Self-supervised Learning for Reading Activity Classification

Reading analysis can relay information about user's confidence and habits and can be used to construct useful feedback. A lack of labeled data inhibits the effective application of fully-supervised Deep Learning (DL) for automatic reading analysis. We propose a Self-supervised Learning (SSL) method for reading analysis. Previously, SSL has been effective in physical human activity recognition (HAR) tasks, but it has not been applied to cognitive HAR tasks like reading. We first evaluate the proposed method on a four-class classification task on reading detection using electrooculography datasets, followed by an evaluation of a two-class classification task of confidence estimation on multiple-choice questions using eye-tracking datasets. Fully-supervised DL and support vector machines (SVMs) are used as comparisons for the proposed SSL method. The results show that the proposed SSL method is superior to the fully-supervised DL and SVM for both tasks, especially when training data is scarce. This result indicates the proposed method is the superior choice for reading analysis tasks. These results are important for informing the design of automatic reading analysis platforms.

English Grammar Error Detection Using Recurrent Neural Networks

Automatic marking of English compositions is a rapidly developing field in recent years. It has gradually replaced teachers’ manual reading and become an important tool to relieve the teaching burden. The existing literature shows that the error of verb consistency and the error of verb tense are the two types of grammatical errors with the highest error rate in English composition. Hence, the detection results of verb errors can reflect the practicability and effectiveness of an automatic reading system. This paper proposes an English verb’s grammar error detection algorithm based on the cyclic neural network. Since LSTM can effectively retain the valid information in the context during training, this paper decided to use LSTM to model the labeled training corpus. At the same time, how to convert the text information in English compositions into numerical values for subsequent calculation is also an important step in automatic reading. Most mainstream tools use the word bag model, i.e., each word is encoded according to the order of each word in the dictionary. Although this encoding method is simple and easy to use, it not only causes the vector to lose the sequence information of the text but also is prone to dimensional disaster. Therefore, word embedding model is adopted in this paper to encode the text, and the text information is sequentially mapped to a low-dimensional vector space. In this way, the position information of the text is not lost, and the dimensional disaster is avoided. The proposed work collects some corpus samples and compares the proposed algorithm with Jouku and Bingguo. The verification results show the superiority of the proposed algorithm in verb error detection.

Automatic Reading Algorithm of Substation Dial Gauges Based on Coordinate Positioning

With the development of science and technology, inspection robots have attracted more and more attention, and research on the automatic reading of pointer instruments through inspection robots has become particularly valuable. Aiming at the problems of uneven illumination, complex dial background and damping fluid interference of the collected instrument images, this paper proposes a dial gauge reading algorithm based on coordinate positioning. First, the multi-scale retinex with color restoration (MSRCR) is applied to improve the uneven illumination of the image. Second, a circle detection algorithm based on the arc-support line segment is proposed to detect the disc to obtain the coordinate of the center and radius of the circle. Then, a pointerless template is used to obtain the pointer, and the concentric circle algorithm is applied to locate the refined pointer. Finally, the automatic reading is calculated using the relative position of the pointer and the zero scale. The experimental results prove that the proposed algorithm can accurately locate the center of the circle and the pointer and obtain readings automatically.

Computer Vision Based Automatic Recognition of Pointer Instruments: Data Set Optimization and Reading

With the promotion of intelligent substations, more and more robots have been used in industrial sites. However, most of the meter reading methods are interfered with by the complex background environment, which makes it difficult to extract the meter area and pointer centerline, which is difficult to meet the actual needs of the substation. To solve the current problems of pointer meter reading for industrial use, this paper studies the automatic reading method of pointer instruments by putting forward the Faster Region-based Convolutional Network (Faster-RCNN) based object detection integrating with traditional computer vision. Firstly, the Faster-RCNN is used to detect the target instrument panel region. At the same time, the Poisson fusion method is proposed to expand the data set. The K-fold verification algorithm is used to optimize the quality of the data set, which solves the lack of quantity and low quality of the data set, and the accuracy of target detection is improved. Then, through some image processing methods, the image is preprocessed. Finally, the position of the centerline of the pointer is detected by the Hough transform, and the reading can be obtained. The evaluation of the algorithm performance shows that the method proposed in this paper is suitable for automatic reading of pointer meters in the substation environment, and provides a feasible idea for the target detection and reading of pointer meters.

AI-based mobile application to fight antibiotic resistance

Antimicrobial resistance is a major global health threat and its development is promoted by antibiotic misuse. While disk diffusion antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST, also called antibiogram) is broadly used to test for antibiotic resistance in bacterial infections, it faces strong criticism because of inter-operator variability and the complexity of interpretative reading. Automatic reading systems address these issues, but are not always adapted or available to resource-limited settings. We present an artificial intelligence (AI)-based, offline smartphone application for antibiogram analysis. The application captures images with the phone’s camera, and the user is guided throughout the analysis on the same device by a user-friendly graphical interface. An embedded expert system validates the coherence of the antibiogram data and provides interpreted results. The fully automatic measurement procedure of our application’s reading system achieves an overall agreement of 90% on susceptibility categorization against a hospital-standard automatic system and 98% against manual measurement (gold standard), with reduced inter-operator variability. The application’s performance showed that the automatic reading of antibiotic resistance testing is entirely feasible on a smartphone. Moreover our application is suited for resource-limited settings, and therefore has the potential to significantly increase patients’ access to AST worldwide.

IoT Based Sensor for Humidity and Temperature Measurement in Smart HVAC Systems

The initials HVAC stand for Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning. They describe the functions of an HVAC system. This mechanical system’s design is primarily an attempt to take control of the environmental conditions inside the space of work by controlling and monitoring the temperature of a room through heating and cooling. It also controls the humidity level in that environment by controlling the movement and distribution of air inside the room. For determining the temperature and humidity, costly sensors are required. These sensors are the traditional mechanical sensors which can’t offer any additional services like cloud support, data storage, etc. Hence here I am proposing an IoT based sensor with cloud data storage using Arduino-Uno development board, ESP8266 and Thingspeak cloud. This sensor is economical and supports automatic reading and controlling of the humidity and temperature and sends this data to a secured server and thus monitors and controls the temperature and humidity of the system.