A Survey on Robotic Prosthetics: Neuroprosthetics, Soft Actuators, and Control Strategies

The field of robotics is a quickly evolving feat of technology that accepts contributions from various genres of science. Neuroscience, Physiology, Chemistry, Material science, Computer science, and the wide umbrella of mechatronics have all simultaneously contributed to many innovations in the prosthetic applications of robotics. This review begins with a discussion of the scope of the term robotic prosthetics and discusses the evolving domain of Neuroprosthetics. The discussion is then constrained to focus on various actuation and control strategies for robotic prosthetic limbs. This review discusses various soft robotic actuators such as EAP, SMA, FFA, etc., and the merits of such actuators over conventional hard robotic actuators. Options in control strategies for robotic prosthetics, that are in various states of research and development, are reviewed. This paper concludes the discussion with an analysis regarding the prospective direction in which this field of robotic prosthetics is evolving in terms of actuation, control, and other features relevant to artificial limbs. This paper intends to review some of the emerging research and development trends in the field of robotic prosthetics and summarize many tangents that are represented under this broad domain in an approachable manner.

Estimation of Electronic Band Gap Energy From Material Properties Using Machine Learning

Machine learning techniques are utilized to estimate the electronic band gap energy and forecast the band gap category of materials based on experimentally quantifiable properties. The determination of band gap energy is critical for discerning various material properties, such as its metallic nature, and potential applications in electronic and optoelectronic devices. While numerical methods exist for computing band gap energy, they often entail high computational costs and have limitations in accuracy and scalability. A machine learning-driven model capable of swiftly predicting material band gap energy using easily obtainable experimental properties would offer a superior alternative to conventional density functional theory (DFT) methods. Our model does not require any preliminary DFT-based calculation or knowledge of the structure of the material. We present a scheme for improving the performance of simple regression and classification models by partitioning the dataset into multiple clusters. A new evaluation scheme for comparing the performance of ML-based models in material sciences involving both regression and classification tasks is introduced based on traditional evaluation metrics. It is shown that on this new evaluation metric, our method of clustering the dataset results in better performance.

Enhancing Neural Theorem Proving through Data Augmentation and Dynamic Sampling Method

Theorem proving is a fundamental task in mathematics. With the advent of large language models (LLMs) and interactive theorem provers (ITPs) like Lean, there has been growing interest in integrating LLMs and ITPs to automate theorem proving. In this approach, the LLM generates proof steps (tactics), and the ITP checks the applicability of the tactics at the current goal. The two systems work together to complete the proof. In this paper, we introduce DS-Prover, a novel dynamic sampling method for theorem proving. This method dynamically determines the number of tactics to apply to expand the current goal, taking into account the remaining time compared to the total allocated time for proving a theorem. This makes the proof search process more efficient by adjusting the balance between exploration and exploitation as time passes. We also augment the training dataset by decomposing simplification and rewrite tactics with multiple premises into tactics with single premises. This gives the model more examples to learn from and helps it to predict the tactics with premises more accurately. We perform our experiments using the Mathlib dataset of the Lean theorem prover and report the performance on two standard datasets, MiniF2F and ProofNet. Our methods achieve significant performance gains on both datasets. We achieved a state-of-the-art performance (Pass@1) of 14.2% on the ProofNet dataset and a performance of 29.8% on MiniF2F, slightly surpassing the best-reported Pass@1 of 29.6% using Lean.

IndoorGNN: A Graph Neural Network based approach for Indoor Localization using WiFi RSSI

Indoor localization is the process of determining the location of a person or object inside a building. Potential usage of indoor localization includes navigation, personalization, safety and security, and asset tracking. Commonly used technologies for indoor localization include WiFi, Bluetooth, RFID, and Ultra-wideband. Among these, WiFi's Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI)-based localization is preferred because of widely available WiFi Access Points (APs). We have two main contributions. First, we develop our method, 'IndoorGNN' which involves using a Graph Neural Network (GNN) based algorithm in a supervised manner to classify a specific location into a particular region based on the RSSI values collected at that location. Most of the ML algorithms that perform this classification require a large number of labeled data points (RSSI vectors with location information). Collecting such data points is a labor-intensive and time-consuming task. To overcome this challenge, as our second contribution, we demonstrate the performance of IndoorGNN on the restricted dataset. It shows a comparable prediction accuracy to that of the complete dataset. We performed experiments on the UJIIndoorLoc and MNAV datasets, which are real-world standard indoor localization datasets. Our experiments show that IndoorGNN gives better location prediction accuracies when compared with state-of-the-art existing conventional as well as GNN-based methods for this same task. It continues to outperform these algorithms even with restricted datasets. It is noteworthy that its performance does not decrease a lot with a decrease in the number of available data points. Our method can be utilized for navigation and wayfinding in complex indoor environments, asset tracking and building management, enhancing mobile applications with location-based services, and improving safety and security during emergencies.

Perceiving University Student's Opinions from Google App Reviews

Google app market captures the school of thought of users from every corner of the globe via ratings and text reviews, in a multilinguistic arena. The potential information from the reviews cannot be extracted manually, due to its exponential growth. So, Sentiment analysis, by machine learning and deep learning algorithms employing NLP, explicitly uncovers and interprets the emotions. This study performs the sentiment classification of the app reviews and identifies the university student's behavior towards the app market via exploratory analysis. We applied machine learning algorithms using the TP, TF, and TF IDF text representation scheme and evaluated its performance on Bagging, an ensemble learning method. We used word embedding, Glove, on the deep learning paradigms. Our model was trained on Google app reviews and tested on Student's App Reviews(SAR). The various combinations of these algorithms were compared amongst each other using F score and accuracy and inferences were highlighted graphically. SVM, amongst other classifiers, gave fruitful accuracy(93.41%), F score(89%) on bigram and TF IDF scheme. Bagging enhanced the performance of LR and NB with accuracy of 87.88% and 86.69% and F score of 86% and 78% respectively. Overall, LSTM on Glove embedding recorded the highest accuracy(95.2%) and F score(88%).

Tirtha -- An Automated Platform to Crowdsource Images and Create 3D Models of Heritage Sites

Digital preservation of Cultural Heritage (CH) sites is crucial to protect them against damage from natural disasters or human activities. Creating 3D models of CH sites has become a popular method of digital preservation thanks to advancements in computer vision and photogrammetry. However, the process is time-consuming, expensive, and typically requires specialized equipment and expertise, posing challenges in resource-limited developing countries. Additionally, the lack of an open repository for 3D models hinders research and public engagement with their heritage. To address these issues, we propose Tirtha, a web platform for crowdsourcing images of CH sites and creating their 3D models. Tirtha utilizes state-of-the-art Structure from Motion (SfM) and Multi-View Stereo (MVS) techniques. It is modular, extensible and cost-effective, allowing for the incorporation of new techniques as photogrammetry advances. Tirtha is accessible through a web interface at https://tirtha.niser.ac.in and can be deployed on-premise or in a cloud environment. In our case studies, we demonstrate the pipeline's effectiveness by creating 3D models of temples in Odisha, India, using crowdsourced images. These models are available for viewing, interaction, and download on the Tirtha website. Our work aims to provide a dataset of crowdsourced images and 3D reconstructions for research in computer vision, heritage conservation, and related domains. Overall, Tirtha is a step towards democratizing digital preservation, primarily in resource-limited developing countries.

Neural Networks at a Fraction with Pruned Quaternions

Contemporary state-of-the-art neural networks have increasingly large numbers of parameters, which prevents their deployment on devices with limited computational power. Pruning is one technique to remove unnecessary weights and reduce resource requirements for training and inference. In addition, for ML tasks where the input data is multi-dimensional, using higher-dimensional data embeddings such as complex numbers or quaternions has been shown to reduce the parameter count while maintaining accuracy. In this work, we conduct pruning on real and quaternion-valued implementations of different architectures on classification tasks. We find that for some architectures, at very high sparsity levels, quaternion models provide higher accuracies than their real counterparts. For example, at the task of image classification on CIFAR-10 using Conv-4, at $3\%$ of the number of parameters as the original model, the pruned quaternion version outperforms the pruned real by more than $10\%$. Experiments on various network architectures and datasets show that for deployment in extremely resource-constrained environments, a sparse quaternion network might be a better candidate than a real sparse model of similar architecture.

Neural directional distance field object representation for uni-directional path-traced rendering

Faster rendering of synthetic images is a core problem in the field of computer graphics. Rendering algorithms, such as path-tracing is dependent on parameters like size of the image, number of light bounces, number of samples per pixel, all of which, are fixed if one wants to obtain a image of a desired quality. It is also dependent on the size and complexity of the scene being rendered. One of the largest bottleneck in rendering, particularly when the scene is very large, is querying for objects in the path of a given ray in the scene. By changing the data type that represents the objects in the scene, one may reduce render time, however, a different representation of a scene requires the modification of the rendering algorithm. In this paper, (a) we introduce directed distance field, as a functional representation of a object; (b) how the directed distance functions, when stored as a neural network, be optimized and; (c) how such an object can be rendered with a modified path-tracing algorithm.

A Comparative Study of Face Detection Algorithms for Masked Face Detection

Contemporary face detection algorithms have to deal with many challenges such as variations in pose, illumination, and scale. A subclass of the face detection problem that has recently gained increasing attention is occluded face detection, or more specifically, the detection of masked faces. Three years on since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is still a complete lack of evidence regarding how well existing face detection algorithms perform on masked faces. This article first offers a brief review of state-of-the-art face detectors and detectors made for the masked face problem, along with a review of the existing masked face datasets. We evaluate and compare the performances of a well-representative set of face detectors at masked face detection and conclude with a discussion on the possible contributing factors to their performance.

3D GANs and Latent Space: A comprehensive survey

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have emerged as a significant player in generative modeling by mapping lower-dimensional random noise to higher-dimensional spaces. These networks have been used to generate high-resolution images and 3D objects. The efficient modeling of 3D objects and human faces is crucial in the development process of 3D graphical environments such as games or simulations. 3D GANs are a new type of generative model used for 3D reconstruction, point cloud reconstruction, and 3D semantic scene completion. The choice of distribution for noise is critical as it represents the latent space. Understanding a GAN's latent space is essential for fine-tuning the generated samples, as demonstrated by the morphing of semantically meaningful parts of images. In this work, we explore the latent space and 3D GANs, examine several GAN variants and training methods to gain insights into improving 3D GAN training, and suggest potential future directions for further research.