Inference about the number of contributors to a DNA mixture: Comparative analyses of a Bayesian network approach and the maximum allele count method

In the forensic examination of DNA mixtures, the question of how to set the total number of contributors (N) presents a topic of ongoing interest. Part of the discussion gravitates around issues of bias, in particular when assessments of the number of contributors are not made prior to considering the genotypic configuration of potential donors. Further complication may stem from the observation that, in some cases, there may be numbers of contributors that are incompatible with the set of alleles seen in the profile of a mixed crime stain, given the genotype of a potential contributor. In such situations, procedures that take a single and fixed number contributors as their output can lead to inferential impasses. Assessing the number of contributors within a probabilistic framework can help avoiding such complication. Using elements of decision theory, this paper analyses two strategies for inference on the number of contributors. One procedure is deterministic and focuses on the minimum number of contributors required to 'explain' an observed set of alleles. The other procedure is probabilistic using Bayes' theorem and provides a probability distribution for a set of numbers of contributors, based on the set of observed alleles as well as their respective rates of occurrence. The discussion concentrates on mixed stains of varying quality (i.e., different numbers of loci for which genotyping information is available). A so-called qualitative interpretation is pursued since quantitative information such as peak area and height data are not taken into account. The competing procedures are compared using a standard scoring rule that penalizes the degree of divergence between a given agreed value for N, that is the number of contributors, and the actual value taken by N. Using only modest assumptions and a discussion with reference to a casework example, this paper reports on analyses using simulation techniques and graphical models (i.e., Bayesian networks) to point out that setting the number of contributors to a mixed crime stain in probabilistic terms is, for the conditions assumed in this study, preferable to a decision policy that uses categoric assumptions about N. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Error handling in multimodal voice-enabled interfaces of tour-guide robots using graphical models

Plamen Prodanov

Mobile service robots are going to play an increasing role in the society of humans. Voice-enabled interaction with service robots becomes very important, if such robots are to be deployed in real-world environments and accepted by the vast majority of potential human users. The research presented in this thesis addresses the problem of speech recognition integration in an interactive voice-enabled interface of a service robot, in particular a tour-guide robot. The task of a tour-guide robot is to engage visitors to mass exhibitions (users) in dialogue providing the services it is designed for (e.g. exhibit presentations) within a limited time. In managing tour-guide dialogues, extracting the user goal (intention) for requesting a particular service at each dialogue state is the key issue. In mass exhibition conditions speech recognition errors are inevitable because of noisy speech and uncooperative users of robots with no prior experience in robotics. They can jeopardize the user goal identification. Wrongly identified user goals can lead to communication failures. Therefore, to reduce the risk of such failures, methods for detecting and compensating for communication failures in human-robot dialogue are needed. During the short-term interaction with visitors, the interpretation of the user goal at each dialogue state can be improved by combining speech recognition in the speech modality with information from other available robot modalities. The methods presented in this thesis exploit probabilistic models for fusing information from speech and auxiliary modalities of the robot for user goal identification and communication failure detection. To compensate for the detected communication failures we investigate multimodal methods for recovery from communication failures. To model the process of modality fusion, taking into account the uncertainties in the information extracted from each input modality during human-robot interaction, we use the probabilistic framework of Bayesian networks. Bayesian networks are graphical models that represent a joint probability function over a set of random variables. They are used to model the dependencies among variables associated with the user goals, modality related events (e.g. the event of user presence that is inferred from the laser scanner modality of the robot), and observed modality features providing evidence in favor of these modality events. Bayesian networks are used to calculate posterior probabilities over the possible user goals at each dialogue state. These probabilities serve as a base in deciding if the user goal is valid, i.e. if it can be mapped into a tour-guide service (e.g. exhibit presentation) or is undefined – signaling a possible communication failure. The Bayesian network can be also used to elicit probabilities over the modality events revealing information about the possible cause for a communication failure. Introducing new user goal aspects (e.g. new modality events and related features) that provide auxiliary information for detecting communication failures makes the design process cumbersome, calling for a systematic approach in the Bayesian network modelling. Generally, introducing new variables for user goal identification in the Bayesian networks can lead to complex and computationally expensive models. In order to make the design process more systematic and modular, we adapt principles from the theory of grounding in human communication. When people communicate, they resolve understanding problems in a collaborative joint effort of providing evidence of common shared knowledge (grounding). We use Bayesian network topologies, tailored to limited computational resources, to model a state-based grounding model fusing information from three different input modalities (laser, video and speech) to infer possible grounding states. These grounding states are associated with modality events showing if the user is present in range for communication, if the user is attending to the interaction, whether the speech modality is reliable, and if the user goal is valid. The state-based grounding model is used to compute probabilities that intermediary grounding states have been reached. This serves as a base for detecting if the the user has reached the final grounding state, or wether a repair dialogue sequence is needed. In the case of a repair dialogue sequence, the tour-guide robot can exploit the multiple available modalities along with speech. For example, if the user has failed to reach the grounding state related to her/his presence in range for communication, the robot can use its move modality to search and attract the attention of the visitors. In the case when speech recognition is detected to be unreliable, the robot can offer the alternative use of the buttons modality in the repair sequence. Given the probability of each grounding state, and the dialogue sequence that can be executed in the next dialogue state, a tour-guide robot has different preferences on the possible dialogue continuation. If the possible dialogue sequences at each dialogue state are defined as actions, the introduced principle of maximum expected utility (MEU) provides an explicit way of action selection, based on the action utility, given the evidence about the user goal at each dialogue state. Decision networks, constructed as graphical models based on Bayesian networks are proposed to perform MEU-based decisions, incorporating the utility of the actions to be chosen at each dialogue state by the tour-guide robot. These action utilities are defined taking into account the tour-guide task requirements. The proposed graphical models for user goal identification and dialogue error handling in human-robot dialogue are evaluated in experiments with multimodal data. These data were collected during the operation of the tour-guide robot RoboX at the Autonomous System Lab of EPFL and at the Swiss National Exhibition in 2002 (Expo.02). The evaluation experiments use component and system level metrics for technical (objective) and user-based (subjective) evaluation. On the component level, the technical evaluation is done by calculating accuracies, as objective measures of the performance of the grounding model, and the resulting performance of the user goal identification in dialogue. The benefit of the proposed error handling framework is demonstrated comparing the accuracy of a baseline interactive system, employing only speech recognition for user goal identification, and a system equipped with multimodal grounding models for error handling.

EPFL2006

Sparsely Observed Functional Time Series: Theory and Applications

Tomas Rubin

Functional time series is a temporally ordered sequence of not necessarily independent random curves. While the statistical analysis of such data has been traditionally carried out under the assumption of completely observed functional data, it may well happen that the statistician only has access to a relatively low number of sparse measurements for each random curve. These discrete measurements may be moreover irregularly scattered in each curve's domain, missing altogether for some curves, and be contaminated by measurement noise. This sparse sampling protocol escapes from the reach of established estimators in functional time series analysis and therefore requires development of a novel methodology. The core objective of this thesis is development of a non-parametric statistical toolbox for analysis of sparsely observed functional time series data. Assuming smoothness of the latent curves, we construct a local-polynomial-smoother based estimator of the spectral density operator producing a consistent estimator of the complete second order structure of the data. Moreover, the spectral domain recovery approach allows for prediction of latent curve data at a given time by borrowing strength from the estimated dynamic correlations in the entire time series across time. Further to predicting the latent curves from their noisy point samples, the method fills in gaps in the sequence (curves nowhere sampled), denoises the data, and serves as a basis for forecasting. A classical non-parametric apparatus for encoding the dependence between a pair of or among a multiple functional time series, whether sparsely or fully observed, is the functional lagged regression model. This consists of a linear filter between the regressors time series and the response. We show how to tailor the smoother based estimators for the estimation of the cross-spectral density operators and the cross-covariance operators and, by means of spectral truncation and Tikhonov regularisation techniques, how to estimate the lagged regression filter and predict the response process. The simulation studies revealed the following findings: (i) if one has freedom to design a sampling scheme with a fixed number of measurements, it is advantageous to sparsely distribute these measurements in a longer time horizon rather than concentrating over a shorter time horizon to achieve dense measurements in order to diminish the spectral density estimation error, (ii) the developed functional recovery predictor surpasses the static predictor not exploiting the temporal dependence, (iii) neither of the two considered regularisation techniques can, in general, dominate the other for the estimation in functional lagged regression models. The new methodologies are illustrated by applications to real data: the meteorological data revolving around the fair-weather atmospheric electricity measured in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and at Wank mountain, Germany; and a case study analysing the dependence of the US Treasury yield curve on macroeconomic variables. As a secondary contribution, we present a novel simulation method for general stationary functional time series defined through their spectral properties. A simulation study shows universality of such approach and superiority of the spectral domain simulation over the temporal domain in some situations.

EPFL2021

A Generative Model for Music Transcription

In this paper we present a graphical model for polyphonic music transcription. Our model, formulated as a Dynamical Bayesian Network, embodies a transparent and computationally tractable approach to this acoustic analysis problem. An advantage of our approach is that it places emphasis on explicitly modelling the sound generation procedure. It provides a clear framework in which both high level (cognitive) prior information on music structure can be coupled with low level (acoustic physical) information in a principled manner to perform the analysis. The model is a special case of the, generally intractable, switching Kalman filter model. Where possible, we derive, exact polynomial time inference procedures, and otherwise efficient approximations. We argue that our generative model based approach is computationally feasible for many music applications and is readily extensible to more general auditory scene analysis scenarios.