What is Information Retrieval?

Information Retrieval refers to the human-computer interaction (HCI) that happens when we
use a machine to search some piece of information for information objects (content) that
match our search query. It is all about retrieving information that is stored in a database or
computer and related to the user’s needs. A user’s query is matched against a set of
documents to find the relevant documents.

What is an IR Model?

An Information Retrieval (IR) model selects and ranks the document that is required by the
user or the user has asked for in the form of a query.

Components of Information Retrieval/ IR Model

1. Acquisition

In this step, the selection of documents and other objects from various web resources
that consist of text-based documents takes place. The required data is collected by web
crawlers and stored in the database.

2. Representation

The representation of information retrieval system mainly involves indexing the following:

 Indexing may be done in a variety of methods, including free text keywords (even in
entire texts)

 Summarizing and abstracting

 Bibliographic information: author, title, sources, date, etc.

 Information about metadata
 Classification and clustering
 Field and limit organization
 Basic Index, Supplemental Index Limits
 3. File Organisation
There are mainly 2 categories of file organization which are: sequential and inverted. The
mixture of these two is a combination.
 Sequential: It organizes documents based on document data.
 Inverted: It contains term by term, list of records under each term
 Combination: Synthesis of inverted indexes as well as sequential documents
4. Query

An IR process starts when a user enters a query into the system. Queries are formal
statements of information needs, for example, search strings in web search engines. In
information retrieval, a query does not uniquely identify a single object in the collection.
Instead, several objects may match the query, perhaps with different degrees of relevancy.

Types of IR Models

 Classic IR Model
It is the most basic and straight forward IR model. This paradigm is founded on mathematical
information that was easily recognized and comprehended. The three traditional IR models
are Boolean, Vector, and Probabilistic.
 Non-Classic IR Model
Non-classical IR models include situation theory models, information logic models, and
interaction models.
 Alternative IR Model
It is an improvement to the traditional IR model that makes use of some unique approaches
from other domains. Alternative IR models include fuzzy models, cluster models, and latent
semantic indexing (LSI) models.

Information Extraction:

Information Extraction’s main goal is to find out meaningful information from the document
set. IE is one type of IR. IE automatically gets structured information from a set of
unstructured documents. IE focuses more on texts that can be read and written by humans and
utilize them with NLP (natural language processing).

Extraction is difficult than Information Retrieval.

How extraction works:

Typically, for structured information to be extracted from unstructured texts, the following
main subtasks are involved:

 Pre-processing of the text – this is where the text is prepared for processing with the
help of computational linguistics tools such as tokenization, sentence splitting,
morphological analysis, etc.
  Finding and classifying concepts – this is where mentions of people, things, locations,
events and other pre-specified types of concepts are detected and classified.

 Connecting the concepts – this is the task of identifying relationships between the
extracted concepts.

 Unifying – this subtask is about presenting the extracted data into a standard form.

 Getting rid of the noise – this subtask involves eliminating duplicate data.

 Enriching your knowledge base – this is where the extracted knowledge is ingested in
your database for further use.

Information extraction can be entirely automated or performed with the help of human input.

Natural Language Processing

NLP stands for Natural Language Processing, which is a part of Computer Science,
Human language, and Artificial Intelligence. It is the technology that is used by machines
to understand, analyse, manipulate, and interpret human's languages. It helps developers to
organize knowledge for performing tasks such as translation, automatic summarization,
speech recognition etc.

Modern NLP consists of various applications, like speech recognition, machine

translation, and machine text reading. When we combine all these applications then it
allows the artificial intelligence to gain knowledge of the world. Let's consider the example
of AMAZON ALEXA, using this robot you can ask the question to Alexa, and it will reply to
you.

Advantages of NLP
o NLP helps users to ask questions about any subject and get a direct response within
seconds.
o NLP offers exact answers to the question means it does not offer unnecessary and
unwanted information.
o NLP helps computers to communicate with humans in their languages.
o It is very time efficient.
o Most of the companies use NLP to improve the efficiency of documentation
processes, accuracy of documentation, and identify the information from large
databases.

Disadvantages of NLP

A list of disadvantages of NLP is given below:

 o NLP may not show context.
o NLP is unable to adapt to the new domain, and it has a limited function that's why
NLP is built for a single and specific task only.

Components of NLP

There are the following two components of NLP -

1. Natural Language Understanding (NLU)

Natural Language Understanding (NLU) helps the machine to understand and analyse human
language by extracting the metadata from content such as concepts, entities, keywords,
emotion, relations, and semantic roles.

2. Natural Language Generation (NLG)

Natural Language Generation (NLG) acts as a translator that converts the computerized data
into natural language representation. It mainly involves Text planning, Sentence planning,
and Text Realization.

Applications of NLP

There are the following applications of NLP -

1. Question Answering

Question Answering focuses on building systems that automatically answer the questions
asked by humans in a natural language.

2. Spam Detection

Spam detection is used to detect unwanted e-mails getting to a user's inbox.

3. Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment Analysis is also known as opinion mining. It is used on the web to analyse the
attitude, behaviour, and emotional state of the sender. This application is implemented
through a combination of NLP (Natural Language Processing) and statistics by assigning the
values to the text (positive, negative, or natural), identify the mood of the context (happy, sad,
angry, etc.)

4. Machine Translation

Machine translation is used to translate text or speech from one natural language to another
natural language.

Machine translation of languages refers to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine
learning algorithms to automatically translate text or speech from one language to another.
Why Machine Translation of Languages in Artificial Intelligence?

Machine translation of languages in artificial intelligence (AI) has several benefits, including:

1. Improved communication: Machine translation makes it easier for people who

speak different languages to communicate with each other, breaking down language
barriers and facilitating international cooperation.

2. Cost savings: Machine translation is typically faster and less expensive than human
translation, making it a cost-effective solution for businesses and organizations that
need to translate large amounts of text.

3. Increased accessibility: Machine translation can make digital content more

accessible to users who speak different languages, improving the user experience and
expanding the reach of digital products and services.

4. Improved efficiency: Machine translation can streamline the translation process,

allowing businesses and organizations to quickly translate large amounts of text and
improving overall efficiency.

5. Language learning: Machine translation can be a valuable tool for language learners,
helping them to understand the meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases and
improving their language skills.

Machine translation has many applications, including:

1. Cross-border communication: Machine translation allows people from different

countries to communicate with each other more easily, breaking down language
barriers and facilitating international cooperation.

2. Localization: Machine translation can be used to quickly and efficiently translate

websites, software, and other digital content into different languages, making them
more accessible to users around the world.

3. Business: Machine translation can be used by businesses to translate documents,

contracts, and other important materials, enabling them to work with partners and
customers from around the world.

4. Education: Machine translation can be used in education to help students learn new
languages and improve their language skills.

5. Government: Machine translation can be used by governments to translate official

documents and communications, improving accessibility and transparency.

Speech recognition

Speech recognition, also known as automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer speech
recognition, or speech-to-text, is a capability which enables a program to process human
speech into a written format. While it’s commonly confused with voice recognition, speech
recognition focuses on the translation of speech from a verbal format to a text one whereas
voice recognition just seeks to identify an individual user’s voice.

Key features of effective speech recognition

 Language weighting: Improve precision by weighting specific words that are spoken
frequently (such as product names or industry jargon), beyond terms already in the
base vocabulary.

 Speaker labeling: Output a transcription that cites or tags each speaker’s

contributions to a multi-participant conversation.

 Acoustics training: Attend to the acoustical side of the business. Train the system to
adapt to an acoustic environment (like the ambient noise in a call center) and speaker
styles (like voice pitch, volume and pace).

 Profanity filtering: Use filters to identify certain words or phrases and sanitize
speech output.

Speech recognition algorithms

 Natural language processing (NLP).

 Hidden markov models (HMM)

 N-grams

 Neural networks

 Speaker Diarization (SD)

Robotics

Robotics is the term used in artificial intelligence that deals with a study of creating
intelligent and efficient robots.

What are Robots

Robots are multifunctional, re-programmable, automatic industrial machine designed for
replacing human in hazardous work.

Robots can be work as:-

o An automatic machine sweeper

o In space
o A machine removing mines in a war field
o An automatic car for a child to play with
o In military, etc.
Aspects of Robotics
o The robots have electrical components for providing power and control the
machinery.
o They have mechanical construction, shape, or form designed to accomplish a
particular task.
o It contains some type of computer program that determines what, when and how a
robot does something.

Consider the key components of robotics are:-

o Power Supply - The working power to the robot is provided by batteries, hydraulic,
solar power, or pneumatic power sources.
o Actuators - Actuators are the energy conversion device used inside a robot. The
major function of actuators is to convert energy into movement.
o Electric motors (DC/AC)- Motors are electromechanical component used for
converting electrical energy into its equivalent mechanical energy. In robots motors
are used for providing rotational movement.
o Sensors - Sensors provide real time information on the task environment.
o Controller - Controller is a part of robot that coordinates all motion of the mechanical
system. It also receives an input from immediate environment through various
sensors. The heart of robot's controller is a microprocessor linked with the
input/output and monitoring device. The command issued by the controller activates
the motion control mechanism, consisting of various controller, actuators and
amplifier.

Robot Locomotion

Locomotion is the method of moving from one place to another. The mechanism that makes a
robot capable of moving in its environment is called as robot locomotion.

There are many types of locomotion's:-

 o Wheeled
o Legged
o Tracked slip/skid
o Combination of legged and wheeled locomotion

Legged locomotion
o It comes up with the variety of one, two, four, and six legs. If a robot has multiple legs
then leg coordination is required for locomotion.
o Legged locomotion consumes more power while demonstrating jump, hop, walk, trot,
climb up or down etc.
o It requires more number of motors for accomplish a movement. It is suited for rough
as well as smooth terrain where irregular or too smooth surface makes it consume
more operational power.

Hence, there are six possible different events:-

o Lifting the Right leg

o Lifting the Left leg
o Releasing the right leg
o Releasing the left leg
o Releasing both the legs together
o Lifting both the legs together

Wheeled Locomotion

It requires less number of motors for accomplishing a movement. It is little easy to implement
as there are lesser stability issues in case of more number of wheels. It is more power
efficient as compared to legged locomotion.

Slip/Skid Locomotion

In Slip/Skid locomotion the vehicles use tracks as available in a tank. The robot is steered by
moving tracks with different speeds in the same or opposite direction. It offers stability
because of large contact area of ground and track.

Perception

Robots’ ability to interact with their surroundings is an essential capability, especially in

unstructured human-inhabited environments. The knowledge of such an environment is
usually obtained through sensors. The study of acquiring knowledge from sensor data is
called robotic perception. Perception is the first step in many tasks such as manipulation or
human-robot interaction.

Perception is the act of using sensor values to drive inference about the world.
Planning is the process of determining which actions to execute in order to effect desired
changes in the world.

Planning can mean very different things, depending on the complexity of the task, the time
scale for actions, the uncertainty involved, and the complexity of the robot itself.

 Task Planning

Task planning treats problems at a fairly high level of abstraction, ignoring details such
as the geometry of the environment, the specific path traversed by the robot, and any
consideration of dynamics.

Actions in a task plan are typically described in high-level, symbolic terms, such as move the
piece of trash to the paper bin or go to the kitchen. A task planner makes its decisions by
considering the effects of actions at this high level but it will not consider details such as how
to grasp the item of trash or what should be the motor torques on the wheels of a robot to
move it from the living room to the kitchen.

 Path Planning

Path planning deals with the problem of moving the robot from one position to another.
Avoiding collisions with obstacles in the environment (including humans and other robots) is
generally a central concern for path planners.

An easy way to address this problem is to discretize the world into a grid and then label grid
cells as either being free or as containing an obstacle. The path planning problem is then to
find a sequence of free grid cells such that the initial robot position is contained in the starting
cell and the goal position is contained in the final cell. The disadvantage to this approach is
that the representation of free space is conservative (if a cell is partially blocked by an
obstacle, then the entire cell will be treated as an obstacle and therefore be unavailable to the
robot); there may be cases for which a collision-free path exists in the world, but not in the
grid. In such cases, the robot will be unable to find a free path, even though it exists.

 Trajectory Planning

While path planning considers the “shape” of the path from start to goal (e.g., a car that has a
map of the road), trajectory planning also considers the time parameterization of that path
(how fast the car traverses the road). This aspect of planning becomes important when the
robot has interesting dynamics.

Dealing with Uncertainty

In real-world applications, robot’s never know precisely where they are or precisely what will
be the results of their actions. In some cases, uncertainties can be ignored during planning.

When uncertainties cannot be neglected, we often use probability theory to model the
uncertainties, and to form a basis for probabilistic inference about the state of the world and
the effects of the robot’s actions.