Nonparametric belief propagation

Abstract

Continuous quantities are ubiquitous in models of real-world phenomena, but are surprisingly difficult to reason about automatically. Probabilistic graphical models such as Bayesian networks and Markov random fields, and algorithms for approximate inference such as belief propagation (BP), have proven to be powerful tools in a wide range of applications in statistics and artificial intelligence. However, applying these methods to models with continuous variables remains a challenging task. In this work we describe an extension of BP to continuous variable models, generalizing particle filtering, and Gaussian mixture filtering techniques for time series to more complex models. We illustrate the power of the resulting nonparametric BP algorithm via two applications: kinematic tracking of visual motion and distributed localization in sensor networks.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Oct 01, 2010
Source ID
10.1145/1831407.1831431

Entities

People

  • Alan S. Willsky
  • Alexander T. Ihler
  • Erik B. Sudderth
  • Michael Isard
  • William T. Freeman

Organizations

  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research
  • Brown University
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Microsoft Research
  • National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
  • Office of Naval Research
  • University of California, Irvine

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Mathematical Modeling and Probability Theory.
  • Regression Analysis.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Bayesian Inference
  • AI & ML - Machine Learning Algorithms