About figure in minipage

Question

How to hide "Figure 3:" and "Figure 4:", and let "Figure 5" shows as "Figure 3"? (i.e. subfigure not taking the figure number)

\begin{figure}[htbp]
\hspace{-4mm}
\begin{minipage}{0.5\linewidth}]
\centering
\input{trans}
\caption{(a)}
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}{0.5\linewidth}
\centering
\input{trans1}
\caption{(a)}
\end{minipage}
\caption{Monitoring Automata}
\label{fig:monitoringAutomata}
\end{figure}

Answer 1

If I understand what you're asking for, I think this should do the trick:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}[htbp]
    \hspace{-4mm}
    \begin{minipage}{0.5\linewidth}
        \centering
        \includegraphics[width=2in]{example-image-a}\\
        Info on image (a)
    \end{minipage}
    \begin{minipage}{0.5\linewidth}
        \centering
        \includegraphics[width=2in]{example-image-b}\\
        Info on image (b)
    \end{minipage}
    \caption{Monitoring Automata}
    \label{fig:monitoringAutomata}
\end{figure}
\end{document}

I don't have your image files. So I use the package graphicx to import different images. In other words the graphicx package is not necessary to the solution.

The key here is that I'm not using a caption on the images. I've just got a title centered below each.

The numbering for the figure is off only because this is the first figure in my document. If you copy this into your document, the numbering of the figure should be as you want it.