Abstract Customer maintenance is of vital importance to the enterprise management. Valuable assessment and efficient prediction for customer ordering behavior can offer better decision-making and reduce business costs significantly. According to existing studies about customer behavior regularity segment and demand prediction most focus on e-commerce and other fields with large amount of data, making them not suitable for small enterprises and data features like sparsity and outliers are not mined when doing regularity quantification. Additionally, more and more complex network structures for demand prediction are proposed, which builds on the assumption that all the samples have predictive value, ignoring the fine-grained analysis of different time series regularity with high cost. To deal with the above issues, a multi-step regularity assessment and joint prediction system for ordering time series is proposed. For extracting features, comprehensive assessment of customer regularity based on entropy weight method with the result of predictability quantification using K-Means clustering algorithm, real entropy, LZW algorithm and anomaly detection adopting Isolation Forest algorithm not only gives an objective result to ‘how high the regularity of customers is’, filling the gap in the field of regularity quantification, but also provides a theoretical basis for demand prediction models selection. Prediction models: Random Forest regression, XGBoost, CNN and LSTM network are experimented with sMAPE and MSLE for performance evaluation to verify the effectiveness of the proposed regularity quantitation method. Moreover, a merged CNN-BiLSTM neural network model is established for predicting those customers with low regularity and difficult to predict by traditional machine leaning algorithms, which performs better on the data set compared to others. Random Forest is still used for prediction of customers with high regularity due to its high training efficiency. Finally, the results of prediction, regularity quantification, and classification are output from the intelligent system, which is capable of providing scientific basis for corporate strategy decision and has highly extendibility in other enterprises and fields for follow-up research.

Yichen Zhou

Wenhe Han

Heng Zhou

Autonomous Intelligent Systems

A multi-step regularity assessment and joint prediction system for ordering time series based on entropy and deep learning

基于熵和深度学习的多步规则性评估与联合预测系统用于排序时间序列

Abstract Metal powder contributes to the environmental burdens of additive manufacturing (AM) substantially. Current life cycle assessments (LCAs) of metal powders present considerable variations of lifecycle environmental inventory due to process divergence, spatial heterogeneity, or temporal fluctuation. Most importantly, the amounts of LCA studies on metal powder are limited and primarily confined to partial material types. To this end, based on the data surveyed from a metal powder supplier, this study conducted an LCA of titanium and nickel alloy produced by electrode-inducted and vacuum-inducted melting gas atomization, respectively. Given that energy consumption dominates the environmental burden of powder production and is influenced by metal materials’ physical properties, we proposed a Bayesian stochastic Kriging model to estimate the energy consumption during the gas atomization process. This model considered the inherent uncertainties of training data and adaptively updated the parameters of interest when new environmental data on gas atomization were available. With the predicted energy use information of specific powder, the corresponding lifecycle environmental impacts can be further autonomously estimated in conjunction with the other surveyed powder production stages. Results indicated the environmental impact of titanium alloy powder is slightly higher than that of nickel alloy powder and their lifecycle carbon emissions are around 20 kg CO 2 equivalency. The proposed Bayesian stochastic Kriging model showed more accurate predictions of energy consumption compared with conventional Kriging and stochastic Kriging models. This study enables data imputation of energy consumption during gas atomization given the physical properties and producing technique of powder materials.

Haibo Xiao

Baoyun Gao

Shoukang Yu

Bin Liu

Sheng Cao

Shitong Peng

Life cycle assessment of metal powder production: a Bayesian stochastic Kriging model-based autonomous estimation

金属粉末生产生命周期评估：基于贝叶斯随机克里金模型的自主估算

Abstract Textile dyeing requires optimizing combinations of ingredients and process parameters to achieve target colour properties. Modelling the complex relationships between these factors and the resulting colour is challenging. In this case, a physics-informed approach for multi-output regression to model CIELAB colour values from dyeing ingredient and process inputs is proposed. Leveraging attention mechanisms and multi-task learning, the model outperforms baseline methods at predicting multiple colour outputs jointly. Specifically, the Transformer model’s attention mechanism captures the complex interactions between dyeing ingredients and process parameters, while the multi-task learning framework exploits the intrinsic correlations among the L*, a*, and b* dimensions of the CIELAB colour space. In addition, the incorporation of physical knowledge through a physics-informed loss function integrates the CMC colour difference formula. This loss function, along with the attention mechanisms, enables the model to learn the nuanced relationships between the dyeing process variables and the final colour output, thereby improving the overall prediction accuracy. This reduces trial-and-error costs and resource waste, contributing to environmental sustainability by minimizing water and energy consumption and chemical emissions.

Zheyuan Chen

Jian Liu

Jian Li

Mukun Yuan

Guangping Yu

Leveraging multi-output modelling for CIELAB using colour difference formula towards sustainable textile dyeing

利用多输出建模与CIELAB色差公式实现可持续纺织染色

Abstract To solve the problem of mobile robots needing to adjust their pose for accurate operation after reaching the target point in the indoor environment, a localization method based on scene modeling and recognition has been designed. Firstly, the offline scene model is created by both handcrafted feature and semantic feature. Then, the scene recognition and location calculation are performed online based on the offline scene model. To improve the accuracy of recognition and location calculation, this paper proposes a method that integrates both semantic features matching and handcrafted features matching. Based on the results of scene recognition, the accurate location is obtained through metric calculation with 3D information. The experimental results show that the accuracy of scene recognition is over 90%, and the average localization error is less than 1 meter. Experimental results demonstrate that the localization has a better performance after using the proposed improved method.

Gang Huang

Liangzhu Lu

Yifan Zhang

Gangfu Cao

Zhe Zhou

Improved vision-only localization method for mobile robots in indoor environments

室内环境中移动机器人改进的仅视觉定位方法

Abstract This article introduces an open-source software stack designed for autonomous 1:10 scale model vehicles. Initially developed for the Bosch Future Mobility Challenge (BFMC) student competition, this versatile software stack is applicable to a variety of autonomous driving competitions. The stack comprises perception, planning, and control modules, each essential for precise and reliable scene understanding in complex environments such as a miniature smart city in the context of BFMC. Given the limited computing power of model vehicles and the necessity for low-latency real-time applications, the stack is implemented in C++, employs YOLO Version 5 s for environmental perception, and leverages the state-of-the-art Robot Operating System (ROS) for inter-process communication. We believe that this article and the accompanying open-source software will be a valuable resource for future teams participating in autonomous driving student competitions. Our work can serve as a foundational tool for novice teams and a reference for more experienced participants. The code and data are publicly available on GitHub.

Julius Bächle

Jakob Häringer

Noah Köhler

Kadir-Kaan Özer

Markus Enzweiler

Reiner Marchthaler

Competing with autonomous model vehicles: a software stack for driving in smart city environments

与自主模型车辆竞争：智能城市环境中的驾驶软件栈

Abstract Accurate velocity measurement of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is essential in various applications. Traditional vision-based methods rely heavily on visual features, which are often inadequate in low-light or feature-sparse environments. This study presents a novel approach to measure the axial velocity of UAVs using motion blur images captured by a UAV-mounted monocular camera. We introduce a motion blur model that synthesizes imaging from neighboring frames to enhance motion blur visibility. The synthesized blur frames are transformed into spectrograms using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) technique. We then apply a binarization process and the Radon transform to extract light-dark stripe spacing, which represents the motion blur length. This length is used to establish a model correlating motion blur with axial velocity, allowing precise velocity calculation. Field tests in a hydropower station penstock demonstrated an average velocity error of 0.048 m/s compared to ultra-wideband (UWB) measurements. The root-mean-square error was 0.025, with an average computational time of 42.3 ms and CPU load of 17%. These results confirm the stability and accuracy of our velocity estimation algorithm in challenging environments.

Quanxi Zhan

Yanmin Zhou

Junrui Zhang

Chenyang Sun

Runjie Shen

Bin He

A novel method for measuring center-axis velocity of unmanned aerial vehicles through synthetic motion blur images

一种通过合成运动模糊图像测量无人机中心轴速度的新方法

Abstract Semantic segmentation is significant to realize the scene understanding of autonomous driving. Due to the lack of annotated real-world data, the technology of domain adaptation is applied so that the model is trained on the synthetic data and inferred on the real data. However, this domain gap leads to aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty. These uncertainties link to the potential safety issue of autonomous driving in normal weather and adverse weather. In this study, we explore the scientific problem that has received sparse attention previously. We postulate that the Dual Attention module can mitigate the uncertainty in the task of semantic segmentation and provide some empirical study to validate it. Furthermore, the utilization of Kullback-Leibler divergence (KL divergence) helps the estimation of aleatoric uncertainty and boosts the robustness of the segmentation model. Our empirical study on the diverse datasets of semantic segmentation demonstrates the effectiveness of our method in normal and adverse weather. Our code is available at: https://github.com/liubo629/Seg-Uncertainty-dual-attention .

Huilin Yin

Pengyu Wang

Boyu Liu

Jun Yan

An uncertainty-aware domain adaptive semantic segmentation framework

一种不确定性感知的领域自适应语义分割框架

Abstract This study addresses the complexities of maritime area information collection, particularly in challenging sea environments, by introducing a multi-agent control model for regional information gathering. Focusing on three key areas—regional coverage, collaborative exploration, and agent obstacle avoidance—we aim to establish a multi-unmanned ship coverage detection system. For regional coverage, a multi-objective optimization model considering effective area coverage and time efficiency is proposed, utilizing a heuristic simulated annealing algorithm for optimal allocation and path planning, achieving a 99.67% effective coverage rate in simulations. Collaborative exploration is tackled through a comprehensive optimization model, solved using an improved greedy strategy, resulting in a 100% static target detection and correct detection index. Agent obstacle avoidance is enhanced by a collision avoidance model and a distributed underlying collision avoidance algorithm, ensuring autonomous obstacle avoidance without communication or scheduling. Simulations confirm zero collaborative failures. This research offers practical solutions for multi-agent exploration and coverage in unknown sea areas, balancing workload and time efficiency while considering ship dynamics constraints.

Feifei Chen

Qingyun Yu

Multiple unmanned ship coverage and exploration in complex sea areas

复杂海域多无人船覆盖与探测

Abstract Water conservation has become a global problem as the population increases. In many densely populated cities in China, leaks from century-old pipe works have been widespread. However, entirely eradicating the issues involves replacing all water networks, which is costly and time-consuming. This paper proposed an AI-enabled water-saving control system with three control modes: time division control, flow regulation, and critical point control according to actual flow. Firstly, based on the current leaking situation of water supply networks in China and the capability level of China’s water management, a water-saving technology integrating PID control and a series of deep learning algorithms was proposed. Secondly, a multi-jet control valve was designed to control pressure and reduce water distribution network cavitation. This technology has been successfully applied in industrial settings in China and has achieved gratifying water-saving results.

Fengnian Liu

Xiang Yu

Junya Tang

Water-saving control system based on multiple intelligent algorithms

基于多种智能算法的水资源节约控制系统

Abstract In this article, a nonlinear optimal control approach is proposed for the dynamic model of 3-DOF four-cable driven parallel robots (CDPR). To solve the associated nonlinear optimal control problem, the dynamic model of the 3-DOF cable-driven parallel robot undergoes approximate linearization around a temporary operating point that is recomputed at each time-step of the control method. The linearization relies on Taylor series expansion and on the associated Jacobian matrices. For the linearized state-space model of the 3-DOF cable-driven parallel robot a stabilizing optimal (H-infinity) feedback controller is designed. To compute the controller’s feedback gains an algebraic Riccati equation is repetitively solved at each iteration of the control algorithm. The stability properties of the control method are proven through Lyapunov analysis. The proposed nonlinear optimal control approach achieves fast and accurate tracking of reference setpoints under moderate variations of the control inputs and a minimum dispersion of energy.

G. Rigatos

M. Abbaszadeh

J. Pomares

A nonlinear optimal control approach for 3-DOF four-cable driven parallel robots

三自由度四线驱动并联机器人的非线性最优控制方法

期刊	Autonomous Intelligent Systems
ISSN	2730-616X
h-index	8