One-bit feedback systems generate binary data as their output and the system performance is usually measured by the success rate with a fixed parameter combination. Traditional methods need many executions for parameter optimization. Hence, it is impractical to utilize these methods in Expensive One-Bit Feedback Systems (EOBFSs), where a single system execution is costly in terms of time or money. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm, named Iterative Regression and Optimization (IRO), for parameter optimization and its corresponding scheme based on the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) method and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) method, named MLEPSO-IRO, for parameter optimization in EOBFSs. The IRO algorithm is an iterative algorithm, with each iteration comprising two parts: regression and optimization. Considering the structure of IRO and the Bernoulli distribution property of the output of EOBFSs, MLE and a modified PSO are selected to implement the regression and optimization sections, respectively, in MLEPSO-IRO. We also provide a theoretical analysis for the convergence of MLEPSO-IRO and provide numerical experiments on hypothesized EOBFSs and one real EOBFS in comparison to traditional methods. The results indicate that MLEPSO-IRO can provide a much better result with only a small amount of system executions.

Interference and anti-interference are two opposite and important issues in visual tracking. Occlusion interference can disguise the features of a target and can also be used as an effective benchmark to determine whether a tracking algorithm is reliable. In this paper, we proposed an inner Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm to locate the optimal occlusion strategy under different tracking conditions and to identify the most effective occlusion positions and direction of movement to allow a target to evade tracking. This algorithm improved the standard PSO process in three ways. First, it introduced a death process, which greatly reduced the time cost of optimization. Second, it used statistical data to determine the fitness value of the particles so that the fitness more accurately described the tracking. Third, the algorithm could avoid being trapped in local optima, as the fitness changes with time. Experimental results showed that this algorithm was able to identify a global optimal occlusion strategy that can disturb the tracking machine with 86.8% probability over more than 10 000 tracking processes. In addition, it reduced the time cost by approximately 80%, compared with conventional PSO algorithms.