Evaluating the Energy Efficiency of Few-Shot Learning for Object Detection in Industrial Settings

In the ever-evolving era of Artificial Intelligence (AI), model performance has constituted a key metric driving innovation, leading to an exponential growth in model size and complexity. However, sustainability and energy efficiency have been critical requirements during deployment in contemporary industrial settings, necessitating the use of data-efficient approaches such as few-shot learning. In this paper, to alleviate the burden of lengthy model training and minimize energy consumption, a finetuning approach to adapt standard object detection models to downstream tasks is examined. Subsequently, a thorough case study and evaluation of the energy demands of the developed models, applied in object detection benchmark datasets from volatile industrial environments is presented. Specifically, different finetuning strategies as well as utilization of ancillary evaluation data during training are examined, and the trade-off between performance and efficiency is highlighted in this low-data regime. Finally, this paper introduces a novel way to quantify this trade-off through a customized Efficiency Factor metric.

Toward Green and Human-Like Artificial Intelligence: A Complete Survey on Contemporary Few-Shot Learning Approaches

Despite deep learning's widespread success, its data-hungry and computationally expensive nature makes it impractical for many data-constrained real-world applications. Few-Shot Learning (FSL) aims to address these limitations by enabling rapid adaptation to novel learning tasks, seeing significant growth in recent years. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of the field's latest advancements. Initially, FSL is formally defined, and its relationship with different learning fields is presented. A novel taxonomy is introduced, extending previously proposed ones, and real-world applications in classic and novel fields are described. Finally, recent trends shaping the field, outstanding challenges, and promising future research directions are discussed.

Evaluation of Environmental Conditions on Object Detection using Oriented Bounding Boxes for AR Applications

The objective of augmented reality (AR) is to add digital content to natural images and videos to create an interactive experience between the user and the environment. Scene analysis and object recognition play a crucial role in AR, as they must be performed quickly and accurately. In this study, a new approach is proposed that involves using oriented bounding boxes with a detection and recognition deep network to improve performance and processing time. The approach is evaluated using two datasets: a real image dataset (DOTA dataset) commonly used for computer vision tasks, and a synthetic dataset that simulates different environmental, lighting, and acquisition conditions. The focus of the evaluation is on small objects, which are difficult to detect and recognise. The results indicate that the proposed approach tends to produce better Average Precision and greater accuracy for small objects in most of the tested conditions.

Multimodal Explainable Artificial Intelligence: A Comprehensive Review of Methodological Advances and Future Research Directions

The current study focuses on systematically analyzing the recent advances in the field of Multimodal eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (MXAI). In particular, the relevant primary prediction tasks and publicly available datasets are initially described. Subsequently, a structured presentation of the MXAI methods of the literature is provided, taking into account the following criteria: a) The number of the involved modalities, b) The stage at which explanations are produced, and c) The type of the adopted methodology (i.e. mathematical formalism). Then, the metrics used for MXAI evaluation are discussed. Finally, a comprehensive analysis of current challenges and future research directions is provided.

Localization as a key enabler of 6G wireless systems: A comprehensive survey and an outlook

When fully implemented, sixth generation (6G) wireless systems will constitute intelligent wireless networks that enable not only ubiquitous communication but also high-accuracy localization services. They will be the driving force behind this transformation by introducing a new set of characteristics and service capabilities in which location will coexist with communication while sharing available resources. To that purpose, this survey investigates the envisioned applications and use cases of localization in future 6G wireless systems, while analyzing the impact of the major technology enablers. Afterwards, system models for millimeter wave, terahertz and visible light positioning that take into account both line-of-sight (LOS) and non-LOS channels are presented, while localization key performance indicators are revisited alongside mathematical definitions. Moreover, a detailed review of the state of the art conventional and learning-based localization techniques is conducted. Furthermore, the localization problem is formulated, the wireless system design is considered and the optimization of both is investigated. Finally, insights that arise from the presented analysis are summarized and used to highlight the most important future directions for localization in 6G wireless systems.

Large Scale Global Optimization Algorithms for IoT Networks: A Comparative Study

The advent of Internet of Things (IoT) has bring a new era in communication technology by expanding the current inter-networking services and enabling the machine-to-machine communication. IoT massive deployments will create the problem of optimal power allocation. The objective of the optimization problem is to obtain a feasible solution that minimizes the total power consumption of the WSN, when the error probability at the fusion center meets certain criteria. This work studies the optimization of a wireless sensor network (WNS) at higher dimensions by focusing to the power allocation of decentralized detection. More specifically, we apply and compare four algorithms designed to tackle Large scale global optimization (LGSO) problems. These are the memetic linear population size reduction and semi-parameter adaptation (MLSHADE-SPA), the contribution-based cooperative coevolution recursive differential grouping (CBCC-RDG3), the differential grouping with spectral clustering-differential evolution cooperative coevolution (DGSC-DECC), and the enhanced adaptive differential evolution (EADE). To the best of the authors knowledge, this is the first time that LGSO algorithms are applied to the optimal power allocation problem in IoT networks. We evaluate the algorithms performance in several different cases by applying them in cases with 300, 600 and 800 dimensions.

The evolution of argumentation mining: From models to social media and emerging tools

Argumentation mining is a rising subject in the computational linguistics domain focusing on extracting structured arguments from natural text, often from unstructured or noisy text. The initial approaches on modeling arguments was aiming to identify a flawless argument on specific fields (Law, Scientific Papers) serving specific needs (completeness, effectiveness). With the emerge of Web 2.0 and the explosion in the use of social media both the diffusion of the data and the argument structure have changed. In this survey article, we bridge the gap between theoretical approaches of argumentation mining and pragmatic schemes that satisfy the needs of social media generated data, recognizing the need for adapting more flexible and expandable schemes, capable to adjust to the argumentation conditions that exist in social media. We review, compare, and classify existing approaches, techniques and tools, identifying the positive outcome of combining tasks and features, and eventually propose a conceptual architecture framework. The proposed theoretical framework is an argumentation mining scheme able to identify the distinct sub-tasks and capture the needs of social media text, revealing the need for adopting more flexible and extensible frameworks.

Smart IoT Cameras for Crowd Analysis based on augmentation for automatic pedestrian detection, simulation and annotation

Smart video sensors for applications related to surveillance and security are IOT-based as they use Internet for various purposes. Such applications include crowd behaviour monitoring and advanced decision support systems operating and transmitting information over internet. The analysis of crowd and pedestrian behaviour is an important task for smart IoT cameras and in particular video processing. In order to provide related behavioural models, simulation and tracking approaches have been considered in the literature. In both cases ground truth is essential to train deep models and provide a meaningful quantitative evaluation. We propose a framework for crowd simulation and automatic data generation and annotation that supports multiple cameras and multiple targets. The proposed approach is based on synthetically generated human agents, augmented frames and compositing techniques combined with path finding and planning methods. A number of popular crowd and pedestrian data sets were used to validate the model, and scenarios related to annotation and simulation were considered.