Many complex engineering systems can be represented in a topological form, such as graphs. This paper utilizes a machine learning technique called Geometric Deep Learning (GDL) to aid designers with challenging, graph-centric design problems. The strategy presented here is to take the graph data and apply GDL to seek the best realizable performing solution effectively and efficiently with lower computational costs. This case study used here is the synthesis of analog electrical circuits that attempt to match a specific frequency response within a particular frequency range. Previous studies utilized an enumeration technique to generate 43,249 unique undirected graphs presenting valid potential circuits. Unfortunately, determining the sizing and performance of many circuits can be too expensive. To reduce computational costs with a quantified trade-off in accuracy, the fraction of the circuit graphs and their performance are used as input data to a classification-focused GDL model. Then, the GDL model can be used to predict the remainder cheaply, thus, aiding decision-makers in the search for the best graph solutions. The results discussed in this paper show that additional graph-based features are useful, favorable total set classification accuracy of 80\% in using only 10\% of the graphs, and iteratively-built GDL models can further subdivide the graphs into targeted groups with medians significantly closer to the best and containing 88.2 of the top 100 best-performing graphs on average using 25\% of the graphs.
This paper tackles the challenging task of evaluating socially situated conversational robots and presents a novel objective evaluation approach that relies on multimodal user behaviors. In this study, our main focus is on assessing the human-likeness of the robot as the primary evaluation metric. While previous research often relied on subjective evaluations from users, our approach aims to evaluate the robot's human-likeness based on observable user behaviors indirectly, thus enhancing objectivity and reproducibility. To begin, we created an annotated dataset of human-likeness scores, utilizing user behaviors found in an attentive listening dialogue corpus. We then conducted an analysis to determine the correlation between multimodal user behaviors and human-likeness scores, demonstrating the feasibility of our proposed behavior-based evaluation method.
Low Rank Parity Check (LRPC) codes form a class of rank-metric error-correcting codes that was purposely introduced to design public-key encryption schemes. An LRPC code is defined from a parity check matrix whose entries belong to a relatively low dimensional vector subspace of a large finite field. This particular algebraic feature can then be exploited to correct with high probability rank errors when the parameters are appropriately chosen. In this paper, we present theoretical upper-bounds on the probability that the LRPC decoding algorithm fails.
We present a novel controller design on a robotic locomotor that combines an aerial vehicle with a spring-loaded leg. The main motivation is to enable the terrestrial locomotion capability on aerial vehicles so that they are carrying heavy loads: heavy enough that flying is no longer possible, e.g., when the thrust-to-weight ratio (TWR) is small. The robot is designed with a pogo-stick leg and a quadrotor, and thus it is named as PogoX. We show that with a simple and lightweight spring-loaded leg, the robot is capable of hopping with TWR $<1$. The control of hopping is realized via two components: a vertical height control via control Lyapunov function-based energy shaping, and a step-to-step (S2S) dynamics based horizontal velocity control that is inspired by the hopping of the Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP). The controller is successfully realized on the physical robot, showing dynamic terrestrial locomotion of PogoX which can hop at variable heights and different horizontal velocities with robustness to ground height variations and external pushes.
Most autonomous navigation systems assume wheeled robots are rigid bodies and their 2D planar workspaces can be divided into free spaces and obstacles. However, recent wheeled mobility research, showing that wheeled platforms have the potential of moving over vertically challenging terrain (e.g., rocky outcroppings, rugged boulders, and fallen tree trunks), invalidate both assumptions. Navigating off-road vehicle chassis with long suspension travel and low tire pressure in places where the boundary between obstacles and free spaces is blurry requires precise 3D modeling of the interaction between the chassis and the terrain, which is complicated by suspension and tire deformation, varying tire-terrain friction, vehicle weight distribution and momentum, etc. In this paper, we present a learning approach to model wheeled mobility, i.e., in terms of vehicle-terrain forward dynamics, and plan feasible, stable, and efficient motion to drive over vertically challenging terrain without rolling over or getting stuck. We present physical experiments on two wheeled robots and show that planning using our learned model can achieve up to 60% improvement in navigation success rate and 46% reduction in unstable chassis roll and pitch angles.
This paper presents a comprehensive study focusing on the influence of DEM type and spatial resolution on the accuracy of flood inundation prediction. The research employs a state-of-the-art deep learning method using a 1D convolutional neural network (CNN). The CNN-based method employs training input data in the form of synthetic hydrographs, along with target data represented by water depth obtained utilizing a 2D hydrodynamic model, LISFLOOD-FP. The performance of the trained CNN models is then evaluated and compared with the observed flood event. This study examines the use of digital surface models (DSMs) and digital terrain models (DTMs) derived from a LIDAR-based 1m DTM, with resolutions ranging from 15 to 30 meters. The proposed methodology is implemented and evaluated in a well-established benchmark location in Carlisle, UK. The paper also discusses the applicability of the methodology to address the challenges encountered in a data-scarce flood-prone region, exemplified by Pakistan. The study found that DTM performs better than DSM at lower resolutions. Using a 30m DTM improved flood depth prediction accuracy by about 21% during the peak stage. Increasing the resolution to 15m increased RMSE and overlap index by at least 50% and 20% across all flood phases. The study demonstrates that while coarser resolution may impact the accuracy of the CNN model, it remains a viable option for rapid flood prediction compared to hydrodynamic modeling approaches.
This paper brings an in detail Genetic Algorithm (GA) based combinatorial optimization method used for the optimal design of the water distribution network (WDN) of Gurudeniya Service Zone, Sri Lanka. Genetic Algorithm (GA) mimics the survival of the fittest principle of nature to develop a search process. Methodology employs fuzzy combinations of pipe diameters to check their suitability to be considered as the cost effective optimal design solutions. Furthermore, the hydraulic constraints were implicitly evaluated within the GA itself in its aim to reaching the global optimum solution. Upon analysis, the results of this approach delivered agreeable design outputs. In addition, the comparison made between the results obtained by a previous study inspired by the Honey Bee Mating Optimization (HBMO) Algorithm and results obtained by the GA based approach, proves competency of GA for the optimal design of water distribution network in Gurudeniya Service Zone, Sri Lanka.
Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) is a discipline focused on predicting the point at which systems or components will cease to perform as intended, typically measured as Remaining Useful Life (RUL). RUL serves as a vital decision-making tool for contingency planning, guiding the timing and nature of system maintenance. Historically, PHM has primarily been applied to hardware systems, with its application to software only recently explored. In a recent study we introduced a methodology and demonstrated how changes in software can impact the RUL of software. However, in practical software development, real-time performance is also influenced by various environmental attributes, including operating systems, clock speed, processor performance, RAM, machine core count and others. This research extends the analysis to assess how changes in environmental attributes, such as operating system and clock speed, affect RUL estimation in software. Findings are rigorously validated using real performance data from controlled test beds and compared with predictive model-generated data. Statistical validation, including regression analysis, supports the credibility of the results. The controlled test bed environment replicates and validates faults from real applications, ensuring a standardized assessment platform. This exploration yields actionable knowledge for software maintenance and optimization strategies, addressing a significant gap in the field of software health management.
In pace with developments in the research field of artificial intelligence, knowledge graphs (KGs) have attracted a surge of interest from both academia and industry. As a representation of semantic relations between entities, KGs have proven to be particularly relevant for natural language processing (NLP), experiencing a rapid spread and wide adoption within recent years. Given the increasing amount of research work in this area, several KG-related approaches have been surveyed in the NLP research community. However, a comprehensive study that categorizes established topics and reviews the maturity of individual research streams remains absent to this day. Contributing to closing this gap, we systematically analyzed 507 papers from the literature on KGs in NLP. Our survey encompasses a multifaceted review of tasks, research types, and contributions. As a result, we present a structured overview of the research landscape, provide a taxonomy of tasks, summarize our findings, and highlight directions for future work.
The dominating NLP paradigm of training a strong neural predictor to perform one task on a specific dataset has led to state-of-the-art performance in a variety of applications (eg. sentiment classification, span-prediction based question answering or machine translation). However, it builds upon the assumption that the data distribution is stationary, ie. that the data is sampled from a fixed distribution both at training and test time. This way of training is inconsistent with how we as humans are able to learn from and operate within a constantly changing stream of information. Moreover, it is ill-adapted to real-world use cases where the data distribution is expected to shift over the course of a model's lifetime. The first goal of this thesis is to characterize the different forms this shift can take in the context of natural language processing, and propose benchmarks and evaluation metrics to measure its effect on current deep learning architectures. We then proceed to take steps to mitigate the effect of distributional shift on NLP models. To this end, we develop methods based on parametric reformulations of the distributionally robust optimization framework. Empirically, we demonstrate that these approaches yield more robust models as demonstrated on a selection of realistic problems. In the third and final part of this thesis, we explore ways of efficiently adapting existing models to new domains or tasks. Our contribution to this topic takes inspiration from information geometry to derive a new gradient update rule which alleviate catastrophic forgetting issues during adaptation.
Current deep learning research is dominated by benchmark evaluation. A method is regarded as favorable if it empirically performs well on the dedicated test set. This mentality is seamlessly reflected in the resurfacing area of continual learning, where consecutively arriving sets of benchmark data are investigated. The core challenge is framed as protecting previously acquired representations from being catastrophically forgotten due to the iterative parameter updates. However, comparison of individual methods is nevertheless treated in isolation from real world application and typically judged by monitoring accumulated test set performance. The closed world assumption remains predominant. It is assumed that during deployment a model is guaranteed to encounter data that stems from the same distribution as used for training. This poses a massive challenge as neural networks are well known to provide overconfident false predictions on unknown instances and break down in the face of corrupted data. In this work we argue that notable lessons from open set recognition, the identification of statistically deviating data outside of the observed dataset, and the adjacent field of active learning, where data is incrementally queried such that the expected performance gain is maximized, are frequently overlooked in the deep learning era. Based on these forgotten lessons, we propose a consolidated view to bridge continual learning, active learning and open set recognition in deep neural networks. Our results show that this not only benefits each individual paradigm, but highlights the natural synergies in a common framework. We empirically demonstrate improvements when alleviating catastrophic forgetting, querying data in active learning, selecting task orders, while exhibiting robust open world application where previously proposed methods fail.