This paper presents an optimization-based solution to task and motion planning (TAMP) on mobile manipulators. Logic-geometric programming (LGP) has shown promising capabilities for optimally dealing with hybrid TAMP problems that involve abstract and geometric constraints. However, LGP does not scale well to high-dimensional systems (e.g. mobile manipulators) and can suffer from obstacle avoidance issues. In this work, we extend LGP with a sampling-based reachability graph to enable solving optimal TAMP on high-DoF mobile manipulators. The proposed reachability graph can incorporate environmental information (obstacles) to provide the planner with sufficient geometric constraints. This reachability-aware heuristic efficiently prunes infeasible sequences of actions in the continuous domain, hence, it reduces replanning by securing feasibility at the final full trajectory optimization. Our framework proves to be time-efficient in computing optimal and collision-free solutions, while outperforming the current state of the art on metrics of success rate, planning time, path length and number of steps. We validate our framework on the physical Toyota HSR robot and report comparisons on a series of mobile manipulation tasks of increasing difficulty.
In recent years, the growing adoption of autobidding has motivated the study of auction design with value-maximizing auto-bidders. It is known that under mild assumptions, uniform bid-scaling is an optimal bidding strategy in truthful auctions, e.g., Vickrey-Clarke-Groves auction (VCG), and the price of anarchy for VCG is $2$. However, for other auction formats like First-Price Auction (FPA) and Generalized Second-Price auction (GSP), uniform bid-scaling may not be an optimal bidding strategy, and bidders have incentives to deviate to adopt strategies with non-uniform bid-scaling. Moreover, FPA can achieve optimal welfare if restricted to uniform bid-scaling, while its price of anarchy becomes $2$ when non-uniform bid-scaling strategies are allowed. All these price of anarchy results have been focused on welfare approximation in the worst-case scenarios. To complement theoretical understandings, we empirically study how different auction formats (FPA, GSP, VCG) with different levels of non-uniform bid-scaling perform in an autobidding world with a synthetic dataset for auctions. Our empirical findings include: * For both uniform bid-scaling and non-uniform bid-scaling, FPA is better than GSP and GSP is better than VCG in terms of both welfare and profit; * A higher level of non-uniform bid-scaling leads to lower welfare performance in both FPA and GSP, while different levels of non-uniform bid-scaling have no effect in VCG. Our methodology of synthetic data generation may be of independent interest.
Semi-supervised learning (SSL) methods effectively leverage unlabeled data to improve model generalization. However, SSL models often underperform in open-set scenarios, where unlabeled data contain outliers from novel categories that do not appear in the labeled set. In this paper, we study the challenging and realistic open-set SSL setting, where the goal is to both correctly classify inliers and to detect outliers. Intuitively, the inlier classifier should be trained on inlier data only. However, we find that inlier classification performance can be largely improved by incorporating high-confidence pseudo-labeled data, regardless of whether they are inliers or outliers. Also, we propose to utilize non-linear transformations to separate the features used for inlier classification and outlier detection in the multi-task learning framework, preventing adverse effects between them. Additionally, we introduce pseudo-negative mining, which further boosts outlier detection performance. The three ingredients lead to what we call Simple but Strong Baseline (SSB) for open-set SSL. In experiments, SSB greatly improves both inlier classification and outlier detection performance, outperforming existing methods by a large margin. Our code will be released at //github.com/YUE-FAN/SSB.
This position paper outlines a new approach to adapting 3D user interface (UI) layouts given the complex nature of end-user preferences. Current optimization techniques, which mainly rely on weighted sum methods, can be inflexible and result in unsatisfactory adaptations. We propose using multi-objective optimization and interactive preference elicitation to provide semi-automated, flexible, and effective adaptations of 3D UIs. Our approach is demonstrated using an example of single-element 3D layout adaptation with ergonomic objectives. Future work is needed to address questions around the presentation and selection of optimal solutions, the impact on cognitive load, and the integration of preference learning. We conclude that, to make adaptive 3D UIs truly effective, we must acknowledge the limitations of our optimization objectives and techniques and emphasize the importance of user control.
In the Machine Learning (ML) model development lifecycle, training candidate models using an offline holdout dataset and identifying the best model for the given task is only the first step. After the deployment of the selected model, continuous model monitoring and model retraining is required in many real-world applications. There are multiple reasons for retraining, including data or concept drift, which may be reflected on the model performance as monitored by an appropriate metric. Another motivation for retraining is the acquisition of increasing amounts of data over time, which may be used to retrain and improve the model performance even in the absence of drifts. We examine the impact of various retraining decision points on crucial factors, such as model performance and resource utilization, in the context of Multilabel Classification models. We explain our key decision points and propose a reference framework for designing an effective model retraining strategy.
Due to the limited availability of data, existing few-shot learning methods trained from scratch fail to achieve satisfactory performance. In contrast, large-scale pre-trained models such as CLIP demonstrate remarkable few-shot and zero-shot capabilities. To enhance the performance of pre-trained models for downstream tasks, fine-tuning the model on downstream data is frequently necessary. However, fine-tuning the pre-trained model leads to a decrease in its generalizability in the presence of distribution shift, while the limited number of samples in few-shot learning makes the model highly susceptible to overfitting. Consequently, existing methods for fine-tuning few-shot learning primarily focus on fine-tuning the model's classification head or introducing additional structure. In this paper, we introduce a fine-tuning approach termed Feature Discrimination Alignment (FD-Align). Our method aims to bolster the model's generalizability by preserving the consistency of spurious features across the fine-tuning process. Extensive experimental results validate the efficacy of our approach for both ID and OOD tasks. Once fine-tuned, the model can seamlessly integrate with existing methods, leading to performance improvements. Our code can be found in //github.com/skingorz/FD-Align.
This work presents a new depth- and semantics-aware conditional generative model, named TITAN-Next, for cross-domain image-to-image translation in a multi-modal setup between LiDAR and camera sensors. The proposed model leverages scene semantics as a mid-level representation and is able to translate raw LiDAR point clouds to RGB-D camera images by solely relying on semantic scene segments. We claim that this is the first framework of its kind and it has practical applications in autonomous vehicles such as providing a fail-safe mechanism and augmenting available data in the target image domain. The proposed model is evaluated on the large-scale and challenging Semantic-KITTI dataset, and experimental findings show that it considerably outperforms the original TITAN-Net and other strong baselines by 23.7$\%$ margin in terms of IoU.
The specification of requirements and tests are crucial activities in automotive development projects. However, due to the increasing complexity of automotive systems, practitioners fail to specify requirements and tests for distributed and evolving systems with complex interactions when following traditional development processes. To address this research gap, we propose a technique that starts with the early identification of validation concerns from a stakeholder perspective, which we use to systematically design tests that drive a scenario-based modeling and analysis of system requirements. To ensure complete and consistent requirements and test specifications in a form that is required in automotive development projects, we develop a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) methodology. This methodology supports system architects and test designers in the collaborative application of our technique and in maintaining a central system model, in order to automatically derive the required specifications. We evaluate our methodology by applying it at KOSTAL (Tier1 supplier) and within student projects as part of the masters program Embedded Systems Engineering. Our study corroborates that our methodology is applicable and improves existing requirements and test specification processes by supporting the integrated and stakeholder-focused modeling of product and validation systems, where the early definition of stakeholder and validation concerns fosters a problem-oriented, iterative and test-driven requirements modeling.
This paper introduces Robust Spin (R-Spin), a data-efficient self-supervised fine-tuning framework for speaker and noise-invariant speech representations by learning discrete acoustic units with speaker-invariant clustering (Spin). R-Spin resolves Spin's issues and enhances content representations by learning to predict acoustic pieces. R-Spin offers a 12X reduction in computational resources compared to previous state-of-the-art methods while outperforming them in severely distorted speech scenarios. This paper provides detailed analyses to show how discrete units contribute to speech encoder training and improving robustness in diverse acoustic environments.
This paper presents MiniZero, a zero-knowledge learning framework that supports four state-of-the-art algorithms, including AlphaZero, MuZero, Gumbel AlphaZero, and Gumbel MuZero. While these algorithms have demonstrated super-human performance in many games, it remains unclear which among them is most suitable or efficient for specific tasks. Through MiniZero, we systematically evaluate the performance of each algorithm in two board games, 9x9 Go and 8x8 Othello, as well as 57 Atari games. For two board games, using more simulations generally results in higher performance. However, the choice of AlphaZero and MuZero may differ based on game properties. For Atari games, both MuZero and Gumbel MuZero are worth considering. Since each game has unique characteristics, different algorithms and simulations yield varying results. In addition, we introduce an approach, called progressive simulation, which progressively increases the simulation budget during training to allocate computation more efficiently. Our empirical results demonstrate that progressive simulation achieves significantly superior performance in two board games. By making our framework and trained models publicly available, this paper contributes a benchmark for future research on zero-knowledge learning algorithms, assisting researchers in algorithm selection and comparison against these zero-knowledge learning baselines. Our code and data are available at //rlg.iis.sinica.edu.tw/papers/minizero.
Accurate modeling of the diverse and dynamic interests of users remains a significant challenge in the design of personalized recommender systems. Existing user modeling methods, like single-point and multi-point representations, have limitations w.r.t. accuracy, diversity, computational cost, and adaptability. To overcome these deficiencies, we introduce density-based user representations (DURs), a novel model that leverages Gaussian process regression for effective multi-interest recommendation and retrieval. Our approach, GPR4DUR, exploits DURs to capture user interest variability without manual tuning, incorporates uncertainty-awareness, and scales well to large numbers of users. Experiments using real-world offline datasets confirm the adaptability and efficiency of GPR4DUR, while online experiments with simulated users demonstrate its ability to address the exploration-exploitation trade-off by effectively utilizing model uncertainty.