Abstract

Radars with mmWave frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) technology accu- rately estimate the range and velocity of targets in their field of view (FoV). The targeted angle of arrival (AoA) estimation can be improved by increasing receiving antennas or by using multiple- input multiple-output (MIMO). However, obtaining target features such as target type remains challenging. In this paper, we present a novel target classification method based on machine learning and features extracted from a range fast Fourier transform (FFT) profile by using mmWave FMCW Radars operating in the frequency range of 77–81 GHz. The measurements are carried out in a variety of realistic situations, including pedestrian, automotive, and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) (also known as drone). Peak, width, area, variance, and range are collected from range FFT profile peaks and fed into a machine learning model. In order to evaluate the performance, various light weight classification machine learning models such as logistic regression, Naive Bayes, support vector machine (SVM), and lightweight gradient boosting machine (GBM) are used. We demonstrate our findings by using outdoor measurements and achieve a classification accuracy of 95.6% by using LightGBM. The proposed method will be extremely useful in a wide range of applications, including cost-effective and dependable ground station traffic management and control systems for autonomous operations, and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). The presented classifi- cation technique extends the potential of mmWave FMCW Radar beyond the detection of range, velocity, and AoA to classification. mmWave FMCW Radars will be more robust in computer vision, visual perception, and fully autonomous ground control and traffic management cyber-physical systems as a result of the added new feature.

Abstract

The ability to predict the movements of the target person allows a person following robot (PFR) to coexist with the person while still complying with the social norms. In human-robot collaboration, this is an essential requisite for long-term time-dependent navigation and not losing sight of the person during momentary occlusions that may arise from a crowd due to static or dynamic obstacles, other human beings, or intersections in the local surrounding. The PFR must not only traverse to the previously unknown goal position but also relocate the target person after the miss, and resume following. In this paper, we try to solve this as a coupled motion-planning and control problem by formulating a model predictive control (MPC) controller with non-linear constraints for a wheeled differential-drive robot. And, using a human motion prediction strategy based on the recorded pose and trajectory information of both the moving target person and the PFR, add additional constraints to the same MPC, to recompute the optimal controls to the wheels. We make comparisons with RNNs like LSTM and Early Relocation for learning the best-predicted reference path.MPC is best suited for complex constrained problems because it allows the PFR to periodically update the tracking information, as well as to adapt to the moving person’s stride. We show the results using a simulated indoor environment and lay the foundation for its implementation on a real robot. Our proposed method offers a robust person following behaviour without the explicit need for policy learning or offline computation, allowing us to design a generalized framework.

Abstract

The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 are designed to further empower the state and allow the executive considerable powers to shape public discourses. On the one hand, the state now demands access to all information about the content and origins of every digital communication, a measure that will weaken the right to privacy. On the other hand, digital content is now subject to both self-regulation as well as extensive surveillance and regulation designed to allow substantial control by the executive over content.

Abstract

The paper presents a sub-nW bandgap reference (BGR) that exploits the temperature variation of gate-leakage current in thin oxide devices operating in the accumulation region to generate the reference voltage. The incorporation of gateleakage transistors scales down the power consumption of the BGR to pico-watt level without using any large physical resistors or sophisticated techniques, thereby making it suitable for IoT applications. The BGR is designed in TSMC 65nm technology and occupies an area of 0.009mm 2 . Post layout simulation results show nominal and worst-case accuracies of 23ppm/°C and 44ppm/°C respectively in the temperature range of -40°C to 100°C. Without any trimming, an inaccuracy (±3σ) of 3% is observed for the reference voltage, showing its resilience to process variations. It also exhibits a typical line sensitivity of 0.063%/V in a supply range of 1.5V-3.8V and a PSRR of -65dB at DC and 1.8V supply. The power consumption is observed to be 443pW at 1.5V supply and nominal temperature

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted people's lives driving them to act in fear, anxiety, and anger, leading to worldwide racist events in the physical world and online social networks. Though there are works focusing on Sinophobia during the COVID-19 pandemic, less attention has been given to the recent surge in Islamophobia. A large number of positive cases arising out of the religious Tablighi Jamaat gathering has driven people towards forming anti-Muslim communities around hashtags like #coronajihad, #tablighijamaatvirus on Twitter. In addition to the online spaces, the rise in Islamophobia has also resulted in increased hate crimes in the real world. Hence, an investigation is required to create interventions. To the best of our knowledge, we present the first large-scale quantitative study linking

Abstract

Nasalization of vowels is a phenomenon where the oral and nasal tracts participate simultaneously in the production of speech. Acoustic coupling of the oral and nasal tracts, together with the glottal activity, results in a complex dynamic production system. The extent of coupling determines the degree of nasalization in vowels. Changes in the instantaneous response of the vocal tract system are used to study the effects of co-articulatory load of nasals on vowels. Dominant resonance frequency (DRF) contour is extracted from the instantaneous response of the system to determine the duration of the vowel nasalization. The extent of coupling determines the relative dominance of the oral and nasal resonances during the open and closed phases of a glottal cycle. Larger coupling leads to more decay of the energy of the oral resonances, and hence the vowel spectra exhibit predominantly the nasal resonances characteristics. Comparison with the existing measures show the effectiveness of the proposed measures for determining vowel nasalization. Segments of vowels in the context of nasal consonants from utterances of both male and female speakers of English are used to illustrate different aspects of this study on vowel nasalization.

Abstract

Pattern mining is an important task of data mining and involves the extraction of interesting associations from large transactional databases. Typically, a given transactional database D gets updated due to the addition and deletion of transactions. Consequently, some of the previously discovered patterns may become invalid, while some new patterns may emerge. This has motivated significant research efforts in the area of incremental mining. The goal of incremental mining is to efficiently mine patterns when D gets updated with additions and/or deletions of transactions as opposed to mining all of the patterns from scratch. Incidentally, active research efforts are being made to develop incremental pattern mining algorithms for extracting frequent patterns, sequential patterns and utility patterns. Another important type of pattern is the coverage pattern (CP), which has significant applications in areas such as banner advertising, search engine advertising and visibility mining. However, none of the existing works address the issue of incremental mining for extracting CPs. In this regard, the main contributions of this work are twofold. First, we introduce the problem of incremental mining of CPs. Second, we propose an approach, designated as Comprehensive Coverage Pattern Mining, for efficiently extracting CPs under the incremental paradigm. We have also performed extensive experiments using two real click-stream datasets and one synthetic dataset to demonstrate the overall effectiveness of our proposed approach.

Abstract

Large gains in the rate of cache-aided broadcast communication are obtained using coded caching, but to obtain this most existing centralized coded caching schemes require that the files at the server be divisible into a large number of parts (this number is called subpacketization). In fact, most schemes require the subpacketization to be growing asymptotically as exponential in √[\leftroot -1\uproot 1r]K for some positive integer r and K being the number of users. On the other extreme, few schemes having subpacketization linear in K are known; however, they require large number of users to exist, or they offer only little gain in the rate. In this work, we propose two new centralized coded caching schemes with low subpacketization and moderate rate gains utilizing projective geometries over finite fields. Both the schemes achieve the same asymptotic subpacketization, which is exponential in O((logK) 2 ) (thus improving on the √[\leftroot -1\uproot 1r]K exponent). The first scheme has a larger cache requirement but has at most a constant rate (with increasing K), while the second has small cache requirement but has a larger rate. As a special case of our second scheme, we get a new linear subpacketization scheme, which has a more flexible range of parameters than the existing linear subpacketization schemes. Extending our techniques, we also obtain low subpacketization schemes for other multi-receiver settings such as distributed computing and the cache-aided interference channel. We validate the performance of all our schemes via extensive numerical comparisons. For a special class of symmetric caching schemes with a given subpacketization level, we propose two new information theoretic lower bounds on the optimal rate of coded caching.

Abstract

We demonstrate time-, space-, and weight-based calibration techniques for pressure monitoring in the low-cost plastic optical fiber (POF) sensor carpet. It is found that the POF-based pressure sensing platform has several limitations, such as output voltage variations and difference in the sensor response for horizontal and vertical fibers due to convex and concave shapes of bend. To surpass the these limitations, we have developed time-based calibration using time windowing technique to reduce the standard deviation of photodiode output voltage variations by 98%. We have also described space and weight calibration techniques based on the convex and concave shapes of fiber bend. These techniques help in improving the Landweber image reconstruction algorithm to obtain significant clarity and improvement in object pressure images. We also report an artificial intelligence-based algorithm to determine the accuracy of positioning of the load. Experimental results demonstrate that this algorithm gives a mean square error of 0.875 cm in position detection on the carpet. We discuss the potential for a compact and cost-effective pressure sensor carpet, which integrates with the living environment and the outside world.

Abstract

The heterogeneous fast side-chain dynamics of proteins plays crucial roles in molecular recognition and binding. Site-specific NMR experiments quantify these motions by measuring the model-free order parameter (Oaxis2) on a scale of 0 (most flexible) to 1 (least flexible) for each methyl-containing residue of proteins. Here, we have examined ligand-induced variations in the fast side-chain dynamics and conformational entropy of calmodulin (CaM) using five different CaM–peptide complexes. Oaxis2 of CaM in the ligand-free (Oaxis,U2) and ligand-bound (Oaxis,B2) states are calculated from molecular dynamics trajectories and conformational energy surfaces obtained using the adaptive biasing force (ABF) method. ΔOaxis2 = Oaxis,B2 – Oaxis,U2 follows a Gaussian-like unimodal distribution whose second moment is a potential indicator of the binding affinity of these complexes. The probability for the binding-induced Oaxis,U2 → Oaxis,B2 transition decreases with increasing magnitude of ΔOaxis2, indicating that large flexibility changes are improbable for side chains of CaM after ligand binding. A linear correlation established between ΔOaxis2 and the conformational entropy change of the protein makes possible the determination of the conformational entropy of binding of protein–ligand complexes. The results not only underscore the functional importance of fast side-chain fluctuations but also highlight key motional and thermodynamic correlates of protein–ligand binding.