License Plate Recognition System Essay Example

License Plate Recognition System Essay Project Report On LICENSE PLATE RECOGNITION SYSTEM PROJECT GROUP MEMBERS A. NISHANTH J. VISHWESH NACHIKET VASANT VAIDYA NAVEEN SUKUMAR TAPPETA R. ANAND UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF PROF. S. R. SATHE DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE VISVESVARAYA NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY NAGPUR 2008-2009 DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE VISVESVARAYA NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY NAGPUR 2008-09 CERTIFICATE This Is To Certify That A. Nishanth J. Vishwesh Nachiket Vasant Vaidya Naveen Sukumar Tappeta R. Anand Have Successfully Completed The Project Titled LICENSE PLATE RECOGNITION SYSTEM during the academic year 2008-2009. This dissertation is towards the partial fulfillment in the requirement for the degree of BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY (COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING), V. N. I. T, Nagpur. DR. S. R. SATHE DR. O. G. KAKDE (PROJECT GUIDE) (HEAD OF THE DEPT) ACKNOWLEGEMENT This project would not have taken its shape, nor would it have been successfully completed without the support and encouragement of our project guide Prof. S. R. Sathe, who presented us with an invaluable opportunity to work on this project. We take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to him. We are extremely indebted to him for the same. We wish to express our heartfelt gratitude to the Department of Computer Science, and the Head of Department, Dr. O. G. Kakde for granting us full freedom towards the utilization of all the facilities in the department. This project has been a very good experience for all of us, which helped us to work together as a good team. We are sure that the knowledge and experience gathered by this will stand us in good stead in our future. We will write a custom essay sample on License Plate Recognition System specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on License Plate Recognition System specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on License Plate Recognition System specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer In this thesis a Number Plate Recognition System for Indian License Plates has been explicated. The System comprises of 4 modules for each of the following: The extraction of a region of interest (ROI) containing a car, the extraction of the license plate candidates from these ROIs, the segmentation of the characters from the best candidate and finally using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on the segmented characters. The results are fed to a grammar checking module after which the license plate number is obtained. The algorithm used to generate the ROIs is a weighted histogram method, the license plate extraction uses vertical edge detection and image morphology, the character segmentation is done using a simple connected component analysis along with heuristics and finally the OCR is implemented using the novel Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) Framework. This thesis proposes a solution to: the problem of License Plate Localization in images with a complicated background, the problem of increasing the effectiveness of morphology and edge based approaches as they are very sensitive to noisy edges and the problem of recognition of characters that have varied size, rotation and have a lot of noise. The system has two components viz. a component that runs on Matlab 7. 6 that performs the image processing and a component on python2. 5. 2 that runs the Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing(Nupic) for the OCR. The combination of algorithms that we have used proves very effective and has been applied successfully over a test database. ABSTRACT | INTRODUCTION| | | | | INTRODUCTION License plate recognition is a mass surveillance method that uses optical character recognition on images to read the license plates on vehicles. There are three key components to any NPR system: License Plate extraction, Character Segmentation, Optical Character Segmentation. Analyses on the performance of a number of techniques which are used in Number Plate Recognition are discussed below (Refer [1]). LICENSE PLATE LOCALIZATION TECHNIQUES Binary Image Processing Techniques Using Edge and Morphology Based Approaches These techniques are sensitive to noisy edges, however hybrid techniques in this area coupled with prior system information such as distance constraints from the car boost system accuracies to as high as 99. 6% in [2]. In this thesis, a method is proposed to boost the accuracies of these Image processing techniques when applied to images with complicated backgrounds by selecting region of interests. Image Transformations A gabor filter based method is used for texture analysis and license plate detection. These methods are computationally expensive and slow for images with large analysis. In the method that uses Hough transform (HT), edges in the input image are detected first. Then, HT is applied to detect the LP regions. The execution time of the HT requires too much computation when applied to a binary image with great number of pixels. Methods Based On Color and Templates The solutions based on color currently available do not provide a high degree of accuracy in natural scenery, since color is not stable when the lighting conditions change. In addition, as these methods are color based, they are country specific. Methods based on Templates have little effect on Indian License Plates due to rampant non-standardization. The hierarchy introduced in the License Plate Recognition system that has been developed in this thesis viz. Image Candidates containing Car Candidates containing License Plates Enhances the Edge and Morphology based techniques by drastically reducing the number of false Number Plate candidates and increases the accuracy of Plate Localization. OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION TECHNIQUES Pattern Matching It is suitable for single font, not-rotated, fixed size characters only. It is reported that 90% of central processing unit time was consumed for the computation of the cross-correlation measures between the various templates and the relative sub-image. Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) The disadvantage was the complex procedure of preprocessing and parameterization. It gives a result of 95. 7%. It has a restriction on effective distance of plate recognition system. Hybrid Approach This uses statistical and structural recognition method. It achieves robustness and a high recognition performance. Its success rate is 95. 41%. Neural Networks Multilayered Feed Forward Neural Networks Approach The network has to be trained for many training cycles to attain the good performance. The number of hidden layers as well as number of respective neurons has to be defined by trial and error approach only. This approach cannot handle the noisy part. Self-Organized Neural Networks Based On Kohonen’s The feature maps are implemented to handle noisy, deformed, broken, or incomplete characters acquired from License Plates that were bent and/or tilted with respect to the camera. The method focuses on accuracy at the cost of increased complexity and execution speed. Thus it may be concluded that on analyzing some earlier used techniques for Optical Character Recognition (OCR), many methods involving HMMs , self-organized neural networks based on Kohonen’s, though very robust, have high computational costs involved. We propose a new technique for OCR on Numentas HTM framework. It achieves a high level of rotation and scale invariance in recognition and the hierarchical structure has an added advantage of memory efficiency while making invariant representations of characters. ORGANIZATION The thesis is organized as follows: The First chapter gives an introduction to the architecture of a general License Plate Recognition System and lists the components of the software system that has been developed for this thesis. It also lists the assumptions and the system parameters. The second chapter provides an explanation to the Image Processing and Segmentation techniques that have been used. The third chapter illustrates the process involved in extracting the Regions of Interest (ROI) containing the car, Localization of the number plate from the ROI and describes the segmentation techniques to get the individual characters. The third chapter illustrates the concepts of Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM). The fourth chapter describes the HTM Learning Algorithms. The fifth chapter deals with the HTM based Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Grammar Check Modules implemented for the system. The last chapter lists the results that were obtained by applying the system on various images, conclusion and the future work. | CHAPTER-I| SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE| | | | | CHAPTER-I 1. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE A Number Plate Recognition system comprises of software (Image Processing and Character Recognition) and hardware components (Custom License Plate Capture Cameras) as shown in the figure. Images from the acquisition device are processed by the Software components and the results are logged or the results could be used to trigger actions such as: opening a gate to a restricted area. Figure 1. 1 The system proposed in the following thesis has been designed specifically for deployment at sites such as: Site Access Control, Car Parks, Freight Logistics Companies, Toll Booths, Airports, Hotels, Industrial Estates, Contract Car Parking, Banks and Stadiums. In this thesis we have focused on the implementation of the software component of a License plate Recognition System and the algorithms proposed allow the system to be used with a variety of low and high quality acquisition devices subject to the set constraints. . 1 SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE The system has two components namely, the Matlab component and the Python Component. The Matlab Component retrieves images from the Image Database. First, the ROI containing the car are extracted by the Car Candidate Generation Module. Second, the License Plate Localization and Segmentation Module localize the License Plate from the ROI, segment the characters and pass them to Python Component through the Inter Process Communicat ion Module. The Python Component applies the HTM framework based OCR on the characters segmented earlier and passes the results onto a Grammar Check Module. The Grammar Check Module returns a single result to the Matlab Component via Inter Process Communication Module. The results are finally displayed and can be further processed. The following pipeline illustrates the Software Architecture of the system: License Plate Recognition System Image Database Python Component HTM based OCR Grammar Checking Module Inter Process Communication Matlab Component Car Candidate Generation License Plate Localization and Character Segmentation Inter process Communication Display Results Figure 1. 2 1. 1. 1 Assumptions made by the System * The System is designed to provide best results when applied to number plates corresponding to the rules stated below: â€Å"On June 1, 2005, the Government of India introduced High Security Registration (HSR) number plates which are tamper proof. All new motorized road vehicles that came into the market after that need to adhere to the new plates, while existing vehicles have been given two years to comply. Features incorporated include the number plate having a patented chromium hologram; a laser numbering containing the alpha-numeric identification of both the testing agency and manufacturers and a retro-reflective film bearing a verification inscription India at a 45-degree inclination. The characters are embossed on the plate for better visibility. The letters IND are printed in a light shade of blue on the observers left side under the hologram. † Figure 1. 3 * Even though the system works for multiple cars, we focus on retrieving the number plate of the prominent car. The grammar used is based on only Indian license plates and can be extended to other countries also. 1. 1. 2 Parameters taken by the System * Image resolution used: 1200 x 1600 * The images are acquired from a distance between 3 to 6 meters and a height of 2 meters * The input to the system is an RGB image * The output is a string containing the registration number | CHAPTER-II| IMAGE PROCESSING AND SEGMENTATIO N TECHNIQUES| | | | CHAPTER-II 2. IMAGE PROCESSING AND SEGMENTATION TECHNIQUES 2. 1 IMAGE ENHANCEMENT Image Enhancement involves the processing of an image that is better in quality in comparison to the raw image. The following sections explain the various spatial filters that are used in the system. Spatial Filtering involves convolution of an image with a mask. The filter masks are called convolution masks or kernels. The response R of an m x n mask at any point (x,y) in an image is given by R= i=1mnwizi where the w’s are the mask coefficients, the z’s are the values of the image gray levels corresponding to those coefficients and mn is the total number of coefficients in the mask. 2. 1. 1 Average Filter R= 1121i=1121zi Figure 2. 2 Figure 2. 1 The equation above shows an 11 x 11 smoothing filter which is the average of the gray levels of the pixels in the 11 x 11 neighborhood defined by the mask. 2. 1. 2 Median Filter It is necessary to perform a high degree of noise reduction in an image before performing higher-level processing steps, such as edge detection. The median filter is a non-linear digital filtering technique, used to remove noise from images or other signals. It examines a sample of the input and decides if it is representative of the signal. This is performed using a window consisting of an odd number of samples. The values in the window are sorted into numerical order; the median value, the sample in the center of the window, is selected as the output. The oldest sample is discarded, a new sample acquired, and the calculation repeats. Figure 2. 3 For example, suppose that a 3 x 3 neighborhood has values (10, 20, 20, 20, 15, 20, 20, 25, 100). These values are sorted as (10, 15, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 25, 100), which results in a median of 20. Thus, the principal function of median filters is to force points with distinct gray levels to be more like their neighbors. In fact, isolated clusters of pixels that are light or dark with respect to their neighbors, and whose area is less than n2/2 (one-half the filter area), are eliminated by an n x n median filter. In this case eliminated means forced to the median intensity of the neighbors. Larger clusters are affected considerably less. Figure 2. 4 2. 2 IMAGE SEGMENTATION In computer vision, segmentation refers to the process of partitioning a digital image into multiple segments (sets of pixels) (Also known as super pixels). The goal of segmentation is to simplify and/or change the representation of an image into something that is more meaningful and easier to analyze. Image segmentation is typically used to locate objects and boundaries (lines, curves, etc. ) in images. More precisely, image segmentation is the process of assigning a label to every pixel in an image such that pixels with the same label share certain visual characteristics. 2. 2. 1 IMAGE MORPHOLOGY AND DILATION Mathematical morphology (MM) is a theory and technique for the analysis and processing of geometrical structures, based on set theory, lattice theory, topology, and random functions. MM is most commonly applied to digital images, but it can be employed as well on graphs, surface meshes, solids, and many other spatial structures. Dilation operation is fundamental to morphological processing. With A and B as sets in Z, the dilation of A by B, denoted A? B is defined as A? B= zBz? A ? ? This equation is based on obtaining the reflection of B about its origin and shifting this reflection by z. The dilation of A by B then is the set of all displacements, Z, such that B and A overlap by at least one element. Set B is commonly referred to as the structuring element in dilation. Figure 2. 5 2. 2. EDGE DETECTION The sobel operator calculates the gradient of the image intensity at each point, giving the direction of the largest possible increase from light to dark and the rate of change in that direction. The result shows how abruptly or smoothly the image changes at that point, and therefore how likely it is that that part of the image represents an edge, as well as how t hat edge is likely to be oriented The gradient of a two-variable function (the image intensity function) is at each image point a 2D vector with the components given by the derivatives in the horizontal and vertical directions. At each image point, the gradient vector points in the direction of largest possible intensity increase, and the length of the gradient vector corresponds to the rate of change in that direction. The result of the Sobel operator at an image point which is in a region of constant image intensity is a zero vector and at a point on an edge is a vector which points across the edge, from darker to brighter values Mathematical Representation: Mathematically, the operator uses two 3? 3 kernels which are convolved with the original image to calculate approximations of the derivatives one for horizontal changes, and one for vertical. If we define A as the source image, and Gx and Gy are two images which at each point contain the horizontal and vertical derivative approximations, the computations are as follows: Gy=+1+2+1000-1-2-1*A and Gx=+10-1+20-2+10-1*A where * here denotes the 2-dimensional convolution operation. The x-coordinate is here defined as increasing in the right-direction, and the y-coordinate is defined as increasing in the down-direction. At each point in the image, the resulting gradient approximations can be combined to give the gradient magnitude, using: G=Gx2+Gy2 Using this information, we can also calculate the gradients direction: ? =arctanGxGy where, for example, ? is 0 for a vertical edge which is darker on the left side. Figure 2. 6 Figure 2. 7 2. 2. 3 EXTRACTION OF BLOB PROPERTIES USING MOMENTS Image moments are certain particular weighted averages (moments) of the image pixels intensities, or functions of those moments, usually chosen to have some attractive property or interpretation. For a 2-D continuous function f(x,y) the moment (sometimes called raw moment) of order (p + q) is defined as Mpq=- - xpyqfx,ydx dy or p, q = 0,1,2, Adapting this to scalar (greytone) image with pixel intensities I(x,y), raw image moments Mij are calculated by Mij=xyxiyjIx,y Area: Area (for binary images) or sum of grey level (for greytone images): M00 Centroid: Centroid: x,y=M10M00,M01M00 Orientation and Length of Major and Minor Axis: Information about image orientation can be derived by first using the second order central moments to construct a covari ance matrix. ?20=? 20? 00=M20M00-x2 ?02=? 02? 00=M02M00-y2 ?11=? 11? 00=M11M00-xy2 The covariance matrix of the image I(x,y) is now covIx,y=? 20? 11? 11? 02 The eigenvectors of this matrix correspond to the major and minor axes of the image intensity, so the orientation can thus be extracted from the angle of the eigenvector associated with the largest eigenvalue. It can be shown that this angle ? is given by the following formula: ? =12arctan2? 11? 20-? 02 The eigenvalues of the covariance matrix can easily be shown to be ? i=? 20+? 022 ±4? 112+? 20-? 0222 and are proportional to the squared length of the eigenvector axes. The relative difference in magnitude of the eigenvalues are thus an indication of the eccentricity of the image, or how elongated it is. The eccentricity is 1-? 2? Bounding Box: The extreme (min and max) x and y values in the blob are recorded and a set of bounding box co-ordinates namely (xmin , ymin) and (xmax , ymax) are generated. The bounding box is the smallest box that completely encloses the image. | CHAPTER-III| LOCALIZATION AND SEGMENTATION| | | | CHAPTER-III 3. LOCALIZATION AND SEGMENTATION 3. 1 INTRODUCT ION To localize the license plate three classes of techniques are made use of, viz. Morphology-based techniques, Edge-based techniques and Histogram-based techniques. Later, the Character- Segmentation is achieved using Connected Component Analysis and by applying Heuristics. The functioning of this part of the system can be further divided into 3 sub-sections. The first deals with Car Candidate Generation, the second deals with License Plate Localization and the third with Character Segmentation. 3. 2 EXTRACTING THE CAR-CANDIDATE REGION The Car-Candidate-Generation is done to focus on the car area in the given image to remove false candidates like name-boards, and noisy edges etc. The following steps were used to extract the car candidates: 1. Figure 3. 1 Figure 3. 2 The RGB Image is converted to a Grayscale image using: I = 0. 2989 * R + 0. 870 * G + 0. 1140 * B. 2. Figure 3. 3 An averaging filter is applied on the Grayscale image by convolving it with a 1111 mask. 3. Figure 3. 4 The Grayscale Image is subtracted from the Averaged image to yield an edge image. The effect induced by Averaged Image Grayscale Image is as follows: Values in the grayscale image higher than the average value (in the 11 x 11 neighborhood) are eliminated while calculating the difference as negative values are converted to 0. Values close to the average value are eliminated while thresholding to convert this image to a black and white image. Thus only pixels with values significantly lower than the average in the 11 x 11 neighborhood are retained. All low intensity parts of the edge in a grayscale image have a high value in the averaged image and hence in the differenced image they retain a good magnitude. 4. Figure 3. 5 The Otsu’s Threshold is used to convert the edge image into a black and white image. 5. Figure 3. 6 The Black and White Image is labeled resulting in each connected component to have a number/label associated with it. The area of these blobs is computed. 6. Figure 3. 7 A Weighted Vertical Histogram is computed for the labeled image. For every column in the Labeled Image, we extract the unique labels. The sum of the areas corresponding to these unique labels is the value of the Histogram for that column. 7. Figure 3. 8 Figure 3. 9 The peaks having magnitude above a threshold (V) and having a distance of VThresh between them are clustered to form vertical strips containing potential car candidates. Depending on the threshold value, eliminate the false car candidates. 8. Figure 3. 10 A weighted horizontal histogram is computed on the vertical strips thus obtained after eliminating the false candidates. 9. Figure 3. 12 Figure 3. 11 The peaks having magnitude above a threshold (H) and having a distance of HThresh between them are clustered to form rectangular strips assuming a threshold of one-third of the average in a strip, and obtain the car candidates. 3. 3 LICENSE PLATE LOCALIZATION The following pipeline explains the steps involved in the localization Once the car candidate is obtained; we localize the number plate in the following manner: 1. Grayscale image corresponding to the potential car candidate region is extracted. 2. To remove Salt and Pepper noise, median filter with a 33 mask is applied. It is useful to reduce speckle noise and salt and pepper noise. Its edge-preserving nature makes it useful in cases where edge blurring is undesirable. 3. Vertical edge detection is done on the image using sobel operator. This yields a grayscale image which is then subjected to a threshold based on RMS estimate of noise. 4. The image is dilated using a rectangular structuring element of size [2 15]. Figure 3. 13 5. Figure 3. 14 The area and bounding box of the connected components are then computed by first labeling the image and then extracting the blob properties. 6. Figure 3. 15 Area and Aspect Ratio heuristics are applied on connected components in the Dilated Image, to get Candidate License Plate (CLP) regions, and the corresponding regions are extracted from the edge image. 3. 4 CHARACTER SEGMENTATION Now the number plate candidates thus obtained are subjected to Character Segmentation by the following steps: The Connected Component Analysis is performed to obtain bounding box of each character. The connected component analysis algorithm is applied to the processed images. So we get the bounding rectangle of the object and the number of the object pixels in these rectangles. The following heuristics are applied to eliminate fake License Plate Candidates: * First the height heuristic is applied such that if the height of the bounding box of each object in the candidate license plate region is at least 0. 4 times the height of the Minor Axis Length of the CLP it was a part of, only then can it be a character. * Second the width heuristic is applied such that if the width of the bounding box of each object in the candidate license plate region is less than 0. 125 times the length of the Major Axis length of the CLP it was a part of, only then can it be a character. Any CLP retrieved from the dilated image should have at least four such objects stated in the above two points to qualify to be final candidate. * Lastly, an equation of a line passing through center of the plate is calculated using the Centroid and the Orientation of the plate candidate. All centroids of the Connected Components in the plate should be less than minimum perpendicular distance (Mi nDist) from the line. This heuristic further eliminates fake candidates. The other segmented regions eliminated, as they don’t qualify to be a character and may just be noise. Figure 3. 16 Thus the segmented characters are obtained. | CHAPTER-IV| HIERARCHICAL TEMPORAL MEMORY (HTM)| | | | CHAPTER-IV 4. HIERARCHICAL TEMPORAL MEMORY (HTM) 4. 1 WHAT IS HTM? Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) is a technology that replicates the structural and algorithmic properties of human brain such as visual pattern recognition, understanding spoken language, recognizing and manipulating objects by touch. HTMs are not programmed and do not execute different algorithms for different problems. Instead, HTMs â€Å"learn† how to solve problems. HTMs are trained by exposing them to sensory data and the capability of the HTM is determined largely by what it has learnt. HTMs are organized as a tree-shaped hierarchy of nodes, where each node implements a common learning and memory function. HTM memory is hierarchical in both space and time to capture and model the structure of the world. HTMs perform the following four basic functions regardless of the particular problem they are applied to: * Discover causes in the world * Infer causes of novel input * Make predictions * Direct behavior . 1. 1 Discover causes in the world Figure 4. 1 Left box in the figure 4. 1 represents a world the HTM is to learn about. The world consists of objects and their relationships. The objects in the world are physical such as cars, people, and buildings. The right box in Figure 4. 1 represents an HTM. It interfaces to its world through one or more senses shown in the middle of the figure. The senses sample some attribute of the world such as light or touch, though the senses used by an HTM do not need to be the same senses humans have. Typically the senses don’t directly detect the objects in the world. Senses typically present an array of data to the HTM, where each element in the array is a measurement of some small attribute of the world. From an HTM’s perspective, there are two essential characteristics of sensory data. First, the sensory data must measure something that is directly or indirectly impacted by the causes in the world. Second, the sensory data must change and flow continuously through time, while the causes underlying the sensory data remain relatively stable. The temporal aspect of sensory data can come from movements or changes of the objects in the world or it can come from movement of the sensory system itself through the world. The HTM’s output is manifest as a set of probabilities for each of the learned causes. This moment-to-moment distribution of possible causes is called a â€Å"belief†. If an HTM knows about ten causes in the world, it will have ten variables representing those causes. The value of these variables – its belief – is what the HTM believes is happening in its world at that instant. Typical HTMs will know about many causes, and as you will see, HTMs actually learn a hierarchy of causes. 4. 1. 2 Infer causes of novel input After an HTM network was trained with the set of training data, the network would be ready for the inference and it gives the output as the probability vector with the highest probability as the category to which the object belongs to. 4. 1. 3 Make predictions HTMs consist of a hierarchy of memory nodes where each node learns causes and forms beliefs. Part of the learning algorithm performed by each node is to store likely sequences of patterns. By combining memory of likely sequences with current input, each node has the ability to make predictions of what is likely to happen next. An entire HTM, being a collection of nodes, also makes predictions. Just as an HTM can infer the causes of novel input, it also can make predictions about novel events. Predicting the future of novel events is the essence of creativity and planning. Leaving the details of how this works for later, we can state now what prediction can be used for. There are several uses for prediction in an HTM, including priming, imagination and planning, and generating behavior. Priming When an HTM predicts what is likely to happen next, the prediction can act as what is called a â€Å"prior probability†, meaning it biases the system to infer the predicted causes. For example, if an HTM were processing text or spoken language, it would automatically predict what sounds, words, and ideas are likely to occur next. This prediction helps the system understand noisy or missing data. Imagination and Planning HTMs automatically predict and anticipate what is likely to happen next. Instead of using these predictions for priming, an HTM’s predictions can be fed back into the HTM as a substitute for sensory data. This process is what humans do when they think. Thinking, imagining, planning the future, and silently rehearsing in our heads are all the same, and achieved by following a series of predictions. HTMs can do this as well. Imagining the future can be valuable in many applications. For example, a car may be equipped with an HTM to monitor nearby traffic, to drive accordingly. 4. 1. 4 Direct behavior An HTM that has learned the causes in its world, and how those causes behave over time, has in essence created a model of its world. Now suppose an HTM is attached to a system which physically interacts with the world. What is important is that the system can move its sensors through its world and/or manipulate objects in its world. In such a system, the HTM can learn to generate complex goal-oriented behavior. As the HTM discovers the causes in its world, it learns to represent its built-in behaviors just as it learns to represent the behaviors of objects in the outside world. From the HTM’s perspective, the system it is connected to is just another object in the world. Through an associative memory mechanism, the HTM-based representations of the built-in behaviors are paired with the mechanisms creating the built-in behaviors themselves. . 2 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONCEPT OF HIERARCHY The following reasons explain the concepts to introduce a hierarchical structure: Shared representations lead to generalizat

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Longevity essays Almost everyone dreams of living forever. It seems so appealing to be able to live life for a very long time, happily and healthily, and going out and enjoying everything that life has to offer once or twice. A lot of people think that its a gift from God to live a long time. But what happens when you have to watch all of your friends and family and all of those who are dear to you are dying all around you. Then it becomes a curse. Some may argue that everyone close to them can live long with them, but what about their family and friends? Realistically speaking, is everyone on the planet going to be able to get his or her hands on a longevity supplement so that everyone can live forever? Unfortunately, the answer to that is no. Many scientists, researchers, and even authors are trying to learn more about longevity and ways to live longer. Author Ben Bova has a new book, Immortality, which is one of the many recent volumes that explain how science is beginning to discover more about aging and death and how to prolong life. "Biologists are learning what causes aging in the cells of your body," he says. He reminds us that the human body has about 100 trillion cells and when they cease to function and reproduce, we do as well. Biologists have learned that each cell has a biological clock that tells the cell when to stop dividing and reproducing and when to die. In 1961, California's Leonard Hayflick discovered that most cells in our bodies divide and reproduce themselves about 50 times before slowing down and dying. It's called the Hayflick Limit. Hayflick insists that despite science's best efforts, humans will only live to be 120, which is the longest a human being has ever lived. "When you drive your brand new automobile off of the automobile showroom floor, you have a clear understanding of the potential of that automobile to live for a certain number of years before you have to buy a new one. That's longevity determination...

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Where the funding fathers able to create a limited government that exist today exlain your answer - Essay Example However, with the passage of time, as the American population augmented and a feeling of nationhood grew amongst the Americans, many of the founding fathers realized the need for a strong government. The issue of limited government was as controversial amongst the founding generation as it is today. The conservatives amongst the founding fathers supported a strong government (Hamilton, Madison and Jay xxi). Those amongst the founding fathers of liberal affiliations supported a limited government that respected the rights of the people and did not infringe on the privacy of the free citizens (Hamilton, Madison & Jay xxii). There was a dominant feeling in the founding fathers that eventually people need to be governed, but also that people do need some inalienable rights and freedoms. The political development in the USA has always been a kind of balance between these two imperative

Human Resource Management and Organizational Performance

Human Resource Management and Organizational Performance Introduction The study of HRM has come a long way in a relatively short period of existence. In a society that has become increasingly dependent on knowledge and skills it is clear that the companies training perform an important role in overall organization performance. This training comes from Human Resource Management practices. HRM practices are defined as the activities intend to enhance the performance of organizations and employees ability to achieve the goals of organization. HRM practices raise the outcomes of HRM to influence the organization performance This study focus on the relationship between HRM practices variables and organizational performance, impact of HRM practices on organizational performance and productivity. The performance of an organization depends on many factors and employees contribution. Impact of combined performance of employees on organization performance is greater than individuals. Explanation, importance of relationship and the impact of the HRM practices on the performance of organization. Different approaches of HRM practices and business strategy. It reflects the approach and different factors of the HRM practices. Effect of the individual and shared climate levels of organization Different Studies have emphasized the contribution of Human Resource Management practices to the organizational performance. These studies focused on HRM practices. There is shared idea that HR practices are only effective when bundles are considered including incentive system, training, flexible job assignment, high selectivity and performance management. These practices contribute to increase employee and organization performance by increasing the level of productivity and financial performance. HRM practices have an effect of motivating employees to adopt the required behaviours, it links to the organizational climate, service environment and customer satisfaction. Outcome of investment on employees training each year, this finding is generally shown to be stronger when an organization provides employees with opportunities for the involvement in decision making and organises work in ways that allows employees a higher level of discretionary efforts in the way work is done HRM practices and Organizational performance According to studies of Boselie, Paauwe and Jansen (2000), that relationship between relevant dependant and independent variable will vary according to such influences as technology, unionization, industry, company ownership and location, capital intensity, company age and size. Contingency arguments imply potentially complex interactions between HRM variable, between performance and contingency factors, between HRM variables and performance indicators and contingency factors. Commitment HR practices are based on the idea that the closer an organizations HR practices resembled the correct prototypical system, the greater the performance gain Nicolai and Dana (2009), focus on the impact of individual and bundles of HRM practices. The focus of the empirical research has been divergent and it is clear that reward and training have attracted disproportionate. These are important HRM practices, but it is hard to argue on a priori grounds that positive impact of, for example job design variables. They found that practices such as the use of selective hiring, the extent of training and active participation of the employee in decision making were conducive to organization learning, while group performance-based compensation was not found to be significant for organization learning A number of HRM researchers have argued that synergies are likely to exist among individual HRM practices. These studies indicate that when HRM practices are applied as coherent systems, they have greater effects on organization productivity than the sum of the individual effects from each practice alone Cristina (2007), explain the relationship and impact of HRM practices in organizational performance. People management should be matter of discussion and investment on the part of companies. As for as the theoretical approaches are concerned, the conceptualization of the relationship among HRM practices and business strategy has given birth to three main approaches, named universalistic, contingent and configurational. Under the common relationship among HR Practices and organization performance or outcome, these models hypothesize different set s of variable and relations among them eventually influence corporate results In the view of Peter and Donna (2008), firstly approach which reflects the early work examining the impact of HRM practices implicitly assumed a universalistic, rational model of work organization yielded significant performance dividend. This has been closely associated with a best practice model of HRM. Secondly HR practices are required to have consistency with other organizational factors to be effective. These factors include the nature of market and legislative change. Climate of organization both as individual level attribute and as a set of shared beliefs and values have effect of motivating employee to adopt desired attitudes and behaviour that in the collection, help to achieve organizations goals. HRM system can be read as communication between employer to employee. The effectiveness of HRM system as communication to employee will depend on those features that define HRM system strength. These features are distinctiveness, consistency and consensus. Rita and Miguel (2004) , research has shown that HRM practices contribute to organizational performance. Early studies emphasized the impact of several separate HRM practices, such as compensation, performance management system and training. Later studies reported the positive impact of HRM practices on organizational performance as well as the virtuous impact of HR sophistication, measured by investment in HR planning, in hiring and in employee development on productivity, particularly in capital intensive organization. These latter studies have a common idea that bundle of HR practices improve employee and organization performance. Overall set of HRM practices developed the employees skills, ability and motivation. High performance work system contribute to improve employee and organization performance by increasing the level of productivity Organizations Demand and outcome for HRM practices According to Bo Hansson (2002), in estimating the impact of training on the probability of the organization being a top performer in the industry, controlling for the past profitability is an effort to measure the net contribution of training to the profit op the organization. Percentage of wage bills spent on training is significantly and positively associated with the profitability in an organization. The proportion of employee being trained is positive but not significant. Most significant factor to indicate current performance is the past performance The measure of internal promotion is significantly and positively associated with profitability only in the presence of how much is invested in training and not in the estimates of how many employees are trained every year. Focusing on internal promotion seems to be a good strategy for organization profitability as this strategy reduces the training. Because measure of internal promotion is significantly in the presence of how much is invested in training Bruce and Benjamin (2009), explain the individual organizations decision regarding the extent of the investment in HRM practices. Following the mainline of HRM practices they assume the organization short-run objective is maximum financial return, which is simply treating as maximum profit. This assumption limits to private sector for profit organizations. The HRM practices are treat as an input factor in production. That is the organizations output is assumed produced with labour, capital and HRM practices. HRM is utilized therefore, because of its boost productivity. HRM helps to produced more output and profit Strength of HRM Practices and Turnover Rita and Miguel (2004), presents the links between HRM feature and outcome at organizational level, such as financial performance and productivity. HRM system or practices creates the conditions to achieve organizational goals by influences employee attribution. Individual practices intended to achieve objectives, such as promoting innovation, process deals with how the HRM practices is designed and administrated to send signals to employees that allow them to create a shared meaning about the desired response and collective sense of what is expected. According to one study (B Hansson, 2002), turnover is significantly and negatively associated with being a top performing organization. A large amount spent on employee every year. It is crucial for an organization to retain their employee in that turnover reduces the returns to training. This reasoning is in accord with the rational that mobility lowers an organizations training investment in that reduces the return on these training i nvestments. However, an explanation for the finding that mobility is not determining the provision of training is that the economic benefits to the organization from training their employees outweigh the cost of lost human capital investment that are caused by personal turnover. Important determination of training is personal turnover as it affects the ability of organization to benefit from training Aims and Objectives Following are the aims and objectives of this study To show the Impact of HRM practices on the performance of organization Effect of HRM practices on employees performance, ability and behaviour. Contribution of HRM practices in organization performance. what package of HRM practices affect performance. The Relationship between HRM and Organizational Performance. Organization Performance and HRM practices Conclusions We can conclude that there are possibilities for including the institutional setting in theoretical framework in order to have a full coverage of the relationship between HRM practices and performance. On a number of HRM practices the individual organization cannot differentiate itself from competitors. The best practices are already enforced for majority of organization due to role. Highlight the impact of the individuals and bundles of HRM practices on the productivity and performance on organization The purpose of study is to explore relationship between HRM polices human capital and organization performance at business and individual level by considering different variables. From the concept of the strength of the HRM system, we can suggest that workplace climate provide a high credible mechanism in creating the basis on which practices are institutionalised into the inimitable asset for the organization. Workplace climate appears to act as a significant mediator between HRM system and performance

“Social Construction of Reality”

â€Å"Social Construction of Reality† Reality is not an objective thing that is imposed upon us, but is created by us. Reality does not exist externally but internally, as each individual or group interprets it, and is always changing. Due to these concepts sociologists often speak about the â€Å"social construction of reality† which is essential to understand when attempting to explain human social behavior. Since realty is the basis of people’s actions, W. I. Thomas states, â€Å"If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences†.The â€Å"social construction of reality†, human social behavior and W. I. Thomas’s statement are three concepts that fit hand in hand and are important when trying to explain one another. Sociologists speak about the â€Å"social construction of reality† as a way to describe the significance of how society shapes our definition of reality. People coming together to build reality and define something as real because we define it as real. As sociologists explain the social construction of reality they have observed that each society or the social groups that each person belongs to forms ones particular views on life.Our â€Å"social construction of reality† constructs our views of how we see the world around us therefore affecting how we see reality and why we do the things we do. People construct reality using the five senses: sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste. For example, when taking a table into consideration, one does not react to the concrete object but the meaning we give it. If this same table were to fall out of the sky, land in a jungle and tribe people were to stumble across it they most likely would not use it in the same context but maybe as a bed or a sacrificial altar.The â€Å"social construction of reality† not only applies to inanimate objects but to relationships and the basis of how someone treats someone else, such as symbo lic interactionism (Essentials of Sociology, pg. 15). Symbolic interactionism such as we attach meaning to things and this is how everyone understands similar views in the world and how we communicate with one another. This is evident when one dissects the idea of the enslavement of Africans, known as the â€Å"white mans burden†. Whites defined blacks as less than human, savages or creatures that could not survive off of their own minimal cognitive reasoning.This understanding was the basis of slavery. Another example is the idea of marriage and divorce, and how the institution is ever changing. Up until the early 1900’s marriage was viewed as a lifelong commitment, divorce was â€Å"taboo† and shunned as being immoral and the abandonment of adult responsibility. In 1945 sociologists Ernest Burgess and Harvey Locke noted that couples were looking at marriage as less of a lifelong commitment and more of an arrangement that was based on attraction and feelings, i t became a situation that could be broken when feelings changed.Divorce became more common and was defined more positive as freedom and new beginnings (Essentials of Sociology, pg. 16). An example of another â€Å"reality† is how from person to person there is no true definition of success. The letter grade â€Å"B† brings on different emotions depending on the individual. One student would jump for joy to pass with the â€Å"B† while others would be sad, even cry. In actuality â€Å"B† is just a shape, a letter of the English alphabet, given on paper but what the person defines it as gives it meaning to their reality, and then forget about the â€Å"+† or â€Å"-â€Å" given accompanied with the letter grade.Our social construction of reality defines our behavior and how we respond to the meaning that we give these situations or objects. Human social behavior is what is based off of once a reality is socially constructed. This is why it is so im portant to first understand the concept of the â€Å"social construction of reality† before trying to explain why people act the way they do. Because this object with four legs attached to a flat surface is defined as a â€Å"table† one uses it to eat on or sit at and not other things such as sleep on.If an individual were to use it as something else they would be looked at as being weird because they are not doing what is socially accepted or viewed as â€Å"breaking the rules†. The concept of ethnocentrism is where a group of people tries to change another group of people to make them like them so they can â€Å"save† them for their own good. This is done because according to their social construction of reality however the opposing group behaves is â€Å"wrong†. This can be seen throughout history for example the crusades, as stated before the â€Å"white mans burden† in Africa, and the war in Iraq.During the days of slavery, treating a b lack individual maliciously was socially accepted because of the way reality was constructed. The changing attitudes toward marriage and divorce are evident when one looks at the trends. Marriage is not viewed the same as it was 100 years ago; it is not necessary to be married forming a family by age 15. This concept of social construction of reality also explains why patterns form and how people can develop similar behavior without having to know each other.On the streets of New York good sidewalk etiquette is defined as passing another person on the right, walking far enough not to brush the other person ,if one can help it, and ensuring not to look at the person when walking by. However, when any of these rules are broken it makes the other individual uneasy or even angry. But these unwritten rules aren’t necessarily the same in different parts of the world, for example in London it is socially correct that if you are walking towards and passing someone else that you part ways on the left side.Other areas where unwritten rules exist are in elevators, such as where and how to stand, and also seen in face-to-face conversations, such as eye contact and distance something known as â€Å"personal space†. Ones views for what is right from wrong also comes from the foundation on what one defines as real. W. I. Thomas’s quote, â€Å"If men define a situation as real, its real in its consequences† correlates directly to the idea that human social behavior is based off of the â€Å"social construction of reality†.Thomas is analyzing that reality is a social product that is construed by whatever we define as real. Humans do what they do and react solely by the meaning we give things and not the things in and of itself. This is why money, gold and diamonds are â€Å"valuable†. Money is simply made of paper but because it is defined as currency we make it out to be very valuable. To better understand this notion one can take not e of our system of crime and punishment, which is based off of W. I. Thomas’s thoughts.When the jury makes a decision, they are deciding on what they perceive as reality. They do not know exactly what happened but from witnesses and evidence they make this judgment. W. I. Thomas’s idea is significant in the study of human social behavior because it further proves that human actions are based off of the reality that something is true. This is why what is defined as â€Å"normal† varies from culture to culture and the decided meaning to an object or action is arbitrary. The â€Å"social construction of reality†, human social behavior and W.I. Thomas’s quote, â€Å"If men define a situation as real, it is real in its consequences† are concepts that compliment one another. To be able to understand fully, one must be able to comprehend all concepts. When sociologists speak about the â€Å"social construction of reality† through the groups that we belong to we learn ways of looking at whatever happens to us and what we see because through social interaction is how we construct reality and from that point on is how we behave and respond.It’s not a question of which came first the chicken or the egg, because in the eyes of sociologists human social behavior is caused by the â€Å"social construction or reality† and W. I. Thomas’s statement is an abridgment of these concepts explaining men’s definitions of situations given the meaning of what is what or who is who. It doesn’t matter what is real or not, what does exist or not exist, because we give meaning or â€Å"consequences† to this reality that has been portrayed and instilled in our minds. References Henslin, J. M. 2011. Essentials of Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach-9th edition. Pearson. Social Construction of Reality The â€Å"Social Construction of Reality† is a work of hypothetical reasoning to the redefine the task and to broaden its range to understand the redefining of sociological knowledge. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann both argue that reality is socially constructed by the knowledge of the people for social reality is produced and communicated amongst others. They emphasize on the fact that human is a part of a product of society and vice versa: society is a product of human. Berger and Luckmann follow the Schutz’s concept of viewing the reality of everyday life as an â€Å"intersubjective world†- a world shared with many others.Berger and Luckmann begin with emphasizing strongly on the multiple interpretations of â€Å"reality† amongst the â€Å"intersubjective world† they share. They argue the meanings that we, as human, interpret from the messages and what we situate ourselves in, is affected by our knowledge, our surroundings and our interactio ns. And what we interpret corresponds with others’ interpretations. It’s a constant, ongoing paralleling conflict/agreement between your individual meaning and others’ meaning of a message. Berger accentuates that we take the â€Å"reality of everyday life for granted as reality. I felt in the way that he was criticizing humans for being ignorant and close minded to what more the world can offer and only focusing on the views of our individual society. Human only seek to understand our individual knowledge of a subject, hence that I mentioned before in my interpretations, that our society is constructed by knowledge. I then concluded that Berger was arguing on the concept that we, as humans, are de-humanizing ourselves through our view of society. He gives off an example, which I completely agree with, to further emphasize on how humans can become oblivious to the world that is outside OUR individual world.He speaks of a case, where an automobile mechanic who k nows of only American cars is put in a situation where a customer brings in a Volkswagen-a foreign-made car. Now this mechanic is required to enter the â€Å"problematic† world of foreign cars with curiosity to lead, or makes the choice to not leave his â€Å"everyday reality. † We, as humans (depending on the individual’s personality) become cautious when the problematic world is presented to us. Whether the society involves humans to be risk taker, no human would leave their world of comfort and sanity to join and explore something completely different from the world they are familiarizing with.After hours of re-reading this excerpt, I finally got an idea or at least a gist of what Bergen and Luckmann argues. I then related their argument to past historical events or events that we deal and struggle with today. I related this excerpt to the struggle that women endured in the mid 1800’s. Many, more in general, men, didn’t recognize women were huma n with rights according to the governmental documentations. Men saw women as property, especially if they were married. Women were stripped off their rights when married and were considered delicate and weak.Women possess the knowledge that they were equal to men; they knew that the society there were stuck in was incorrect. So they, as â€Å"delicate and weak† beings took the chance to explore their own â€Å"problematic† world. And that lead to a movement, a strong revolution consisting of women fighting for their rights. And the ignorance in this situation is presented through the share of the men’s interpretation of what a woman is and the purpose they are to be serving in society. As Berger argues that we take our reality of everyday for granted, I agreed.In today’s society, it becomes clear that certain women belittle themselves for men. In today’s society, women don’t realize how grateful we are to be able to a complete true citizen. From sending nudes and selling their body, it puts a strong movement that was revolutionizing in the19th century to waste. Women become close minded, exactly as Berger and Luckmann argued, and only see for their individual society. That’s why we need to vote; at least to appreciate that the rights we now possessed were fought for, for us to be equal.

Poem Analysis on “Out, Out-, ” by Robert Frost Essay

My emotions toward this poem are depressed, forlorn, and melancholy. In â€Å"’Out, Out-,’†, a young boy is at work about to go to dinner when suddenly the saw cuts off his hand. A boy his age shouldn’t have to die doing a man’s job. Work back then had unimaginable conditions that made you want to cry. The line that struck out at me the most was â€Å"Don’t let him cut my hand off- The, When he comes. Don’t let him sister!† So. But the hand was already gone. This made my whole body convulse at the thought of his hand being cut off and eventually causing his death. When breaking down the poem, I realized he used repetition of the words â€Å"snarled and rattled†. For me it created an ominous and almost foreshadowing affect. The working condition was not up to par, and Frost shows this by the line â€Å"And they, since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.† This shows how people acted towards children working and that anything can happen. It also produced a personification because a saw doesn’t answer to when being called to supper, nor can it leap. â€Å"His sister stood beside him in her apron To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws know what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap— He must have given the hand.† Frost uses emotionally filled words in this poem. That must mean that he was attached to it emotionally and personally. I did some background research and it is possible that he based it off of his neighbor’s son, Raymond Fitzgerald who cut off his hand with a saw and bled until he went into shock, causing heart failure. People either were not aware of the conditions back then, or they did and couldn’t do anything about it because they needed the money. In that time period, everyone in the family had to contribute to survive. I believe he was also making a statement towards the government for not making regulations on the age  requirement of eligibility to work.