Anomaly detection is a common application of machine learning. Out-of-distribution (OOD) detection in particular is a semi-supervised anomaly detection technique where the detection method is trained only on the inlier (in-distribution) samples-unlike the fully supervised variant, the distribution of the outlier samples are never explicitly modeled in OOD detection tasks. In this work, we design a novel GAN-based OOD detection network specifically designed to protect a cyber-physical signal systems from novel Trojan malware called non-control data (NCD) attack that evades conventional malware detection techniques. Inspired in part by the classical locally most powerful (LMP) test in statistical inferences, the proposed LMP-GAN trains the OOD detector (discriminator) by generating OOD samples that are aimed at making maximal alteration to the inlier samples while evading detection. We experimentally compare the results to the state-of-the-art anomaly detection methods to demonstrate the benefits and the appropriateness of the LMP-GAN OOD detector.

Software defined radio (SDR) provides significant advantages over traditional analog radio systems and are becoming increasingly relied on for ”mission critical” applications. This along with risk of trojans, single-event upsets and human error creates the necessity for fault tolerant systems. Redundancy has been traditionally used to implement fault tolerance but incurs a substantial area overhead which is undesirable in most applications. Advancements in field-programmable gate array and system on a chip technologies have made implementing machine learning (ML) algorithms within embedded systems feasible. In this paper we explore the use of ML to implement fault tolerance in an SDR. Our approach, which we call adaptive component-level degeneracy (ACD), uses a ML model to learn the functionality of an SDR component. Once trained, the model can detect when the component is compromised and mitigate the issue with its own output. We demonstrate the ability of our model to learn multiple simulated SDR components. We compare the one-dimensional convolutional neural network and bidirectional recurrent neural network architectures at modeling time series components. We also implement ACD within a real-time SDR system using GNU Radio Companion. The results show great potential for the utilization of ML techniques for improving embedded system reliability.

Accuracy of robots is an important facet in an industrial setting. In this paper, we present a novel kinematic calibration methodology. Traditional calibration techniques require an external metrology device. Unlike those, the presented product here is highly practical in that it does not require a metrology device. The kinematic calibration model is formulated by making use of the robot itself as a metrology device to measure the geometry of a known artifact. The optimal parameters/characteristics of the model are identified using a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique. Our experimental results show that this new approach provides results comparable to those generated using spatial information provided by a Coordinate Measurement Machine (CMM). Using this new approach (GageCAL), the Yaskawa Motoman “MHS-Hi” robot is calibrated. Our experimental testing also indicates that this methodology can be extended to a wide variety of anthropomorphic robots.

We present new pulmonary nodule segmentation algorithms for computed tomography (CT). These include a fully-automated (FA) system, a semi-automated (SA) system, and a hybrid system. Like most traditional systems, the new FA system requires only a single user-supplied cue point. On the other hand, the SA system represents a new algorithm class requiring 8 user-supplied control points. This does increase the burden on the user, but we show that the resulting system is highly robust and can handle a variety of challenging cases. The proposed hybrid system starts with the FA system. If improved segmentation results are needed, the SA system is then deployed. The FA segmentation engine has 2 free parameters, and the SA system has 3. These parameters are adaptively determined for each nodule in a search process guided by a regression neural network (RNN). The RNN uses a number of features computed for each candidate segmentation. We train and test our systems using the new Lung Image Database Consortium and Image Database Resource Initiative (LIDC-IDRI) data. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first nodule-specific performance benchmarks using the new LIDC-IDRI dataset. We also compare the performance of the proposed methods with several previously reported results on the same data used by those other methods. Our results suggest that the proposed FA system improves upon the state-of-the-art, and the SA system offers a considerable boost over the FA system.