Domain Anomaly Detection in Machine Perception: A System Architecture and Taxonomy

A Machine Learning Strategy Based on Kittler’s Taxonomy to Detect Anomalies and Recognize Contexts Applied to Monitor Water Bodies in Environments

Environmental monitoring, such as analyses of water bodies to detect anomalies, is recognized worldwide as a task necessary to reduce the impacts arising from pollution. However, the large number of data available to be analyzed in different contexts, such as in an image time series acquired by satellites, still pose challenges for the detection of anomalies, even when using computers. This study describes a machine learning strategy based on Kittler’s taxonomy to detect anomalies related to water pollution in an image time series. We propose this strategy to monitor environments, detecting unexpected conditions that may occur (i.e., detecting outliers), and identifying those outliers in accordance with Kittler’s taxonomy (i.e., detecting anomalies). According to our strategy, contextual and non-contextual image classifications were semi-automatically compared to find any divergence that indicates the presence of one type of anomaly defined by the taxonomy. In our strategy, models built to classify a single image were used to classify an image time series due to domain adaptation. The results 99.07%, 99.99%, 99.07%, and 99.53% were achieved by our strategy, respectively, for accuracy, precision, recall, and F-measure. These results suggest that our strategy allows computers to recognize contexts and enhances their capabilities to solve contextualized problems. Therefore, our strategy can be used to guide computational systems to make different decisions to solve a problem in response to each context. The proposed strategy is relevant for improving machine learning, as its use allows computers to have a more organized learning process. Our strategy is presented with respect to its applicability to help monitor environmental disasters. A minor limitation was found in the results caused by the use of domain adaptation. This type of limitation is fairly common when using domain adaptation, and therefore has no significance. Even so, future work should investigate other techniques for transfer learning.

Real-Time Nonparametric Anomaly Detection in High-Dimensional Settings

Timely detection of abrupt anomalies is crucial for real-time monitoring and security of modern systems producing high-dimensional data. With this goal, we propose effective and scalable algorithms. Proposed algorithms are nonparametric as both the nominal and anomalous multivariate data distributions are assumed unknown. We extract useful univariate summary statistics and perform anomaly detection in a single-dimensional space. We model anomalies as persistent outliers and propose to detect them via a cumulative sum-like algorithm. In case the observed data have a low intrinsic dimensionality, we find a submanifold in which the nominal data are embedded and evaluate whether the sequentially acquired data persistently deviate from the nominal submanifold. Further, in the general case, we determine an acceptance region for nominal data via Geometric Entropy Minimization and evaluate whether the sequentially observed data persistently fall outside the acceptance region. We provide an asymptotic lower bound and an asymptotic approximation for the average false alarm period of the proposed algorithm. Moreover, we provide a sufficient condition to asymptotically guarantee that the decision statistic of the proposed algorithm does not diverge in the absence of anomalies. Experiments illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes in quick and accurate anomaly detection in high-dimensional settings.

Robust One-Class Kernel Spectral Regression

The kernel null-space technique is known to be an effective one-class classification (OCC) technique. Nevertheless, the applicability of this method is limited due to its susceptibility to possible training data corruption and the inability to rank training observations according to their conformity with the model. This article addresses these shortcomings by regularizing the solution of the null-space kernel Fisher methodology in the context of its regression-based formulation. In this respect, first, the effect of the Tikhonov regularization in the Hilbert space is analyzed, where the one-class learning problem in the presence of contamination in the training set is posed as a sensitivity analysis problem. Next, the effect of the sparsity of the solution is studied. For both alternative regularization schemes, iterative algorithms are proposed which recursively update label confidences. Through extensive experiments, the proposed methodology is found to enhance robustness against contamination in the training set compared with the baseline kernel null-space method, as well as other existing approaches in the OCC paradigm, while providing the functionality to rank training samples effectively.

An Incongruence-Based Anomaly Detection Strategy for Analyzing Water Pollution in Images from Remote Sensing

The potential applications of computational tools, such as anomaly detection and incongruence, for analyzing data attract much attention from the scientific research community. However, there remains a need for more studies to determine how anomaly detection and incongruence applied to analyze data of static images from remote sensing will assist in detecting water pollution. In this study, an incongruence-based anomaly detection strategy for analyzing water pollution in images from remote sensing is presented. Our strategy semi-automatically detects occurrences of one type of anomaly based on the divergence between two image classifications (contextual and non-contextual). The results indicate that our strategy accurately analyzes the majority of images. Incongruence as a strategy for detecting anomalies in real-application (non-synthetic) data found in images from remote sensing is relevant for recognizing crude oil close to open water bodies or water pollution caused by the presence of brown mud in large rivers. It can also assist surveillance systems by detecting environmental disasters or performing mappings.

Efficient Training for Positive Unlabeled Learning

Positive unlabeled (PU) learning is useful in various practical situations, where there is a need to learn a classifier for a class of interest from an unlabeled data set, which may contain anomalies as well as samples from unknown classes. The learning task can be formulated as an optimization problem under the framework of statistical learning theory. Recent studies have theoretically analyzed its properties and generalization performance, nevertheless, little effort has been made to consider the problem of scalability, especially when large sets of unlabeled data are available. In this work we propose a novel scalable PU learning algorithm that is theoretically proven to provide the optimal solution, while showing superior computational and memory performance. Experimental evaluation confirms the theoretical evidence and shows that the proposed method can be successfully applied to a large variety of real-world problems involving PU learning.

Delta Divergence: A Novel Decision Cognizant Measure of Classifier Incongruence

In pattern recognition, disagreement between two classifiers regarding the predicted class membership of an observation can be indicative of an anomaly and its nuance. Since, in general, classifiers base their decisions on class a posteriori probabilities, the most natural approach to detecting classifier incongruence is to use divergence. However, existing divergences are not particularly suitable to gauge classifier incongruence. In this paper, we postulate the properties that a divergence measure should satisfy and propose a novel divergence measure, referred to as delta divergence. In contrast to existing measures, it focuses on the dominant (most probable) hypotheses and, thus, reduces the effect of the probability mass distributed over the non dominant hypotheses (clutter). The proposed measure satisfies other important properties, such as symmetry, and independence of classifier confidence. The relationship of the proposed divergence to some baseline measures, and its superiority, is shown experimentally.

UAV Sensor Fault Detection Using a Classifier without Negative Samples: A Local Density Regulated Optimization Algorithm

Fault detection for sensors of unmanned aerial vehicles is essential for ensuring flight security, in which the flight control system conducts real-time control for the vehicles relying on the sensing information from sensors, and erroneous sensor data will lead to false flight control commands, causing undesirable consequences. However, because of the scarcity of faulty instances, it still remains a challenging issue for flight sensor fault detection. The one-class support vector machine approach is a favorable classifier without negative samples, however, it is sensitive to outliers that deviate from the center and lacks a mechanism for coping with them. The compactness of its decision boundary is influenced, leading to the degradation of detection rate. To deal with this issue, an optimized one-class support vector machine approach regulated by local density is proposed in this paper, which regulates the tolerance extents of its decision boundary to the outliers according to their extent of abnormality indicated by their local densities. The application scope of the local density theory is narrowed to keep the internal instances unchanged and a rule for assigning the outliers continuous density coefficients is raised. Simulation results on a real flight control system model have proved its effectiveness and superiority.