Ordinal regression has wide applications in many domains where the human evaluation plays a major role. Most current ordinal regression methods are based on Support Vector Machines (SVM) and suffer from the problems of ignoring the global information of the data and the high computational complexity. Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and its kernel version, Kernel Discriminant Analysis (KDA), take into consideration the global information of the data together with the distribution of the classes for classification, but they have not been utilized for ordinal regression yet. In this paper, we propose a novel regression method by extending the Kernel Discriminant Learning using a rank constraint. The proposed algorithm is very efficient since the computational complexity is significantly lower than other ordinal regression methods. We demonstrate experimentally that the proposed method is capable of preserving the rank of data classes in a projected data space. In comparison to other benchmark ordinal regression methods, the proposed method is competitive in accuracy.

In most complex classification problems, many types of features have been captured or extracted. Feature fusion is used to combine features for better classification and to reduce data dimensionality. Kernel-based feature fusion methods are very effective for classification, but they do not reduce data dimensionality. In this brief, we propose an effective feature fusion method using locally linear embedding (LLE). The proposed method overcomes the limitations of LLE, which could not handle different types of features and is inefficient for classification. We propose an efficient algorithm to solve the optimization problem in obtaining weights of different features, and design an efficient method for LLE-based classification. In comparison to other kernel-based feature fusion methods, the proposed method fuses features to a significantly lower dimensional feature space with the same discriminant power. We have conducted experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed feature fusion method.

This paper studies the target searching problem using swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in unknown environments which information is unknown to the UAVs, other than features they detects through their sensors. Effective decision and control methods are required for UAVs that consider their limitations and characteristics when confronted with target searching problems. A cooperative target searching method is proposed for swarm UAVs based on an improved bean optimization algorithm (BOA) called Robot Bean Optimization Algorithm (RBOA). Compared with conventional BOAs used for optimal computation, RBOA has two main modifications for the cooperative control of swarm robots: 1) it accounts for the free motion space of individual UAVs using a Thiessen polygon; and 2) it adds a free space search mechanism to improve the efficiency of target searching. Based on the above improvements, and by integrating a multi-phase search mechanism and scheduling control strategy, a swarm UAV collaborative search simulation platform is built for experimental purposes. The results obtained from search simulations show that the RBOA can outperform adaptive robotic particle swarm optimization (A-RPSO) in target searches in complex and unknown environments, especially with fewer evolutionary generations and smaller numbers of robots. The RBOA, which is inspired by plant population evolutionary patterns, has fast and effective search capabilities, distributed collaborative interaction, and emergent swarm intelligence. It provides new ideas and support for research into the control of swarm UAVs and swarm robots.

The advancement of society and technology has promoted the development of modern agriculture. It has become a trend to replace traditional manpower with intelligent agricultural machinery that operates independently. As the core technology of intelligent agricultural machinery, complete coverage path planning technology has become more important. At present, the complete coverage path planning algorithms still suffer from problems such as sacrificing the coverage rate to obtain the minimum energy consumption, taking a long time to calculate the algorithm, and destroying crops across the covered region. In view of the above problems, an improved complete coverage path planning algorithms based on backtracking is proposed combined with the actual needs of intelligent agricultural machinery for planting seedlings to improve four aspects: repeated coverage, search efficiency, path planning, and sub-regional crossing. Firstly, the Morse decomposition method is used to divide a complex farmland region into simple sub-regions. Then an improved backtracking method based on a greedy algorithm is proposed in order to reduce the computational efficiency of the current region connection algorithms. The priority principle and the strategy of moving along the boundary are used to solve the problems of region crossing and sacrificing the coverage rate, thereby improving the performance of the current complete coverage path planning method. Compared with the traditional backtracking method, the experimental results show that the number of backtracking points is decreased by about 70% and the occurrence of crossing sub-regions has been significantly reduced. This proposed method can improve the coverage and operating efficiency of intelligent agricultural machinery operations and provide technical support for agricultural operations such as sowing, tillage, and harvesting, thus improving the quality and efficiency of agricultural production.