UTEP REU Summer Site in Applied Intelligent Systems
Sample Research Projects
The unifying research theme for this REU will be the use of
intelligent system techniques, including machine learning, data
mining, optimization, and image analysis, to solve relevant data
analysis problems in science and engineering fields. Students will be
able to choose from the following list, according to their interests
and abilities:
Discovering the Patterns of Interaction in Spoken Dialog
Spoken dialog systems today are not as responsive as one would like;
indeed, their patterns of interaction are generally perceived as rigid
and robotic. Improving this requires a better understanding of what
patterns of interaction are normal in human-human interaction. In
this project we will develop tools and techniques for both semi- and
fully-automated analysis of medium to large dialog data corpora, and
measure the value of the discovered patterns for dialog systems.
Generating Test Cases for Pairwise Testing Using Genetic Algorithms
Pairwise testing is a combinatorial testing technique that tests all
possible pairs of input values. Although, finding a smallest set of
test cases for pairwise testing is NP-complete, pairwise testing is
regarded as a reasonable cost-benefit compromise among combinatorial
testing methods. The objective of this project is to formulate the
problem of finding a pairwise test set as a search problem and apply a
genetic algorithm to solve it. A genetic algorithm is a technique that
simulates the natural process of evolution and is known to be very
effective for finding solutions for problems with a huge search space
and complexity. The project will also develop an open-source program
that could be used as a framework for generating pairwise test sets
using genetic algorithms.
Automated Identification of Foreign Accents in Speech
In many security applications, it is desirable to determine a person's
native language from speech in a second language. The first part of
this project will consist of developing a small corpus of English
spoken by speakers of English as a second language with different
native languages (for example, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese,
and French). In the second part, various features and learning
algorithms will be evaluated to determine the degree to which native
languages can be accurately identified automatically and the features
(phonemes, prosody, etc.) that allow this identification.
A Survey of Fuzzy Measure Extraction Techniques and Design of a
Hybrid Optimization Technique for Multi-criteria Decision Making
At the heart of decision making are very often multiple criteria. It
can be challenging to combine them properly to take into account
potential dependency between criteria and to make a sound decision.
Fuzzy measures combined into a Choquet integral are an option of
choice to express dependencies and reach a sound decision. However,
fuzzy measures are hard to determine: either the user has to
exhaustively describe it (which can be unreasonably long and
irrelevant) or the measure can be extracted from some sample data (by
solving an optimization problem).
GPU Implementation of Tracking Algorithms
Modern vision-based tracking algorithms usually use a version of the
condensation or particle filter algorithm, which approximates the
distribution of possible configurations of the objects of interest
using a discrete set of hypotheses commonly called particles. The
likelihood of each particle has to be evaluated at every tracking
cycle, and in complex domains thousands of particles are needed to
properly approximate the target probability distribution. The goal of
this project is to implement a vision-based tracker using a Graphics
Processing Unit (GPU) in order to evaluate hundreds or thousands of
particles in parallel, allowing real-time tracking of multiple complex
objects.
Analysis of Animal Behavior Using 3D Computer Vision
Behavior analysis of laboratory animals is a tedious process that has
to be performed by visual observation. The goal of this project is to
develop a software system based on the Kinect 3D image-based sensor
to autonomously monitor and analyze the behavior of laboratory rats.
Analysis of Planetary Images
The Cassini spacecraft took thousands of images of Saturn and its
rings and moons. Unfortunately, to date this image dataset is poorly
organized, which prevents the scientific community from fully
exploiting it. This project consists of developing an image analysis
system to classify and perform a preliminary analysis of this large
image dataset.
Game Theory for Homeland Security
A common problem in protecting infrastructure and networks against
attackers is making decisions about how to allocate limited resources
to protect the most important targets. This work focuses on using
game-theoretic modeling to understand these decisions, find optimal
randomized (unpredictable) policies for resource allocations, and give
recommendations to police or other end users. This project will
address specific issues in resource allocation for border security.
Agent Technologies for the Smart Grid
The world is undergoing dramatic changes in the ways that energy is
generated, distributed, and used. Intelligent agents are a critical
technology in managing the increasingly complex and decentralized
energy systems that are evolving. These technologies, often called the
"smart grid", have the potential to dramatically improve the
efficiency and reliability of future energy markets. This project will
focus on developing a trading agent to compete in the "Power TAC"
game, a new scenario this year that is part of the annual Trading
Agent Competition. More information about the Trading Agent
Competition and Power TAC is available at http://tradingagents.org and
http://www.powertac.org.
Compression of Meteorological Data
Environmental monitoring stations are generation enormous amounts of
data that pose significant challenges for transmission and storage.
This project deals with the use of machine learning approaches to
attain very high compression rates with minimal information loss. This
research would build on similar approaches we have applied
successfully in the areas of medical image compression and
surveillance.