Laura Fernández-Robles

Universidad de León | UNILEON · Department of Mechanic Engineering, Computer and Aerospacial Sciences

Automatic accent classification is an active research field concerning speech processing. It can be useful to identify a speaker's region of origin, which can be applied in police investigations carried out by Law Enforcement Agencies, as well as for the improvement of current speech recognition systems. This paper presents a novel descriptor calle...

A recent trend in speech processing is the use of embeddings created through machine learning models trained on a specific task with large datasets. By leveraging the knowledge already acquired, these models can be reused in new tasks where the amount of available data is small. This paper proposes a pipeline to create a new model, called Mel and W...

Meat production needs of accurate measurement of livestock weight. In lambs, traditional scales are still used to weigh live animals, which is a tedious process for the operators and stressful for the animal. In this paper, we propose a method to estimate the weight of live lambs automatically, fast, non-invasive and affordably. The system only req...

A recent trend in speech processing is the use of embeddings created through machine learning models trained on a specific task with large datasets. By leveraging the knowledge already acquired, these models can be reused in new tasks where the amount of available data is small. This paper proposes a pipeline to create a new model, called Mel and W...

In this paper, we propose DeepSumm, a novel method based on topic modeling and word embeddings for the extractive summarization of single documents. Recent summarization methods based on sequence networks fail to capture the long range semantics of the document which are encapsulated in the topic vectors of the document. In DeepSumm, our aim is to...

Mathematical modeling and data-driven methodologies are frequently required to optimize industrial processes in the context of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). This paper introduces the PipeGraph software library, an open-source python toolbox for easing the creation of machine learning models by using Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)-like implementations...

Machined workpieces must satisfy quality standards such as avoid the presence of burrs in edge finishing to reduce production costs and time. In this work we consider three types of burr that are determined by the distribution of the edge shape on a microscopic scale: knife-type (without imperfections), saw-type (presence of small splinters that co...

Texture-based instance retrieval is typically performed on images that present a single texture pattern and is mainly applied to the retrieval of fabrics or textiles. In this work, we apply it to indoor scene images that typically present many different texture patterns, which constitutes a more challenging problem. Such retrieval systems, together...

Identifying key content from a video is essential for many security applications such as motion/action detection, person re-identification and recognition. Moreover, summarizing the key information from Child Sexual Exploitation Materials, especially videos, which mainly contain distinctive scenes including people’s faces is crucial to speed-up the...

Image representations in the form of neural activations derived from intermediate layers of deep neural networks are the state-of-the-art descriptors for instance based retrieval. However, the problem that persists consists of how to retrieve identical images as the most relevant ones from a large image or video corpus. In this work, we introduce c...

Manufacturing processes require to satisfy quality standards in the produced parts. In particular, the edge finishing must be burr-free, avoiding that it yields different problems such as wasting time removing them what increases the production cost and time. A burr can be noticed microscopically, but it can contain imperfections or evidence of poo...

Quality standards involve objective procedures that guarantee the criteria keep constant during the process. In manufacturing, an important task that operators do by visual inspection is the evaluation of the surface finish of a machined workpiece. In this paper, a vision-based system that represents the image texture by a Local Binary Pattern vect...

Micro milling is a versatile machining process owing to its capability to machine, by material removal, micro-sized components with complex geometrical features. However, micro milling tools wear quickly, being a key issue to determine tool wear condition in order to prevent excessive tool wear or a sudden tool breakage while machining, which would...

Metallic pieces are typically machined by continuous tool passes, which usually causes regular patterns in the form of straight edges in the surface of the pieces. An irregular pattern on the surface of the piece implies a decrease of the quality of the machined piece. In this paper, we propose an acquisition system and a machine-vision based metho...

Precise automated determination of char morphologies formed by coal during combustion can lead to more efficient industrial control systems for coal combustion. Commonly, char particles are manually classified following the ICCP decision tree which considers four morphological features. One of these features is unfused material, and this class of m...

This paper reports the experience of using the PAELLA algorithm as a helper tool in robust regression instead of as originally intended for outlier identification and removal. This novel usage of the algorithm takes advantage of the occurrence vector calculated by the algorithm in order to strengthen the effect of the more reliable samples and less...

Recognizing infrequent or emerging named entities in a user-generated text is a challenging task, especially when informal or slang text is used. Some recent works propose to use a gazetteer to solve this problem, but this solution is not general because the gazetteer is task-specific and its maintenance is costly. In this paper, we overcome this d...

This paper reports the usage of the occurrence vector provided by the PAELLA algorithm in the context of robust regression. PAELLA was originally conceived as an outlier detection and data cleaning technique. A novel approach is to use this algorithm not for discarding outliers but to generate information related to the reliability of the observati...

In this paper, we propose SummCoder, a novel methodology for generic extractive text summarization of single documents. The approach generates a summary according to three sentence selection metrics formulated by us: sentence content relevance, sentence novelty, and sentence position relevance. The sentence content relevance is measured using a dee...

This paper presents how speech-to-text summarization can be performed using extractive text summarization algorithms. Our objective is to make a recommendation about which of the six text summary algorithms evaluated in the study is the most suitable for the task of audio summarization. First, we have selected six text summarization algorithms: Luh...

Milling workpiece present a regular pattern when they are correctly machined. However, if some problems occur, the pattern is not so homogeneous and, consequently, its quality is reduced. This paper proposes a method based on the use of texture descriptors in order to detect workpiece wear in milling automatically. Images are captured by using a bo...

The accuracy requirements for sensor network positioning have grown over the last few years due to the high precision demanded in activities related with vehicles and robots. Such systems involve a wide range of specifications which must be met through positioning devices based on time measurement. These systems have been traditionally designed wit...

Time difference of arrival (TDOA) positioning methods have experienced growing importance over the last few years due to their multiple applications in local positioning systems (LPSs). While five sensors are needed to determine an unequivocal three-dimensional position, systems with four nodes present two different solutions that cannot be discard...

This paper proposes a methodology for dealing with an issue of crucial practical importance in real engineering systems such as fault detection and recovery of a sensor. The main goal is to define a strategy to identify a malfunctioning sensor and to establish the correct measurement value in those cases. As study case, we use the data collected fr...

En este artículo proponemos un método que permite mejorar la clasificación de imágenes en conjuntos de datos en los que la imagen contiene un único objeto. Para ello, consideramos los mapas de prominencia como si se trataran de mapas topográficos y filtramos las características del fondo de la imagen mejorando de esta forma la codificación que real...

The Tor network hosts a significant amount of hidden services related to suspicious activities. Law Enforcement Agencies need to monitor and to investigate crimes hidden behind the anonymity provided by Tor. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm, named ToRank, that ranks hidden services in Tor better than the known algorithms used for the Surfa...

This paper presents a new texture descriptor booster, Complete Local Oriented Statistical Information Booster (CLOSIB), based on statistical information of the image. Our proposal uses the statistical information of the texture provided by the image gray-levels differences to increase the discriminative capability of Local Binary Patterns (LBP)-bas...

En este artículo proponemos un método que permite mejorar la clasificación de imágenes en conjuntos de datos en los que la imagen contiene un único objeto. Para ello, consideramos los mapas de prominencia como si se trataran de mapas topográficos y filtramos las características del fondo de la imagen mejorando de esta forma la codificación que real...

In the current meso cutting technology industry, the demand for more advanced, accurate and cheaper devices capable of creating a wide range surfaces and geometries is rising. To fulfill this demand, an alternative single point cutting device with 6 degrees of freedom (6DOF) was developed. Its main advantage compared to milling has been the need fo...

Ground-level ozone is a pollutant, greenhouse gas, and respiratory irritant which may facilitate skin cancer development and be involved in cardiovascular, respiratory and a range of other diseases. A re-distribution in the hourly ozone concentrations has occurred in the past decades while the interest in obtaining precise methods for the predictio...

This paper reports the use of the PAELLA algorithm in the context of weighted regression. First, an experiment comparing this new approach versus probabilistic macro sampling is reported, as a natural extension of previous work. Then another different experiment is reported where this approach is tested against a state of the art regression techniq...

This paper analyses the use of discussion forums by students that work together in the same project, and investigates their relationship with the final success of the project. Furthermore, the application of text mining techniques as a tool for identifying problems in the development of the learning experience is studied. Analyses were carried out...

Public health in developed countries is heavily affected by pollution specially in highly populated areas. Amongst the pollutants with greatest impact in health, ozone is particularly addressed in this paper due to importance of its effect on cardiovascular and respiratory problems and their prevalence on developed societies. Local authorities are...

The present study aims at understanding the challenges and identifying opportunities for improving teaching and learning in higher education institutions of diverse background. The case study used for data collection was the examinations and assignments developed along a course in project management for obtaining of the bachelor degree in Mechanica...

This paper explores the benefit of using the PAELLA algorithm in an innovative way. The PAELLA algorithm was originally developed in the context of outlier detection and data cleaning. As a consequence, it is usually seen as a discriminant tool that categorizes observations into two groups: core observations and outliers. A new look at the informat...

Saliency Maps, frequently used to highlight significant information, can be combined with other paradigms, such as Bag of Visual Words (BoVW), to improve image description when the saliency regions correspond closely with the objects of interest. In this paper, we present three attention filtering strategies based on their saliency map that improve...

Actualmente, muchas aplicaciones requieren localizar de forma precisa los objetos que aparecen en una imagen, para su posterior procesamiento. Este es el caso de la inspección visual en la industria, los sistemas de diagnóstico clínico asistido por computador, la detección de obstáculos en vehículos o en robots, entre otros. Sin embargo, diversos f...

This research addresses a sensor fault detection and recovery methodology oriented to a real system as can be a geothermal heat exchanger installed as part of the heat pump installation at a bioclimatic house. The main aim is to stablish the procedure to detect the anomaly over a sensor and recover the value when it occurs. Therefore, some experime...

This paper presents a reliable machine vision system to automatically estimate and visualize tool wear in micro milling manufacturing. The estimation of tool wear is very important for tool monitoring systems and image sensors configure a cheap and reliable solution. This system provides information to decide whether a tool should be replaced so th...

The study of char morphology, produced during combustion of pulverised coal, may be used to evaluate the effect of coal on the performance of the burner. Particle reactivity is the response to temperature and oxygen concentration and depends on particle size and other variations during the combustion. In this paper, we automatically characterised c...

Textile based image retrieval for indoor environments can be used to retrieve images that contain the same textile, which may indicate that scenes are related. This makes up a useful approach for law enforcement agencies who want to find evidence based on matching between textiles. In this paper, we propose a novel pipeline that allows searching an...

This work proposes and evaluates object description and retrieval techniques in different real applications. First, we addressed the classification of boar spermatozoa according to acrosome integrity, which is an important challenge in the veterinary field. We presented several methods based on invariant local features. We yielded satisfactory resu...

The TOR Project allows the publication of content anonymously, which cause the proliferation of illegal material whose authorship is almost impossible to identify. In this paper, we present and make publicly available TOIC (TOr Image Categories), an image dataset which comprises five different illegal classes based on crawled TOR addresses. To clas...

This paper presents a method to evaluate the learning-teaching process using machine learning techniques and the conclusions drawn in an experience on eight courses of very diverse fields. The method is based on data visualization supported by multidimensional scaling. Students’ learning behavior can be visually interpreted from the graphical resul...

The structure of the vessel tree in a retinal fundus image has been demonstrated to be a valid biometric feature that can be used for person identification. Most of the existing methods in this field rely on vessel segmentation algorithms, which may be computationally intensive and may suffer from insufficient robustness to noisy images and to imag...

Object detection is the key module in most visual-based surveillance applications and security systems. In crime scene analysis, the images and videos play a significant role in providing visual documentation of a scene. It allows police officers to recreate a scene for later analysis by detecting objects related to a specific crime. However, due t...

The task of retrieving a specific object from an image, which is similar to a query object is one of the critical applications in the computer vision domain. The existing methods fail to return similar objects when the region of interest is not specified correctly in a query image. Furthermore, when the feature vector is large, the retrieval from b...

This paper proposes a novel method for in situ localization of multiple inserts by means of machine vision techniques, a challenging issue in the field of tool wear monitoring. Most existing research works focus on evaluating the wear of isolated inserts after been manually extracted from the head tool. The method proposed solves this issue of para...

This paper presents a reliable machine vision system to automatically detect inserts and determine if they are broken. Unlike the machining operations studied in the literature, we are dealing with edge milling head tools for aggressive machining of thick plates (up to 12 centimetres) in a single pass. The studied cutting head tool is characterised...

The FRESVIDA project deals with the life assessment of cutting tools working under severe conditions using digital image processing techniques. The description of texture in materials through artificial vision techniques is very useful for this goal. There are several works based on Local Binary Patterns (LBP) and many variants such as Local Binary...

This paper reports the insights obtained during an experience on eight courses in fields of diverse nature. A methodology based on data visualization supported by multidimensional scaling is presented. These techniques might be useful for instructors interested in identifying those factors with larger impact on the learning-teaching process. Graphi...

The combination of SIFT descriptors with other features usually improves image classification, like Edge-SIFT, which extracts keypoints from an edge image obtained after applying the compass operator to a colour image. We evaluate for the first time, how the use of different radii in the compass operator affects the classification performance. We d...

In this paper, an automatic process to determine tool wear in machining procedures has been developed using computer vision and texture recognition techniques. Two different methods based on Local Binary Pattern (LBP) were evaluated combined with the LOSIB texture booster (Local Oriented Statistical Information Booster). The dataset used is compose...

Wear evaluation of cutting tools is a key issue for prolonging their lifetime and ensuring high quality of products. In this paper, we present a method for the effective localisation of cutting edges of inserts in digital images of an edge profile milling head. We introduce a new image data set of 144 images of an edge milling head that contains 30...

The assessment of the state of the acrosome is a priority in artificial insemination centres since it is one of the main causes of function loss. In this work, boar spermatozoa present in gray scale images acquired with a phase-contrast microscope have been classified as acrosome-intact or acrosome-damaged, after using fluorescent images for creati...

Local oriented statistical information booster (LOSIB) is a descriptor enhancer based on the extraction of the gray level differences along several orientations. Specifically, the mean of the differences along particular orientations is consid- ered. In this paper we have carried out some experiments using several classical texture descriptors to s...

A new method to describe texture images using a hybrid combination of local and global texture descriptors is proposed in this paper. In this regard, a new adaptive local binary pattern (ALBP) descriptor is presented in order to carry out the local description. It is built by adding oriented standard deviation information to an ALBP descriptor in o...

In this paper, we demonstrate that the Adaptive Local Binary Pattern with oriented Standard deviation (ALBPS) method outperforms the original local binary pattern (LBP) as well as some of its most recent variants: Adaptive Local Binary Pattern (ALBP), Complete Local Binary Pattern (CLBP) and Local Binary Pattern Variance (LBPV). All the descriptors...

In this paper, we introduce a blind tampering detection method based on JPEG ghosts [3] capable of detecting tampering when it is cre-ated by splicing regions with different compression levels in an image. Given an image, a set of re-compressions of that image is generated and used to extract a feature vector to train a Support Vector Machine clas-...

Scale-Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) features have been widely accepted as an effective local keypoint descriptor for its robust description of digital image content. This method extracts distinctive invariant features from images that can be used to perform reliable matching between different views of an object. Object recognition proceeds by...