Obstacle Detection System for Navigation Assistance of Visually Impaired People Based on Deep Learning Techniques.

Visually impaired people seek social integration, yet their mobility is restricted. They need a personal navigation system that can provide privacy and increase their confidence for better life quality. In this paper, based on deep learning and neural architecture search (NAS), we propose an intelligent navigation assistance system for visually impaired people. The deep learning model has achieved significant success through well-designed architecture. Subsequently, NAS has proved to be a promising technique for automatically searching for the optimal architecture and reducing human efforts for architecture design. However, this new technique requires extensive computation, limiting its wide use. Due to its high computation requirement, NAS has been less investigated for computer vision tasks, especially object detection. Therefore, we propose a fast NAS to search for an object detection framework by considering efficiency. The NAS will be used to explore the feature pyramid network and the prediction stage for an anchor-free object detection model. The proposed NAS is based on a tailored reinforcement learning technique. The searched model was evaluated on a combination of the Coco dataset and the Indoor Object Detection and Recognition (IODR) dataset. The resulting model outperformed the original model by 2.6% in average precision (AP) with acceptable computation complexity. The achieved results proved the efficiency of the proposed NAS for custom object detection.

Cyber Attacks and Terrorism: A Twenty-First Century Conundrum.

In the recent years, an alarming rise in the incidence of cyber attacks has made cyber security a major concern for nations across the globe. Given the current volatile socio-political environment and the massive increase in the incidence of terrorism, it is imperative that government agencies rapidly realize the possibility of cyber space exploitation by terrorist organizations and state players to disrupt the normal way of life. The threat level of cyber terrorism has never been as high as it is today, and this has created a lot of insecurity and fear. This study has focused on different aspects of cyber attacks and explored the reasons behind their increasing popularity among the terrorist organizations and state players. This study proposes an empirical model that can be used to estimate the risk levels associated with different types of cyber attacks and thereby provide a road map to conceptualize and formulate highly effective counter measures and cyber security policies.

Reducing traffic congestion in makkah during Hajj through the use of AI technology.

This research addresses the pervasive issue of traffic congestion during the Hajj, where approximately 250,000 vehicles substantially exacerbate travel times and road accidents, while also escalating pollution levels, thereby adversely affecting public health. Aimed at bolstering the Kingdom's Vision 2030, the study focuses on the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced communication technologies to optimize traffic management in Mecca. Through the innovative deployment of smart cameras and real-time data analytics, the proposed system seeks to predict, manage, and alleviate traffic congestion by providing alternative routes and facilitating smoother vehicular movement. An exploration into the myriad benefits of this AI-integrated system reveals potentials such as enhanced road safety, improved emergency response efficiencies, and elevated air quality, thereby contributing to the overall wellbeing of the community and environment. In addition, the research anticipates that reducing traffic bottlenecks will indirectly invigorate local businesses and augment tourism revenues, aligning with the objectives of enhancing economic prosperity. By advocating a multi-faceted approach to crowd monitoring and management, this study underscores the indispensable role of AI in revolutionizing traffic management strategies, despite the challenges posed by the complexity of real-time data simulation and the unique intricacies of the Hajj.

Exploring Hajj pilgrim satisfaction with hospitality services through expectation-confirmation theory and deep learning.

The Hajj is a religious event that attracts a significant number of Muslims from various countries who perform rituals in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Despite the high volume of pilgrims that typically participate in the event, the number has been reduced in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The satisfaction of Hajj pilgrims with the quality of hospitality services provided during the event is a crucial factor that must be studied and understood. To achieve this goal, various psychological theories have been employed to explain the phenomenon. The advancement of big data and artificial intelligence has enabled the development of new analytical methodologies for evaluating psychological theories in the hospitality industry. In this study, we present a novel deep learning model that leverages the expectation-confirmation theory to examine the satisfaction of Hajj pilgrims with hospitality services. The model was trained and tested on data obtained from hotel review posts related to the Hajj. Based on our results, the proposed model achieved a high accuracy of 97 % in predicting the satisfaction of Hajj pilgrims. In addition, the results can be used to improve the quality of services provided to pilgrims and enhance their overall experience during the Hajj.

An optimized multi-attribute decision-making approach to construction supply chain management by using complex picture fuzzy soft set.

Supplier selection is a critical decision-making process for any organization, as it directly impacts the quality, cost, and reliability of its products and services. However, the supplier selection problem can become highly complex due to the uncertainties and vagueness associated with it. To overcome these complexities, multi-criteria decision analysis, and fuzzy logic have been used to incorporate uncertainties and vagueness into the supplier selection process. These techniques can help organizations make informed decisions and mitigate the risks associated with supplier selection. In this article, a complex picture fuzzy soft set (cpFSS), a generalized fuzzy set-like structure, is developed to deal with information-based uncertainties involved in the supplier selection process. It can maintain the expected information-based periodicity by introducing amplitude and phase terms. The amplitude term is meant for fuzzy membership, and the phase term is for managing its periodicity within the complex plane. The cpFSS also facilitates the decision-makers by allowing them the opportunity to provide their neutral grade-based opinions for objects under observation. Firstly, the essential notions and set-theoretic operations of cpFSS are investigated and illustrated with examples. Secondly, a MADM-based algorithm is proposed by describing new matrix-based aggregations of cpFSS like the core matrix, maximum and minimum decision value matrices, and score. Lastly, the proposed algorithm is implemented in real-world applications with the aim of selecting a suitable supplier for the provision of required materials for construction projects. With the sensitivity analysis of score values through Pythagorean means, it can be concluded that the results and rankings of the suppliers are consistent. Moreover, through structural comparison, the proposed structure is proven to be more flexible and reliable as compared to existing fuzzy set-like structures.

Indoor Signs Detection for Visually Impaired People: Navigation Assistance Based on a Lightweight Anchor-Free Object Detector.

Facilitating the navigation of visually impaired people in indoor environments requires detecting indicating signs and informing them. In this paper, we proposed an indoor sign detection based on a lightweight anchor-free object detection model called FAM-centerNet. The baseline model of this work is the centerNet, which is an anchor-free object detection model with high performance and low computation complexity. A Foreground Attention Module (FAM) was introduced to extract target objects in real scenes with complex backgrounds. This module segments the foreground to extract relevant features of the target object using midground proposal and boxes-induced segmentation. In addition, the foreground module provides scale information to improve the regression performance. Extensive experiments on two datasets prove the efficiency of the proposed model for detecting general objects and custom indoor signs. The Pascal VOC dataset was used to test the performance of the proposed model for detecting general objects, and a custom dataset was used for evaluating the performance in detecting indoor signs. The reported results have proved the efficiency of the proposed FAM in enhancing the performance of the baseline model.

A Framework for Susceptibility Analysis of Brain Tumours Based on Uncertain Analytical Cum Algorithmic Modeling.

Susceptibility analysis is an intelligent technique that not only assists decision makers in assessing the suspected severity of any sort of brain tumour in a patient but also helps them diagnose and cure these tumours. This technique has been proven more useful in those developing countries where the available health-based and funding-based resources are limited. By employing set-based operations of an arithmetical model, namely fuzzy parameterised complex intuitionistic fuzzy hypersoft set (FPCIFHSS), this study seeks to develop a robust multi-attribute decision support mechanism for appraising patients' susceptibility to brain tumours. The FPCIFHSS is regarded as more reliable and generalised for handling information-based uncertainties because its complex components and fuzzy parameterisation are designed to deal with the periodic nature of the data and dubious parameters (sub-parameters), respectively. In the proposed FPCIFHSS-susceptibility model, some suitable types of brain tumours are approximated with respect to the most relevant symptoms (parameters) based on the expert opinions of decision makers in terms of complex intuitionistic fuzzy numbers (CIFNs). After determining the fuzzy parameterised values of multi-argument-based tuples and converting the CIFNs into fuzzy values, the scores for such types of tumours are computed based on a core matrix which relates them with fuzzy parameterised multi-argument-based tuples. The sub-intervals within [0, 1] denote the susceptibility degrees of patients corresponding to these types of brain tumours. The susceptibility of patients is examined by observing the membership of score values in the sub-intervals.

A Modified ResNeXt for Android Malware Identification and Classification.

It is critical to successfully identify, mitigate, and fight against Android malware assaults, since Android malware has long been a significant threat to the security of Android applications. Identifying and categorizing dangerous applications into categories that are similar to one another are especially important in the development of a safe Android app ecosystem. The categorization of malware families may be used to improve the efficiency of the malware detection process as well as to systematically identify malicious trends. In this study, we proposed a modified ResNeXt model by embedding a new regularization technique to improve the classification task. In addition, we present a comprehensive evaluation of the Android malware classification and detection using our modified ResNeXt. The nonintuitive malware's features are converted into fingerprint images in order to extract the rich information from the input data. In addition, we applied fine-tuned deep learning (DL) based on the convolutional neural network (CNN) on the visualized malware samples to automatically obtain the discriminatory features that separate normal from malicious data. Using DL techniques not only avoids the domain expert costs but also eliminates the frequent need for the feature engineering methods. Furthermore, we evaluated the effectiveness of the modified ResNeXt model in the classification process by testing a total of fifteen different combinations of the Android malware image sections on the Drebin dataset. In this study, we only use grayscale malware images from a modified ResNeXt to analyze the malware samples. The experimental results show that the modified ResNeXt successfully achieved an accuracy of 98.25% using Android certificates only. Furthermore, we undertook extensive trials on the dataset in order to confirm the efficacy of our methodology, and we compared our approach with several existing methods. Finally, this article reveals the evaluation of different models and a much more precise option for malware identification.

A Robust Framework for Data Generative and Heart Disease Prediction Based on Efficient Deep Learning Models.

Biomarkers including fasting blood sugar, heart rate, electrocardiogram (ECG), blood pressure, etc. are essential in the heart disease (HD) diagnosing. Using wearable sensors, these measures are collected and applied as inputs to a deep learning (DL) model for HD diagnosis. However, it is observed that model accuracy weakens when the data gathered are scarce or imbalanced. Therefore, this work proposes two DL-based frameworks, GAN-1D-CNN, and GAN-Bi-LSTM. These frameworks contain: (1) a generative adversarial network (GAN) and (2) a one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D-CNN) or bi-directional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM). The GAN model is utilized to augment the small and imbalanced dataset, which is the Cleveland dataset. The 1D-CNN and Bi-LSTM models are then trained using the enlarged dataset to diagnose HD. Unlike previous works, the proposed frameworks increase the dataset first to avoid the prediction bias caused by the limited data. The GAN-1D-CNN achieved 99.1% accuracy, specificity, sensitivity, F1-score, and 100% area under the curve (AUC). Similarly, the GAN-Bi-LSTM obtained 99.3% accuracy, 99.2% specificity, 99.3% sensitivity, 99.2% F1-score, and 100% AUC. Furthermore, time complexity of proposed frameworks is investigated with and without principal component analysis (PCA). The PCA method reduced prediction times for 61 samples using GAN-1D-CNN and GAN-Bi-LSTM to 68.8 and 74.8 ms, respectively. These results show that it is reliable to use our frameworks for augmenting limited data and predicting heart disease.

Event-Specific Transmission Forecasting of SARS-CoV-2 in a Mixed-Mode Ventilated Office Room Using an ANN.

The emerging novel variants and re-merging old variants of SARS-CoV-2 make it critical to study the transmission probability in mixed-mode ventilated office environments. Artificial neural network (ANN) and curve fitting (CF) models were created to forecast the R-Event. The R-Event is defined as the anticipated number of new infections that develop in particular events occurring over the course of time in any defined space. In the spring and summer of 2022, real-time data for an office environment were collected in India in a mixed-mode ventilated office space in a composite climate. The performances of the proposed CF and ANN models were compared with respect to traditional statistical indicators, such as the correlation coefficient, RMSE, MAE, MAPE, NS index, and a20-index, in order to determine the merit of the two approaches. Thirteen input features, namely the indoor temperature (TIn), indoor relative humidity (RHIn), area of opening (AO), number of occupants (O), area per person (AP), volume per person (VP), CO2 concentration (CO2), air quality index (AQI), outer wind speed (WS), outdoor temperature (TOut), outdoor humidity (RHOut), fan air speed (FS), and air conditioning (AC), were selected to forecast the R-Event as the target. The main objective was to determine the relationship between the CO2 level and R-Event, ultimately producing a model for forecasting infections in office building environments. The correlation coefficients for the CF and ANN models in this case study were 0.7439 and 0.9999, respectively. This demonstrates that the ANN model is more accurate in R-Event prediction than the curve fitting model. The results show that the proposed ANN model is reliable and significantly accurate in forecasting the R-Event values for mixed-mode ventilated offices.

The Assessment of Medication Effects in Omicron Patients through MADM Approach Based on Distance Measures of Interval-Valued Fuzzy Hypersoft Set.

Omicron, so-called COVID-2, is an emerging variant of COVID-19 which is proved to be the most fatal amongst the other variants such as alpha, beta and gamma variants (α, ß, γ variants) due to its stern and perilous nature. It has caused hazardous effects globally in a very short span of time. The diagnosis and medication of Omicron patients are both challenging undertakings for researchers (medical experts) due to the involvement of various uncertainties and the vagueness of its altering behavior. In this study, an algebraic approach, interval-valued fuzzy hypersoft set (iv-FHSS), is employed to assess the conditions of patients after the application of suitable medication. Firstly, the distance measures between two iv-FHSSs are formulated with a brief description some of its properties, then a multi-attribute decision-making framework is designed through the proposal of an algorithm. This framework consists of three phases of medication. In the first phase, the Omicron-diagnosed patients are shortlisted and an iv-FHSS is constructed for such patients and then they are medicated. Another iv-FHSS is constructed after their first medication. Similarly, the relevant iv-FHSSs are constructed after second and third medications in other phases. The distance measures of these post-medication-based iv-FHSSs are computed with pre-medication-based iv-FHSS and the monotone pattern of distance measures are analyzed. It is observed that a decreasing pattern of computed distance measures assures that the medication is working well and the patients are recovering. In case of an increasing pattern, the medication is changed and the same procedure is repeated for the assessment of its effects. This approach is reliable due to the consideration of parameters (symptoms) and sub parameters (sub symptoms) jointly as multi-argument approximations.

Contrast and Synthetic Multiexposure Fusion for Image Enhancement.

Many hardware and software advancements have been made to improve image quality in smartphones, but unsuitable lighting conditions are still a significant impediment to image quality. To counter this problem, we present an image enhancement pipeline comprising synthetic multi-image exposure fusion and contrast enhancement robust to different lighting conditions. In this paper, we propose a novel technique of generating synthetic multi-exposure images by applying gamma correction to an input image using different values according to its luminosity for generating multiple intermediate images, which are then transformed into a final synthetic image by applying contrast enhancement. We observed that our proposed contrast enhancement technique focuses on specific regions of an image resulting in varying exposure, colors, and details for generating synthetic images. Visual and statistical analysis shows that our method performs better in various lighting scenarios and achieves better statistical naturalness and discrete entropy scores than state-of-the-art methods.

Computational Learning Model for Prediction of Heart Disease Using Machine Learning Based on a New Regularizer.

Heart diseases are characterized as heterogeneous diseases comprising multiple subtypes. Early diagnosis and prognosis of heart disease are essential to facilitate the clinical management of patients. In this research, a new computational model for predicting early heart disease is proposed. The predictive model is embedded in a new regularization based on decaying the weights according to the weight matrices' standard deviation and comparing the results against its parents (RSD-ANN). The performance of RSD-ANN is far better than that of the existing methods. Based on our experiments, the average validation accuracy computed was 96.30% using either the tenfold cross-validation or holdout method.