, an RL technique. The simulation results indicate that by using the optimal parameters for the proposed stretch reduction strategy., Comment: 6 pages, 4 Figures, 1 Table, International Conference on Green and Human Information Technology (ICGHIT) 2021