The article develops a novel motion model, called generalized multispeed Dubins motion model (GMDM), which extends the Dubins model by considering multiple speeds. While the Dubins model produces time-optimal paths under a constant-speed constraint, these paths could be suboptimal if this constraint is relaxed to include multiple speeds. This is because a constant speed results in a large minimum turning radius, thus producing paths with longer maneuvers and larger travel times. In contrast, multispeed relaxation allows for slower speed sharp turns, thus producing more direct paths with shorter maneuvers and smaller travel times. Furthermore, the inability of the Dubins model to reduce speed could result in fast maneuvers near obstacles, thus producing paths with high collision risks. In this regard, GMDM provides the motion planners the ability to jointly optimize time and risk by allowing the change of speed along the path. GMDM is built upon the six Dubins path types considering the change of speed on path segments. It is theoretically established that GMDM provides full reachability of the configuration space for any speed selections. Furthermore, it is shown that the Dubins model is a specific case of GMDM for constant speeds. The solutions of GMDM are analytical and suitable for real-time applications. The performance of GMDM in terms of solution quality (i.e., time/time-risk cost) and computation time is comparatively evaluated against the existing motion models in obstacle-free as well as obstacle-rich environments via extensive Monte Carlo simulations. The results show that in obstacle-free environments, GMDM produces near time-optimal paths with significantly lower travel times than the Dubins model while having similar computation times. In obstacle-rich environments, GMDM produces time-risk optimized paths with substantially lower collision risks.

Border surveillance requires regular patrolling to prevent intruders from crossing across, emphasizing the need for an automated network of sensing devices that is capable of detecting and estimating multiple moving targets. This paper proposes a fusion-driven decentralized sensor scheduling scheme that enables dynamic space-time clustering around multiple moving targets for energy-efficient track estimation. Each sensor node runs a Probabilistic Finite State Automata (PFSA) that controls the sensing and communication devices in an energy-efficient manner. This decentralized scheduling scheme is validated and compared with traditional scheduling schemes. The results show that the proposed scheme conserves energy while maintaining accurate track estimation.

Human activity recognition has become an increasingly important field of research with many practical applications related to health care and leisure activities. The accessibility of inexpensive portable sensors, such as accelerometers, allows for a widespread use of this technology for both commercial and personal activity recognition. This paper develops a novel feature extraction approach to human activity recognition through the development of the Lempel-Ziv-Welch Coded Probabilistic Finite State Automata (LZW-Coded PFSA) to classify activities such as walking, jumping, running, waist rotations, and shoulder rotations. The PFSA reveal the underlying architecture of a given activity and classify it without making any a priori assumptions by inferring patterns from the sensor measurements. LZW-Coded PFSA select the optimal variable length state from the time-series data and compress it into class-separable state transition matrices π. This algorithm is robust to subject biases and is shown to be effective with a correct classification rate of 95.63%.