This paper proposes a novel controller framework that provides trajectory tracking for an Aerial Manipulator (AM) while ensuring the safe operation of the system under unknown bounded disturbances. The AM considered here is a 2-DOF (degrees-of-freedom) manipulator rigidly attached to a UAV. Our proposed controller structure follows the conventional inner loop PID control for attitude dynamics and an outer loop controller for tracking a reference trajectory. The outer loop control is based on the Model Predictive Control (MPC) with constraints derived using the Barrier Lyapunov Function (BLF) for the safe operation of the AM. BLF-based constraints are proposed for two objectives, viz. 1) To avoid the AM from colliding with static obstacles like a rectangular wall, and 2) To maintain the end effector of the manipulator within the desired workspace. The proposed BLF ensures that the above-mentioned objectives are satisfied even in the presence of unknown bounded disturbances. The capabilities of the proposed controller are demonstrated through high-fidelity non-linear simulations with parameters derived from a real laboratory scale AM. We compare the performance of our controller with other state-of-the-art MPC controllers for AM.

In this paper, the Multi-Swarm Cooperative Information-driven search and Divide and Conquer mitigation control (MSCIDC) approach is proposed for faster detection and mitigation of forest fire by reducing the loss of biodiversity, nutrients, soil moisture, and other intangible benefits. A swarm is a cooperative group of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that fly together to search and quench the fire effectively. The multi-swarm cooperative information-driven search uses a multi-level search comprising cooperative information-driven exploration and exploitation for quick/accurate detection of fire location. The search level is selected based on the thermal sensor information about the potential fire area. The dynamicity of swarms, aided by global regulative repulsion and merging between swarms, reduces the detection and mitigation time compared to the existing methods. The local attraction among the members of the swarm helps the non-detector members to reach the fire location faster, and divide-and-conquer mitigation control ensures a non-overlapping fire sector allocation for all members quenching the fire. The performance of MSCIDC has been compared with different multi-UAV methods using a simulated environment of pine forest. The performance clearly shows that MSCIDC mitigates fire much faster than the multi-UAV methods. The Monte-Carlo simulation results indicate that the proposed method reduces the average forest area burnt by $65\%$ and mission time by $60\%$ compared to the best result case of the multi-UAV approaches, guaranteeing a faster and successful mission.

与计算机视觉合并的基于无人机的遥感系统（UAV）遥感系统具有协助建筑物建设和灾难管理的潜力，例如地震期间的损害评估。可以通过检查来评估建筑物到地震的脆弱性，该检查考虑到相关组件的预期损害进展以及组件对结构系统性能的贡献。这些检查中的大多数是手动进行的，导致高利用人力，时间和成本。本文提出了一种通过基于无人机的图像数据收集和用于后处理的软件库来自动化这些检查的方法，该方法有助于估算地震结构参数。这里考虑的关键参数是相邻建筑物，建筑计划形状，建筑计划区域，屋顶上的对象和屋顶布局之间的距离。通过使用距离测量传感器以及通过Google Earth获得的数据进行的现场测量，可以验证所提出的方法在估计上述参数估算上述参数方面的准确性。可以从https://uvrsabi.github.io/访问其他详细信息和代码。

我们生活的世界充满了技术，而每天都有无人机的进步和使用有效地增加。由于许多应用程序方案，在某些任务中，无人机容易受到外部干扰的影响，例如地面站的连通性丧失，安全任务，安全问题和与交货相关的任务。因此，根据情况，这可能会影响运营并导致无人机的安全着陆。因此，本文提出了一种在动态环境中安全着陆的启发式方法。这种方法的目的是检测安全的潜在降落区 - PLZ，并找出最适合降落的区域。最初，PLZ是通过通过Canny Edge算法处理图像来检测的，然后应用了直径估计值对于每个边缘最小的区域。比车辆间隙更高的斑点被标记为安全PLZ。在该方法的第二阶段中，计算了向PLZ移动的动态障碍的速度，并考虑到达到区域的时间。计算无人机的ETA并在无人机的下降期间，执行动态障碍物。在现实世界环境中测试的方法显示了现有工作的更好结果。

Designing experiments often requires balancing between learning about the true treatment effects and earning from allocating more samples to the superior treatment. While optimal algorithms for the Multi-Armed Bandit Problem (MABP) provide allocation policies that optimally balance learning and earning, they tend to be computationally expensive. The Gittins Index (GI) is a solution to the MABP that can simultaneously attain optimality and computationally efficiency goals, and it has been recently used in experiments with Bernoulli and Gaussian rewards. For the first time, we present a modification of the GI rule that can be used in experiments with exponentially-distributed rewards. We report its performance in simulated 2- armed and 3-armed experiments. Compared to traditional non-adaptive designs, our novel GI modified design shows operating characteristics comparable in learning (e.g. statistical power) but substantially better in earning (e.g. direct benefits). This illustrates the potential that designs using a GI approach to allocate participants have to improve participant benefits, increase efficiencies, and reduce experimental costs in adaptive multi-armed experiments with exponential rewards.

Modelling and forecasting real-life human behaviour using online social media is an active endeavour of interest in politics, government, academia, and industry. Since its creation in 2006, Twitter has been proposed as a potential laboratory that could be used to gauge and predict social behaviour. During the last decade, the user base of Twitter has been growing and becoming more representative of the general population. Here we analyse this user base in the context of the 2021 Mexican Legislative Election. To do so, we use a dataset of 15 million election-related tweets in the six months preceding election day. We explore different election models that assign political preference to either the ruling parties or the opposition. We find that models using data with geographical attributes determine the results of the election with better precision and accuracy than conventional polling methods. These results demonstrate that analysis of public online data can outperform conventional polling methods, and that political analysis and general forecasting would likely benefit from incorporating such data in the immediate future. Moreover, the same Twitter dataset with geographical attributes is positively correlated with results from official census data on population and internet usage in Mexico. These findings suggest that we have reached a period in time when online activity, appropriately curated, can provide an accurate representation of offline behaviour.

Existing federated classification algorithms typically assume the local annotations at every client cover the same set of classes. In this paper, we aim to lift such an assumption and focus on a more general yet practical non-IID setting where every client can work on non-identical and even disjoint sets of classes (i.e., client-exclusive classes), and the clients have a common goal which is to build a global classification model to identify the union of these classes. Such heterogeneity in client class sets poses a new challenge: how to ensure different clients are operating in the same latent space so as to avoid the drift after aggregation? We observe that the classes can be described in natural languages (i.e., class names) and these names are typically safe to share with all parties. Thus, we formulate the classification problem as a matching process between data representations and class representations and break the classification model into a data encoder and a label encoder. We leverage the natural-language class names as the common ground to anchor the class representations in the label encoder. In each iteration, the label encoder updates the class representations and regulates the data representations through matching. We further use the updated class representations at each round to annotate data samples for locally-unaware classes according to similarity and distill knowledge to local models. Extensive experiments on four real-world datasets show that the proposed method can outperform various classical and state-of-the-art federated learning methods designed for learning with non-IID data.

This is paper for the smooth function approximation by neural networks (NN). Mathematical or physical functions can be replaced by NN models through regression. In this study, we get NNs that generate highly accurate and highly smooth function, which only comprised of a few weight parameters, through discussing a few topics about regression. First, we reinterpret inside of NNs for regression; consequently, we propose a new activation function--integrated sigmoid linear unit (ISLU). Then special charateristics of metadata for regression, which is different from other data like image or sound, is discussed for improving the performance of neural networks. Finally, the one of a simple hierarchical NN that generate models substituting mathematical function is presented, and the new batch concept ``meta-batch" which improves the performance of NN several times more is introduced. The new activation function, meta-batch method, features of numerical data, meta-augmentation with metaparameters, and a structure of NN generating a compact multi-layer perceptron(MLP) are essential in this study.

The existing methods for video anomaly detection mostly utilize videos containing identifiable facial and appearance-based features. The use of videos with identifiable faces raises privacy concerns, especially when used in a hospital or community-based setting. Appearance-based features can also be sensitive to pixel-based noise, straining the anomaly detection methods to model the changes in the background and making it difficult to focus on the actions of humans in the foreground. Structural information in the form of skeletons describing the human motion in the videos is privacy-protecting and can overcome some of the problems posed by appearance-based features. In this paper, we present a survey of privacy-protecting deep learning anomaly detection methods using skeletons extracted from videos. We present a novel taxonomy of algorithms based on the various learning approaches. We conclude that skeleton-based approaches for anomaly detection can be a plausible privacy-protecting alternative for video anomaly detection. Lastly, we identify major open research questions and provide guidelines to address them.

The Government of Kerala had increased the frequency of supply of free food kits owing to the pandemic, however, these items were static and not indicative of the personal preferences of the consumers. This paper conducts a comparative analysis of various clustering techniques on a scaled-down version of a real-world dataset obtained through a conjoint analysis-based survey. Clustering carried out by centroid-based methods such as k means is analyzed and the results are plotted along with SVD, and finally, a conclusion is reached as to which among the two is better. Once the clusters have been formulated, commodities are also decided upon for each cluster. Also, clustering is further enhanced by reassignment, based on a specific cluster loss threshold. Thus, the most efficacious clustering technique for designing a food kit tailored to the needs of individuals is finally obtained.