TEDNet: Twin Encoder Decoder Neural Network for 2D Camera and LiDAR Road Detection

Robust road surface estimation is required for autonomous ground vehicles to navigate safely. Despite it becoming one of the main targets for autonomous mobility researchers in recent years, it is still an open problem in which cameras and LiDAR sensors have demonstrated to be adequate to predict the position, size and shape of the road a vehicle is driving on in different environments. In this work, a novel Convolutional Neural Network model is proposed for the accurate estimation of the roadway surface. Furthermore, an ablation study has been conducted to investigate how different encoding strategies affect model performance, testing 6 slightly different neural network architectures. Our model is based on the use of a Twin Encoder-Decoder Neural Network (TEDNet) for independent camera and LiDAR feature extraction, and has been trained and evaluated on the Kitti-Road dataset. Bird's Eye View projections of the camera and LiDAR data are used in this model to perform semantic segmentation on whether each pixel belongs to the road surface. The proposed method performs among other state-of-the-art methods and operates at the same frame-rate as the LiDAR and cameras, so it is adequate for its use in real-time applications.

Enhancing ASD detection accuracy: a combined approach of machine learning and deep learning models with natural language processing

Purpose: Our study explored the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to diagnose autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It focused on machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) to detect ASD from text inputs on social media, addressing challenges in traditional ASD diagnosis. Methods: We used natural language processing (NLP), ML, and DL models (including decision trees, XGB, KNN, RNN, LSTM, Bi-LSTM, BERT, and BERTweet) to analyze 404,627 tweets, classifying them based on ASD or non-ASD authors. A subset of 90,000 tweets was used for model training and testing. Results: Our AI models showed high accuracy, with an 88% success rate in identifying texts from individuals with ASD. Conclusion: The study demonstrates AI's potential in improving ASD diagnosis, especially in children, highlighting the importance of early detection.

Heart disease risk prediction using deep learning techniques with feature augmentation

Cardiovascular diseases state as one of the greatest risks of death for the general population. Late detection in heart diseases highly conditions the chances of survival for patients. Age, sex, cholesterol level, sugar level, heart rate, among other factors, are known to have an influence on life-threatening heart problems, but, due to the high amount of variables, it is often difficult for an expert to evaluate each patient taking this information into account. In this manuscript, the authors propose using deep learning methods, combined with feature augmentation techniques for evaluating whether patients are at risk of suffering cardiovascular disease. The results of the proposed methods outperform other state of the art methods by 4.4%, leading to a precision of a 90%, which presents a significant improvement, even more so when it comes to an affliction that affects a large population.