Timothy Schulz (ECE/ICC-DataS) is the principal investigator (PI) on a project that has received a $30,000 research and development grant from the University of Arizona.
The project is titled “Multiscale Phase Retrieval.”
by Office of the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affair
Snehamoy Chatterjee (GMES/ICC-DataS) has been appointed to a endowed faculty fellow position in the Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences (GMES).
Witte Family Endowed Faculty Fellow in Mining Engineering
Dr. Chatterjee, associate professor in GMES, has been appointed the new Witte Family Endowed Faculty Fellow in Mining Engineering, a position created to retain and attract highly qualified faculty who are at the top of their profession, inspire students to think beyond the classroom material, and integrate their research into the classroom.
Chatterjee was instrumental in developing GMES’s new interdisciplinary program in mining engineering and now teaches several key courses for this program. He continuously updates his courses to adopt new teaching and technological approaches and incorporates research in his instruction. He is always looking out for students’ best interests by seeking ways for them to participate in research and design projects in order to enhance their learning and professional development.
Timothy Havens, the William and Gloria Jackson Associate Professor of Computer Systems, has co-authored a paper recently published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Volume 50, Issue 1.
The paper is titled, “Recurrent networks for direction-of-arrival identification of an acoustic source in a shallow water channel using a vector sensor.” Havens’s co-authors are Steven Whitaker (EE graduate student), Andrew Barnard (ME-EM/GLRC), and George D, Anderson, US Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC)-Newport.
The work described in the paper was funded by the United States Naval Undersea Warfare Center and Naval Engineering Education Consortium (NEEC) (Grant No. N00174-19-1-0004) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) (Grant No. N00014-20-1-2793). This is Contribution No. 76 of the Great Lakes Research Center at Michigan Technological University.
Abstract
Conventional direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation algorithms for shallow water environments usually contain high amounts of error due to the presence of many acoustic reflective surfaces and scattering fields. Utilizing data from a single acoustic vector sensor, the magnitude and DOA of an acoustic signature can be estimated; as such, DOA algorithms are used to reduce the error in these estimations.
Three experiments were conducted using a moving boat as an acoustic target in a waterway in Houghton, Michigan. The shallow and narrow waterway is a complex and non-linear environment for DOA estimation. This paper compares minimizing DOA errors using conventional and machine learning algorithms. The conventional algorithm uses frequency-masking averaging, and the machine learning algorithms incorporate two recurrent neural network architectures, one shallow and one deep network.
Results show that the deep neural network models the shallow water environment better than the shallow neural network, and both networks are superior in performance to the frequency-masking average method.
Citation: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 150, 111 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0005536Steven Whitaker1,b), Andrew Barnard2, George D. Anderson3, and Timothy C. Havens4
by Pasi Lautala
Thomas Oommen (GMES, ICC), Ricardo Eiris, (CEGE, ICC), and Beth Veinott (CLS, ICC) are among eight Michigan Tech researchers who have submitted a a record number of eight concept papers for proposed research projects with the Federal Railroad Administration.
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) requested that Michigan Tech submit a record number of eight concept papers for proposed research projects as part of their 2021 Broad Agency Announcement.
In addition, Tech is a subcontractor for two more concept paper proposals. The paper submittal was coordinated by the Rail Transportation Program and the range of topics speaks to the diversity of Michigan Tech’s expertise applicable to the rail transportation. The PIs are looking forward to FRA decisions on how many of these papers advance to full proposals.
Each of the 10 projects had a different principal investigator (PI), representing six university departments/institutes and several more co-PIs.
The project titles and their PIs include:
- Hyper- and Multi-spectral Sensing and Deep Learning for Automated Identification of Roadbed Condition, (PI, Thomas Oommen, GMES).
- Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) for Weld Enhanced Cast Steel Coupler Knuckles (PI, Paul Sanders, MSE).
- IoT Assisted Data-analytics Framework Enables Assessment of Location Based Ride Quality (LBRQ) (PI, Sriram Malladi, MEEM).
- RailStory: Using Web-based Immersive Storytelling to Attract the Next Generation of Young Women in Rail (PI, Ricardo Eiris, CEGE).
- A Risk Informed Decision-Making Framework for Coastal Railroad System Subjected to Storm Hazards and Sea Level Rise (PI, Yousef Darestani, CEGE).
- Rail Corridor Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) Framework, Factors and Models to Support Project Evaluation and Multi-Modal Comparisons (PI, Pasi Lautala, CEGE).
- Development of Infrared Thermography for Effective Rail Weld Inspection (PI, Qingli Dai, CEGE).
- Enabling Longer-distance, AI-enabled Drone-based Grade Crossing Assessment in Potentially GPS Denied Environments (PI, Colin Brooks).
- Multi-Site Simulation to Examine Driver Behavior Impact of Integrated Rail Crossing Violation Warning (RCVW) and In-Vehicle Auditory/Visual Alert (IVAA) System (PI, Elizabeth Veinott, subcontract with Virginia Tech).
- Evaluation of Non-traditional Methods of Reducing Emissions in Short Line Railroad Operations (PI, Jeremy Worm, subcontract with ASLRRA).
Dr. Sidike Paheding, assistant professor of Applied Computing, is the co-author of a paper published June 3, 2021, the journal “IEEE Access.” The paper is titled, “U-net and its variants for medical image segmentation: A review of theory and applications.”
The paper discusses U-net, an image segmentation technique developed primarily for image segmentation tasks.
The co-authors of the paper are Nahian Siddique, Colin P. Elkin, and Vijay Devabhaktuni, all with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University Northwest, Hammond, Indiana.
Abstract
U-net is an image segmentation technique developed primarily for image segmentation tasks. These traits provide U-net with a high utility within the medical imaging community and have resulted in extensive adoption of U-net as the primary tool for segmentation tasks in medical imaging. The success of U-net is evident in its widespread use in nearly all major image modalities, from CT scans and MRI to Xrays and microscopy. Furthermore, while U-net is largely a segmentation tool, there have been instances of the use of U-net in other applications. Given that U-net’s potential is still increasing, this narrative literature review examines the numerous developments and breakthroughs in the U-net architecture and provides observations on recent trends. We also discuss the many innovations that have advanced in deep learning and discuss how these tools facilitate U-net. In addition, we review the different image modalities and application areas that have been enhanced by U-net.
The paper can be accessed on the IEEE Access website.
IEEE Access is a multidisciplinary, applications-oriented, all-electronic archival journal that continuously presents the results of original research or development across all of IEEE’s fields of interest. Supported by article processing charges, its hallmarks are a rapid peer review and publication process with open access to all readers.
by Allison Mills, University Marketing and Communications
A major challenge for fully autonomous vehicles is navigating bad weather. Snow especially confounds crucial sensor data that helps a vehicle gauge depth, find obstacles and keep on the correct side of the yellow line, assuming it is visible. Averaging more than 200 inches of snow every winter, Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula is the perfect place to push autonomous vehicle tech to its limits.
In two papers presented at SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing 2021, researchers from Michigan Technological University discuss solutions for snowy driving scenarios that could help bring self-driving options to snowy cities like Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis and Toronto.
The team includes Nathir Rawashdeh and doctoral student Abu-Alrub (CC) as well as Jeremy Bos and student researchers Akhil Kurup, Derek Chopp and Zach Jeffries (ECE).
Read more about their collaborative mobility research on mtu.edu/news.
This MTU news story was published by Science Daily, TechXplore, Knowridge Science Report and other research news aggregators.
The Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC) is pleased to welcome Tony Pinar as a member. Pinar’s primary research interests are in applied machine learning and data fusion.
A lecturer in Michigan Tech’s Electrical and Computer Engineering department, Pinar holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Michigan Tech. His previous positions include research engineer for Michigan Tech’s Advanced Power System Research Center and electrical design engineer for GE Aviation. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society.
Pinar’s teaching interests include machine learning, signal processing, and electronic design. Included among the classes he teaches are Electronics, Electronic Applications, Probability—Signal Analysis, and Control Systems I.
“Teaching is like a puzzle where one may have to take a difficult concept, reduce it to digestible pieces, and deliver them to fresh minds in a way to maximize understanding and insight,” Pinar says. “That challenge is what drives me to be a better teacher.”
Pinar believes that to be a good teacher one must understand the topics very well and he strives for the most effective delivery. “This keeps me on my toes, forces me to constantly identify holes in my knowledge, and drives me to continuously strive to learn new things,” he explains.
On research, Pinar says it is rewarding to work on open-ended and novel problems that are in their infancy and at the cutting edge of today’s technology.
“It is also exciting to me to watch the cutting edge move forward, see what sticks and what doesn’t, and observe how the direction(s) of the field evolve,” he adds. “I’m very new to this domain so I haven’t been able to observe it for long, but I am looking forward to witnessing the future of the field.”