African Bison Optimization Algorithm:A New Bio-Inspired Optimizer with Engineering Applications

This paper introduces the African Bison Optimization(ABO)algorithm,which is based on biological population.ABO is inspired by the survival behaviors of the African bison,including foraging,bathing,jousting,mating,and eliminating.The foraging behavior prompts the bison to seek a richer food source for survival.When bison find a food source,they stick around for a while by bathing behavior.The jousting behavior makes bison stand out in the population,then the winner gets the chance to produce offspring in the mating behavior.The eliminating behavior causes the old or injured bison to be weeded out from the herd,thus maintaining the excellent individuals.The above behaviors are translated into ABO by mathematical modeling.To assess the reliability and performance of ABO,it is evaluated on a diverse set of 23 benchmark functions and applied to solve five practical engineering problems with constraints.The findings from the simulation demonstrate that ABO exhibits superior and more competitive performance by effectively managing the trade-off between exploration and exploitation when compared with the other nine popular metaheuristics algorithms.

Multi-Objective Optimization of Multi-Product Parallel Disassembly Line Balancing Problem Considering Multi-Skilled Workers Using a Discrete Chemical Reaction Optimization Algorithm

This work investigates a multi-product parallel disassembly line balancing problem considering multi-skilled workers.A mathematical model for the parallel disassembly line is established to achieve maximized disassembly profit and minimized workstation cycle time.Based on a product’s AND/OR graph,matrices for task-skill,worker-skill,precedence relationships,and disassembly correlations are developed.A multi-objective discrete chemical reaction optimization algorithm is designed.To enhance solution diversity,improvements are made to four reactions:decomposition,synthesis,intermolecular ineffective collision,and wall invalid collision reaction,completing the evolution of molecular individuals.The established model and improved algorithm are applied to ball pen,flashlight,washing machine,and radio combinations,respectively.Introducing a Collaborative Resource Allocation(CRA)strategy based on a Decomposition-Based Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm,the experimental results are compared with four classical algorithms:MOEA/D,MOEAD-CRA,Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm Ⅱ(NSGA-Ⅱ),and Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm Ⅲ(NSGA-Ⅲ).This validates the feasibility and superiority of the proposed algorithm in parallel disassembly production lines.

Dynamic Hand Gesture Recognition Based on Short-Term Sampling Neural Networks

Hand gestures are a natural way for human-robot interaction.Vision based dynamic hand gesture recognition has become a hot research topic due to its various applications.This paper presents a novel deep learning network for hand gesture recognition.The network integrates several well-proved modules together to learn both short-term and long-term features from video inputs and meanwhile avoid intensive computation.To learn short-term features,each video input is segmented into a fixed number of frame groups.A frame is randomly selected from each group and represented as an RGB image as well as an optical flow snapshot.These two entities are fused and fed into a convolutional neural network(Conv Net)for feature extraction.The Conv Nets for all groups share parameters.To learn longterm features,outputs from all Conv Nets are fed into a long short-term memory(LSTM)network,by which a final classification result is predicted.The new model has been tested with two popular hand gesture datasets,namely the Jester dataset and Nvidia dataset.Comparing with other models,our model produced very competitive results.The robustness of the new model has also been proved with an augmented dataset with enhanced diversity of hand gestures.

A Simulation Engine for Stochastic Timed Petri Nets and Application to Emergency Healthcare Systems

In many service delivery systems,the quantity of available resources is often a decisive factor of service quality.Resources can be personnel,offices,devices,supplies,and so on,depending on the nature of the services a system provides.Although service computing has been an active research topic for decades,general approaches that assess the impact of resource provisioning on service quality matrices in a rigorous way remain to be seen.Petri nets have been a popular formalism for modeling systems exhibiting behaviors of competition and concurrency for almost a half century.Stochastic timed Petri nets(STPN),an extension to regular Petri nets,are a powerful tool for system performance evaluation.However,we did not find any single existing STPN software tool that supports all timed transition firing policies and server types,not to mention resource provisioning and requirement analysis.This paper presents a generic and resource oriented STPN simulation engine that provides all critical features necessary for the analysis of service delivery system quality vs.resource provisioning.The power of the simulation system is illustrated by an application to emergency health care systems.

A Cooperative Location Management Scheme for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a kind of wireless ad hoc network. It is a self-configuring network of mobile routers connected by wireless links. Since MANETs do not have a fixed infrastructure, it is a chal-lenge to design a location management scheme that is both scalable and cost-efficient. In this paper, we propose a cooperative location management scheme, called CooLMS, for MANETs. CooLMS combines the strength of grid based location management and pointer forwarding strategy to achieve high scalability and low signaling cost. An indepth formal analysis of the location management cost of CooLMS is presented. In particular, the total location management cost of mobile nodes moving at variable velocity is estimated using the Gauss_Markov mobility model for the correlation of mobility velocities. Simulation results show CooLMS performs better than other schemes under certain circumstances.

Using the Power Control and Cooperative Communication for Energy Saving in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper, we investigate the energy saving problem in mobile ad hoc network, and give out an improved variable-range transmission power control algorithm based on minimum spanning tree algorithm (MST). Using previous work by Gomez and Campbell [1], we show that in consider of node's mobility, the previous variable-range transmission power control based on minimum spanning tree algorithm can not support nodes' mobility in mobile ad hoc network. For this reason, we give out an improved variable-range transmission power control algorithm to support node's mobility and solve asymmetric graph problem. To save more energy without changing the topology of the network, we give out two new data transmission mechanisms based on the idea of cooperative communication. The results of this paper enhance the possibility of using variable-range transmission power control in mobile ad hoc networks.

Parallel intelligent education with ChatGPT

This paper presents a framework for parallel intelligent education that involves physical and virtual learning for a personalized learning experience.We especially focus on Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer(ChatGPT)owing to its considerable potential to supplement regular class learning.We address the strengths and weaknesses of learning with ChatGPT.Finally,we discuss the challenges and solutions of the proposed parallel intelligent education with ChatGPT.

Probabilistic Automata-Based Method for Enhancing Performance of Deep Reinforcement Learning Systems

Deep reinforcement learning(DRL) has demonstrated significant potential in industrial manufacturing domains such as workshop scheduling and energy system management.However, due to the model's inherent uncertainty, rigorous validation is requisite for its application in real-world tasks. Specific tests may reveal inadequacies in the performance of pre-trained DRL models, while the “black-box” nature of DRL poses a challenge for testing model behavior. We propose a novel performance improvement framework based on probabilistic automata,which aims to proactively identify and correct critical vulnerabilities of DRL systems, so that the performance of DRL models in real tasks can be improved with minimal model modifications.First, a probabilistic automaton is constructed from the historical trajectory of the DRL system by abstracting the state to generate probabilistic decision-making units(PDMUs), and a reverse breadth-first search(BFS) method is used to identify the key PDMU-action pairs that have the greatest impact on adverse outcomes. This process relies only on the state-action sequence and final result of each trajectory. Then, under the key PDMU, we search for the new action that has the greatest impact on favorable results. Finally, the key PDMU, undesirable action and new action are encapsulated as monitors to guide the DRL system to obtain more favorable results through real-time monitoring and correction mechanisms. Evaluations in two standard reinforcement learning environments and three actual job scheduling scenarios confirmed the effectiveness of the method, providing certain guarantees for the deployment of DRL models in real-world applications.

A Transfer Learning Framework for Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

Dear Editor,This letter presents a new transfer learning framework for the deep multi-agent reinforcement learning(DMARL) to reduce the convergence difficulty and training time when applying DMARL to a new scenario [1], [2].

Deep Learning Based Hand Gesture Recognition and UAV Flight Controls

Dynamic hand gesture recognition is a desired alternative means for human-computer interactions.This paper presents a hand gesture recognition system that is designed for the control of flights of unmanned aerial vehicles(UAV).A data representation model that represents a dynamic gesture sequence by converting the 4-D spatiotemporal data to 2-D matrix and a 1-D array is introduced.To train the system to recognize designed gestures,skeleton data collected from a Leap Motion Controller are converted to two different data models.As many as 9124 samples of the training dataset,1938 samples of the testing dataset are created to train and test the proposed three deep learning neural networks,which are a 2-layer fully connected neural network,a 5-layer fully connected neural network and an 8-layer convolutional neural network.The static testing results show that the 2-layer fully connected neural network achieves an average accuracy of 96.7%on scaled datasets and 12.3%on non-scaled datasets.The 5-layer fully connected neural network achieves an average accuracy of 98.0%on scaled datasets and 89.1%on non-scaled datasets.The 8-layer convolutional neural network achieves an average accuracy of 89.6%on scaled datasets and 96.9%on non-scaled datasets.Testing on a drone-kit simulator and a real drone shows that this system is feasible for drone flight controls.