At the beginning of this century, Hegselmann and Krause proposed a dynamical model for opinion formation that is referred to as the Bounded Confidence Opinion Dynamics (BCOD) model and that has since attracted a wide interest from different research communities. The model can be viewed as a dynamic network, in which each agent is endowed with a state variable representing an opinion and two agents interact if the distance between their opinions does not exceed a constant confidence bound. This relation of instantaneous proximity between the opinions naturally induces a dynamic interaction graph. At each stage of the opinion iteration, all agents synchronously update their opinion to the average of all opinions that belong to the neighbors in the interaction graph.BCOD models exhibit a broad variety of phenomena that cannot be studied by traditional methods, and their analysis has enriched the systems and control field with a number of novel mathematical tools. This fact, together with the existence of an extensive literature on the topic scattered across different fields, calls for a systematic presentation of the existing results on this class of dynamic networks. The aim of this survey is to provide an overview of BCOD models with time-synchronous interactions, with possibly asymmetric and heterogeneous confidence bounds. Conditions on the different classes of BCOD which ensure the convergence (in finite time or asymptotically) of the opinions are discussed, and the possible structures of the terminal opinions are described. The numerous phenomena highlighted in the literature from numerical studies, e.g., the characterization of steady state behaviors and the sensitivity to confidence thresholds, are also reviewed. Finally, some recent modifications and applications of BCOD models are discussed, and suggestions of directions for future research are provided.

Sensitive and reliable protein biomarkers are needed to predict disease trajectory and personalize treatment strategies for multiple sclerosis (MS). Here, we use the highly sensitive proximity-extension assay combined with next-generation sequencing (Olink Explore) to quantify 1463 proteins in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and plasma from 143 people with early-stage MS and 43 healthy controls. With longitudinally followed discovery and replication cohorts, we identify CSF proteins that consistently predicted both short- and long-term disease progression. Lower levels of neurofilament light chain (NfL) in CSF is superior in predicting the absence of disease activity two years after sampling (replication AUC = 0.77) compared to all other tested proteins. Importantly, we also identify a combination of 11 CSF proteins (CXCL13, LTA, FCN2, ICAM3, LY9, SLAMF7, TYMP, CHI3L1, FYB1, TNFRSF1B and NfL) that predict the severity of disability worsening according to the normalized age-related MS severity score (replication AUC = 0.90). The identification of these proteins may help elucidate pathogenetic processes and might aid decisions on treatment strategies for persons with MS.

The electric vehicle (EV) chargers with the battery voltage/current regulated starts behaving as constant power loads. Therefore, the connection of EV chargers in dc microgrid reduces the stability margin of the system which can destabilize a dc microgrid. Further, the limit on charging power supplied by the EV charger to the battery increases the charging time of the battery. The main aim of this paper is to compensate the instability caused due to EV chargers in a dc microgrid including renewable energy sources like solar photovoltaic (PV) sources which are interfaced to dc-bus using dc-dc boost converters. For stabilization of this system, an adaptive sliding mode control (ASMC) is synthesized for dc-dc boost converters feeding constant power load. The proposed controller modifies its gain in order to maintain sufficient stability margin during large step variation in load demand. The adaptive variation ensures a high robustness against wide changes of the charging power demand and does not require any prior knowledge about the bounds of the system. Further, the stability analysis of the proposed ASMC using Lyapunov method guarantees the finite time convergence of sliding surface and asymptotic convergences of converter state variables. The efficacy of the proposed controller is validated with the help of results captured using Controller Hardware-in-the-Loop (CHIL) and experimental setup. These results show the effectiveness of practical implementation of the proposed controller.

This paper introduces a disturbance-parametrized (DP) robust lattice-based motion-planning framework for nonlinear systems affected by bounded disturbances. A key idea in this work is to rigorously exploit the available knowledge about the disturbance, starting already offline at the time when a library of DP motion primitives is computed and ending not before the motion has been executed online. Given an up-to-date-estimate of the disturbance, the lattice-based motion planner performs a graph search online, to non-conservatively compute a disturbance aware optimal motion plan with formally motivated margins to obstacles. This is done utilizing the DP motion primitives, around which tubes are generated utilizing a suitably designed robust controller. The sizes of the tubes are dependent on the upper bounds of the disturbance appearing in the error between the actual system trajectory and the DP nominal trajectory, which in turn along with the overall optimality of the plan is dependant on the user-selected resolution of the available disturbance estimates. Increasing the resolution of the disturbance parameter results in smaller sizes of tubes around the motion primitives and can significantly reduce the conservativeness compared to traditional approaches, thus increasing the performance of the computed motion plans. The proposed strategy is implemented on an Euler-Lagrange-based ship model which is affected by a significant wind disturbance and the efficiency of the strategy is validated through a suitable simulation example.

System identification learns mathematical models of dynamic systems starting from input-output data. Despite its long history, such research area is still extremely active. New challenges are posed by identification of complex physical processes given by the interconnection of dynamic systems. Examples arise in biology and industry, e.g., in the study of brain dynamics or sensor networks. In the last years, regularized kernel-based identification, with inspiration from machine learning, has emerged as an interesting alternative to the classical approach commonly adopted in the literature. In the linear setting, it uses the class of stable kernels to include fundamental features of physical dynamical systems, e.g., smooth exponential decay of impulse responses. Such class includes also unknown continuous parameters, called hyperparameters, which play a similar role as the model discrete order in controlling complexity. In this paper, we develop a linear system identification procedure by casting stable kernels in a full Bayesian framework. Our models incorporate hyperparameters uncertainty and consist of a mixture of dynamic systems over a continuum spectrum of dimensions. They are obtained by overcoming drawbacks related to classical Markov chain Monte Carlo schemes that, when applied to stable kernels, are proved to become nearly reducible (i.e., unable to reconstruct posteriors of interest in reasonable time). Numerical experiments show that full Bayes frequently outperforms the state-of-the-art results on typical benchmark problems. Two real applications related to brain dynamics (neural activity) and sensor networks are also included.

We introduce a novel framework of continuous-time ultra-wideband-inertial sensor fusion for online motion estimation. Quaternion-based cubic cumulative B-splines are exploited for parameterizing motion states continuously over time. Systematic derivations of analytic kinematic interpolations and spatial differentiations are further provided. Based thereon, a new sliding-window spline fitting scheme is established for asynchronous multi-sensor fusion and online calibration. We conduct a dedicated validation of the quaternion spline fitting method, and evaluate the proposed system, SFUISE (spline fusion-based ultra-wideband-inertial state estimation), in real-world scenarios using public data set and experiments. The proposed sensor fusion system is real-time capable and delivers superior performance over state-of-the-art discrete-time schemes. We release the source code and own experimental data at https://github.com/KIT-ISAS/SFUISE.

Even for nonnegative graphs, the pseudoinverse of a Laplacian matrix is not an ``ordinary (i.e., unsigned) Laplacian matrix but rather a signed Laplacian. In this paper, we show that the property of eventual positivity provides a natural embedding class for both signed and unsigned Laplacians, class which is closed with respect to pseudoinversion as well as to stability. Such a class can deal with both undirected and directed graphs. In particular, for digraphs, when dealing with pseudoinverse-related quantities such as effective resistance, two possible solutions naturally emerge, differing in the order in which the operations of pseudoinversion and of symmetrization are performed. Both lead to an effective resistance which is a Euclidean metric on the graph.

This article presents a data-driven safe reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm for discrete-time nonlinear systems. A data-driven safety certifier is designed to intervene with the actions of the RL agent to ensure both safety and stability of its actions. This is in sharp contrast to existing model-based safety certifiers that can result in convergence to an undesired equilibrium point or conservative interventions that jeopardize the performance of the RL agent. To this end, the proposed method directly learns a robust safety certifier while completely bypassing the identification of the system model. The nonlinear system is modeled using linear parameter varying (LPV) systems with polytopic disturbances. To prevent the requirement for learning an explicit model of the LPV system, data-based $\lambda$ -contractivity conditions are first provided for the closed-loop system to enforce robust invariance of a prespecified polyhedral safe set and the systems asymptotic stability. These conditions are then leveraged to directly learn a robust data-based gain-scheduling controller by solving a convex program. A significant advantage of the proposed direct safe learning over model-based certifiers is that it completely resolves conflicts between safety and stability requirements while assuring convergence to the desired equilibrium point. Data-based safety certification conditions are then provided using Minkowski functions. They are then used to seemingly integrate the learned backup safe gain-scheduling controller with the RL controller. Finally, we provide a simulation example to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

This paper investigates a local observer-based leader-following consensus control of one-sided Lipschitz (OSL) multi-agent systems (MASs) under input saturation. The proposed consensus control scheme has been formulated by using the OSL property, input saturation, directed graphs, estimated states, and quadratic inner-boundedness condition by attaining the regional stability. It is assumed that the graph always includes a (directed) spanning tree with respect to the leader root to develop matrix inequalities for investigating parameters of the proposed observer and consensus protocols. Further, a new observer-based consensus tracking method for MASs with saturation, concerning independent topologies for communicating outputs and estimates over the network, is explored to deal with a more perplexing and realistic situation. In contrast to the traditional methods, the proposed consensus approach considers output feedback and deals with the input saturation for a generalized class of nonlinear systems. The efficiency of the obtained results is illustrated via application to a group of five moving agents in the Cartesian coordinates.

This paper investigates the impact of addition/removal/reweighting of edges in a complex networked linear control system. For networks of positive edge weights, we show that when adding edges leads to the creation of new cycles, these in turn may lead to instabilities. Dynamically, these cycles correspond to positive feedback loops. Conditions are provided under which the modified network is guaranteed to be stable. These conditions are related to the steady state value of the transfer function matrix of the newly created positive feedbacks. The tools we develop in the paper can be used to investigate the fragility of a network, i.e., its robustness to structured perturbations.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

The increase in perception capabilities of connected mobile sensor platforms (e.g., self-driving vehicles, drones, and robots) leads to an extensive surge of sensed features at various temporal and spatial scales. Beyond their traditional use for safe operation, available observations could enable to see how and where people move on sidewalks and cycle paths, to eventually obtain a complete microscopic and macroscopic picture of the traffic flows in a larger area. This paper proposes a new method for advanced traffic applications, tracking an unknown and varying number of moving targets (e.g., pedestrians or cyclists) constrained by a road network, using mobile (e.g., vehicles) spatially distributed sensor platforms. The key contribution in this paper is to introduce the concept of network bound targets into the multi-target tracking problem, and hence to derive a network-constrained multi-hypotheses tracker (NC-MHT) to fully utilize the available road information. This is done by introducing a target representation, comprising a traditional target tracking representation and a discrete component placing the target on a given segment in the network. A simulation study shows that the method performs well in comparison to the standard MHT filter in free space. Results particularly highlight network-constraint effects for more efficient target predictions over extended periods of time, and in the simplification of the measurement association process, as compared to not utilizing a network structure. This theoretical work also directs attention to latent privacy concerns for potential applications.

In this paper, we propose a distributed second-order augmented Lagrangian method for distributed optimal control problems, which can be exploited for distributed model predictive control. We employ a primal-dual interior-point approach for the inner iteration of the augmented Lagrangian and distribute the corresponding computations using message passing over what is known as the clique tree of the problem. The algorithm converges to its centralized counterpart and it requires fewer communications between sub-systems as compared to algorithms such as the alternating direction method of multipliers. We illustrate the efficiency of the framework when applied to randomly generated interconnected sub-systems as well as to a vehicle platooning problem.

Robust and highly accurate position estimation in underground mines is investigated by considering a vehicle equipped with 2D laser scanners. A survey of available methods to process data from such sensors is performed with focus on feature extraction methods. Pros and cons of the usage of different methods for the positioning application with 2D laser data are highlighted, and suitable methods are identified. Three state-of-the-art feature extraction methods are adapted to the scenario of positioning in a predefined map and the methods are evaluated through experiments conducted in a simulated underground mine environment. Results indicate that feature extraction methods perform in parity with the method of matching each ray individually to the map, and better than the point cloud scan matching method of a pure ICP, assuming a highly accurate map is available. Furthermore, experiments show that feature extraction methods more robustly handle imperfections or regions of errors in the map by automatically disregarding these regions.

A method is presented for simultaneous estimation of the probability distributions of both anthropogenic and wind-generated underwater noise power spectral density using only acoustic data recorded with a single hydrophone. Probability density models for both noise sources are suggested, and the model parameters are estimated using the method of maximum likelihood. A generic mixture model is utilized to model a time invariant anthropogenic noise distribution. Wind-generated noise is assumed normally distributed with a wind speed-dependent mean. The mean is then modeled as an affine linear function of the wind-generated noise level at a reference frequency, selected in a frequency range where the anthropogenic noise is less dominant. The method was used to successfully estimate the wind-generated noise spectra from ambient noise recordings collected at two locations in the southern Baltic Sea. At the North location, 3 km from the nearest shipping lane, the ship noise surpasses the wind-generated noise almost 100% of the time in the frequency band 63-400 Hz during summer for wind speed 7 m/s. At the South location, 14 km to the nearest shipping lane, the ship noise dominance is lower but still 40%-90% in the same frequencies and wind speed. (C) 2022 Acoustical Society of America

When data are available for all nodes of a Gaussian graphical model, then, it is possible to use sample correlations and partial correlations to test to what extent the conditional independencies that encode the structure of the model are indeed verified by the data. In this paper, we give a heuristic rule useful in such a validation process: When the correlation subgraph involved in a conditional independence is balanced (i.e., all its cycles have an even number of negative edges), then a partial correlation is usually a contraction of the corresponding correlation, which often leads to conditional independence. In particular, the contraction rule can be made rigorous if we look at concentration subgraphs rather than correlation subgraphs. The rule is applied to real data for elementary gene regulatory motifs.

The term hybrid immunity is used to denote the immunological status of vaccinated individuals with a history of natural infection. Reports of new SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern motivate continuous rethought and renewal of COVID-19 vaccination programs. We used a naturalistic case-control study design to compare the effectiveness of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine to hybrid immunity 180 days post-vaccination in prioritized and non-prioritized populations vaccinated before 31 July 2021 in three Swedish counties (total population 1,760,000). Subjects with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test recorded within 6 months before vaccination (n = 36,247; 6%) were matched to vaccinated-only controls. In the prioritized population exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha and Delta variants post-vaccination, the odds ratio (OR) for breakthrough infection was 2.2 (95% CI, 1.6-2.8; p < 0.001) in the vaccinated-only group compared with the hybrid immunity group, while in the later vaccinated non-prioritized population, the OR decreased from 4.3 (95% CI, 2.2-8.6; p < 0.001) during circulation of the Delta variant to 1.9 (95% CI, 1.7-2.1; p < 0.001) with the introduction of the Omicron variant (B.1.617.2). We conclude that hybrid immunity provides gains in protection, but that the benefits are smaller for risk groups and with circulation of the Omicron variant and its sublineages.

Mean square error optimal estimation requires the full correlation structure to be available. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to maintain full knowledge about the correlations. One example is decentralized data fusion where the cross-correlations between estimates are unknown, partly due to information sharing. To avoid underestimating the covariance of an estimate in such situations, conservative estimation is one option. In this paper the conservative linear unbiased estimator is formalized including optimality criteria. Fundamental bounds of the optimal conservative linear unbiased estimator are derived. A main contribution is a general approach for computing the proposed estimator based on robust optimization. Furthermore, it is shown that several existing estimation algorithms are special cases of the optimal conservative linear unbiased estimator. An evaluation verifies the theoretical considerations and shows that the optimization based approach performs better than existing conservative estimation methods in certain cases.

In this technical article, we present a dual active-set solver for quadratic programming that has properties suitable for use in embedded model predictive control applications. In particular, the solver is efficient, can easily be warm started, and is simple to code. Moreover, the exact worst-case computational complexity of the solver can be determined offline and, by using outer proximal-point iterations, ill-conditioned problems can be handled in a robust manner.

This paper proposes a novel multi-model adaptive identification (MMAI) algorithm for discrete-time linear time invariant (LTI) uncertain systems with tunable performance. The uncertain plant parameter vector is assumed to belong to a known convex hull of a finite number of vertices; these vertices are considered as initial choice of vertices of an adaptive model parameter set. The estimated parameter, corresponding to the uncertain plant parameter, is computed at every instant as a convex combination of the model set vertices. To update the vertices of the adaptive model parameter set, a switched adaptive update law is proposed, along with a novel discrete-time initial excitation (IE) condition, which is imposed on the regressor signal. The proposed discrete-time IE condition is online verifiable and is milder than persistence of excitation (PE) condition, required for parameter convergence in classical adaptive estimation routines. The switched adaptive law guarantees exponential convergence of the vertices of the model set as well as the estimated parameter, to the true plant parameter, provided the regressor signal satisfies the IE condition. The properties of the designed MMAI strategy are validated through suitable simulation examples.

In this article we use high-throughput epigenomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics data to construct fine-graded models of the "protein-coding units"gathering all transcript isoforms and chromatin accessibility peaks associated with more than 4000 genes in humans. Each protein-coding unit has the structure of a directed acyclic graph (DAG) and can be represented as a Bayesian network. The factorization of the joint probability distribution induced by the DAGs imposes a number of conditional independence relationships among the variables forming a protein-coding unit, corresponding to the missing edges in the DAGs. We show that a large fraction of these conditional independencies are indeed verified by the data. Factors driving this verification appear to be the structural and functional annotation of the transcript isoforms, as well as a notion of structural balance (or frustration-free) of the corresponding sample correlation graph, which naturally leads to reduction of correlation (and hence to independence) upon conditioning.

GNSS receivers are vulnerable to spoofing attacks in which false satellite signals deceive receivers to compute false position and/or time estimates. This work derives and evaluates algorithms that perform spoofing mitigation by utilizing double differences of pseudorange or carrier phase measurements from multiple receivers. The algorithms identify pseudorange and carrier-phase measurements originating from spoofing signals, and omit these from the position and time computation. The algorithms are evaluated with simulated and live-sky meaconing attacks. The simulated spoofing attacks show that mitigation using pseudoranges is possible in these tests when the receivers are separated by five meters or more. At 20 meters, the pseudorange algorithm correctly authenticates six out of seven pseudoranges within 30 seconds in the same simulator tests. Using carrier phase allows mitigation with shorter distances between receivers, but requires better time synchronization between the receivers. Evaluations with live-sky meaconing attacks show the validity of the proposed mitigation algorithms.

We propose a linear programming method that is based on active-set changes and proximal-point iterations. The method solves a sequence of least-distance problems using a warm-started quadratic programming solver that can reuse internal matrix factorizations from the previously solved least-distance problem. We show that the proposed method terminates in a finite number of iterations and that it outperforms state-of-the-art LP solvers in scenarios where an extensive number of small/medium scale LPs need to be solved rapidly, occurring in, for example, multi-parametric programming algorithms. In particular, we show how the proposed method can accelerate operations such as redundancy removal, computation of Chebyshev centers and solving linear feasibility problems.

Motivation: The simultaneous availability of ATAC-seq and RNA-seq experiments allows to obtain a more in-depth knowledge on the regulatory mechanisms occurring in gene regulatory networks. In this article, we highlight and analyze two novel aspects that leverage on the possibility of pairing RNA-seq and ATAC-seq data. Namely we investigate the causality of the relationships between transcription factors, chromatin and target genes and the internal consistency between the two omics, here measured in terms of structural balance in the sample correlations along elementary length-3 cycles. Results: We propose a framework that uses the a priori knowledge on the data to infer elementary causal regulatory motifs (namely chains and forks) in the network. It is based on the notions of conditional independence and partial correlation, and can be applied to both longitudinal and non-longitudinal data. Our analysis highlights a strong connection between the causal regulatory motifs that are selected by the data and the structural balance of the underlying sample correlation graphs: strikingly, >97% of the selected regulatory motifs belong to a balanced subgraph. This result shows that internal consistency, as measured by structural balance, is close to a necessary condition for 3-node regulatory motifs to satisfy causality rules.

A research arena (WARA-PS) for sensing, data fusion, user interaction, planning and control of collaborative autonomous aerial and surface vehicles in public safety applications is presented. The objective is to demonstrate scientific discoveries and to generate new directions for future research on autonomous systems for societal challenges. The enabler is a computational infrastructure with a core system architecture for industrial and academic collaboration. This includes a control and command system together with a framework for planning and executing tasks for unmanned surface vehicles and aerial vehicles. The motivating application for the demonstration is marine search and rescue operations. A state-of-art delegation framework for the mission planning together with three specific applications is also presented. The first one concerns model predictive control for cooperative rendezvous of autonomous unmanned aerial and surface vehicles. The second project is about learning to make safe real-time decisions under uncertainty for autonomous vehicles, and the third one is on robust terrain-aided navigation through sensor fusion and virtual reality tele-operation to support a GPS-free positioning system in marine environments. The research results have been experimentally evaluated and demonstrated to industry and public sector audiences at a marine test facility. It would be most difficult to do experiments on this large scale without the WARA-PS research arena. Furthermore, these demonstrator activities have resulted in effective research dissemination with high public visibility, business impact and new research collaborations between academia and industry.

Introduction: By means of adding more sensor technology, modern hearing aids (HAs) strive to become better, more personalized, and self-adaptive devices that can handle environmental changes and cope with the day-to-day fitness of the users. The latest HA technology available in the market already combines sound analysis with motion activity classification based on accelerometers to adjust settings. While there is a lot of research in activity tracking using accelerometers in sports applications and consumer electronics, there is not yet much in hearing research. Objective: This study investigates the feasibility of activity tracking with ear-level accelerometers and how it compares to waist-mounted accelerometers, which is a more common measurement location. Method: The activity classification methods in this study are based on supervised learning. The experimental set up consisted of 21 subjects, equipped with two XSens MTw Awinda at ear-level and one at waist-level, performing nine different activities. Results: The highest accuracy on our experimental data as obtained with the combination of Bagging and Classification tree techniques. The total accuracy over all activities and users was 84% (ear-level), 90% (waist-level), and 91% (ear-level + waist-level). Most prominently, the classes, namely, standing, jogging, laying (on one side), laying (face-down), and walking all have an accuracy of above 90%. Furthermore, estimated ear-level step-detection accuracy was 95% in walking and 90% in jogging. Conclusion: It is demonstrated that several activities can be classified, using ear-level accelerometers, with an accuracy that is on par with waist-level. It is indicated that step-detection accuracy is comparable to a high-performance wrist device. These findings are encouraging for the development of activity applications in hearing healthcare.

We demonstrate that finite impulse response (FIR) models can be applied to analyze the time evolution of an epidemic with its impact on deaths and healthcare strain. Using time series data for COVID-19-related cases, ICU admissions and deaths from Sweden, the FIR model gives a consistent epidemiological trajectory for a simple delta filter function. This results in a consistent scaling between the time series if appropriate time delays are applied and allows the reconstruction of cases for times before July 2020, when RT-PCR testing was not widely available. Combined with randomized RT-PCR study results, we utilize this approach to estimate the total number of infections in Sweden, and the corresponding infection-to-fatality ratio (IFR), infection-to-case ratio (ICR), and infection-to-ICU admission ratio (IIAR). Our values for IFR, ICR and IIAR are essentially constant over large parts of 2020 in contrast with claims of healthcare adaptation or mutated virus variants importantly affecting these ratios. We observe a diminished IFR in late summer 2020 as well as a strong decline during 2021, following the launch of a nation-wide vaccination program. The total number of infections during 2020 is estimated to 1.3 million, indicating that Sweden was far from herd immunity.

Objectives: The investigation of auditory cognitive processes recently moved from strictly controlled, trial-based paradigms toward the presentation of continuous speech. This also allows the investigation of listening effort on larger time scales (i.e., sustained listening effort). Here, we investigated the modulation of sustained listening effort by a noise reduction algorithm as applied in hearing aids in a listening scenario with noisy continuous speech. The investigated directional noise reduction algorithm mainly suppresses noise from the background. Design: We recorded the pupil size and the EEG in 22 participants with hearing loss who listened to audio news clips in the presence of background multi-talker babble noise. We estimated how noise reduction (off, on) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR; +3 dB, +8 dB) affect pupil size and the power in the parietal EEG alpha band (i.e., parietal alpha power) as well as the behavioral performance. Results: Our results show that noise reduction reduces pupil size, while there was no significant effect of the SNR. It is important to note that we found interactions of SNR and noise reduction, which suggested that noise reduction reduces pupil size predominantly under the lower SNR. Parietal alpha power showed a similar yet nonsignificant pattern, with increased power under easier conditions. In line with the participants reports that one of the two presented talkers was more intelligible, we found a reduced pupil size, increased parietal alpha power, and better performance when people listened to the more intelligible talker. Conclusions: We show that the modulation of sustained listening effort (e.g., by hearing aid noise reduction) as indicated by pupil size and parietal alpha power can be studied under more ecologically valid conditions. Mainly concluded from pupil size, we demonstrate that hearing aid noise reduction lowers sustained listening effort. Our study approximates to real-world listening scenarios and evaluates the benefit of the signal processing as can be found in a modern hearing aid.

We present an algorithm to estimate and quantify the uncertainty of the accelerometers relative geometry in an inertial sensor array. We formulate the calibration problem as a Bayesian estimation problem and propose an algorithm that samples the accelerometer positions posterior distribution using Markov chain Monte Carlo. By identifying linear substructures of the measurement model, the unknown linear motion parameters are analytically marginalized, and the remaining non-linear motion parameters are numerically marginalized. The numerical marginalization occurs in a low dimensional space where the gyroscopes give information about the motion. This combination of information from gyroscopes and analytical marginalization allows the user to make no assumptions of the motion before the calibration. It thus enables the user to estimate the accelerometer positions relative geometry by simply exposing the array to arbitrary twisting motion. We show that the calibration algorithm gives good results on both simulated and experimental data, despite sampling a high dimensional space.

In this paper, we propose a distributed algorithm for sensor network localization based on a maximum likelihood formulation. It relies on the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm where the computations are distributed among different computational agents using message passing, or equivalently dynamic programming. The resulting algorithm provides a good localization accuracy, and it converges to the same solution as its centralized counterpart. Moreover, it requires fewer iterations and communications between computational agents as compared to first-order methods. The performance of the algorithm is demonstrated with extensive simulations in Julia in which it is shown that our method outperforms distributed methods that are based on approximate maximum likelihood formulations.

A computationally efficient method for online joint state inference and dynamical model learning is presented. The dynamical model combines an a priori known, physically derived, state-space model with a radial basis function expansion representing unknown system dynamics and inherits properties from both physical and data-driven modeling. The method uses an extended Kalman filter approach to jointly estimate the state of the system and learn the unknown system dynamics, via the parameters of the basis function expansion. The key contribution is a computational complexity reduction compared to a similar approach with globally supported basis functions. By using compactly supported radial basis functions and an approximate Kalman gain, the computational complexity is considerably reduced and is essentially determined by the support of the basis functions. The approximation works well when the system dynamics exhibit limited correlation between points well separated in the state-space domain. The method is exemplified via two intelligent vehicle applications where it is shown to: (i) have competitive system dynamics estimation performance compared to the globally supported basis function method, and (ii) be real-time applicable to problems with a large-scale state-space.

Objectives Previous research using non-invasive (magnetoencephalography, MEG) and invasive (electrocorticography, ECoG) neural recordings has demonstrated the progressive and hierarchical representation and processing of complex multi-talker auditory scenes in the auditory cortex. Early responses (<85 ms) in primary-like areas appear to represent the individual talkers with almost equal fidelity and are independent of attention in normal-hearing (NH) listeners. However, late responses (>85 ms) in higher-order non-primary areas selectively represent the attended talker with significantly higher fidelity than unattended talkers in NH and hearing-impaired (HI) listeners. Motivated by these findings, the objective of this study was to investigate the effect of a noise reduction scheme (NR) in a commercial hearing aid (HA) on the representation of complex multi-talker auditory scenes in distinct hierarchical stages of the auditory cortex by using high-density electroencephalography (EEG). Design We addressed this issue by investigating early (<85 ms) and late (>85 ms) EEG responses recorded in 34 HI subjects fitted with HAs. The HA noise reduction (NR) was either on or off while the participants listened to a complex auditory scene. Participants were instructed to attend to one of two simultaneous talkers in the foreground while multi-talker babble noise played in the background (+3 dB SNR). After each trial, a two-choice question about the content of the attended speech was presented. Results Using a stimulus reconstruction approach, our results suggest that the attention-related enhancement of neural representations of target and masker talkers located in the foreground, as well as suppression of the background noise in distinct hierarchical stages is significantly affected by the NR scheme. We found that the NR scheme contributed to the enhancement of the foreground and of the entire acoustic scene in the early responses, and that this enhancement was driven by better representation of the target speech. We found that the target talker in HI listeners was selectively represented in late responses. We found that use of the NR scheme resulted in enhanced representations of the target and masker speech in the foreground and a suppressed representation of the noise in the background in late responses. We found a significant effect of EEG time window on the strengths of the cortical representation of the target and masker. Conclusion Together, our analyses of the early and late responses obtained from HI listeners support the existing view of hierarchical processing in the auditory cortex. Our findings demonstrate the benefits of a NR scheme on the representation of complex multi-talker auditory scenes in different areas of the auditory cortex in HI listeners.

In parliamentary democracies, government negotiations talks following a general election can sometimes be a long and laborious process. In order to explain this phenomenon, in this paper we use structural balance theory to represent a multiparty parliament as a signed network, with edge signs representing alliances and rivalries among parties. We show that the notion of frustration, which quantifies the amount of "disorder" encoded in the signed graph, correlates very well with the duration of the government negotiation talks. For the 29 European countries considered in this study, the average correlation between frustration and government negotiation talks ranges between 0.42 and 0.69, depending on what information is included in the edges of the signed network. Dynamical models of collective decision-making over signed networks with varying frustration are proposed to explain this correlation.

A sensor management method for joint multi-target search and track problems is proposed, where a single user-defined parameter allows for a trade-off between the two objectives. The multi-target density is propagated using the Poisson multi-Bernoulli mixture filter, which eliminates the need for a separate handling of undiscovered targets and provides the theoretical foundation for a unified search and track method. Monte Carlo simulations of two scenarios are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed method.

Fifteen years have passed since the publication of Foxlins seminal paper "Pedestrian tracking with shoe-mounted inertial sensors". In addition to popularizing the zero-velocity update, Foxlin also hinted that the optimal parameter tuning of the zero-velocity detector is dependent on, for example, the users gait speed. As demonstrated by the recent influx of related studies, the question of how to properly design a robust zero-velocity detector is still an open research question. In this review, we first recount the history of foot-mounted inertial navigation and characterize the main sources of error, thereby motivating the need for a robust solution. Following this, we systematically analyze current approaches to robust zero-velocity detection, while categorizing public code and data. The article concludes with a discussion on commercialization along with guidance for future research.

The problem of joint classification of gait and device mode from inertial measurement units (IMU) measurements is considered. For this, an approach for computing unique gait signature using measurements collected from body-worn inertial measurement units (IMUs) is proposed.The gait signature represents one full cycle of the human gait, and is suitable for off-line or on-line classification of the gait mode. The signature can also be used to jointly classify the gait mode and the device mode. The device mode identifies how the IMU-equipped device is being carried by the user. The method is based on precise segmentation and resampling of the measured IMU signal, as an initial step, further tuned by minimizing the variability of the obtained signature within each gait cycle. Finally, a Fourier series expansion of the gait signature is introduced which provides a low-dimensional feature vector well suited for classification purposes. The proposed method is evaluated on a large dataset involving several subjects, each one containing two different gait modes and four different device modes.

The angular wheel speed of a vehicle is estimated by tracking the frequency of chassis vibrations measured with an accelerometer. A Bayesian filtering framework is proposed, allowing for straightforward incorporation of supporting information. The framework is evaluated on a large number of experimental test drives, showing comparable performance to the standard periodogram method. We then demonstrate the flexibility of the framework using accelerometer information in two ways, combining the high-frequency vibrations with low-frequency information about the vehicle acceleration. This is shown to improve robustness and resolve many cases where stand-alone frequency tracking fails.

A new method for nonintrusive elevator fault detection is presented. A computationally efficient algorithm for implementing the method is also proposed. The method is employed to detect when the elevator has been stationary for an unusually long period of time compared to historical traffic load patterns. This information can be used for fault detection but also indirectly to monitor the condition of the doors. The traffic load on the elevator is modeled as a nonhomogeneous Poisson process, and a generalized linear model is used to describe how the intensity of the process varies over time. A statistical hypothesis test is then used to determine if the elevator has been stationary for an unusually long time. The application of the proposed method is illustrated by an example where the detected faults are compared with the elevator service log. All faults were detected long before the service company was notified by the facility owner. Furthermore, based on the evaluation of 30 weeks of data, the method achieves a precision of 0.82 at a recall probability of 0.80.

In this letter we propose a method to exactly certify the complexity of an active-set method which is based on reformulating strictly convex quadratic programs to nonnegative least-squares problems. The exact complexity of the method is determined by proving the correspondence between the method and a standard primal active-set method for quadratic programming applied to the dual of the quadratic program to be solved. Once this correspondence has been established, a complexity certification method which has already been established for the primal active-set method is used to also certify the complexity of the nonnegative least-squares method. The usefulness of the proposed method is illustrated on a multi-parametric quadratic program originating from model predictive control of an inverted pendulum.

In multiagent dynamical systems, privacy protection corresponds to avoid disclosing the initial states of the agents while accomplishing a distributed task. The system-theoretic framework described in this paper for this scope, denoted dynamical privacy, relies on introducing output maps which act as masks, rendering the internal states of an agent indiscernible by the other agents. Our output masks are local (i.e., decided independently by each agent), time-varying functions asymptotically converging to the true states. The resulting masked system is also time-varying, and has the original unmasked system as its limit system. It is shown that dynamical privacy is not compatible with the existence of equilibria. Nevertheless the masked system retains the same convergence properties of the original system: the equilibria of the original systems become attractors for the masked system but lose the stability property. Application of dynamical privacy to popular examples of multiagent dynamics, such as models of social opinions, average consensus and synchronization, is investigated in detail. (c) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Objectives Selectively attending to a target talker while ignoring multiple interferers (competing talkers and background noise) is more difficult for hearing-impaired (HI) individuals compared to normal-hearing (NH) listeners. Such tasks also become more difficult as background noise levels increase. To overcome these difficulties, hearing aids (HAs) offer noise reduction (NR) schemes. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of NR processing (inactive, where the NR feature was switched off,vs.active, where the NR feature was switched on) on the neural representation of speech envelopes across two different background noise levels [+3 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and +8 dB SNR] by using a stimulus reconstruction (SR) method. Design To explore how NR processing supports the listeners selective auditory attention, we recruited 22 HI participants fitted with HAs. To investigate the interplay between NR schemes, background noise, and neural representation of the speech envelopes, we used electroencephalography (EEG). The participants were instructed to listen to a target talker in front while ignoring a competing talker in front in the presence of multi-talker background babble noise. Results The results show that the neural representation of the attended speech envelope was enhanced by the active NR scheme for both background noise levels. The neural representation of the attended speech envelope at lower (+3 dB) SNR was shifted, approximately by 5 dB, toward the higher (+8 dB) SNR when the NR scheme was turned on. The neural representation of the ignored speech envelope was modulated by the NR scheme and was mostly enhanced in the conditions with more background noise. The neural representation of the background noise was modulated (i.e., reduced) by the NR scheme and was significantly reduced in the conditions with more background noise. The neural representation of the net sum of the ignored acoustic scene (ignored talker and background babble) was not modulated by the NR scheme but was significantly reduced in the conditions with a reduced level of background noise. Taken together, we showed that the active NR scheme enhanced the neural representation of both the attended and the ignored speakers and reduced the neural representation of background noise, while the net sum of the ignored acoustic scene was not enhanced. Conclusion Altogether our results support the hypothesis that the NR schemes in HAs serve to enhance the neural representation of speech and reduce the neural representation of background noise during a selective attention task. We contend that these results provide a neural index that could be useful for assessing the effects of HAs on auditory and cognitive processing in HI populations.

Regularized system identification of linear time invariant systems in the presence of outliers is investigated. The finite impulse response (FIR) model and the Gaussian scale mixture are chosen to be the system model and the noise model, respectively. Two special cases of the noise model are considered: the well-known Students t distribution and a proposed G-confluent distribution. Both the FIR model parameter and the latent variables in the noise model are treated as parameters of our statistical model and moreover, the scale of the noise variance is treated as a hyper-parameter besides the hyper-parameters used to parameterize the priors of the impulse response and the latent variables. Then a variational expectation-maximization algorithm is proposed for inference of the parameters and hyper-parameters of the statistical model, and the algorithm is guaranteed to converge to a stationary point. Monte Carlo numerical simulations show that when the relative size of outliers is small, the proposed approach performs comparably to a state-of-the-art method and when the relative size of outliers and/or the occurrence probability of outliers is large, the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art method. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Tracked targets often exhibit common behaviors due to influences from the surrounding environment, such as wind or obstacles, which are usually modeled as noise. Here, these influences are modeled using sparse Gaussian processes that are learned online together with the state inference using an extended Kalman filter. The method can also be applied to time-varying influences and identify simple dynamic systems. The method is evaluated with promising results in a simulation and a real-world application.

In the local approach to linear parameter varying (LPV) system identification, it is widely acknowledged that locally estimated linear state-space models should be made coherent before being interpolated, but the accurate meaning of the term "coherent" or "coherence" is rarely defined. The purpose of this article is to analyze the relevance of two existing definitions and to point out the consequence of this analysis on the practice of LPV system identification.

Estimation of the mean of a stochastic variable observed in noise with positive support is considered. It is well known from the literature that order statistics gives one order of magnitude lower estimation variance compared to the best linear unbiased estimator (BLUE). We provide a systematic survey of some common distributions with positive support, and provide derivations of minimum variance unbiased estimators (MVUE) based on order statistics, including BLUE for comparison. The estimators are derived with or without knowledge of the hyperparameters of the underlying noise distribution. Though the uniform, exponential and Rayleigh distributions, respectively, we consider are standard in literature, the problem of estimating the location parameter with additive noise from these distribution seems less studied, and we have not found any explicit expressions for BLUE and MVUE for these cases. In addition to additive noise with positive support, we also consider the mixture of uniform and normal noise distribution for which an order statistics-based unbiased estimator is derived. Finally, an iterative global navigation satellite system (GNSS) localization algorithm with uncertain pseudorange measurements is proposed which relies on the derived estimators for receiver clock bias estimation. Simulation data for GNSS time estimation and experimental GNSS data for joint clock bias and position estimation are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed methods.

In abstractions of linear dynamic networks, selected node signals are removed from the network, while keeping the remaining node signals invariant. The topology and link dynamics, or modules, of an abstracted network will generally be changed compared to the original network. Abstractions of dynamic networks can be used to select an appropriate set of node signals that are to be measured, on the basis of which a particular local module can be estimated. A method is introduced for network abstraction that generalizes previously introduced algorithms, as e.g. immersion and the method of indirect inputs. For this abstraction method it is shown under which conditions on the selected signals a particular module will remain invariant. This leads to sets of conditions on selected measured node variables that allow identification of the target module. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Poor road conditions in underground mine tunnels can lead to decreased production efficiency and increased wear on production vehicles. A prototype system for road condition monitoring is presented in this paper to counteract this. The system consists of three components i.e. localization, road monitoring, and scheduling. The localization of vehicles is performed using a Rao-Blackwellized extended particle filter, combining vehicle mounted sensors with signal strengths of WiFi access points. Two methods for road monitoring are described: a Kalman filter used together with a model of the vehicle suspension system, and a relative condition measure based on the power spectral density. Lastly, a method for taking automatic action on an ill-conditioned road segment is proposed in the form of a rescheduling algorithm. The scheduling algorithm is based on the large neighborhood search and is used to integrate road service activities in the short-term production schedule while minimizing introduced production disturbances. The system is demonstrated on experimental data collected in a Swedish underground mine.

We study the fundamental problem of fusing one round trip time (RTT) observation associated with a serving base station with one time-difference of arrival (TDOA) observation associated to the serving base station and a neighbor base station to localize a 2-D mobile station (MS). This situation can arise in 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) when the number of reported cells of the mobile station is reduced to a minimum in order to minimize the signaling costs and to support a large number of devices. The studied problem corresponds geometrically to computing the intersection of a circle with a hyperbola, both with measurement uncertainty, which generally has two equally likely solutions. We derive an analytical representation of these two solutions that fits a filter bank framework that can keep track of different hypothesis until potential ambiguities have been resolved. Further, a performance bound for the filter bank is derived. The proposed filter bank is first evaluated in a simulated scenario, where the set of serving and neighbor base stations is changing in a challenging way. The filter bank is then evaluated on real data from a field test, where the result shows a precision better than 40 m 95% of the time.

Smartphone-based driver monitoring is quickly gaining ground as a feasible alternative to competing in-vehicle and aftermarket solutions. Currently the main challenges for data analysts studying smartphone-based driving data stem from the mobility of the smartphone. In this paper, we use kernel-based k-means clustering to infer the placement of smartphones within vehicles. The trip segments are mapped into fifteen different placement clusters. As a part of the presented framework, we discuss practical considerations concerning e.g., trip segmentation, cluster initialization, and parameter selection. The proposed method is evaluated on more than 10 000 kilometers of driving data collected from approximately 200 drivers. To validate the interpretation of the clusters, we compare the data associated with different clusters and relate the results to real-world knowledge of driving behavior. The clusters associated with the label "Held by hand" are shown to display high gyroscope variances, low maximum speeds, low correlations between the measurements from smartphone-embedded and vehicle-fixed accelerometers, and short segment durations.

Gearbox failures cost thousands of lost production hours in plants that use industrial robots. In this context, an automated monitoring system that can warn the user of an impending failure can save precious resources. This problem has been addressed in many other domains through the use of machine learning approaches. However, standard machine learning algorithms are limited in their ability to detect gearbox failures, mainly due to task variability arises from robot-specific data. To improve detection performance of machine learning approaches, in this paper we propose techniques to curate the data prior to building a classification model. In a systematic hypothesis-driven study exploring the effect of different preprocessing techniques, we evaluate training data augmentation with estimated measurements, data differencing to suppress task dependence, inclusion of local variation, and selection of principal components on data collected from 26 industrial robots from the field. Our results show that preprocessing techniques improve the failure detection performance.

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People with hearing impairment typically have difficulties following conversations in multi-talker situations. Previous studies have shown that utilizing eye gaze to steer audio through beamformers could be a solution for those situations. Recent studies have shown that in-ear electrodes that capture electrooculography in the ear (EarEOG) can estimate the eye-gaze relative to the head, when the head was fixed. The head movement can be estimated using motion sensors around the ear to create an estimate of the absolute eye-gaze in the room. In this study, an experiment was designed to mimic a multi-talker situation in order to study and model the EarEOG signal when participants attempted to follow a conversation. Eleven hearing impaired participants were presented speech from the DAT speech corpus (Bo Nielsen et al., 2014), with three targets positioned at -30 degrees, 0 degrees and +30 degrees azimuth. The experiment was run in two setups: one where the participants had their head fixed in a chinrest, and the other where they were free to move their head. The participants task was to focus their visual attention on an LED-indicated target that changed regularly. A model was developed for the relative eye-gaze estimation, taking saccades, fixations, head movement and drift from the electrode-skin half-cell into account. This model explained 90.5% of the variance of the EarEOG when the head was fixed, and 82.6% when the head was free. The absolute eye-gaze was also estimated utilizing that model. When the head was fixed, the estimation of the absolute eye-gaze was reliable. However, due to hardware issues, the estimation of the absolute eye-gaze when the head was free had a variance that was too large to reliably estimate the attended target. Overall, this study demonstrated the potential of estimating absolute eye-gaze using EarEOG and motion sensors around the ear.

In this paper, we introduce an optimal average cost learning framework to solve output regulation problem for linear systems with unknown dynamics. Our optimal framework aims to design the controller to achieve output tracking and disturbance rejection while minimizing the average cost. We derive the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation for the optimal average cost problem and develop a reinforcement algorithm to solve it. Our proposed algorithm is an off-policy routine which learns the optimal average cost solution completely model-free. We rigorously analyze the convergence of the proposed algorithm. Compared to previous approaches for optimal tracking controller design, we elevate the need for judicious selection of the discounting factor and the proposed algorithm can be implemented completely model-free. We support our theoretical results with a simulation example. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This letter deals with the issue of obtaining consistent parameter estimators in nonlinear regression models where the regressors are second-order modulus functions, which is a structure that is often used in models of marine vessels. It is shown that the accuracy of an instrumental variable estimator can be improved by conducting experiments where the input signal has a static offset of sufficient amplitude and the instruments are forced to have zero mean. The proposed method is then evaluated in a simulation example.

System Identification is about estimating models of dynamical systems from measured input-output data. Its traditional foundation is basic statistical techniques, such as maximum likelihood estimation and asymptotic analysis of bias and variance and the like. Maximum likelihood estimation relies on minimization of criterion functions that typically are non-convex, and may cause numerical search problems and estimates trapped in local minima. Recent interest in identification algorithms has focused on techniques that are centered around convex formulations. This is partly the result of developments in semidefinite programming, machine learning and statistical learning theory. The development concerns issues of regular-ization for sparsity and for better tuned bias/variance trade-offs. It also involves the use of subspace methods as well as nuclear norms as proxies to rank constraints. A special approach is to look for difference-of-convex programming (DCP) formulations, in case a pure convex criterion is not found. Other techniques are based on Lagrangian relaxation and contraction theory. A quite different route to convexity is to use algebraic techniques to manipulate the model parameterizations. This article will illustrate all this recent development.

The problem of estimating continuous-time model parameters of linear dynamical systems using sampled time-domain input and output data has received considerable attention over the past decades and has been approached by various methods. The research topic also bears practical importance due to both its close relation to first principles modelling and equally to linear model-based control design techniques, most of them carried in continuous time. Nonetheless, as the performance of the existing algorithms for continuous-time model identification has seldom been assessed and, as thus far, it has not been considered in a comprehensive study, this practical potential of existing methods remains highly questionable. The goal of this brief paper is to bring forward a first study on this issue and to factually highlight the main aspects of interest. As such, an analysis is performed on a benchmark designed to be consistent both from a system identification viewpoint and from a control-theoretic one. It is concluded that robust initialization aspects require further research focus towards reliable algorithm development. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Model predictive control (MPC) is one of the most widely spread advanced control schemes in industry today. In MPC, a constrained finite-time optimal control (CFTOC) problem is solved at each iteration in the control loop. The CFTOC problem can be solved using, for example, second-order methods, such as interior-point or active-set methods, where the computationally most demanding part often consists of computing the sequence of second-order search directions. Each search direction can be computed by solving a set of linear equations that corresponds to solving an unconstrained finite-time optimal control (UFTOC) problem. In this paper, different direct (noniterative) parallel algorithms for solving UFTOC problems are presented. The parallel algorithms are all based on a recursive variable elimination and solution propagation technique. Numerical evaluations of one of the parallel algorithms indicate that a significant boost in performance can be obtained, which can facilitate high-performance second-order MPC solvers.

Some controllability aspects for iterative learning control (ILC) are discussed. Via a batch (lifted) description of the problem a state space model of the system to be controlled is formulated in the iteration domain. This model provides insight and enables analysis of the conditions for and relationships between controllability, output controllability and target path controllability. In addition, the property miminum lead target path controllability is introduced. This property, which is connected to the number of time delays, plays an important role in the design of ILC algorithms. The properties are illustrated by a numerical example.

To optimally compensate for time-varying phase aberrations with adaptive optics, a model of the dynamics of the aberrations is required to predict the phase aberration at the next time step. We model the time-varying behavior of a phase aberration, expressed in Zernike modes, by assuming that the temporal dynamics of the Zernike coefficients can be described by a vector-valued autoregressive (VAR) model. We propose an iterative method based on a convex heuristic for a rank-constrained optimization problem, to jointly estimate the parameters of the VAR model and the Zernike coefficients from a time series of measurements of the point-spread function (PSF) of the optical system. By assuming the phase aberration is small, the relation between aberration and PSF measurements can be approximated by a quadratic function. As such, our method is a blind identification method for linear dynamics in a stochastic Wiener system with a quadratic nonlinearity at the output and a phase retrieval method that uses a time-evolution-model constraint and a single image at every time step. (c) 2019 Optical Society of America.

In this paper, a robotic arm moving along a user-defined trajectory is used to calibrate a short-range magnetic positioning system (MPS). Such system estimates the position and attitude of an active transmitting coil by measuring the induced voltage on a set of fixed receiving coils, with known position and orientation. This estimate is obtained by solving an optimization problem that can be decomposed into a linear and a reduced nonlinear problem. Then, a Kalman Filter is used to process the estimated positions and obtain smooth trajectories. Data acquisition and processing are performed in real time by the MPS. In this context, the robotic arm is used to provide ground truth, i.e., to move the active coil along a known trajectory, while simultaneously the MPS estimates the position of the active coil. Such ground-truth information is then used to calibrate the MPS and improve its accuracy. To align the robotic arm with the MPS, a preliminary calibration procedure of the robot is performed. Then, a wide ground-truth trajectory is used to estimate the calibration parameters of the MPS itself, namely, the positions and orientation of the fixed coils. To validate the efficiency of the calibration procedure, the accuracy of the MPS is evaluated across several trajectories. The results show that the mean positioning error is less than 3 mm. Finally, an on-the-fly calibration method simultaneously estimating positions and attitudes of both the active coil and all the receivers is investigated.

Auditory attention identification methods attempt to identify the sound source of a listeners interest by analyzing measurements of electrophysiological data. We present a tutorial on the numerous techniques that have been developed in recent decades, and we present an overview of current trends in multivariate correlation-based and model-based learning frameworks. The focus is on the use of linear relations between electrophysiological and audio data. The way in which these relations are computed differs. For example, canonical correlation analysis (CCA) finds a linear subset of electrophysiological data that best correlates to audio data and a similar subset of audio data that best correlates to electrophysiological data. Model-based (encoding and decoding) approaches focus on either of these two sets. We investigate the similarities and differences between these linear model philosophies. We focus on (1) correlation-based approaches (CCA), (2) encoding/decoding models based on dense estimation, and (3) (adaptive) encoding/decoding models based on sparse estimation. The specific focus is on sparsity-driven adaptive encoding models and comparing the methodology in state-of-the-art models found in the auditory literature. Furthermore, we outline the main signal processing pipeline for how to identify the attended sound source in a cocktail party environment from the raw electrophysiological data with all the necessary steps, complemented with the necessary MATLAB code and the relevant references for each step. Our main aim is to compare the methodology of the available methods, and provide numerical illustrations to some of them to get a feeling for their potential. A thorough performance comparison is outside the scope of this tutorial.

Complex eukaryotic promoters normally contain multiple cis-regulatory sequences for different transcription factors (TFs). The binding patterns of the TFs to these sites, as well as the way the TFs interact with each other and with the RNA polymerase (RNAp), lead to combinatorial problems rarely understood in detail, especially under varying epigenetic conditions. The aim of this paper is to build a model describing how the main regulatory cluster of the olfactory receptor Or59b drives transcription of this gene in Drosophila. The cluster-driven expression of this gene is represented as the equilibrium probability of RNAp being bound to the promoter region, using a statistical thermodynamic approach. The RNAp equilibrium probability is computed in terms of the occupancy probabilities of the single TFs of the cluster to the corresponding binding sites, and of the interaction rules among TFs and RNAp, using experimental data of Or59b expression to tune the model parameters. The model reproduces correctly the changes in RNAp binding probability induced by various mutation of specific sites and epigenetic modifications. Some of its predictions have also been validated in novel experiments.

Recently, the measurement of the pupil dilation response has been applied in many studies to assess listening effort. Meanwhile, the mechanisms underlying this response are still largely unknown. We present the results of a method that separates the influence of the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system on the pupil response during speech perception. This is achieved by changing the background illumination level. In darkness, the influence of the parasympathetic nervous system on the pupil response is minimal, whereas in light, there is an additional component from the parasympathetic nervous system. Nineteen hearing-impaired and 27 age-matched normal-hearing listeners performed speech reception threshold tests targeting a 50% correct performance level while pupil responses were recorded. The target speech was masked with a competing talker. The test was conducted twice, once in dark and once in a light condition. Need for Recovery and Checklist Individual Strength questionnaires were acquired as indices of daily-life fatigue. In dark, the peak pupil dilation (PPD) did not differ between the two groups, but in light, the normal-hearing group showed a larger PPD than the hearing-impaired group. Listeners with better hearing acuity showed larger differences in dilation between dark and light. These results indicate a larger effect of parasympathetic inhibition on the pupil dilation response of listeners with better hearing acuity, and a relatively high parasympathetic activity in those with worse hearing. Previously observed differences in PPD between normal and impaired listeners are probably not solely because of differences in listening effort.

Electrophysiological feedback on activity in the auditory pathway may potentially advance the next generation of hearing aids. Conventional electroencephalographic (EEG) systems are, however, impractical during daily life and incompatible with hearing aids. Ear-EEG is a method in which the EEG is recorded from electrodes embedded in a hearing aid like earpiece. The method therefore provides an unobtrusive way of measuring neural activity suitable for use in everyday life. This study aimed to determine whether ear-EEG could be used to estimate hearing thresholds in subjects with sensorineural hearing loss. Specifically, ear-EEG was used to determine physiological thresholds at 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz using auditory steady-state response measurements. To evaluate ear-EEG in relation to current methods, thresholds were estimated from a concurrently recorded conventional scalp EEG. The threshold detection rate for ear-EEG was 20% lower than the detection rate for scalp EEG. Thresholds estimated using in-ear referenced ear-EEG were found to be elevated at an average of 5.9, 2.3, 5.6, and 1.5 dB relative to scalp thresholds at 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz, respectively. No differences were found in the variance of means between in-ear ear-EEG and scalp EEG. In-ear ear-EEG, auditory steady-state response thresholds were found at 12.1 to 14.4 dB sensation level with an intersubject variation comparable to that of behavioral thresholds. Collectively, it is concluded that although further refinement of the method is needed to optimize the threshold detection rate, ear-EEG is a feasible method for hearing threshold level estimation in subjects with sensorineural hearing impairment.

Input design is an important issue for classical system identification methods but has not been investigated for the kernel-based regularization method (KRM) until very recently. In this paper, we consider the input design problem of KRMs for LTI system identification. Different from the recent result, we adopt a Bayesian perspective and in particular make use of scalar measures (e.g., the A-optimality, D-optimality, and E-optimality) of the Bayesian mean square error matrix as the design criteria subject to power-constraint on the input. Instead of solving the optimization problem directly, we propose a two-step procedure. In the first step, by making suitable assumptions on the unknown input, we construct a quadratic map (transformation) of the input such that the transformed input design problems are convex, and the global minima of the transformed input design problem can thus be found efficiently by applying well-developed convex optimization software packages. In the second step, we derive the characterization of the optimal input based on the global minima found in the first step by solving the inverse image of the quadratic map. In addition, we derive analytic results for some special types of kernels, which provide insights on the input design and also its dependence on the kernel structure. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In this paper. we develop new methods to automatically detect the onset and duration of freezing of gait (FOG) in people with Parkinson disease (PD) in real time, using inertial sensors. We first build a physical model that describes the trembling motion during the FOG events. Then, we design a generalized likelihood ratio test framework to develop a two-stage detector for determining the zero-velocity and trembling events during gait. Thereafter, to filter out falsely detected FOG events, we develop a point-process filter that combines the output of the detectors with information about the speed of the foot, provided by a foot-mounted inertial navigation system. We computed the probability of FOG by using the point-process filter to determine the onset and duration of the FOG event. Finally, we validate the performance of the proposed system design using real data obtained from people with PD who performed a set of gait tasks. We compare our FOG detection results with an existing method that only uses accelerometer data. The results indicate that our method yields 81.03% accuracy in detecting FOG events and a threefold decrease in the false-alarm rate relative to the existing method.

This work investigates the energy consumption of industrial robots in the context of automotive industry. The purpose is to identify the most influencing parameters and variables and to propose best practices with focus on energy efficiency. The analysis approach is composed of three experiments performed in a simulation environment that test different values of programming parameters and variables, such as joint speed, acceleration, robot payload. The first experiment focuses on energy consumption of robots at standstill. The second one considers the robot moving along different paths. Finally, the third one analyses how the joint friction is affected by load, speed and temperature and how it influences the energy consumption. Results show that at standstill, it is important to reduce dwell time, select an energy efficient position and reduce the programmed value of the timer responsible for turning off the servomotors. While moving, it is important to select maximum continuous termination for intermediate points and avoid low speeds. Regarding friction variation, results show that at high motor speed, low temperatures increase energy consumption. In order to evaluate the contribution of the best practices in a real environment, they are applied to a welding robotic cell of an automotive industry.

Model predictive control (MPC) represents nowadays one of the main methods employed for process control in industry. Its strong suits comprise a simple algorithm based on a straightforward formulation and the flexibility to deal with constraints. On the other hand, it can be questioned its robustness regarding model uncertainties and external noises. Thus, a lot of efforts have been spent in the past years into the search of methods to address these shortcomings. In this study, the authors propose a robust MPC controller which stems from the idea of adding robustness in the prediction phase of the algorithm while leaving the core of MPC untouched. More precisely, they consider a robust Kalman filter that has been recently introduced and they further extend its usability to feedback control systems. Overall the proposed control algorithm allows to maintain all of the advantages of MPC with an additional improvement in performance and without any drawbacks in terms of computational complexity. To test the actual reliability of the algorithm, they apply it to control a servomechanism system characterised by non-linear dynamics.

The aim of this paper is to modify continuous-time bounded confidence opinion dynamics models so that "changes of opinion" (intended as changes of the sign of the initial states) are never induced during the evolution. Such sign invariance can be achieved by letting opinions of different sign localized near the origin interact negatively, or neglect each other, or even repel each other. In all cases, it is possible to obtain sign-preserving bounded confidence models with state-dependent connectivity and with a clustering behavior similar to that of a standard bounded confidence model. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sleep scoring is used as a diagnostic technique in the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders. Automated sleep scoring is crucial, since the large volume of data should be analyzed visually by the sleep specialists which is burdensome, time-consuming tedious, subjective, and error prone. Therefore, automated sleep stage classification is a crucial step in sleep research and sleep disorder diagnosis. In this paper, a robust system, consisting of three modules, is proposed for automated classification of sleep stages from the single-channel electroencephalogram (EEG). In the first module, signals taken from Pz-Oz electrode were denoised using multiscale principal component analysis. In the second module, the most informative features are extracted using discrete wavelet transform (DWT), and then, statistical values of DWT subbands are calculated. In the third module, extracted features were fed into an ensemble classifier, which can be called as rotational support vector machine (RotSVM). The proposed classifier combines advantages of the principal component analysis and SVM to improve classification performances of the traditional SVM. The sensitivity and accuracy values across all subjects were 84.46% and 91.1%, respectively, for the five-stage sleep classification with Cohens kappa coefficient of 0.88. Obtained classification performance results indicate that, it is possible to have an efficient sleep monitoring system with a single-channel EEG, and can be used effectively in medical and home-care applications.

Distributed algorithms for solving coupled semidefinite programs commonly require many iterations to converge. They also put high computational demand on the computational agents. In this paper, we show that in case the coupled problem has an inherent tree structure, it is possible to devise an efficient distributed algorithm for solving such problems. The proposed algorithm relies on predictor- corrector primal-dual interior-point methods, where we use a message-passing algorithm to compute the search directions distributedly. Message passing here is closely related to dynamic programming over trees. This allows us to compute the exact search directions in a finite number of steps. This is because computing the search directions requires a recursion over the tree structure and, hence, terminates after an upward and downward pass through the tree. Furthermore, this number can be computed a priori and only depends on the coupling structure of the problem. We use the proposed algorithm for analyzing robustness of large-scale uncertain systems distributedly. We test the performance of this algorithm using numerical examples.

The commercial interest in proximity services is increasing. Application examples include location-based information and advertisements, logistics, social networking, file sharing, etc. In this paper, we consider positioning of devices based on a time series of proximity reports from a mobile device to a network node. This corresponds to nonlinear measurements with respect to the device position in relation to the network nodes. Motion model will be needed together with the measurements to determine the position of the device. Therefore, sequential Monte Carlo methods, namely particle filtering and smoothing, are applicable for positioning. Positioning performance is evaluated in a typical office area with Bluetooth-low-energy beacons deployed for proximity detection and report, and is further compared to parametric Cramér-Rao lower bounds. Finally, the position accuracy is also evaluated with real experimental data.

Identification of structured state-space (gray-box) model is popular for modeling physical and network systems. Due to the non-convex nature of the gray-box identification problem, good initial parameter estimates are crucial for successful applications. In this paper, the non-convex gray-box identification problem is reformulated as a structured low-rank matrix factorization problem by exploiting the rank and structured properties of a block Hankel matrix constructed by the system impulse response. To address the low-rank optimization problem, it is first transformed into a difference-of-convex (DC) formulation and then solved using the sequentially convex relaxation method. Compared with the classical gray-box identification methods like the prediction-error method (PEM), the new approach turns out to be more robust against converging to non-global minima, as supported by a simulation study. The developed identification can either be directly used for gray-box identification or provide an initial parameter estimate for the PEM. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the problem of controlling a complex network with minimal control energy. We show first that the control energy depends on the time constant of the modes of the network, and that the closer the eigenvalues are to the imaginary axis of the complex plane, the less energy is required for complete controllability. In the limit case of networks having all purely imaginary eigenvalues (e.g. networks of coupled harmonic oscillators), several constructive algorithms for minimum control energy driver node selection are developed. A general heuristic principle valid for any directed network is also proposed: the overall cost of controlling a network is reduced when the controls are concentrated on the nodes with highest ratio of weighted outdegree vs indegree.

In Model Predictive Control (MPC), the control input is computed by solving a constrained finite-time optimal control (CFTOC) problem at each sample in the control loop. The main computational effort when solving the CFTOC problem using an active-set (AS) method is often spent on computing the search directions, which in MPC corresponds to solving unconstrained finite-time optimal control (UFTOC) problems. This is commonly performed using Riccati recursions or generic sparsity exploiting algorithms. In this work the focus is efficient search direction computations for AS type methods. The system of equations to be solved at each AS iteration is changed only by a low-rank modification of the previous one, and exploiting this structured change is important for the performance of AS type solvers. In this paper, theory for how to exploit these low-rank changes by modifying the Riccati factorization between AS iterations in a structured way is presented. A numerical evaluation of the proposed algorithm shows that the computation time can be significantly reduced by modifying, instead of re-computing, the Riccati factorization. This speed-up can be important for AS type solvers used for linear, nonlinear and hybrid MPC.

State-space smoothing has found many applications in science and engineering. Under linear and Gaussian assumptions, smoothed estimates can be obtained using efficient recursions, for example Rauch Tung Striebel and Mayne Fraser algorithms. Such schemes are equivalent to linear algebraic techniques that minimize a convex quadratic objective function with structure induced by the dynamic model. These classical formulations fall short in many important circumstances. For instance, smoothers obtained using quadratic penalties can fail when outliers are present in the data, and cannot track impulsive inputs and abrupt state changes. Motivated by these shortcomings, generalized Kalman smoothing formulations have been proposed in the last few years, replacing quadratic models with more suitable, often nonsmooth, convex functions. In contrast to classical models, these general estimators require use of iterated algorithms, and these have received increased attention from control, signal processing, machine learning, and optimization communities. In this survey we show that the optimization viewpoint provides the control and signal processing community great freedom in the development of novel modeling and inference frameworks for dynamical systems. We discuss general statistical models for dynamic systems, making full use of nonsmooth convex penalties and constraints, and providing links to important models in signal processing and machine learning. We also survey optimization techniques for these formulations, paying close attention to dynamic problem structure. Modeling concepts and algorithms are illustrated with numerical examples. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Devising the planar routes of minimal length that are required to pass through predefined neighborhoods of target points plays an important role in reducing the missions operating cost. Two versions of the problem are considered. The first one assumes that the ordering of the targets is fixed a priori. In such a case, the optimal route is devised by solving a convex optimization problem formulated either as a second-order cone program or as a sum-of-squares optimization problem. Additional route properties, such as continuity and minimal curvature, are considered as well. The second version allows the ordering of the targets to be optimized to further reduce the route length. We show that such a problem can be solved by introducing additional binary variables, which allows the route to be designed using off-the-shelf mixed-integer solvers. A case study that shows that the proposed strategy is computationally tractable is presented.

A platform for sensor fusion consisting of a standard smartphone equipped with the specially developed Sensor Fusion appis presented. The platform enables real-time streaming of data over WiFi to a computer where signal processingalgorithms, e.g., the Kalman filter, can be developed and executed in a Matlab framework. The platform is an excellenttool for educational purposes and enables learning activities where methods based on advanced theory can be implementedand evaluated at low cost. The article describes the app and a laboratory exercise developed around these new technologicalpossibilities. The laboratory session is part of a course in sensor fusion, a signal processing continuation course focused onmultiple sensor signal applications, where the goal is to give the students hands on experience of the subject. This is done byestimating the orientation of the smartphone, which can be easily visualized and also compared to the built-in filters in thesmartphone. The filter can accept any combination of sensor data from accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers toexemplify their importance. This way different tunings and tricks of important methods are easily demonstrated andevaluated on-line. The presented framework facilitates this in a way previously impossible.

Bayesian nonparametric approaches have been recently introduced in system identification scenario where the impulse response is modeled as the realization of a zero-mean Gaussian process whose covariance (kernel) has to be estimated from data. In this scheme, quality of the estimates crucially depends on the parametrization of the covariance of the Gaussian process. A family of kernels that have been shown to be particularly effective in the system identification framework is the family of Diagonal/Correlated (DC) kernels. Maximum entropy properties of a related family of kernels, the Tuned/Correlated (TC) kernels, have been recently pointed out in the literature. In this technical note, we show that maximum entropy properties indeed extend to the whole family of DC kernels. The maximum entropy interpretation can be exploited in conjunction with results on matrix completion problems in the graphical models literature to shed light on the structure of the DC kernel. In particular, we prove that the DC kernel admits a closed-form factorization, inverse, and determinant. These results can be exploited both to improve the numerical stability and to reduce the computational complexity associated with the computation of the DC estimator.

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The general Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) problem aims at estimating the state of a moving platform simultaneously with building a map of the local environment. There are essentially three classes of algorithms. EKF- SLAM and FastSLAM solve the problem on-line, while Nonlinear Least Squares (NLS) is a batch method. All of them scales badly with either the state dimension, the map dimension or the batch length. We investigate the EM algorithm for solving a generalized version of the NLS problem. This EM-SLAM algorithm solves two simpler problems iteratively, hence it scales much better with dimensions. The iterations switch between state estimation, where we propose an Extended Rauch-Tung-Striebel smoother, and map estimation, where a quasi-Newton method is suggested. The proposed method is evaluated in real experiments and also in simulations on a platform with a monocular camera attached to an inertial measurement unit. It is demonstrated to produce lower RMSE than with a standard Levenberg-Marquardt solver of NLS problem, at a computational cost that increases considerably slower. 

Mathematical models of real life systems and processes are essential in today’s industrial work. To be able to construct such models is therefore a fundamental skill in modern engineering...

In this chapter we show that chordal structure can be used to devise efficient optimization methods for many common model predictive control problems. The chordal structure is used both for computing search directions efficiently as well as for distributing all the other computations in an interior-point method for solving the problem. The chordal structure can stem both from the sequential nature of the problem as well as from distributed formulations of the problem related to scenario trees or other formulations. The framework enables efficient parallel computations.

The uncertainty in the prediction calculated using the delta method for an over-parameterized (parametric) black-box model is shown to be larger or equal to the uncertainty in the prediction of a canonical (minimal) model. Equality holds if the additional parameters of the overparameterized model do not add flexibility to the model. As a conclusion, for an overparameterized black-box model, the calculated uncertainty in the prediction by the delta method is not underestimated. The results are shown analytically and are validated in a simulation experiment where the relationship between the normalized traction force and the wheel slip of a car is modelled using e.g., a neural network.

A deep neural classifier trained on an upstream task can be leveraged to boost the performance of another classifier in a related downstream task through the representations learned in hidden layers. However, presence of shortcuts (easy-to-learn features) in the upstream task can considerably impair the versatility of intermediate representations and, in turn, the downstream performance. In this paper, we propose a method to improve the representations learned by deep neural image classifiers in spite of a shortcut in upstream data. In our method, the upstream classification objective is augmented with a type of adversarial training where an auxiliary network, so called lens, fools the classifier by exploiting the shortcut in reconstructing images. Empirical comparisons in self-supervised and transfer learning problems with three shortcut-biased datasets suggest the advantages of our method in terms of downstream performance and/or training time.

A case study of the use of reflections within the Applied physics and electrical engineering program at Linköping University is presented. Reflections have been used for several years and they are done at four stages in the program, in terms of reflections at the end of the Introductory course in year one, design-implement experiences in year three and five, and a reflection document that is the last component of the Master’s thesis. In the first three stages a project model is used to support the planning and execution of the project, and in the project model the project work ends with a reflection. In the reflection document connected to the Master’s thesis the student reflects upon both the thesis work itself and the entire education program, according to the sections and subsections of the CDIO Syllabus. The paper describes how the reflections are integrated in the program. Experiences from student perspective are collected in a small-scale study via interviews with students from year one and year five. 

This paper proposes the modeling and analysis of multi-energy systems as multilayer networks. The aim is to assess the interdependence between different energy infrastructures. Multilayer network modeling enhances the one-dimensional graph-based approach employed to study the vulnerability and the topological characteristics of power grids. The centrality indices defined for one-dimensional networks are extended to multilayer networks, highlighting the differences emerging when interdependence is considered. The proposed multilayer framework is demonstrated on the 24-bus IEEE power grid coupled with a gas network with 7 nodes.

Hegselmann-Krause (HK) models exhibit complex behaviors which are not easily tractable through mathematical analysis. In this paper, a characterization of the steady-state behaviors of homogeneous HK models and sensitivity to confidence thresholds is discussed by commenting on existing and new numerical results. The typical decreasing of number of clusters and convergence time by increasing the confidence thresholds are discussed and motivations for the behavior of some counterexamples are provided. A tighter upper bound for the dependence of the number of clusters with respect to the confidence thresholds is proposed. Differences and analogies between the opinions evolution for symmetric and asymmetric HK models are commented.

An autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is a crewless robotic vehicle that dives into the water and performs without human assistance. This paper focuses on developing trajectory tracking control for bio-mimetic AUV system under uncertain environments. Therefore, a relatively new control technique called time delay-based estimation control is proposed for trajectory tracking under multiple uncertainties. This algorithm estimates the total disturbance in the system using immediate past information of input and output of feedback state and control variables. The benefit of this scheme is that it avoids assumptions about a priori upper bound information of disturbance. Further, the control structure is simple and does not require any high-frequency switching or high gain to nullify the effects of disturbance. The theoretical analysis of the proposed scheme guarantees the uniformly ultimate bounded stability of the closed-loop system. The numerical analysis is also carried out to validate the control performance of the given algorithm for lemniscate reference path tracking.

Human-wildlife conflicts are a global problem which is central to the Global Goal 15 (life on land). One particular case is elephants, that can cause harm to both people, property and crops. An early warning system that can detect and warn people in time would allow effective mitigation measures. The proposed method is based on a small local network of geophones that sense the seismic waves of elephant footsteps. It is known that elephant footsteps induce low frequency ground waves that can be picked up by geophones in the ground. First, a method is described that detect the particular signature of such footsteps, and then the detections are used to estimate the direction of arrival (DOA). Finally, a Kalman filter is applied to the measurements in order to track the elephant. Field tests performed at a local zoo shows promising results with accurate DOA estimates at 15 meters distance and acceptable accuracy at 40 meters.

Underwater surveillance using passive sonar and track-before-detect technology requires accurate models of the tracked signal and the background noise. However, in an underwater environment, the signal channel is time-varying and prior knowledge about the spatial distribution of the background noise is unavailable. In this paper, an autoregressive model that captures a time-varying signal level caused by multi-path propagation is presented. In addition, a multi-source model is proposed to describe spatially distributed background noise. The models are used in a Bernoulli filter track-before-detect framework and evaluated using both simulated and sea trial data. The simulations demonstrate clear improvements in terms of target loss and improved ability to discern the target from the noisy background. An evaluation of the track-before-detect algorithm on the sea trial data indicates a performance gain when incorporating the proposed models in underwater surveillance and tracking problems. 

Network-centric multitarget tracking under communication constraints is considered, where dimension-reduced track estimates are exchanged. Previous work on target tracking in this subfield has focused on fusion aspects only and derived optimal ways of reducing dimensionality based on fusion performance. In this work we propose a novel problem formalization where estimates are reduced based on association performance. The problem is analyzed theoretically and problem properties are derived. The theoretical analysis leads to an optimization strategy that can be used to partly preserve association quality when reducing the dimensionality of communicated estimates. The applicability of the suggested optimization strategy is demonstrated numerically in a multitarget scenario.

Conventional direction of arrival (DOA) estimators are based on array processing using either time differences or beam-forming. The proposed approach is based on the received power at each microphone, which enables simple hardware, low sampling frequency and small arrays. The problem is recast into a linear regression framework where the least squares method applies, and the main drawback is that different sound sources are not readily separable.Our proposed approach is based on a training phase where the directional sensitivity of each microphone element is estimated. This model is then used as a fingerprint of the observed power vector in a real-time estimator. The learned power vector is here modeled by a Fourier series expansion, which enables Cramér-Rao lower bound computations. We demonstrate the performance using a circular array with eight microphones with promising results.

This paper considers fusion of dimension-reduced estimates in a decentralized sensor network. The benefits of a decentralized sensor network include modularity, robustness and flexibility. Moreover, since preprocessed data is exchanged between the agents it allows for reduced communication. Nevertheless, in certain applications the communication load is required to be reduced even further. One way to decrease the communication load is to exchange dimension-reduced estimates instead of full estimates. Previous work on this topic assumes global availability of covariance matrices, an assumption which is not realistic in decentralized applications. Hence, in this paper we consider the problem of deriving dimension-reduced estimates using only local information. The proposed solution is based on an estimate of the information common to the network. This common information estimate is computed locally at each agent by fusion of all information that is either received or transmitted by that agent. It is shown how the common information estimate is utilized for fusion of dimension-reduced estimates using two well-known fusion methods: the Kalman fuser which is optimal under the assumption of uncorrelated estimates, and covariance intersection. One main theoretical result is that the common information estimate allows for a decorrelation procedure such that uncorrelated estimates can be maintained. This property is crucial to be able to use the Kalman fuser without double counting of information. A numerical comparison suggests that the performance degradation of using the common information estimate, compared to having local access to the actual covariance matrices computed by other agents, is relatively small.

Asymptotic theory for the regularized system identification has received increasing interests in recent years. In this paper, for the finite impulse response (FIR) model and filtered white noise inputs, we show the convergence in distribution of the Steins unbiased risk estimator (SURE) based hyper-parameter estimator and find factors that influence its convergence properties. In particular, we consider the ridge regression case to obtain closed-form expressions of the limit of the regression matrix and the variance of the limiting distribution of the SURE based hyper-parameter estimator, and then demonstrate their relation numerically.

When Model Predictive Control (MPC) is used in real-time to control linear systems, quadratic programs (QPs) need to be solved within a limited time frame. Recently, several parametric methods have been proposed that certify the number of computations active-set QP solvers require to solve these QPs. These certification methods, hence, ascertain that the optimization problem can be solved within the limited time frame. A shortcoming in these methods is, however, that they do not account for numerical errors that might occur internally in the solvers, which ultimately might lead to optimistic complexity bounds if, for example, the solvers are implemented in single precision. In this paper we propose a general framework that can be incorporated in any of these certification methods to account for such numerical errors.

We propose a decentralized subset method for optimal processing and combining of uplink signals in a distributed MIMO (D-MIMO) network. We further propose the use of Kalman filters with the square-root implementation to estimate the received uplink signals. This square-root implementation is shown to be numerically stable when inverting the covariance matrix, as it always assures the covariance matrix to be symmetric and positive semi-definite. In the paper we also analyze the computational complexity and cost with different combining methods. We show that the Kalman filter implementation provides the same result as the MMSE method in terms of the spectral efficiencies and equivalent SINR. However, the Kalman filter implementation is shown to be very efficient as it provides the possibility to fully utilize  parallel computing of distributed hardware processors. Moreover, the processing can be decentralized and the estimates can be aggregated from local estimates to as many access points (APs) as needed to reach the desired performance target. A Kalman filter implementation has the flexibility to aggregate signals in different ways, allowing the fronthaul architecture to support connectivity of individual APs in any combination of parallel or serial manners.

The classical SIR model is a fundamental building block in most epidemiological models. Despite its widespread use, its properties in filtering and estimation applications are much less well explored. Independently of how the basic SIR model is integrated into more complex models, the fundamental question is whether the states and parameters can be estimated from a fusion of available numeric measurements. The problem studied in this paper focuses on the parameter and state estimation of a stochastic SIR model from assumed direct measurements of the number of infected people in the population, and the generalisation to other measurements is left for future research. In terms of parameter estimation, two components are discussed separately. The first component is model parameter estimation assuming that the all states are measured directly. The second component is state estimation assuming known parameters. These two components are combined into an iterative state and parameter estimator. This iterative method is compared to a straightforward approach based on state augmentation of the unknown parameters. Feasibility of the problem is studied from an information-theoretic point of view using the Cramer Rao Lower Bound (CRLB). Using simulated data resembling the first wave of Covid-19 in Sweden, the iterative method outperforms the state augmentation approach.

For accurate control of industrial robots, a fast and easy-to-use method to estimate the model parameters based on experimental data is desired. This publication is about optimal experiment design in terms of short experiment times and an accurate parameter estimate. An optimization problem that is based on information matrices is solved for finding the optimal robot configurations for the identification experiment. A simulation study shows that the experiment time can be reduced significantly and the accuracy of the parameter estimate can be increased if experiments are conducted only in the optimal manipulator configurations. Furthermore, it is shown that a realistic estimate of the uncertainty in the frequency response function is crucial for successful experiment design.

Laplacian dynamics on signed graphs have a richer behavior than those on nonnegative graphs. In particular, their stability is not guaranteed a priori. Consequently, also the time-varying case must be treated with care. In particular, instabilities can occur also when switching in a family of systems each of which corresponds to a stable signed Laplacian. In the paper we obtain sufficient conditions for such a family of signed Laplacians to form a consensus set, i.e., to be stable and converging to consensus for any possible switching pattern. The conditions are that all signed Laplacian matrices are eventually exponentially positive (a Perron-Frobenius type of property) and normal.

Motion planning and decision-making while considering uncertainty is critical for an autonomous vehicle to safely and efficiently drive on a highway. This paper presents a new combined two-step approach for this problem, where a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) is tightly coupled with a scenario model predictive control (SCMPC) step. To generate the scenarios in the SCMPC step, the solution to the POMDP is used together with a novel scenario-reduction procedure, which selects a small representative subset of all scenarios considered in the POMDP. The resulting planner is evaluated in a simulation study where the impact of the two-step approach and the scenario-reduction method is shown.

The productivity and efficiency of port operations strongly depend on how fast a ship can be unloaded and loaded again. With this in mind, ship-to-shore cranes perform the critical task of transporting containers into and onto a ship and must do so as fast as possible. Though the problem of minimizing the time spent in moving the payload has been addressed in previous studies, the different heights of the container stacks have not been the focus. In this paper, we perform a change of variable and reformulate the optimization problem to deal with the constraints on the stack heights. As consequence, these constraints become trivial and easy to represent since they turn into bound constraints when the problem is discretized for the numerical solver. To validate the idea, we simulate a small-scale scenario where different stack heights are used. The results confirm our idea and the representation of the stack constraints become indeed trivial. This approach is promising to be applied in real crane operations and has the potential to enhance their automation.

Raman spectroscopy in conjunction with a Coded Aperture Snapshot Spectral Imaging (CASSI) system allows for detection of small amounts of explosives from stand-off distances. The obtained Compressed Sensing (CS) measurements from CASSI consists of mixed spatial and spectral information, from which a HyperSpectral Image (HSI) can be reconstructed. The HSI contains Raman spectra for all spatial locations in the scene, revealing the existence of substances. In this paper we present the possibility of utilizing a learned prior in the form of a conditional generative model for HSI reconstruction using CS. A Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) is trained using simulated samples of HSI, and conditioning on their respective CASSI measurements to refine the prior. Two different types of simulated HSI were investigated, where spatial overlap of substances was either allowed or disallowed. The results show that the developed method produces precise reconstructions of HSI from their CASSI measurements in a matter of seconds.

Linearized Direction of Arrival (LinDoA) is a method for sound source localization that is designed for use with wearable microphone arrays. The method uses a Taylor series expansion of the sound source signal in the time domain to beamform and estimate the direction of arrival. The original method is limited to spatial sampling, but is here generalized to also consider temporal sampling for improved performance and usability. The proposed generalization allows for time-domain formulations of the Delay-and-Sum and Minimum-Variance Distortionless Response beamformers in addition to the original formulation by implementing interpolation and estimating the noise covariance. A number of variants of the method are described and the design choices are discussed. The methods are evaluated on data gathered by a head-worn array in real and simulated experiments and are compared to conventional methods. They are shown to perform on par with conventional methods at a reduced computational cost.

A belief-space planning problem for GNSS-denied areas is studied, where knowledge about the landmark density is used as prior, instead of explicit landmark positions. To get accurate predictions of the future information gained from observations, the probability of detecting landmarks needs to be taken into account in addition to the probability of the existence of landmarks. Furthermore, these probabilities need to be calculated from prior data without knowledge of explicit landmarks. It is shown in this paper how the landmark detection probabilities can be generated for a ground-to-ground LiDAR sensor and integrated in the path-planning problem. Moreover, it is also shown how prior information can be generated for a forest scenario. Lastly, the approach is evaluated in a simulated environment using a real landmark detector applied to a simulated point cloud. Compared to previous approaches, an informative path planner, integrating the proposed approximation, is able to reduce the platform pose uncertainty. This is achieved using only prior aerial data of the environment.

Long-term autonomy of robots requires localization in an inevitably changing environment, where the robots' knowledge about the surroundings are more or less uncertain. Inspired by methods in target tracking, this paper proposes a feature based multi-hypothesis map representation to provide robust localization under these conditions. It is derived how this representation can be used to obtain consistent position estimates while at the same time providing up-to-date map information to be shared by cooperative robots or for visual presentation. Simulations are performed that conceptually highlights the benefit of the developed solution in an environment where uniquely identifiable landmarks are moved between discrete positions. This relates to a real world scenario where a robot moves in a corridor with office doors opened or closed at different times. 

Data fusion in a communication constrained sensor network is considered. The problem is to reduce the dimensionality of the joint state estimate without significantly decreasing the estimation performance. A method based on scalar subspace projections is derived for this purpose. We consider the cases where the estimates to be fused are: (i) uncorrelated, and (ii) correlated. It is shown how the subspaces can be derived using eigenvalue optimization. In the uncorrelated case guarantees on mean square error optimality are provided. In the correlated case an iterative algorithm based on alternating minimization is proposed. The methods are analyzed using parametrized examples. A simulation evaluation shows that the proposed method performs well both for uncorrelated and correlated estimates.

Maritime navigation heavily relies on global navigation satellite systems and related technologies for positioning. Since these technologies are vulnerable to external threats such as signal spoofing, alternatives are needed to increase reliability and ensure safe navigation. Our proposal is to use radar to construct polar amplitude gridmaps tailored for the intended route, and using a particle filter for position estimation. The proposed approach has been successfully demonstrated on data from a surface vessel in the harbor of Helsinki.

A concatenated Friedkin-Johnsen (FJ) model is a two time-scale opinion dynamics model in which stubborn agents discuss a sequence of issues. For each issue, a FJ model is adopted, and concatenation refers to the fact that the final opinion of the agents at issue s becomes the initial condition at issue s + 1. In this paper we deal with the case in which the system is open, i.e., the group of interacting agents changes at each issue, and so does their stubbornness. A concatenated FJ model can in this case be represented as an infinite product of stochastic matrices. For such system, we obtain sufficient conditions under which the opinions of the agents converge to consensus.

The pseudoinverse of a graph Laplacian is used in many applications and fields, such as for instance in the computation of the effective resistance in electrical networks, in the calculation of the hitting/commuting times for a Markov chain and in continuous-time distributed averaging problems. In this paper we show that the Laplacian pseudoinverse is in general not a Laplacian matrix but rather a signed Laplacian with the property of being an eventually exponentially positive matrix, i.e., of obeying a strong Perron-Frobenius property. We show further that the set of signed Laplacians with this structure (i.e., eventual exponential positivity) is closed with respect to matrix pseudoinversion. This is true even for signed digraphs, and provided that we restrict to Laplacians that are weight balanced also stability is guaranteed.

Comprehension of speech in noise is a challenge for hearing-impaired (HI) individuals. Electroencephalography (EEG) provides a tool to investigate the effect of different levels of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the speech. Most studies with EEG have focused on spectral power in well-defined frequency bands such as alpha band. In this study, we investigate how local functional connectivity, i.e. functional connectivity within a localized region of the brain, is affected by two levels of SNR. Twenty-two HI participants performed a continuous speech in noise task at two different SNRs (+3 dB and +8 dB). The local connectivity within eight regions of interest was computed by using a multivariate phase synchrony measure on EEG data. The results showed that phase synchrony increased in the parietal and frontal area as a response to increasing SNR. We contend that local connectivity measures can be used to discriminate between speech-evoked EEG responses at different SNRs.

The unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is a method to solve nonlinear dynamic filtering problems, which internally uses the unscented transform (UT). The behavior of the UT is controlled by design parameters, seldom changed from the values suggested in early UT/UKF publications. Despite the knowledge that the UKF can perform poorly when the parameters are improperly chosen, there exist no wide spread intuitive guidelines for how to tune them. With an application relevant example, this paper shows that standard parameter values can be far from optimal. By analyzing how each parameter affects the resulting UT estimate, guidelines for how the parameter values should be chosen are developed. The guidelines are verified both in simulations and on real data collected in an underground mine. A strategy to automatically tune the parameters in a state estimation setting is presented, resulting in parameter values inline with developed guidelines.

A belief-space planning problem for GNSS-denied areas is studied where the location and number of landmarks available are unknown when performing the planning. To be able to plan an informative path in this situation, an algorithm using virtual landmarks to position the platform during the planning phase is studied.  The virtual landmarks are selected to capture the expected information available in different regions of the map, based on the beforehand known landmark density. The main contribution of this work is a better approximation of the obtained information from the virtual landmarks and a theoretical study of the properties of the approximation. Furthermore, the proposed approximation, in itself and its use in a path planner, is investigated with successful results.

An optical flow inspired magnetic-field based odometry estimation process is presented. The estimation process is based upon taking "image" like measurements of the magnetic-field using a magnetometer array. From the measurements a model of the local field is learned. Using the learned model the pose change that gives the smallest prediction error of the measurement at the next time instant is calculated. Two models for describing the magnetic-field are presented, and the performance of the odometry estimation process when using the two models is evaluated. The evaluation shows that at a high signal-to-noise ratio the pose change can be estimated with an error of only a few percentage of the true pose change. Further, the evaluation shows that the uncertainty of the estimate can be consistently estimated. Thus, the proposed odometry estimation process can be used to reduce the navigation error growth rate of, for example, inertial navigation systems by providing reliable odometry information when passing by magnetized objects.

Reinforcement learning techniques have successfully been applied to solve challenging problems. Among the more famous examples are playing games such as Go and real-time computer games such as StarCraft II. In addition, reinforcement learning has successfully been deployed in cyber-physical systems such as robots playing a curling-based game. These are all important and significant achievements indicating that the techniques can be of value for the aerospace industry. However, to use these techniques in the aerospace industry, very high requirements on verification and validation must be met. In this position paper, we outline four key problems for verification and validation of reinforcement learning techniques. Solving these are an important step towards enabling reinforcement learning techniques to be used in safety critical domains such as the aerospace industry.

Deep state space models (SSMs) are an actively researched model class for temporal models developed in the deep learning community which have a close connection to classic SSMs. The use of deep SSMs as a black-box identification model can describe a wide range of dynamics due to the flexibility of deep neural networks. Additionally, the probabilistic nature of the model class allows the uncertainty of the system to be modelled. In this work a deep SSM class and its parameter learning algorithm are explained in an effort to extend the toolbox of nonlinear identification methods with a deep learning based method. Six recent deep SSMs are evaluated in a first unified implementation on nonlinear system identification benchmarks. Copyright (C) 2021 The Authors.

The selections for the model orders and the number of controller parameters have not been discussed for many data-driven iterative learning control (ILC) methods. If they are not chosen carefully, the estimated model and designed controller will lead to either large variance or large bias. In this paper we try to use the kernel-based regularization method (KRM) to handle the model estimation problem and the controller design problem for unknown repetitive linear time-varying systems. In particular, we have used the diagonal correlated kernel and the marginal likelihood maximization method for the two problems. Numerical simulation results show that smaller mean square errors for each time instant are obtained by using the proposed ILC method in comparison with an existing data-driven ILC approach. Copyright (C) 2021 The Authors.

In this paper we present a distributed second-order augmented Lagrangian method for distributed model predictive control. We distribute the computations for search direction, step size, and termination criteria over what is known as the clique tree of the problem and calculate each of them using message passing. The algorithm converges to its centralized counterpart and it requires fewer communications between sub-systems as compared to algorithms such as the alternating direction method of multipliers. Results from a simulation study confirm the efficiency of the framework. Copyright (C) 2021 The Authors.

The use of the CDIO framework in the development of the ECIU University is presented. The paper discusses the relatively moderate adaptations and modifications of the CDIO Syllabus and Standards that are necessary to make the documents applicable also in this context. Since challenge-based learning (CBL) is central learning format in the ECIU University, special attention is given to the connections between CBL method, the conceive-design-implement-operate sequence and project-based learning, which is central in the CDIO framework. The paper presents both general aspects and examples of the applications and activities within ECIU University and Linköping University (LiU). The main messages of the paper are that the development of the ECIU University will benefit from applying the CDIO framework since it offers references for what an education should give, in terms of knowledge and skills, and how an education program should be designed. In addition, the components of the CDIO framework require a moderate amount of adaptation to be directly applicable. Examples of the ongoing implementation activities at LiU. 

Introduction 

Higher education institutions (HEIs) face challenges assessing the relevance of educational programmes. Upon graduation, the student should have acquired knowledge and understanding, competence and skills as well as good judgement and approaches to operate in a changing labour market. Ideas on new programmes and courses mainly emanate from research findings identified at the HEIs. Needs and expectations from external stakeholders have the potential to further contribute if room for collaboration is created. Extensive rapid societal changes increase this need for collaboration. 

The Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) state that higher education aims to fulfil multiple purposes, including preparing students for active citizenship, future careers, personal development and create a broad, advanced knowledge base and stimulate research and innovation (ENQA, 2015). However, different stakeholders may have other priorities. Therefore, quality assurance needs to take these different perspectives into account. 

Relevance is considered an aspect of quality in higher education, but many HEIs in Sweden lack structures, processes, and methods for assessing relevance and involving stakeholders in these processes.

This project aimed to increase the knowledge and provide methods to systematically assess relevance and use university-industry collaborations as tools for educational development. 

Methods/Approach 

This paper is a summary of the project MERUT focused on methods for assessment of relevance in higher education. The project was carried out during 2017-2020 with financial support from Vinnova (The Swedish Innovation Agency) and involved seven Swedish HEIs. The connection to future career paths is often stated as the primary factor to describe the relevance of educational programmes and was selected as the focus of MERUT. Data have been collected using workshops, meetings, literature reviews, interview studies, and surveys. Important parts of the work have been interviews with external stakeholders in different labour-market areas who, in various ways, are involved in higher education, most often in advisory boards. Also, interviews with quality coordinators at university programmes as well as at faculty and university management levels at each HEI have been carried out.

The seven participating Swedish universities in MERUT have been Karolinska Institutet, Kristianstad University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Mälardalen University, Linköping University, Stockholm University, and Umeå University.

Results The project resulted in knowledge, tools, and methods to work systematically with relevance in higher education. The results can be summarized as follows:

·         Interviews with HEIs showed that they collaborate with external stakeholders in many ways, primarily around teaching and learning and to a lesser extent around programme management and quality assurance. 

·         Further, the involvement of stakeholders varied both between and within the universities (faculties, subject areas, levels of education). Therefore, it is difficult to evaluate, in a systematic way, how collaboration is included in the quality systems of the HEIs. 

·         A toolbox with methods for how to involve external stakeholders in the process of assessing and developing the relevance of a study programme. These methods can be used in continuous quality work, in major curriculum revisions as well as in the establishment of new programmes.

·         A checklist for external stakeholders' involvement in educational development to facilitate and clarify roles, structures, and tasks in connection with external stakeholders in both the development and operational phases of a study programme. 

The results show that there are many similarities between the HEIs in the study in terms of relevance assessment and dimensioning decisions. However, the potential of a systematic collaboration with stakeholders and society for relevance assessment and dimensioning of education is not yet fully being realised. 

Conclusion 

HEIs interact with external stakeholders in many ways within education. However, it is rare to find examples where external stakeholders are involved in the quality assurance process, at least not in a systematic way. The MERUT project has developed recommendations for collaboration perspectives and stakeholder participation in the governing of educational programmes. A systematic dialogue and interaction with stakeholders contribute to a mutual understanding of different stakeholder groups’ needs and expectations, and their view of quality of higher education. Furthermore, to consider relevance as a quality aspect creates a basis for a more methodical assessment process where external stakeholders can contribute in a clear role. MERUT has developed a toolbox and a checklist to facilitate such systematic interaction and collaboration with stakeholder groups. A conclusion of  this project is that a reciprocal, transparent, and systematic approach leads to a sustainable educational collaboration with improved quality and relevance of higher education.

It would constitute a large gain for society if the HEIs are able to systematically and by efficient processes take external stakeholders’ and societal needs and expectations into account when building comprehensive and systematic relevance assessment processes and in dimensioning of education.  

References

European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). (2015). Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG). Brussels, EURASHE.

In this paper, we study the influence of ill-conditioned regression matrix on two hyper-parameter estimation methods for the kernel-based regularization method: the empirical Bayes (EB) and the Steins unbiased risk estimator (SURE). First, we consider the convergence rate of the cost functions of EB and SURE, and we find that they have the same convergence rate but the influence of the ill-conditioned regression matrix on the scale factor are different: for upper bounds, the scale factor for SURE contains one more factor cond(Phi(T)Phi) than that of EB, where Phi is the regression matrix and cond(.) denotes the condition number of a matrix. This finding indicates that when Phi is ill-conditioned, i.e., cond(Phi(T)Phi) is large, the cost function of SURE converges slower than that of EB. Then we consider the convergence rate of the optimal hyper-parameters of EB and SURE, and we find that they are both asymptotically normally distributed and have the same convergence rate, but the influence of the ill-conditioned regression matrix on the scale factor are different. In particular, for the ridge regression case, we show that the optimal hyper-parameter of SURE converges slower than that of EB with a factor of 1/n(2), as cond(Phi(T)Phi) goes to infinity, where n is the FIR model order.

This work introduces antagonistic interactions into the so-called biased assimilation model of opinion dynamics, a nonlinear model expressing the bias of the agents towards their own opinions. In this model, opinions exchanged in a signed network are multiplied by a state dependent term having the bias as exponent. For small values of the bias parameters, while for structurally balanced networks polarization always occurs, we show that for structurally unbalanced networks also a state of indecision (corresponding to the centroid of the opinion hypercube) is a local attractor. When instead the biases are all large, the opinions usually polarize. In particular, for large enough biases if all agents take the same initial stance (i.e., are all on the same side of the indecision state), then the opinions polarize all to the same extreme value for both structurally balanced network and structurally unbalanced network.

Stabilizing multi-steered articulated vehicles in backward motion is a complex task for any human driver. Unless the vehicle is accurately steered, its structurally unstable joint-angle kinematics during reverse maneuvers can cause the vehicle segments to fold and enter a jack-knife state. In this work, a model predictive path-following controller is proposed enabling automatic low-speed steering control of multi-steered articulated vehicles, comprising a car-like tractor and an arbitrary number of trailers with passive or active steering. The proposed path-following controller is tailored to follow nominal paths that contains full state and control-input information, and is designed to satisfy various physical constraints on the vehicle states as well as saturations and rate limitations on the tractors curvature and the trailer steering angles. The performance of the proposed model predictive path-following controller is evaluated in a set of simulations for a multi-steered 2-trailer with a car-like tractor where the last trailer has steerable wheels. Copyright (C) 2020 The Authors.

Maneuvering an articulated vehicle on narrow road stretches is often a challenging task for a human driver. Unless the vehicle is accurately steered, parts of the vehicles bodies may exceed its assigned drive lane, resulting in an increased risk of collision with surrounding traffic. In this work, an optimization-based path-planning algorithm is proposed targeting onroad driving scenarios for articulated vehicles composed of a tractor and a trailer. To this end, we model the tractor-trailer vehicle in a road-aligned coordinate frame suited for on-road planning. Based on driving heuristics, a set of different optimization objectives is proposed, with the overall goal of designing a path planner that computes paths which minimize the off-track of the vehicle bodies swept area, while remaining on the road and avoiding collision with obstacles. The proposed optimization-based path-planning algorithm, together with the different optimization objectives, is evaluated and analyzed in simulations on a set of complicated and practically relevant on-road planning scenarios using the most challenging tractor-trailer dimensions. Copyright (C) 2020 The Authors.

We design, implement and test two control algorithms for autonomously landing a drone on an autonomous boat. The first algorithm uses distributed model predictive control (DMPC), while the second combines a cascade controller with DMPC. The algorithms are implemented on a real drone, while the boats motion is simulated, and their performance is compared to a centralized model predictive controller. Field experiments are performed, where all algorithms show an ability to land while avoiding violation of the safety constraints. The two distributed algorithms further show the ability to use longer prediction horizons than the centralized model predictive controller, especially in the cascade case, and also demonstrate improved robustness towards breaks in communication. Copyright (C) 2020 The Authors.

In this paper we present a method to exactly certify the iteration complexity of a primal active-set algorithm for quadratic programs which is terminated early, given a specific multi-parametric quadratic program. The primal active-set algorithms real-time applicability is, hence, improved by early termination, increasing its computational efficiency, and by the proposed certification method, providing guarantees on worst-case behaviour. The certification method is illustrated on a multi-parametric quadratic program originating from model predictive control of an inverted pendulum, for which the relationship between allowed suboptimality and iterations needed by the primal active-set algorithm is presented. Copyright (C) 2020 The Authors.

This work deals with a class of nonlinear regression models called second-order modulus models. It is shown that the possibility of obtaining consistent parameter estimators for these models depends on how process disturbances enter the system. Two scenarios where consistency can be achieved for instrumental variable estimators despite non-additive system disturbances are demonstrated, both in theory and by simulation examples. Copyright (C) 2020 The Authors.

This paper investigates the impact of addition/removal of edges in complex networks. Growing a network by the addition of edges has for instance been suggested as a way to improve network robustness to external disturbances. Moreover, when network controllability is considered, designing edge additions is a promising alternative to add more actuation capabilities in order to improve different performance metrics. We quantify the impact of an edge modification with the H-infinity and H-2 norms. For networks with positive edge weights we show how the H-infinity norm can be computed exactly for each possible single edge modification, while for the H-2 norm we instead obtain a lower bound. This bound is linked to the trace of the controllability Gramian, hence it can be used for instance to reduce the energy needed for control. Copyright (C) 2020 The Authors.

The prediction uncertainty of a neural network is considered from a classical system identification point of view. To know this uncertainty is extremely important when using a network in decision and feedback applications. The asymptotic covariance of the internal parameters in the network due to noise in the observed dependent variables (output) and model class mismatch, i.e., the true system cannot be exactly described by the model class, is first surveyed. This is then applied to the prediction step of the network to get a closed form expression for the asymptotic, in training data information, prediction variance. Another interpretation of this expression is as the non-asymptotic Cramér-Rao Lower Bound. To approximate this expression, only the gradients and residuals, already computed in the gradient descent algorithms commonly used to train neural networks, are needed. Using a toy example, it is illustrated how the uncertainty in the output of a neural network can be estimated.

The task of maneuvering ships in confined environments is a difficult task for a human operator. One major reason is due to the complex and slow dynamics of the ship which need to be accounted for in order to successfully steer the vehicle. In this work, a two-step optimization-based motion planner is proposed for autonomous maneuvering of ships in constrained environments such as harbors. A lattice-based motion planner is used in a first step to compute a feasible, but suboptimal solution to a discretized version of the motion planning problem. This solution is then used to enable efficient warm-start and as a terminal manifold for a second recedinghorizon improvement step. Both steps of the algorithm use a high-fidelity model of the ship to plan feasible and energy-efficient trajectories. Moreover, a novel algorithm is proposed for automatic computation of spatial safety envelopes around the trajectory computed by the lattice-based planner. These safety envelopes are used in the second improvement step to obtain collision-avoidance constraints which complexity scales very well with an increased number of surrounding obstacles. The proposed optimization-based motion planner is evaluated with successful results in a simulation study for autonomous docking problems in a model of the Cape Town harbor.