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Grid-interactive building control poses a critical challenge in the context of grid modernization and decarbonization. Recently, various artificial intelligence-based optimal control approaches have been proposed, providing innovative solutions to optimal building control problems. However, researchers and practitioners are now confronted with a dilemma when selecting appropriate control strategies, ranging from model-based (knowledge-incorporating) to learning-based (data-driven) approaches, and hybrid methods combining them. Although each algorithm in existing literature claims superiority over specific baselines, their performance has never been systematically compared and analyzed, owing to the absence of a unified platform for comprehensive evaluation. To fill this knowledge gap, we identify and implement all state-of-the-art approaches within a modular training and evaluation framework, assessing their efficacy in a grid-interactive building control problem. In this paper, we also introduce a streamlined hybrid method that complements existing hybrid approaches. Our comparative study reveals and quantifies the advantages of hybrid methods: on average, they achieve near-optimal control while requiring less than 14% of the online computation of traditional model-based methods. To achieve this performance, they need as few as 2% of the training samples of purely learning-based methods. Finally, we provide insights into the merits, limitations, and implementation of each method to help researchers better understand the state of the art and future directions. The software framework implemented in this study is open-sourced to facilitate future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, intelligent optimization has become a science that few researchers have not used in dealing with problems in their field. Diversity and flexibility have made the use, efficiency, and usefulness of various nature-inspired optimization methods, such as evolutionary and meta-heuristic algorithms, more evident in such problems. This work first provides a comprehensive overview of all considerations governing various optimization problems with detailed corresponding categories. Then, the most comprehensive review and recent methods (during 1965–2022) are presented in evolution-based, swarm-based, physics-based, human-based, and hybrid-based categories. More than 320 new algorithms have been reviewed. All specifications including authors, year, abbreviation, inspired source, controls, and their application are considered in this regard. Statistical analyzes of papers and publishers, annually and for 57 years, along with their ranking, are also examined in detail. Among the key achievements of the paper include: the most number of algorithms with 47.71% (156 methods) have been from the swarm category, and most of them were published in the five years of 2021 (72, 22.02%), 2020 (39, 11.93%), 2022 (31, 9.48%), 2019 (26, 7.95%), and 2016 (21, 6.42%) respectively; the top five rankings of publishers of reviewed algorithms/papers were also: "Proceedings of the Congress" (33, 10.09%), "Applied Soft Computing" (19, 5.81%), "Expert Systems with Applications" (18, 5.51%), "Knowledge-Based Systems" (12, 3.67%), "Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence" (12, 3.67%), "Advances in Engineering Software" (12, 3.67%), " Neural Computing and Applications " (12, 3.67%), and " Information Sciences " (11, 3.36%). The paper's data is available at: https://github.com/ali-ece. [Display omitted] • A detailed overview of optimization and its variants. • A literature review on state-of-the-art algorithms from 1965 to 2022. • Statistical analyzes and explanations in each year and during the 57 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detection transformer (DETR) combines convolutional neural network (CNN) with transformer, providing a more advanced idea. In this paper, an object detection model based on DETR is proposed for fire and smoke detection. Compared with other methods that based on deep learning, the proposed one simplifies the pipeline of detection and builds an end-to-end detector. At the same time, the original DETR model usually requires long training time and large amount of computation, resulting in relatively poor performance in detection speed and accuracy, and it shows to be not friendly for small or early fire detection. Therefore, when designing the proposed network model, a normalization-based attention module is added in the feature extraction stage to highlight the effective features, being beneficial to the process of encoding. A multiscale deformable attention is also used in the encoder–decoder structure, accelerating therefore, the process of convergence during the training of the model, which includes the enhancement of the detection of small objects. Also, considering the cost of computation, the number of layers in the encoder–decoder structure is redefined to reduce the complexity of the model, and that also reduces the requirements of the application equipment. Detailed experiments are conducted on three self-built datasets and two public video sets. The results show that, the proposed method has an excellent performance on all of the datasets considered here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The growing popularity of tablet PCs and intelligent pen-centric computing has increased the importance of freehand sketch recognition algorithms. In this paper, the proposed method integrates the temporal, spatial and geometric constraint information to improve the recognition accuracy. To interpret the sketch as an incremental process, the paper investigates the use of the information fusion technique with Support Vector Machines (SVMs) chain for modeling and understanding the spatial and temporal information of sketch sequences. Online sketch recognition is achieved through the use of the SVMs-chain for systematically modeling the dynamic and stochastic behaviors of the sketch. To validate its efficiency, the experimental results in various domains and the comparison with traditional Hidden Markov Models have been presented. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Forest fire occurrence prediction plays a major role in resource allocation, mitigation and recovery efforts. This paper compares two artificial intelligence based methods, artificial neural networks (ANN) and support vector machines (SVM), utilizing a reduced set of weather parameters. Using a reduced set of parameters results in an efficient and reduced cost prediction system especially for developing countries. In this paper the aim is to predict forest fire occurrence by reducing the number of monitored features, and eliminating the need for weather prediction mechanisms. The reason is to reduce errors due to inaccuracies in weather prediction. The challenge is to choose a limited number of easily measurable features in the aim of reducing the cost of the system and its maintenance. At the same time, the chosen features must have a high correlation with the risk of fire occurrence. A literature review of forest fire prediction methods divided into systems/indices, and artificial intelligence is provided. The two fire danger prediction algorithms utilize relative humidity and cumulative precipitation to output a risk estimate. The assessment of these algorithms, using data from Lebanon, demonstrated their ability to accurately predict the risk of fire occurrence on a scale of four levels. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents a core vector machine (CVM)-based algorithm for on-line voltage security assessment of power systems. To classify the system security status, a CVM has been trained for each contingency. The proposed CVM-based security assessment has very small training time and space in comparison with support vector machines (SVM) and artificial neural networks (ANNs)-based algorithms. The proposed algorithm produces less support vectors (SV) and therefore is faster than existing algorithms. In this paper, a new decision tree (DT)-based feature selection technique has been presented, too. The proposed CVM algorithm has been applied to New England 39-bus power system. The simulation results show the effectiveness and the stability of the proposed method for on-line voltage security assessment procedure of large-scale power system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Text understanding and reasoning are among the core areas of artificial intelligence. Even a total solution to automatic text understanding and reasoning is still beyond the current techniques, thus it is time to build the stepping stones to solve a more straightforward problem set like question-answering (QA) without ambiguous utterances in the contexts or questions. The reported state-of-the-art approaches to this kind of problem are nearly all connectionist models based on neural networks. Significant progress has even been made in this direction. It is still hard for the pure connectionist models to handle logical reasoning. They generally suffer from the longstanding drawback of poor explainability and sensitivity to data noise and distribution. In this paper, we propose a complementary symbolic approach, GMR (Graph Matching based Reasoner) to QA — it automatically generates reasoning rules in the form of graphs from the training set and uses the generated rules to infer answers to the questions in the test set via graph matching. By employing this symbolic approach, 20 tasks in bAbI are solved with an average accuracy of 99.38%, and it outperforms the state-of-the-art for a real-life QA dataset WikiTableQuestions. After analyzing the accuracy of the basic evaluation indicators, we studied the generalization ability of the model in the paper, including the anti-noise ability, the convergence of the model, the stability of the model, the complexity of the algorithm, and the uncertainty of the parameters. Through comprehensive analysis and comparison, our model is stronger than the neural network model regarding anti-noise interference. Compared with the neural network model, our model performs very well in multi-tasking, and the stability of the model is quite high. The diversity of tasks did not reduce the stability of the model. We have conducted a comprehensive analysis and comparison of the parameter uncertainties. Our model can optimally select parameter configurations and will not cause a sharp drop in performance due to the parameter uncertainties. Finally, we describe the complexity of the GMR method and the optimal configuration of its parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new passive robust fault detection scheme using non-linear models that include parameter uncertainty. The non-linear model considered here is described by a group method of data handling (GMDH) neural network. The problem of passive robust fault detection using models including parameter uncertainty has been mainly addressed by checking if the measured behaviour is inside the region of possible behaviours based on the so-called forward test since it bounds the direct image of an interval function. The main contribution of this paper is to propose a new backward test, based on the inverse image of an interval function, that allows checking if there exists a parameter in the uncertain parameter set that is consistent with the measured system behaviour. This test is implemented using interval constraint satisfaction algorithms which can perform efficiently in deciding if the measured system state is consistent with the GMDH model and its associated uncertainty. Finally, this approach is tested on the servoactuator being a FDI benchmark in the European Project DAMADICS. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Recommendation agents employ prediction algorithms to provide users with items that match their interests. In this paper, several prediction algorithms are described and evaluated, some of which are novel in that they combine user-based and item-based similarity measures derived from either explicit or implicit ratings. Both statistical and decision-support accuracy metrics of the algorithms are compared against different levels of data sparsity and different operational thresholds. The first metric evaluates the accuracy in terms of average absolute deviation, while the second evaluates how effectively predictions help users to select high-quality items. The experimental results indicate better performance of item-based predictions derived from explicit ratings in relation to both metrics. Category-boosted predictions lead to slightly better predictions when combined with explicit ratings, while implicit ratings, in the context that have been defined in this paper, perform much worse than explicit ratings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Multi-agent technology is applied in this paper to solve the distribution system service restoration problems. Specifically, switches in the distribution systems are modeled as intelligent agents and organized as local power committees in a distribution system. The advantage of this approach is to utilize the solving ability of a local committee of agents who could coordinate with neighboring committees to achieve an agreement that satisfies the global objective of the power distribution system service restoration problems without relying on a pre-determined centralized optimization algorithm as traditional approaches. The proposed coordination method helps switches in the distributed local power committees to reach a consensus among many proposed service restoration solutions after faults are detected and isolated. We also take the voltage violations into consideration in the search of solutions. Two examples of different power distribution systems are presented to demonstrate how the algorithms of the coordination method can identify the best restoration solution among many proposed local candidate solutions. The simulation results show that the proposed committee-based multi-agent approach yields better performance than the previous methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multilevel thresholding is one important operation in computer vision, which is a subfield of artificial intelligence (AI), used to understand and interpret the data in the real world. The existing entropic methods, based on the histogram of an image for the multilevel thresholding mostly deal with the maximization of the entropic information excluding the shred boundary, which reduces the accuracy. These problems lead to the poor thresholding accuracy and a lower speed. To address the problem, we propose a novel interdependence based technique that uses the shred boundary, which is a minimization problem. A firsthand objective function is investigated, which takes care of the shred boundary. The traditional multilevel thresholding techniques are computationally expensive due to the exhaustive search process, an alternate method is to use the evolutionary computation based on a nature-inspired algorithm. In this paper, a new optimizer called adaptive equilibrium optimizer (AEO) is also proposed for multilevel thresholding, an improvement over the basic equilibrium optimizer (EO) by implementing an adaptive decision making of dispersal for nonperformer search agents. The AEO performance is compared with state-of-the-art algorithms — equilibrium optimizer (EO), gray wolf optimizer (GWO), whale optimization algorithm (WOA), squirrel search algorithm (SSA) and the wind driven optimization (WDO) algorithm, using standard benchmark functions. Based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis, the AEO outperformed EO, GWO, WOA, SSA, and WDO. The optimal thresholds are obtained by minimizing the objective function using the AEO. For the experiment, 500 images of the BSDS 500 dataset are considered. Popular metrics such as the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity index (SSIM), and the feature similarity index (FSIM) are considered for a quantitative analysis. Remarkable differences in the thresholding accuracy are observed with a simultaneously decreasing computational complexity. The merits of the paper are highlighted to ensure its future use in the world of engineering applications using soft computing, a subfield of the AI. • AI technique for multilevel image thresholding is fostered. • The objective function is investigated for interdependency minimization. • A new adaptive equilibrium optimizer is proposed and validated. • Both quantitative and qualitative analysis using statistical methods is done. • Experimental results on BSDS 500 dataset are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clustering is an essential tool in data mining research and applications. It is the subject of active research in many fields of study, such as computer science, data science, statistics, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Several clustering techniques have been proposed and implemented, and most of them successfully find excellent quality or optimal clustering results in the domains mentioned earlier. However, there has been a gradual shift in the choice of clustering methods among domain experts and practitioners alike, which is precipitated by the fact that most traditional clustering algorithms still depend on the number of clusters provided a priori. These conventional clustering algorithms cannot effectively handle real-world data clustering analysis problems where the number of clusters in data objects cannot be easily identified. Also, they cannot effectively manage problems where the optimal number of clusters for a high-dimensional dataset cannot be easily determined. Therefore, there is a need for improved, flexible, and efficient clustering techniques. Recently, a variety of efficient clustering algorithms have been proposed in the literature, and these algorithms produced good results when evaluated on real-world clustering problems. This study presents an up-to-date systematic and comprehensive review of traditional and state-of-the-art clustering techniques for different domains. This survey considers clustering from a more practical perspective. It shows the outstanding role of clustering in various disciplines, such as education, marketing, medicine, biology, and bioinformatics. It also discusses the application of clustering to different fields attracting intensive efforts among the scientific community, such as big data, artificial intelligence, and robotics. This survey paper will be beneficial for both practitioners and researchers. It will serve as a good reference point for researchers and practitioners to design improved and efficient state-of-the-art clustering algorithms. • Provide an up-to-date comprehensive review of the different clustering techniques. • Highlight novel and most recent practical applications areas of clustering. • Provide a convenient research path for new researchers. • Help experts develop new algorithms for emerging challenges in the research area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article is betrothed to serve as a continuation of the emerging swarm techniques to solve supply chain problems. Our aim is to map some of the pressing research challenges contributed by the artificial intelligence community and to develop an improved algorithm: Co-evolutionary immuno-particle swarm optimisation with penetrated hyper-mutation (COIPSO-PHM). In this paper, we proposed a new algorithm which uses clonal selection approach in particle swarm optimisation by embedding co-evolutionary theory to solve the problem of inventory replenishment in distributed plant–warehouse–retailer system. Constraint handling is explicitly taken care by implanting augmented lagrangian concept. To demonstrate the efficiency of the algorithm, its performance are evaluated and compared on 10 benchmarked problems (made constrained problem via random initialisation in the infeasible zone) including functions with uni-modalities as well as multi-modalities. The result follows shows superior performance of the algorithm in every respect. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: With the recent development of ubiquitous technologies, many new applications have been emerging for smart home implementation. Usually, such applications are based on diverse sensors. One fundamental operation in the applications is to find out semantically meaningful events or activities from huge sensor data stream. Usually, such event or activity is represented by a salient sequence pattern. Among the diverse research issues, detecting salient sequence patterns of human motions from image sensor data stream has received much attention for security and surveillance purposes. In the case of detecting human motions from image sensor data, finding and matching their salient sequence patterns could become more complicated since semantically same motions could show diverse variations such as different motion time. Based on this observation, in this paper, we propose a new querying and answering scheme for continuous sensor data stream to detect abnormal human motions. More specifically, we first present a new hierarchical querying scheme to consider variable length of semantically same human motions. Secondly, we present an indexing scheme to efficiently find semantically meaningful motion sequences in the sensor data stream. Thirdly, we present Dynamic Group Warping algorithm to effectively filter out unnecessary human motions. Through extensive experiments, we show that our proposed method achieves outstanding performance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Data-driven model is highly desirable for industrial data analysis in case the experimental model structure is unknown or wrong, or the concerned system has changed. Symbolic regression is a useful method to construct the data-driven model (regression equation). Existing algorithms for symbolic regression such as genetic programming and grammatical evolution are difficult to use due to their special target programming language (i.e., LISP) or additional function parsing process. In this paper, a new evolutionary algorithm, parse-matrix evolution (PME), for symbolic regression is proposed. A chromosome in PME is a parse-matrix with integer entries. The mapping process from the chromosome to the regression equation is based on a mapping table. PME can easily be implemented in any programming language and free to control. Furthermore, it does not need any additional function parsing process. Numerical results show that PME can solve the symbolic regression problems effectively. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents a method for multi-scale segmentation of surface data using scale-adaptive region growing. The proposed segmentation algorithm is initiated by an unsupervised learning of optimal seed positions through the surface attribute clustering with a two-criterion score function. The seeds are selected as consecutive local maxima of the clustering map, which is computed by an aggregation of the local isotropic contrast and local variance maps. The proposed method avoids typical segmentation errors caused by an inappropriate choice of seed points and thresholds used in the region-growing algorithm. The scale-adaptive threshold estimate is based on the image local statistics in the neighborhoods of seed points. The performance of this method was evaluated on LiDAR surface images. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Parametric reconfiguration plays a key role in non-iterative concurrent design of mechatronic systems. This is because it allows the designer to select, among different competitive solutions, the most suitable without sacrificing sub-optimal characteristics. This paper presents a method based on an evolutionary algorithm to improve the parametric reconfiguration feature in the optimal design of a continuously variable transmission and a five-bar parallel robot. The approach considers a solution-diversity mechanism coupled with a memory of those sub-optimal solutions found during the process. Furthermore, a constraint-handling mechanism is added to bias the search to the feasible region of the search space. Differential Evolution is utilized as the search algorithm. The results obtained in a set of five experiments performed per each mechatronic system show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The behaviour of the TCP AIMD algorithm is known to cause queue length oscillations when congestion occurs at a router output link. Indeed, due to these queueing variations, end-to-end applications experience large delay jitter. Many studies have proposed efficient active queue management (AQM) mechanisms in order to reduce queue oscillations and stabilize the queue length. These AQM attempt to improve the random early detection (RED) model. Unfortunately, these enhancements do not react in a similar manner for various network conditions and are strongly sensitive to their initial setting parameters. Although this paper proposes a solution to overcome the difficulties of configuring the RED parameters by using a Kohonen neural network model; another goal of this study is to investigate whether cognitive intelligence could be placed in the core network to solve such stability problem. In our context, we use results from the neural network area to demonstrate that our proposal, named Kohonen-RED (KRED), enables a stable queue length without complex parameters setting or passive measurements to obtain a correct configuration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper proposes an intelligent task planning and action selection mechanism for a mobile robot in a robot soccer system through a fuzzy neural network approach. The proposed fuzzy neural network system is developed through the two dimensional fuzzification of the soccer field. A five layer fuzzy neural network system is trained through error back propagation learning algorithm to impart a strategy based action selection. The action selection depends on the field configuration, and the emergence of a particular field configuration results from the game dynamics. Strategy of the robot changes when the configuration of the objects in the field changes. The proposed fuzzy neural network structure is flexible to accommodate all possible filed configurations. Simulation results indicate that the proposed approach is simple and has the capability in coordinating the multi-agent system through selection of sensible actions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A large number of problems that occur in knowledge-representation, learning, very large scale integration technology (VLSI-design), and other areas of artificial intelligence, are essentially satisfiability problems. The satisfiability problem refers to the task of finding a satisfying assignment that makes a Boolean expression evaluate to True. The growing need for more efficient and scalable algorithms has led to the development of a large number of SAT solvers. This paper reports the first approach that combines finite learning automata with the greedy satisfiability algorithm (GSAT). In brief, we introduce a new algorithm that integrates finite learning automata and traditional GSAT used with random walk. Furthermore, we present a detailed comparative analysis of the new algorithm''s performance, using a benchmark set containing randomized and structured problems from various domains. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The recent product traceability requirements, particularly in food production chains, demonstrate an industrial need to improve traceability systems. Having real-time access to traceability information allows its exploitation, which is the aim of this work. In this paper, the problem of minimizing the cost of products recall is treated. First the raw material dispersion problem is analyzed, in order to determine a risk-level criterion or “production criticality”. This criterion is used subsequently to optimize deliveries dispatch with the purpose of minimizing the number of batch recalls in case of crisis. This is achieved by implementing decision-making aid tools based on operational research and artificial intelligence. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Automotive engines are multivariable system with severe non-linear dynamics, and their modelling and control are challenging tasks for control engineers. Current control of engine used look-up table combined with proportional and integral (PI) control and is not robust to system uncertainty and time varying effects. In this paper the model predictive control strategy is applied to engine air/fuel ratio control using neural network model. The neural network model uses information from multivariables and considers engine dynamics to do multi-step ahead prediction. The model is adapted in on-line mode to cope with system uncertainty and time varying effects. Thus, the control performance is more accurate and robust compared with non-adaptive model based methods. To speed up algorithm calculation, different optimisation algorithms are investigated and performance compared. Finally, the developed method is evaluated on a well-known engine benchmark, a simulated mean value engine model (MVEM). The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed method. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithm, Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO2), is deployed on a custom spacecraft (S/C) build and loss model to determine if an Artificial Intelligence (AI) can learn to monitor satellite constellation health and determine an optimal replacement strategy. A custom environment is created to simulate how S/C are built, launched, generate revenue, and finally decay. The reinforcement learning agent successfully learned an optimal policy for two models: a Simplified Model where the financial cost of actions is ignored; and an Advanced Model where the financial cost of actions is a major element. In both models the AI monitors the constellations and takes multiple strategic and tactical actions to replace satellites to maintain constellation performance. The Simplified Model showed that the PPO2 algorithm was able to converge on an optimal solution after ∼ 200,000 simulations. The Advanced Model was much more difficult for the AI to learn, and thus, the performance drops during the early episodes, but eventually converges to an optimal policy at ∼ 25,000,000 simulations. With the Advanced Model, the AI is taking actions that are successfully providing strategies for constellation management and satellite replacements which include these actions' financial implications. Thus, the methods in this paper provide initial research developments towards a real-world tool and an AI application that can aid various Aerospace businesses in managing Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations. This type of AI application may become imperative for deploying and maintaining small satellite mega-constellations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents an identification method based on artificial neural networks, which can be used for the robust fault detection. In particular, a problem of the multi-layer perceptron neural network uncertainty estimation with application of the outer bounding ellipsoid algorithm is considered. The mathematical description of the model uncertainty enables designing robust fault detection system, which effectiveness was verified with the DAMADICS benchmark. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Neural networks have recently received a great deal of attention in the field of manufacturing process quality control, where statistical techniques have traditionally been used. In this paper, a neural-based procedure for quality monitoring is discussed from a statistical perspective. The neural network is based on Fuzzy ART, which is exploited for recognising any unnatural change in the state of a manufacturing process. Initially, the neural algorithm is analysed by means of geometrical arguments. Then, in order to evaluate control performances in terms of errors of Types I and II, the effects of three tuneable parameters are examined through a statistical model. Upper bound limits for the error rates are analytically computed, and then numerically illustrated for different combinations of the tuneable parameters. Finally, a criterion for the neural network designing is proposed and validated in a specific test case through simulation. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed neural-based procedure for manufacturing quality monitoring. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Switched reluctance motor (SRM) is increasingly employed in industrial applications where variable speed is required because of their simple construction, ease of maintenance, low cost and high efficiency. However, the SRM performance often degrades for the machine parameter variations. The SRM converter is difficult to control due to its nonlinearities and parameter uncertainties. In this paper, to overcome this problem, a neuro fuzzy controller (NFC) is proposed. Heuristic rules are derived with the membership functions of the fuzzy variables tuned by a neural network (NN). The algorithm is implemented on a digital signal processor (TMS320F240) allowing great flexibility for various real time applications. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the NFC with various working conditions of the SRM. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Globally linearizing control (GLC) is a control algorithm capable of using nonlinear process model directly. In GLC, mostly, first-principle models derived from dynamic mass, energy and momentum balances are used. When the process is not perfectly known, the unknown parts of the first principles model should be represented by black-box models, e.g. by neural networks. This paper is devoted to the identification and application of such hybrid models for GLC. It is shown that the first principles part of the model determines the dominant structure of the controller, while the black-box elements of the hybrid model are used as state and/or disturbance estimators. For the identification of the neural network elements of the hybrid model a sensitivity approach based algorithm has been developed. The underlying framework is illustrated by the temperature control of a continuous stirred tank reactor where a neural network is used to model the heat released by an exothermic chemical reaction. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents a design approach for improvement of the efficiency of a universal motor, the type of motor that is typically used in home appliances and power tools. The goal of our optimization was to find optimal values of the independent geometrical parameters of the rotor and the stator of the UM with the aim of reducing the motor''s main power losses—they occur in the iron and the copper. Our procedure is based on a genetic algorithm (GA), and by using it we were able to significantly improve the motor''s efficiency. The GA proved to be a simple and efficient search-and-optimization method for solving this day-to-day design problem in industry. It significantly outperformed a conventional design procedure that was used previously. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: During the last decades, many researchers in image processing and AI community have been focused on developing image and video analysis and understanding. However, despite their extensive efforts on these, there are still several significant challenges such as robust object segmentation and tracking, motion feature extraction, context modeling, and machine learning algorithms. Therefore, more advanced related issues should be taken into account. We have selected nine research papers whose topics are strongly related to the intelligent surveillance system in smart home environment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]