Road and Traffic Signs Recognition using Vector Machines

Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is a system that builds a safe, effective and integrated transportation environment based on advanced technologies. Road signs detection and recognition is an important part of ITS, which offer ways to collect the real time traffic data for processing at a central facility.This project is to implement a road sign recognition model based on AI and image analysis technologies, which applies a machine learning method, Support Vector Machines, to recognize road signs. We focus on recognizing seven categories of road sign shapes and five categories of speed limit signs. Two kinds of features, binary image and Zernike moments, are used for representing the data to the SVM for training and test. We compared and analyzed the performances of SVM recognition model using different features and different kernels. Moreover, the performances using different recognition models, SVM and Fuzzy ARTMAP, are observed.

Interaction and Persuasion:An analysis of the use of rhetorical devices in Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour Party Conference, on September 25, 2006

This essay has identified and analysed rhetorical devices in Gordon Brown’s speech delivered at the Labour Party conference on September 25, 2006. The aim of the study was to identify specific rhetorical devices which are described as interactional resources, analyse their uses and discuss possible effects that they may have when included in a political speech. The results are based on my own interpretations but are supported by information provided in current literature by analysts and researchers of rhetoric use. The result findings could probably serve as evidence of the need for better understanding of the devices used by politicians in their relentless endeavours to influence audience decisions.

Visualization of spirography-based objective measures in Parkinson's disease

Objective: To investigate whether advanced visualizations of spirography-based objective measures are useful in differentiating drug-related motor dysfunctions between Off and dyskinesia in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Background: During the course of a 3 year longitudinal clinical study, in total 65 patients (43 males and 22 females with mean age of 65) with advanced PD and 10 healthy elderly (HE) subjects (5 males and 5 females with mean age of 61) were assessed. Both patients and HE subjects performed repeated and time-stamped assessments of their objective health indicators using a test battery implemented on a telemetry touch screen handheld computer, in their home environment settings. Among other tasks, the subjects were asked to trace a pre-drawn Archimedes spiral using the dominant hand and repeat the test three times per test occasion. Methods: A web-based framework was developed to enable a visual exploration of relevant spirography-based kinematic features by clinicians so they can in turn evaluate the motor states of the patients i.e. Off and dyskinesia. The system uses different visualization techniques such as time series plots, animation, and interaction and organizes them into different views to aid clinicians in measuring spatial and time-dependent irregularities that could be associated with the motor states. Along with the animation view, the system displays two time series plots for representing drawing speed (blue line) and displacement from ideal trajectory (orange line). The views are coordinated and linked i.e. user interactions in one of the views will be reflected in other views. For instance, when the user points in one of the pixels in the spiral view, the circle size of the underlying pixel increases and a vertical line appears in the time series views to depict the corresponding position. In addition, in order to enable clinicians to observe erratic movements more clearly and thus improve the detection of irregularities, the system displays a color-map which gives an idea of the longevity of the spirography task. Figure 2 shows single randomly selected spirals drawn by a: A) patient who experienced dyskinesias, B) HE subject, and C) patient in Off state. Results: According to a domain expert (DN), the spirals drawn in the Off and dyskinesia motor states are characterized by different spatial and time features. For instance, the spiral shown in Fig. 2A was drawn by a patient who showed symptoms of dyskinesia; the drawing speed was relatively high (cf. blue-colored time series plot and the short timestamp scale in the x axis) and the spatial displacement was high (cf. orange-colored time series plot) associated with smooth deviations as a result of uncontrollable movements. The patient also exhibited low amount of hesitation which could be reflected both in the animation of the spiral as well as time series plots. In contrast, the patient who was in the Off state exhibited different kinematic features, as shown in Fig. 2C. In the case of spirals drawn by a HE subject, there was a great precision during the drawing process as well as unchanging levels of time-dependent features over the test trial, as seen in Fig. 2B. Conclusions: Visualizing spirography-based objective measures enables identification of trends and patterns of drug-related motor dysfunctions at the patient’s individual level. Dynamic access of visualized motor tests may be useful during the evaluation of drug-related complications such as under- and over-medications, providing decision support to clinicians during evaluation of treatment effects as well as improve the quality of life of patients and their caregivers. In future, we plan to evaluate the proposed approach by assessing within- and between-clinician variability in ratings in order to determine its actual usefulness and then use these ratings as target outcomes in supervised machine learning, similarly as it was previously done in the study performed by Memedi et al. (2013).

Grafisk profil åt Borlänge Bandy : Framtagning av en sportförenings visuella profil

Borlänge Bandy är en sportförening med säte i Borlänge. Målet med detta arbete var att utreda hur Borlänge Bandy uppfattas av sin målgrupp idag, och utifrån detta skapa en ny grafisk profil som gör att Borlänge Bandy bättre uppfattas som enhetligt av målgruppen, det vill säga bandyspelare på Borlänge Bandy, anställda och styrelseledamöter på Borlänge Bandy och nya potentiella medlemmar. Dessutom skapades en förnyad logotyp i enighet med åsikterna som kom fram i enkätundersökningarna som utfördes.   Genom flera enkätundersökningar gavs bakgrundsinformation om hur Borlänge Bandy uppfattas av sin målgrupp. Svaren från enkätundersökningarna låg sedan till grund för en förnyelse av Borlänge Bandys logotyp då det framkommit att en majoritet av Borlänge Bandys målgrupp ansåg att den behövde förändras. Genom diskussion med en fokusgrupp diskuterades förslag på en förnyad logotyp och utifrån deras kritik skapades en slutgiltigt förnyad logotyp. I fokusgruppen diskuterades även vilka typsnitt som passar att bli Borlänge Bandys nya hustypsnitt. Alla resultat som togs fram jämfördes och kontrollerades med hjälp av teorin som framtagits. En utvärderande fokusgrupp kontrollerade sedan att det önskade resultatet uppnåtts genom att jämföra Borlänge Bandys tidigare visuella utseende med den nya grafiska profilen som skapats.     Resultatet blev en ny grafisk profil med tillhörande grafisk manual till Borlänge Bandy innehållandes information om typografi, färger, logotyp, bildspråk, korrespondensmaterial, företagsprodukter och grafiska element. Om det grafiska materialet hanteras konsekvent skapas igenkänning. Slutsatserna blev att den nya grafiska profilen uppfattas som enhetlig och harmonisk enligt den utvärderande fokusgruppen bestående av Borlänge Bandys målgrupp.