The Concordance Index decomposition: A measure for a deeper understanding of survival prediction models.

The Concordance Index (C-index) is a commonly used metric in Survival Analysis for evaluating the performance of a prediction model. In this paper, we propose a decomposition of the C-index into a weighted harmonic mean of two quantities: one for ranking observed events versus other observed events, and the other for ranking observed events versus censored cases. This decomposition enables a finer-grained analysis of the relative strengths and weaknesses between different survival prediction methods. The usefulness of this decomposition is demonstrated through benchmark comparisons against classical models and state-of-the-art methods, together with the new variational generative neural-network-based method (SurVED) proposed in this paper. The performance of the models is assessed using four publicly available datasets with varying levels of censoring. Using the C-index decomposition and synthetic censoring, the analysis shows that deep learning models utilize the observed events more effectively than other models. This allows them to keep a stable C-index in different censoring levels. In contrast to such deep learning methods, classical machine learning models deteriorate when the censoring level decreases due to their inability to improve on ranking the events versus other events.

Semi-Supervised Learning for Forklift Activity Recognition from Controller Area Network (CAN) Signals.

Machine Activity Recognition (MAR) can be used to monitor manufacturing processes and find bottlenecks and potential for improvement in production. Several interesting results on MAR techniques have been produced in the last decade, but mostly on construction equipment. Forklift trucks, which are ubiquitous and highly important industrial machines, have been missing from the MAR research. This paper presents a data-driven method for forklift activity recognition that uses Controller Area Network (CAN) signals and semi-supervised learning (SSL). The SSL enables the utilization of large quantities of unlabeled operation data to build better classifiers; after a two-step post-processing, the recognition results achieve balanced accuracy of 88% for driving activities and 95% for load-handling activities on a hold-out data set. In terms of the Matthews correlation coefficient for five activity classes, the final score is 0.82, which is equal to the recognition results of two non-domain experts who use videos of the activities. A particular success is that context can be used to capture the transport of small weight loads that are not detected by the forklift's built-in weight sensor.

Parallel orthogonal deep neural network.

Ensemble learning methods combine multiple models to improve performance by exploiting their diversity. The success of these approaches relies heavily on the dissimilarity of the base models forming the ensemble. This diversity can be achieved in many ways, with well-known examples including bagging and boosting. It is the diversity of the models within an ensemble that allows the ensemble to correct the errors made by its members, and consequently leads to higher classification or regression performance. A mistake made by a base model can only be rectified if other members behave differently on that particular instance, and provide the aggregator with enough information to make an informed decision. On the contrary, lack of diversity not only lowers model performance, but also wastes computational resources. Nevertheless, in the current state of the art ensemble approaches, there is no guarantee on the level of diversity achieved, and no mechanism ensuring that each member will learn a different decision boundary from the others. In this paper, we propose a parallel orthogonal deep learning architecture in which diversity is enforced by design, through imposing an orthogonality constraint. Multiple deep neural networks are created, parallel to each other. At each parallel layer, the outputs of different base models are subject to Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization. We demonstrate that this approach leads to a high level of diversity from two perspectives. First, the models make different errors on different parts of feature space, and second, they exhibit different levels of uncertainty in their decisions. Experimental results confirm the benefits of the proposed method, compared to standard deep learning models and well-known ensemble methods, in terms of diversity and, as a result, classification performance.

TREFEX: trend estimation and change detection in the response of MOX gas sensors.

Many applications of metal oxide gas sensors can benefit from reliable algorithms to detect significant changes in the sensor response. Significant changes indicate a change in the emission modality of a distant gas source and occur due to a sudden change of concentration or exposure to a different compound. As a consequence of turbulent gas transport and the relatively slow response and recovery times of metal oxide sensors, their response in open sampling configuration exhibits strong fluctuations that interfere with the changes of interest. In this paper we introduce TREFEX, a novel change point detection algorithm, especially designed for metal oxide gas sensors in an open sampling system. TREFEX models the response of MOX sensors as a piecewise exponential signal and considers the junctions between consecutive exponentials as change points. We formulate non-linear trend filtering and change point detection as a parameter-free convex optimization problem for single sensors and sensor arrays. We evaluate the performance of the TREFEX algorithm experimentally for different metal oxide sensors and several gas emission profiles. A comparison with the previously proposed GLR method shows a clearly superior performance of the TREFEX algorithm both in detection performance and in estimating the change time.

Detecting changes of a distant gas source with an array of MOX gas sensors.

We address the problem of detecting changes in the activity of a distant gas source from the response of an array of metal oxide (MOX) gas sensors deployed in an open sampling system. The main challenge is the turbulent nature of gas dispersion and the response dynamics of the sensors. We propose a change point detection approach and evaluate it on individual gas sensors in an experimental setup where a gas source changes in intensity, compound, or mixture ratio. We also introduce an efficient sensor selection algorithm and evaluate the change point detection approach with the selected sensor array subsets.