Xiaofen Xing

Bio: Xiaofen Xing is an academic researcher from South China University of Technology. The author has contributed to research in topics: Computer science & Convolutional neural network. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 33 publications receiving 267 citations.

Hierarchical Lifelong Learning by Sharing Representations and Integrating Hypothesis

Abstract: In lifelong machine learning (LML) systems, consecutive new tasks from changing circumstances are learned and added to the system. However, sufficiently labeled data are indispensable for extracting intertask relationships before transferring knowledge in classical supervised LML systems. Inadequate labels may deteriorate the performance due to the poor initial approximation. In order to extend the typical LML system, we propose a novel hierarchical lifelong learning algorithm (HLLA) consisting of two following layers: 1) the knowledge layer consisted of shared representations and integrated knowledge basis at the bottom and 2) parameterized hypothesis functions with features at the top. Unlabeled data is leveraged in HLLA for pretraining of the shared representations. We also have considered a selective inherited updating method to deal with intertask distribution shifting. Experiments show that our HLLA method outperforms many other recent LML algorithms, especially when dealing with higher dimensional, lower correlation, and fewer labeled data problems.

BIT: Biologically Inspired Tracker

Abstract: Visual tracking is challenging due to image variations caused by various factors, such as object deformation, scale change, illumination change, and occlusion. Given the superior tracking performance of human visual system (HVS), an ideal design of biologically inspired model is expected to improve computer visual tracking. This is, however, a difficult task due to the incomplete understanding of neurons’ working mechanism in the HVS. This paper aims to address this challenge based on the analysis of visual cognitive mechanism of the ventral stream in the visual cortex, which simulates shallow neurons (S1 units and C1 units) to extract low-level biologically inspired features for the target appearance and imitates an advanced learning mechanism (S2 units and C2 units) to combine generative and discriminative models for target location. In addition, fast Gabor approximation and fast Fourier transform are adopted for real-time learning and detection in this framework. Extensive experiments on large-scale benchmark data sets show that the proposed biologically inspired tracker performs favorably against the state-of-the-art methods in terms of efficiency, accuracy, and robustness. The acceleration technique in particular ensures that biologically inspired tracker maintains a speed of approximately 45 frames/s.

A novel deep-learning based framework for multi-subject emotion recognition

Abstract: Electroencephalogram (EEG) signal based emotion recognition, as a challenging pattern recognition task, has attracted more and more attention in recent years and widely used in medical, Affective Computing and other fields. Traditional approaches often lack of the high-level features and the generalization ability is poor, which are difficult to apply to the practical application. In this paper, we proposed a novel model for multi-subject emotion classification. The basic idea is to extract the high-level features through the deep learning model and transform traditional subject-independent recognition tasks into multi-subject recognition tasks. Experiments are carried out on the DEAP dataset, and our results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Facial Expression Recognition via Broad Learning System

Abstract: In recent years, research on facial expression recognition (FER) has become an increasingly active research topic. Deep learning is a new area, which gives a new way to classify images of human faces into emotion categories. However, it faces many difficulties caused by poor robustness and real-time performance. This paper designs a new architecture network based on Broad Learning System (BLS) for facial expressions recognition. It is established as a flat network. The original inputs are transferred and placed as mapped features in feature nodes, while the structure is expanded in wide sense in the enhancement nodes. To evaluate our architecture we tested the proposed method with the Extended Cohn-Kanade Dataset (CK+). The experimental results show that the BLS approach is very effective in facial expression recognition to compare with convolutional neural networks.

High speed deep networks based on Discrete Cosine Transformation

Abstract: The traditional deep networks take raw pixels of data as input, and automatically learn features using unsupervised learning algorithms. In this configuration, in order to learn good features, the networks usually have multi-layer and many hidden units which lead to extremely high training time costs. As a widely used image compression algorithm, Discrete Cosine Transformation (DCT) is utilized to reduce image information redundancy because only a limited number of the DCT coefficients can preserve the most important image information. In this paper, it is proposed that a novel framework by combining DCT and deep networks for high speed object recognition system. The use of a small subset of DCT coefficients of data to feed into a 2-layer sparse auto-encoders instead of raw pixels. Because of the excellent decorrelation and energy compaction properties of DCT, this approach is proved experimentally not only efficient, but also it is a computationally attractive approach for processing high-resolution images in a deep architecture.

Deep learning for electroencephalogram (EEG) classification tasks: a review.

Abstract: Objective Electroencephalography (EEG) analysis has been an important tool in neuroscience with applications in neuroscience, neural engineering (e.g. Brain-computer interfaces, BCI's), and even commercial applications. Many of the analytical tools used in EEG studies have used machine learning to uncover relevant information for neural classification and neuroimaging. Recently, the availability of large EEG data sets and advances in machine learning have both led to the deployment of deep learning architectures, especially in the analysis of EEG signals and in understanding the information it may contain for brain functionality. The robust automatic classification of these signals is an important step towards making the use of EEG more practical in many applications and less reliant on trained professionals. Towards this goal, a systematic review of the literature on deep learning applications to EEG classification was performed to address the following critical questions: (1) Which EEG classification tasks have been explored with deep learning? (2) What input formulations have been used for training the deep networks? (3) Are there specific deep learning network structures suitable for specific types of tasks? Approach A systematic literature review of EEG classification using deep learning was performed on Web of Science and PubMed databases, resulting in 90 identified studies. Those studies were analyzed based on type of task, EEG preprocessing methods, input type, and deep learning architecture. Main results For EEG classification tasks, convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, deep belief networks outperform stacked auto-encoders and multi-layer perceptron neural networks in classification accuracy. The tasks that used deep learning fell into five general groups: emotion recognition, motor imagery, mental workload, seizure detection, event related potential detection, and sleep scoring. For each type of task, we describe the specific input formulation, major characteristics, and end classifier recommendations found through this review. Significance This review summarizes the current practices and performance outcomes in the use of deep learning for EEG classification. Practical suggestions on the selection of many hyperparameters are provided in the hope that they will promote or guide the deployment of deep learning to EEG datasets in future research.

A Review of Emotion Recognition Using Physiological Signals

Abstract: Emotion recognition based on physiological signals has been a hot topic and applied in many areas such as safe driving, health care and social security. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review on physiological signal-based emotion recognition, including emotion models, emotion elicitation methods, the published emotional physiological datasets, features, classifiers, and the whole framework for emotion recognition based on the physiological signals. A summary and comparation among the recent studies has been conducted, which reveals the current existing problems and the future work has been discussed.

EKT: Exercise-Aware Knowledge Tracing for Student Performance Prediction

Abstract: For offering proactive services (e.g., personalized exercise recommendation) to the students in computer supported intelligent education, one of the fundamental tasks is predicting student performance (e.g., scores) on future exercises, where it is necessary to track the change of each student's knowledge acquisition during her exercising activities. Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, existing approaches can only exploit the exercising records of students, and the problem of extracting rich information existed in the materials (e.g., knowledge concepts, exercise content) of exercises to achieve both more precise prediction of student performance and more interpretable analysis of knowledge acquisition remains underexplored. To this end, in this paper, we present a holistic study of student performance prediction. To directly achieve the primary goal of performance prediction, we first propose a general E xercise- E nhanced R ecurrent N eural N etwork (EERNN) framework by exploring both student's exercising records and the text content of corresponding exercises. In EERNN, we simply summarize each student's state into an integrated vector and trace it with a recurrent neural network, where we design a bidirectional LSTM to learn the encoding of each exercise from its content. For making final predictions, we design two implementations on the basis of EERNN with different prediction strategies, i.e., EERNNM with Markov property and EERNNA with Attention mechanism . Then, to explicitly track student's knowledge acquisition on multiple knowledge concepts, we extend EERNN to an explainable E xercise-aware K nowledge T racing (EKT) framework by incorporating the knowledge concept information, where the student's integrated state vector is now extended to a knowledge state matrix. In EKT, we further develop a memory network for quantifying how much each exercise can affect the mastery of students on multiple knowledge concepts during the exercising process. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments and evaluate both EERNN and EKT frameworks on a large-scale real-world data. The results in both general and cold-start scenarios clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of two frameworks in student performance prediction as well as the superior interpretability of EKT.

Event-Triggered Control for Multiagent Systems With Sensor Faults and Input Saturation

Abstract: An adaptive neural network (NN) event-triggered control scheme is proposed for nonlinear nonstrict-feedback multiagent systems (MASs) against input saturation, unknown disturbance, and sensor faults. Mean-value theorem and Nussbaum-type function are invoked to transform the structure of the input saturation and overcome the difficulty of unknown control directions, respectively. On the basis of the universal approximation property of NNs, a nonlinear disturbance observer is designed to estimate the unknown compounded disturbance composed of external disturbance and the residual term of input saturation. According to the measurement error defined by control signal, an event-triggered mechanism is developed to save network transmission resource and reduce the number of controller update. Then, an adaptive NN compensation control approach is proposed to tackle the problem of sensor faults via the dynamic surface control (DSC) technique. It is proved that all signals in the closed-loop system are semi-globally uniformly ultimately bounded. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented control strategy.