ML Meeting Notes & Research Opportunities

 

Introduction & Progress Update

 

We finally had a long-due gathering of machine learning late afternoon yesterday. Even though some of our members had college class, piano class, etc.. We still had eight members attended the meeting including new friends! Mr. Lin went through the basic introduction of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Perceptrons, and Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLP). He also showed the current progress of Machine Learning (ML) research group. It can be summarized as the following:

• Perceptron has been studied, understood, implemented in C code, and proved to be functioning. It can be used to separate two linearly separable classes.
• Perceptron algorithm has been used to distinguish hand gestures between thumb and pinky by the Electromyography (EMG) signals acquired from two muscles in the forearm. This "Hand-to-Hand Communication" project is a current project of Advanced STEM Research class.
• Multi-Layer Perceptron has been studied, partially understood, and implemented in C code. It has been trained (20,000 samples) and tested (2,500 samples) using artificially generated data set including five classes in the 3D space. So far, it can separate the testing data properly, and the error rate is 2.48 %. 
• The current focus is to apply the MLP to the "Hand-to-Hand Communication" project such that we can recognize hand gestures form all five fingers.

You can view the detailed presentation by clicking the link. 

Research Opportunities

At this moment, four research opportunities are available for students to ramp up the ML learning curve and develop skill sets in specific fields. 

1. Subway Signs Recognition: We will start from recognizing train numbers using MLP. Some image pre-processing and feature extraction will be provided to create the feature vectors as the input of the MLP algorithm. Our goal is to recognize all the subway signs by classification.
2. Drone Tracking: We will use MLP to find the location (3D coordinates) of a flying drone through the positions (2D coordinates) in the image planes of multi-angle cameras by regression. 
3. Bioinformatics: Bioinformatics is the application of computer technology to the management of biological information. Computers are used to gather, store, analyze and integrate biological and genetic information which can then be applied to gene-based drug discovery and development. We are in the process of forming a bioinformatics project with the Evolutionary Bioinformatics Lab at Hunter College.
4. Watson Analytics: IBM is actively developing their Watson-based business. Harnessing the power of Watson to various fields in our lives depends on software applications. We may be able enter the Watson world by learning and developing apps on this commercially available platform.   

So far, a few students have decided to sign up specific activities:

1. Subway Signs Recognition: Qin Ying, Tai Wei and Alan.
2. Drone Tracking: (open).
3. Bioinformatics: Belinda.
4. Watson Analytics: Michael.

For people who haven't signed up specific projects yet or people who have missed the meeting, you can email Mr. Lin your choice. You are more than welcome to review the presentation and discuss the details of the research opportunities with Mr. Lin. Mr. Lin will soon post further information for each team to start working on their project!