Daqing Zhang

Haoyi Xiong, Jiang Bian, Sijia Yang et al.

Large language models (LLMs) have become phenomenally surging, since 2018--two decades after introducing context-awareness into computing systems. Through taking into account the situations of ubiquitous devices, users and the societies, context-aware computing has enabled a wide spectrum of innovative applications, such as assisted living, location-based social network services and so on. To recognize contexts and make decisions for actions accordingly, various artificial intelligence technologies, such as Ontology and OWL, have been adopted as representations for context modeling and reasoning. Recently, with the rise of LLMs and their improved natural language understanding and reasoning capabilities, it has become feasible to model contexts using natural language and perform context reasoning by interacting with LLMs such as ChatGPT and GPT-4. In this tutorial, we demonstrate the use of texts, prompts, and autonomous agents (AutoAgents) that enable LLMs to perform context modeling and reasoning without requiring fine-tuning of the model. We organize and introduce works in the related field, and name this computing paradigm as the LLM-driven Context-aware Computing (LCaC). In the LCaC paradigm, users' requests, sensors reading data, and the command to actuators are supposed to be represented as texts. Given the text of users' request and sensor data, the AutoAgent models the context by prompting and sends to the LLM for context reasoning. LLM generates a plan of actions and responds to the AutoAgent, which later follows the action plan to foster context-awareness. To prove the concepts, we use two showcases--(1) operating a mobile z-arm in an apartment for assisted living, and (2) planning a trip and scheduling the itinerary in a context-aware and personalized manner.

Ru-yu Yan, Da-Qing Zhang

Existing edge detection methods often suffer from noise amplification and excessive retention of non-salient details, limiting their applicability in high-precision industrial scenarios. To address these challenges, we propose CAM-EDIT, a novel framework that integrates Channel Attention Mechanism (CAM) and Edge Detection via Independence Testing (EDIT). The CAM module adaptively enhances discriminative edge features through multi-channel fusion, while the EDIT module employs region-wise statistical independence analysis (using Fisher's exact test and chi-square test) to suppress uncorrelated noise.Extensive experiments on BSDS500 and NYUDv2 datasets demonstrate state-of-the-art performance. Among the nine comparison algorithms, the F-measure scores of CAM-EDIT are 0.635 and 0.460, representing improvements of 19.2\% to 26.5\% over traditional methods (Canny, CannySR), and better than the latest learning based methods (TIP2020, MSCNGP). Noise robustness evaluations further reveal a 2.2\% PSNR improvement under Gaussian noise compared to baseline methods. Qualitative results exhibit cleaner edge maps with reduced artifacts, demonstrating its potential for high-precision industrial applications.

Ruyu Yan, Da-Qing Zhang

Edge detection is crucial in image processing, but existing methods often produce overly detailed edge maps, affecting clarity. Fixed-window statistical testing faces issues like scale mismatch and computational redundancy. To address these, we propose a novel Multi-scale Adaptive Independence Testing-based Edge Detection and Denoising (EDD-MAIT), a Multi-scale Adaptive Statistical Testing-based edge detection and denoising method that integrates a channel attention mechanism with independence testing. A gradient-driven adaptive window strategy adjusts window sizes dynamically, improving detail preservation and noise suppression. EDD-MAIT achieves better robustness, accuracy, and efficiency, outperforming traditional and learning-based methods on BSDS500 and BIPED datasets, with improvements in F-score, MSE, PSNR, and reduced runtime. It also shows robustness against Gaussian noise, generating accurate and clean edge maps in noisy environments.

Shui-jin Rong, Wei Guo, Da-qing Zhang

Aiming at the group decision - making problem with multi - objective attributes, this study proposes a group decision - making system that integrates fuzzy inference and Bayesian network. A fuzzy rule base is constructed by combining threshold values, membership functions, expert experience, and domain knowledge to address quantitative challenges such as scale differences and expert linguistic variables. A hierarchical Bayesian network is designed, featuring a directed acyclic graph with nodes selected by experts, and maximum likelihood estimation is used to dynamically optimize the conditional probability table, modeling the nonlinear correlations among multidimensional indices for posterior probability aggregation. In a comprehensive student evaluation case, this method is compared with the traditional weighted scoring approach. The results indicate that the proposed method demonstrates effectiveness in both rule criterion construction and ranking consistency, with a classification accuracy of 86.0% and an F1 value improvement of 53.4% over the traditional method. Additionally, computational experiments on real - world datasets across various group decision scenarios assess the method's performance and robustness, providing evidence of its reliability in diverse contexts.

Yan Huang, Da-Qing Zhang

Biclustering is an effective technique in data mining and pattern recognition. Biclustering algorithms based on traditional clustering face two fundamental limitations when processing high-dimensional data: (1) The distance concentration phenomenon in high-dimensional spaces leads to data sparsity, rendering similarity measures ineffective; (2) Mainstream linear dimensionality reduction methods disrupt critical local structural patterns. To apply biclustering to high-dimensional datasets, we propose an orthogonal factor-based biclustering algorithm (BCBOF). First, we constructed orthogonal factors in the vector space of the high-dimensional dataset. Then, we performed clustering using the coordinates of the original data in the orthogonal subspace as clustering targets. Finally, we obtained biclustering results of the original dataset. Since dimensionality reduction was applied before clustering, the proposed algorithm effectively mitigated the data sparsity problem caused by high dimensionality. Additionally, we applied this biclustering algorithm to stock technical indicator combinations and stock price trend prediction. Biclustering results were transformed into fuzzy rules, and we incorporated profit-preserving and stop-loss rules into the rule set, ultimately forming a fuzzy inference system for stock price trend predictions and trading signals. To evaluate the performance of BCBOF, we compared it with existing biclustering methods using multiple evaluation metrics. The results showed that our algorithm outperformed other biclustering techniques. To validate the effectiveness of the fuzzy inference system, we conducted virtual trading experiments using historical data from 10 A-share stocks. The experimental results showed that the generated trading strategies yielded higher returns for investors.

Zhiyuan Wang, Haoyi Xiong, Jie Zhang et al.

Mobile Sensing Apps have been widely used as a practical approach to collect behavioral and health-related information from individuals and provide timely intervention to promote health and well-beings, such as mental health and chronic cares. As the objectives of mobile sensing could be either \emph{(a) personalized medicine for individuals} or \emph{(b) public health for populations}, in this work we review the design of these mobile sensing apps, and propose to categorize the design of these apps/systems in two paradigms -- \emph{(i) Personal Sensing} and \emph{(ii) Crowd Sensing} paradigms. While both sensing paradigms might incorporate with common ubiquitous sensing technologies, such as wearable sensors, mobility monitoring, mobile data offloading, and/or cloud-based data analytics to collect and process sensing data from individuals, we present a novel taxonomy system with two major components that can specify and classify apps/systems from aspects of the life-cycle of mHealth Sensing: \emph{(1) Sensing Task Creation \& Participation}, \emph{(2) Health Surveillance \& Data Collection}, and \emph{(3) Data Analysis \& Knowledge Discovery}. With respect to different goals of the two paradigms, this work systematically reviews this field, and summarizes the design of typical apps/systems in the view of the configurations and interactions between these two components. In addition to summarization, the proposed taxonomy system also helps figure out the potential directions of mobile sensing for health from both personalized medicines and population health perspectives.

Pablo Samuel Castro, Shijian Li, Daqing Zhang

We consider the problem of learning to behave optimally in a Markov Decision Process when a reward function is not specified, but instead we have access to a set of demonstrators of varying performance. We assume the demonstrators are classified into one of k ranks, and use ideas from ordinal regression to find a reward function that maximizes the margin between the different ranks. This approach is based on the idea that agents should not only learn how to behave from experts, but also how not to behave from non-experts. We show there are MDPs where important differences in the reward function would be hidden from existing algorithms by the behaviour of the expert. Our method is particularly useful for problems where we have access to a large set of agent behaviours with varying degrees of expertise (such as through GPS or cellphones). We highlight the differences between our approach and existing methods using a simple grid domain and demonstrate its efficacy on determining passenger-finding strategies for taxi drivers, using a large dataset of GPS trajectories.

Youwei Zeng, Dan Wu, Jie Xiong et al.

The past few years have witnessed the great potential of exploiting channel state information retrieved from commodity WiFi devices for respiration monitoring. However, existing approaches only work when the target is close to the WiFi transceivers and the performance degrades significantly when the target is far away. On the other hand, most home environments only have one WiFi access point and it may not be located in the same room as the target. This sensing range constraint greatly limits the application of the proposed approaches in real life. This paper presents FarSense--the first real-time system that can reliably monitor human respiration when the target is far away from the WiFi transceiver pair. FarSense works well even when one of the transceivers is located in another room, moving a big step towards real-life deployment. We propose two novel schemes to achieve this goal: (1) Instead of applying the raw CSI readings of individual antenna for sensing, we employ the ratio of CSI readings from two antennas, whose noise is mostly canceled out by the division operation to significantly increase the sensing range; (2) The division operation further enables us to utilize the phase information which is not usable with one single antenna for sensing. The orthogonal amplitude and phase are elaborately combined to address the "blind spots" issue and further increase the sensing range. Extensive experiments show that FarSense is able to accurately monitor human respiration even when the target is 8 meters away from the transceiver pair, increasing the sensing range by more than 100%. We believe this is the first system to enable through-wall respiration sensing with commodity WiFi devices and the proposed method could also benefit other sensing applications.

Jiangtao Wang, Feng Wang, Yasha Wang et al.

Worker recruitment is a crucial research problem in Mobile Crowd Sensing (MCS). While previous studies rely on a specified platform with a pre-assumed large user pool, this paper leverages the influenced propagation on the social network to assist the MCS worker recruitment. We first select a subset of users on the social network as initial seeds and push MCS tasks to them. Then, influenced users who accept tasks are recruited as workers, and the ultimate goal is to maximize the coverage. Specifically, to select a near-optimal set of seeds, we propose two algorithms, named Basic-Selector and Fast-Selector, respectively. Basic-Selector adopts an iterative greedy process based on the predicted mobility, which has good performance but suffers from inefficiency concerns. To accelerate the selection, Fast-Selector is proposed, which is based on the interdependency of geographical positions among friends. Empirical studies on two real-world datasets verify that Fast-Selector achieves higher coverage than baseline methods under various settings, meanwhile, it is much more efficient than Basic-Selector while only sacrificing a slight fraction of the coverage.

Jiangtao Wang, Yasha Wang, Daqing Zhang et al.

With the advent of seamless connection of human, machine, and smart things, there is an emerging trend to leverage the power of crowds (e.g., citizens, mobile devices, and smart things) to monitor what is happening in a city, understand how the city is evolving, and further take actions to enable better quality of life, which is referred to as Crowd-Powered Smart City (CPSC). In this article, we provide a literature review for CPSC and identify future research opportunities. Specifically, we first define the concepts with typical CPSC applications. Then, we present the main characteristics of CPSC and further highlight the research issues. In the end, we point out existing limitations which can inform and guide future research directions.

Leye Wang, Wenbin Liu, Daqing Zhang et al.

Sparse Mobile CrowdSensing (MCS) is a novel MCS paradigm where data inference is incorporated into the MCS process for reducing sensing costs while its quality is guaranteed. Since the sensed data from different cells (sub-areas) of the target sensing area will probably lead to diverse levels of inference data quality, cell selection (i.e., choose which cells of the target area to collect sensed data from participants) is a critical issue that will impact the total amount of data that requires to be collected (i.e., data collection costs) for ensuring a certain level of quality. To address this issue, this paper proposes a Deep Reinforcement learning based Cell selection mechanism for Sparse MCS, called DR-Cell. First, we properly model the key concepts in reinforcement learning including state, action, and reward, and then propose to use a deep recurrent Q-network for learning the Q-function that can help decide which cell is a better choice under a certain state during cell selection. Furthermore, we leverage the transfer learning techniques to reduce the amount of data required for training the Q-function if there are multiple correlated MCS tasks that need to be conducted in the same target area. Experiments on various real-life sensing datasets verify the effectiveness of DR-Cell over the state-of-the-art cell selection mechanisms in Sparse MCS by reducing up to 15% of sensed cells with the same data inference quality guarantee.

Leye Wang, Xu Geng, Jintao Ke et al.

Ridesourcing platforms like Uber and Didi are getting more and more popular around the world. However, unauthorized ridesourcing activities taking advantages of the sharing economy can greatly impair the healthy development of this emerging industry. As the first step to regulate on-demand ride services and eliminate black market, we design a method to detect ridesourcing cars from a pool of cars based on their trajectories. Since licensed ridesourcing car traces are not openly available and may be completely missing in some cities due to legal issues, we turn to transferring knowledge from public transport open data, i.e, taxis and buses, to ridesourcing detection among ordinary vehicles. We propose a two-stage transfer learning framework. In Stage 1, we take taxi and bus data as input to learn a random forest (RF) classifier using trajectory features shared by taxis/buses and ridesourcing/other cars. Then, we use the RF to label all the candidate cars. In Stage 2, leveraging the subset of high confident labels from the previous stage as input, we further learn a convolutional neural network (CNN) classifier for ridesourcing detection, and iteratively refine RF and CNN, as well as the feature set, via a co-training process. Finally, we use the resulting ensemble of RF and CNN to identify the ridesourcing cars in the candidate pool. Experiments on real car, taxi and bus traces show that our transfer learning framework, with no need of a pre-labeled ridesourcing dataset, can achieve similar accuracy as the supervised learning methods.

Daqing Zhang, Hao Wang, Yasha Wang et al.

Fall is one of the major health threats and obstacles to independent living for elders, timely and reliable fall detection is crucial for mitigating the effects of falls. In this paper, leveraging the fine-grained Channel State Information (CSI) and multi-antenna setting in commodity WiFi devices, we design and implement a real-time, non-intrusive, and low-cost indoor fall detector, called Anti-Fall. For the first time, the CSI phase difference over two antennas is identified as the salient feature to reliably segment the fall and fall-like activities, both phase and amplitude information of CSI is then exploited to accurately separate the fall from other fall-like activities. Experimental results in two indoor scenarios demonstrate that Anti-Fall consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art approach WiFall, with 10% higher detection rate and 10% less false alarm rate on average.