Automation engineering is a branch of engineering that deals with the development of methods and facilities that replace, in whole or in part, manual labour related to the control and monitoring of systems and processes. == Automation engineer == Automation engineers are experts who have the knowledge and ability to design, create, develop and manage machines and systems, for example, factory automation, process automation and warehouse automation. Automation technicians are also involved. == Scope == Automation engineering is the integration of standard engineering fields. Automatic control of various control systems for operating various systems or machines to reduce human efforts & time to increase accuracy. Automation engineers design and service electromechanical devices and systems for high-speed robotics and programmable logic controllers (PLCs). == Work and career after graduation == Graduates can work for both government and private sector entities such as industrial production, and companies that create and use automation systems, for example, the paper industry, automotive industry, metallurgical industry, food and agricultural industry, water treatment, and oil & gas sectors such as refineries, rolling mills, and power plants. == Job description == Automation engineers can design, program, simulate and test automated machinery and processes, and are usually employed in industries such as the energy sector in plants, car manufacturing facilities, food processing plants, and robots. Automation engineers are responsible for creating detailed design specifications and other documents, developing automation based on specific requirements for the process involved, and conforming to international standards like IEC-61508, local standards, and other process-specific guidelines and specifications, simulating, testing, and commissioning electronic equipment for automation.
Tweak programming environment
Tweak is a graphical user interface (GUI) layer written by Andreas Raab for the Squeak development environment, which in turn is an integrated development environment based on the Smalltalk-80 computer programming language. Tweak is an alternative to an earlier graphic user interface layer called Morphic. Development began in 2001. Applications that use the Tweak software include Sophie (version 1), a multimedia and e-book authoring system, and a family of virtual world systems: Open Cobalt, Teleplace, OpenQwaq, 3d ICC's Immersive Terf and the Croquet Project. == Influences == An experimental version of Etoys, a programming environment for children, used Tweak instead of Morphic. Etoys was a major influence on a similar Squeak-based programming environment known as Scratch.
Logic learning machine
Logic learning machine (LLM) is a machine learning method based on the generation of intelligible rules. LLM is an efficient implementation of the Switching Neural Network (SNN) paradigm, developed by Marco Muselli, Senior Researcher at the Italian National Research Council CNR-IEIIT in Genoa. LLM has been employed in many different sectors, including the field of medicine (orthopedic patient classification, DNA micro-array analysis and Clinical Decision Support Systems), financial services and supply chain management. == History == The Switching Neural Network approach was developed in the 1990s to overcome the drawbacks of the most commonly used machine learning methods. In particular, black box methods, such as multilayer perceptron and support vector machine, had good accuracy but could not provide deep insight into the studied phenomenon. On the other hand, decision trees were able to describe the phenomenon but often lacked accuracy. Switching Neural Networks made use of Boolean algebra to build sets of intelligible rules able to obtain very good performance. In 2014, an efficient version of Switching Neural Network was developed and implemented in the Rulex suite with the name Logic Learning Machine. Also, an LLM version devoted to regression problems was developed. == General == Like other machine learning methods, LLM uses data to build a model able to perform a good forecast about future behaviors. LLM starts from a table including a target variable (output) and some inputs and generates a set of rules that return the output value y {\displaystyle y} corresponding to a given configuration of inputs. A rule is written in the form: if premise then consequence where consequence contains the output value whereas premise includes one or more conditions on the inputs. According to the input type, conditions can have different forms: for categorical variables the input value must be in a given subset: x 1 ∈ { A , B , C , . . . } {\displaystyle x_{1}\in \{A,B,C,...\}} . for ordered variables the condition is written as an inequality or an interval: x 2 ≤ α {\displaystyle x_{2}\leq \alpha } or β ≤ x 3 ≤ γ {\displaystyle \beta \leq x_{3}\leq \gamma } A possible rule is therefore in the form if x 1 ∈ { A , B , C , . . . } {\displaystyle x_{1}\in \{A,B,C,...\}} AND x 2 ≤ α {\displaystyle x_{2}\leq \alpha } AND β ≤ x 3 ≤ γ {\displaystyle \beta \leq x_{3}\leq \gamma } then y = y ¯ {\displaystyle y={\bar {y}}} == Types == According to the output type, different versions of the Logic Learning Machine have been developed: Logic Learning Machine for classification, when the output is a categorical variable, which can assume values in a finite set Logic Learning Machine for regression, when the output is an integer or real number.
Huber loss
In statistics, the Huber loss is a loss function used in robust regression, that is less sensitive to outliers in data than the squared error loss. A variant for classification is also sometimes used. == Definition == The Huber loss function describes the penalty incurred by an estimation procedure f. Huber (1964) defines the loss function piecewise by L δ ( a ) = { 1 2 a 2 for | a | ≤ δ , δ ⋅ ( | a | − 1 2 δ ) , otherwise. {\displaystyle L_{\delta }(a)={\begin{cases}{\frac {1}{2}}{a^{2}}&{\text{for }}|a|\leq \delta ,\\[4pt]\delta \cdot \left(|a|-{\frac {1}{2}}\delta \right),&{\text{otherwise.}}\end{cases}}} This function is quadratic for small values of a, and linear for large values, with equal values and slopes of the different sections at the two points where | a | = δ {\displaystyle |a|=\delta } . The variable a often refers to the residuals, that is to the difference between the observed and predicted values a = y − f ( x ) {\displaystyle a=y-f(x)} , so the former can be expanded to L δ ( y , f ( x ) ) = { 1 2 ( y − f ( x ) ) 2 for | y − f ( x ) | ≤ δ , δ ⋅ ( | y − f ( x ) | − 1 2 δ ) , otherwise. {\displaystyle L_{\delta }(y,f(x))={\begin{cases}{\frac {1}{2}}{\left(y-f(x)\right)}^{2}&{\text{for }}\left|y-f(x)\right|\leq \delta ,\\[4pt]\delta \ \cdot \left(\left|y-f(x)\right|-{\frac {1}{2}}\delta \right),&{\text{otherwise.}}\end{cases}}} The Huber loss is the convolution of the absolute value function with the rectangular function, scaled and translated. Thus it "smoothens out" the former's corner at the origin. == Motivation == Two very commonly used loss functions are the squared loss, L ( a ) = a 2 {\displaystyle L(a)=a^{2}} , and the absolute loss, L ( a ) = | a | {\displaystyle L(a)=|a|} . The squared loss function results in an arithmetic mean-unbiased estimator, and the absolute-value loss function results in a median-unbiased estimator (in the one-dimensional case, and a geometric median-unbiased estimator for the multi-dimensional case). The squared loss has the disadvantage that it has the tendency to be dominated by outliers—when summing over a set of a {\displaystyle a} 's (as in ∑ i = 1 n L ( a i ) {\textstyle \sum _{i=1}^{n}L(a_{i})} ), the sample mean is influenced too much by a few particularly large a {\displaystyle a} -values when the distribution is heavy tailed: in terms of estimation theory, the asymptotic relative efficiency of the mean is poor for heavy-tailed distributions. As defined above, the Huber loss function is strongly convex in a uniform neighborhood of its minimum a = 0 {\displaystyle a=0} ; at the boundary of this uniform neighborhood, the Huber loss function has a differentiable extension to an affine function at points a = − δ {\displaystyle a=-\delta } and a = δ {\displaystyle a=\delta } . These properties allow it to combine much of the sensitivity of the mean-unbiased, minimum-variance estimator of the mean (using the quadratic loss function) and the robustness of the median-unbiased estimator (using the absolute value function). == Pseudo-Huber loss function == The Pseudo-Huber loss function can be used as a smooth approximation of the Huber loss function. It combines the best properties of L2 squared loss and L1 absolute loss by being strongly convex when close to the target/minimum and less steep for extreme values. The scale at which the Pseudo-Huber loss function transitions from L2 loss for values close to the minimum to L1 loss for extreme values and the steepness at extreme values can be controlled by the δ {\displaystyle \delta } value. The Pseudo-Huber loss function ensures that derivatives are continuous for all degrees. It is defined as L δ ( a ) = δ 2 ( 1 + ( a / δ ) 2 − 1 ) . {\displaystyle L_{\delta }(a)=\delta ^{2}\left({\sqrt {1+(a/\delta )^{2}}}-1\right).} As such, this function approximates a 2 / 2 {\displaystyle a^{2}/2} for small values of a {\displaystyle a} , and approximates a straight line with slope δ {\displaystyle \delta } for large values of a {\displaystyle a} . While the above is the most common form, other smooth approximations of the Huber loss function also exist. == Variant for classification == For classification purposes, a variant of the Huber loss called modified Huber is sometimes used. Given a prediction f ( x ) {\displaystyle f(x)} (a real-valued classifier score) and a true binary class label y ∈ { + 1 , − 1 } {\displaystyle y\in \{+1,-1\}} , the modified Huber loss is defined as L ( y , f ( x ) ) = { max ( 0 , 1 − y f ( x ) ) 2 for y f ( x ) > − 1 , − 4 y f ( x ) otherwise. {\displaystyle L(y,f(x))={\begin{cases}\max(0,1-y\,f(x))^{2}&{\text{for }}\,\,y\,f(x)>-1,\\[4pt]-4y\,f(x)&{\text{otherwise.}}\end{cases}}} The term max ( 0 , 1 − y f ( x ) ) {\displaystyle \max(0,1-y\,f(x))} is the hinge loss used by support vector machines; the quadratically smoothed hinge loss is a generalization of L {\displaystyle L} . == Applications == The Huber loss function is used in robust statistics, M-estimation and additive modelling.
Structured kNN
Structured k-nearest neighbours (SkNN) is a machine learning algorithm that generalizes k-nearest neighbors (k-NN). k-NN supports binary classification, multiclass classification, and regression, whereas SkNN allows training of a classifier for general structured output. For instance, a data sample might be a natural language sentence, and the output could be an annotated parse tree. Training a classifier consists of showing many instances of ground truth sample-output pairs. After training, the SkNN model is able to predict the corresponding output for new, unseen sample instances; that is, given a natural language sentence, the classifier can produce the most likely parse tree. == Training == As a training set, SkNN accepts sequences of elements with class labels. The type of element does not matter; the only requirement is a defined metric function that gives a distance between each pair of elements of a set. SkNN is based on idea of creating a graph, with each node representing a class label. There is an edge between a pair of nodes if there is a sequence of two elements in the training set with corresponding classes. The first step of SkNN training is the construction of such a graph from training sequences. There are two special nodes in the graph corresponding to sentence beginnings and ends: if a sequence starts with class C, the edge between node START and node C should be created. Like regular k-NN, the second part of SkNN training consists of storing the elements of a training sequence in a certain way. Each element of the training sequences is stored in the node related to the class of the previous element in the sequence. Every first element is stored in the START node. == Inference == Labelling input sequences by SkNN consists of finding the sequence of transitions in the graph, starting from node START. Each transition corresponds to a single element of the input sequence. As a result, the label of each element is determined as the target node label of the transition. The cost of the path is defined as the sum of all transitions, with the cost of transition from node A to node B being the distance from the current input sequence element to the nearest element of class B, stored in node A. Determining an optimal path may be performed using a modified Viterbi algorithm (where the sum of the distances is minimized, unlike the original algorithm which maximizes the product of probabilities).
Waveform graphics
Waveform graphics is a simple vector graphics system introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) on the VT55 and VT105 terminals in the mid-1970s. It was used to produce graphics output from mainframes and minicomputers. DEC used the term "waveform graphics" to refer specifically to the hardware, but it was used more generally to describe the whole system. The system was designed to use as little computer memory as possible. At any given X location it could draw two dots at given Y locations, making it suitable for producing two superimposed waveforms, line charts or histograms. Text and graphics could be mixed, and there were additional tools for drawing axes and markers. The waveform graphics system was used only for a short period of time before it was replaced by the more sophisticated ReGIS system, first introduced on the VT125 in 1981. ReGIS allowed the construction of arbitrary vectors and other shapes. Whereas DEC normally provided a backward compatible solution in newer terminal models, they did not choose to do this when ReGIS was introduced, and waveform graphics disappeared from later terminals. == Description == Waveform graphics was introduced on the VT55 terminal in October 1975, an era when memory was extremely expensive. Although it was technically possible to produce a bitmap display using a framebuffer using technology of the era, the memory needed to do so at a reasonable resolution was typically beyond the price point that made it practical. All sorts of systems were used to replace computer memory with other concepts, like the storage tubes used in the Tektronix 4010 terminals, or the zero memory racing-the-beam system used in the Atari 2600. DEC chose to attack this problem through a clever use of a small buffer representing only the vertical positions on the screen. Such a system could not draw arbitrary shapes, but would allow the display of graph data. The system was based on a 512 by 236 pixel display, producing 512 vertical columns along the X-axis, and 236 horizontal rows on the Y-axis. Y locations were counted up from the bottom, so the coordinate 0,0 was in the lower left, and 511, 235 in the upper right. Had this been implemented using a framebuffer with each location represented by a single bit, 512 × 236 × 1 = 120,832 bits, or 15,104 bytes, would have been required. At the time, memory cost about $50 per kilobyte, so the buffer alone would cost over $700 (equivalent to $4,570 in 2025). Instead, the waveform graphic system used one byte of memory for each X axis location, with the byte's value representing the Y location. This required only 512 bytes for each graph, a total of 1024 bytes for the two graphs. Drawing a line required the programmer to construct a series of Y locations and send them as individual points, the terminal could not connect the dots itself. To make this easier, the terminal automatically incremented the X location every time an Y coordinate was received, so a graph line could be sent as a long string of numbers for subsequent Y locations instead of having to repeatedly send the X location every time. Drawing normally started by sending a single instruction to set the initial X location, often 0 on the left, and then sending in data for the entire curve. The system also included storage for up to 512 markers on both lines. These were always drawn centered on the Y value of the line they were associated with, meaning that a simple on/off indication for X locations was all that was needed, requiring only 1024 bits, or 128 bytes, in total. The markers extended 16 pixels vertically, and could only be aligned on 16-pixel boundaries, so they were not necessarily centered across the underlying graph. Markers were used to indicate important points on the graph, where a symbol of some sort would normally be used. The system also allowed a vertical line to be drawn for every horizontal location and a horizontal one at every vertical location. These were also stored as simple on/off bits, requiring another 128 bytes of memory. These lines were used to draw axes and scale lines, or could be used for a screen-spanning crosshair cursor. A separate set of two 7-bit registers held additional information about the drawing style and other settings. Although complex from the user's perspective, this system was easy to implement in hardware. A cathode ray tube produces a display by scanning the screen in a series of horizontal motions, moving down one vertical line after each horizontal scan. At any given instant during this process, the display hardware examines a few memory locations to see if anything needs to be displayed. For instance, it can determine whether to draw a marker on graph 0 by examining register 1 to see if markers are turned on, looking in the marker buffer to see if there is a 1 at the current X location, and then examining the Y location of graph 0 to see if it is within 16 pixels of the current scan line. If all of these are true, a spot is drawn to present that portion of the marker. As this will be true for 16 vertical locations during the scanning process, a 16-pixel high marker will be drawn. Sold alone, the VT55 was priced at $2,496 (equivalent to $16,295 in 2025),. Like other models of the VT50 series, the terminal could be equipped with an optional wet-paper printer in a panel on the right of the screen. This added $800 (equivalent to $5,223 in 2025) to the price. DEC also offered VT55 in a package with a small model of the PDP-11 to create one model of the DEClab 11/03 system. The DEClab normally sold for $14,000 (equivalent to $91,397 in 2025) with a DECwriter II (LA36) hard-copy terminal for $15,000 (equivalent to $97,925 in 2025), with the VT55. The system had I/O channels for up to 15 lab devices, and included libraries for FORTRAN and BASIC for reading the data and creating graphs. The fairly extensive VT55 Programmers Manual covered the latter in depth. == Commands and data == Data was sent to the terminal using an extended set of codes similar to those introduced on the VT52. VT52 codes generally started with the ESC character (octal 33, decimal 27) and was then followed by a single letter instruction. For instance, the string of four characters ESC H ESC J would reposition the cursor in the upper left (home) and then clear the screen from that point down. These codes were basically modeless; triggered by the ESC the resulting escape mode automatically exited again when the command was complete. Escape codes could be interspersed with display text anywhere in the stream of data. In contrast, the graphics system was entirely modal, with escape sequences being sent to cause the terminal to enter or exit graph drawing mode. Data sent between these two codes were interpreted by the graphics hardware, so text and graphics could not be mixed in a single stream of instructions. Graphics mode was entered by sending the string ESC 1, and exited again with the string ESC 2. Even the commands within the graphics mode were modal; characters were interpreted as being additional data for the previous load character (command) until another load character is seen. Ten load characters were available: @ - no operation, used to tell the terminal the last command is no longer active A - load data into register 0, selecting the drawing mode for the two graphs I - load data into register 1, selecting other drawing options H - load the starting X position (Horizontal) for the following commands B - load data for Y locations for graph 0 starting at the H position selected earlier J - load data for Y locations for graph 1 starting at the H position selected earlier C - store a marker on graph 0 at the following X location K - store a marker on graph 1 at the following X location D - draw a horizontal line at the given Y location L - draw a vertical line at the given X location X and Y locations were sent as 10-bit decimal numbers, encoded as ASCII characters, with 5 bits per character. This means that any number within the 1024 number space (210) can be stored as a string of two characters. To ensure the characters can be transmitted over 7-bit links, the pattern 01 is placed in front of both 5-bit numbers, producing 7-bit ASCII values that are always within the printable range. This results in a somewhat complex encoding algorithm. For instance, if one wanted to encode the decimal value 102, first you convert that to the 10-bit decimal pattern 0010010010. That is then split that into upper and lower 5-bit parts, 00100 and 10010. Then append 01 binary to produce 7-bit numbers 0100100 and 0110010. Individually convert back to decimal 40 and 50, and then look up those characters in an ASCII chart, finding ( and 2. These have to be sent to the terminal least significant character first. If these were being used to set the X coordinate, the complete string would be H2(. When used as X and Y locations for the graphs, extra digits were ignored. For instance, the 512 pixel X axis r
Computational learning theory
In computer science, computational learning theory (or just learning theory) is a subfield of artificial intelligence devoted to studying the design and analysis of machine learning algorithms. == Overview == Theoretical results in machine learning often focus on a type of inductive learning known as supervised learning. In supervised learning, an algorithm is provided with labeled samples. For instance, the samples might be descriptions of mushrooms, with labels indicating whether they are edible or not. The algorithm uses these labeled samples to create a classifier. This classifier assigns labels to new samples, including those it has not previously encountered. The goal of the supervised learning algorithm is to optimize performance metrics, such as minimizing errors on new samples. In addition to performance bounds, computational learning theory studies the time complexity and feasibility of learning . In computational learning theory, a computation is considered feasible if it can be done in polynomial time . There are two kinds of time complexity results: Positive results – Showing that a certain class of functions is learnable in polynomial time. Negative results – Showing that certain classes cannot be learned in polynomial time. Negative results often rely on commonly believed, but yet unproven assumptions, such as: Computational complexity – P ≠ NP (the P versus NP problem); Cryptographic – One-way functions exist. There are several different approaches to computational learning theory based on making different assumptions about the inference principles used to generalise from limited data. This includes different definitions of probability (see frequency probability, Bayesian probability) and different assumptions on the generation of samples. The different approaches include: Exact learning, proposed by Dana Angluin; Probably approximately correct learning (PAC learning), proposed by Leslie Valiant; VC theory, proposed by Vladimir Vapnik and Alexey Chervonenkis; Inductive inference as developed by Ray Solomonoff; Algorithmic learning theory, from the work of E. Mark Gold; Online machine learning, from the work of Nick Littlestone. While its primary goal is to understand learning abstractly, computational learning theory has led to the development of practical algorithms. For example, PAC theory inspired boosting, VC theory led to support vector machines, and Bayesian inference led to belief networks.