In this paper, we study the expressivity of scalar, Markovian reward functions in Reinforcement Learning (RL), and identify several limitations to what they can express. Specifically, we look at three classes of RL tasks; multi-objective RL, risk-sensitive RL, and modal RL. For each class, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions that describe when a problem in this class can be expressed using a scalar, Markovian reward. Moreover, we find that scalar, Markovian rewards are unable to express most of the instances in each of these three classes. We thereby contribute to a more complete understanding of what standard reward functions can and cannot express. In addition to this, we also call attention to modal problems as a new class of problems, since they have so far not been given any systematic treatment in the RL literature. We also briefly outline some approaches for solving some of the problems we discuss, by means of bespoke RL algorithms.
In this paper, we investigate the conditions under which link analysis algorithms prevent minority groups from reaching high ranking slots. We find that the most common link-based algorithms using centrality metrics, such as PageRank and HITS, can reproduce and even amplify bias against minority groups in networks. Yet, their behavior differs: one one hand, we empirically show that PageRank mirrors the degree distribution for most of the ranking positions and it can equalize representation of minorities among the top ranked nodes; on the other hand, we find that HITS amplifies pre-existing bias in homophilic networks through a novel theoretical analysis, supported by empirical results. We find the root cause of bias amplification in HITS to be the level of homophily present in the network, modeled through an evolving network model with two communities. We illustrate our theoretical analysis on both synthetic and real datasets and we present directions for future work.
In this work, we introduce DeepIPC, a novel end-to-end model tailored for autonomous driving, which seamlessly integrates perception and control tasks. Unlike traditional models that handle these tasks separately, DeepIPC innovatively combines a perception module, which processes RGBD images for semantic segmentation and generates bird's eye view (BEV) mappings, with a controller module that utilizes these insights along with GNSS and angular speed measurements to accurately predict navigational waypoints. This integration allows DeepIPC to efficiently translate complex environmental data into actionable driving commands. Our comprehensive evaluation demonstrates DeepIPC's superior performance in terms of drivability and multi-task efficiency across diverse real-world scenarios, setting a new benchmark for end-to-end autonomous driving systems with a leaner model architecture. The experimental results underscore DeepIPC's potential to significantly enhance autonomous vehicular navigation, promising a step forward in the development of autonomous driving technologies. For further insights and replication, we will make our code and datasets available at //github.com/oskarnatan/DeepIPC.
The moving discontinuous Galerkin method with interface condition enforcement (MDG-ICE) is a high-order, r-adaptive method that treats the grid as a variable and weakly enforces the conservation law, constitutive law, and corresponding interface conditions in order to implicitly fit high-gradient flow features. In this paper, we develop an optimization solver based on the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm that features an anisotropic, locally adaptive penalty method to enhance robustness and prevent cell degeneration in the computation of hypersonic, viscous flows. Specifically, we incorporate an anisotropic grid regularization based on the mesh-implied metric that inhibits grid motion in directions with small element length scales, an element shape regularization that inhibits nonlinear deformations of the high-order elements, and a penalty regularization that penalizes degenerate elements. Additionally, we introduce a procedure for locally scaling the regularization operators in an adaptive, elementwise manner in order to maintain grid validity. We apply the proposed MDG-ICE formulation to two- and three-dimensional test cases involving viscous shocks and/or boundary layers, including Mach 17.6 hypersonic viscous flow over a circular cylinder and Mach 5 hypersonic viscous flow over a sphere, which are very challenging test cases for conventional numerical schemes on simplicial grids. Even without artificial dissipation, the computed solutions are free from spurious oscillations and yield highly symmetric surface heat-flux profiles.
This paper presents an extensive empirical study on the integration of dimensionality reduction techniques with advanced unsupervised time series anomaly detection models, focusing on the MUTANT and Anomaly-Transformer models. The study involves a comprehensive evaluation across three different datasets: MSL, SMAP, and SWaT. Each dataset poses unique challenges, allowing for a robust assessment of the models' capabilities in varied contexts. The dimensionality reduction techniques examined include PCA, UMAP, Random Projection, and t-SNE, each offering distinct advantages in simplifying high-dimensional data. Our findings reveal that dimensionality reduction not only aids in reducing computational complexity but also significantly enhances anomaly detection performance in certain scenarios. Moreover, a remarkable reduction in training times was observed, with reductions by approximately 300\% and 650\% when dimensionality was halved and minimized to the lowest dimensions, respectively. This efficiency gain underscores the dual benefit of dimensionality reduction in both performance enhancement and operational efficiency. The MUTANT model exhibits notable adaptability, especially with UMAP reduction, while the Anomaly-Transformer demonstrates versatility across various reduction techniques. These insights provide a deeper understanding of the synergistic effects of dimensionality reduction and anomaly detection, contributing valuable perspectives to the field of time series analysis. The study underscores the importance of selecting appropriate dimensionality reduction strategies based on specific model requirements and dataset characteristics, paving the way for more efficient, accurate, and scalable solutions in anomaly detection.
In this paper, we propose new techniques for solving geometric optimization problems involving interpoint distances of a point set in the plane. Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane and an integer $1 \leq k \leq \binom{n}{2}$, the distance selection problem is to find the $k$-th smallest interpoint distance among all pairs of points of $P$. The previously best deterministic algorithm solves the problem in $O(n^{4/3} \log^2 n)$ time [Katz and Sharir, SIAM J. Comput. 1997 and SoCG 1993]. In this paper, we improve their algorithm to $O(n^{4/3} \log n)$ time. Using similar techniques, we also give improved algorithms on both the two-sided and the one-sided discrete Fr\'{e}chet distance with shortcuts problem for two point sets in the plane. For the two-sided problem (resp., one-sided problem), we improve the previous work [Avraham, Filtser, Kaplan, Katz, and Sharir, ACM Trans. Algorithms 2015 and SoCG 2014] by a factor of roughly $\log^2(m+n)$ (resp., $(m+n)^{\epsilon}$), where $m$ and $n$ are the sizes of the two input point sets, respectively. Other problems whose solutions can be improved by our techniques include the reverse shortest path problems for unit-disk graphs. Our techniques are quite general and we believe they will find many other applications in future.
In this paper, we study the effective dimension of points in infinite fractal trees generated recursively by a finite tree over some alphabet. Using unequal costs coding, we associate a length function with each such fractal tree and show that the channel capacity of the length function is equal to the similarity dimension of the fractal tree (up to a multiplicative constant determined by the size of the alphabet over which our tree is defined). Using this result, we derive formulas for calculating the effective dimension and strong effective dimension of points in fractal trees, establishing analogues of several results due to Lutz and Mayordomo, who studied the effective dimension of points in self-similar fractals in Euclidean space. Lastly, we explore the connections between the channel capacity of a length function derived from a finite tree and the measure of maximum entropy on a related directed multigraph that encodes the structure of our tree, drawing on work by Abram and Lagarias on path sets, where a path set is a generalization of the notion of a sofic shift.
Current studies on human locomotion focus mainly on solid ground walking conditions. In this paper, we present a biomechanic comparison of human walking locomotion on solid ground and sand. A novel dataset containing 3-dimensional motion and biomechanical data from 20 able-bodied adults for locomotion on solid ground and sand is collected. We present the data collection methods and report the sensor data along with the kinematic and kinetic profiles of joint biomechanics. A comprehensive analysis of human gait and joint stiffness profiles is presented. The kinematic and kinetic analysis reveals that human walking locomotion on sand shows different ground reaction forces and joint torque profiles, compared with those patterns from walking on solid ground. These gait differences reflect that humans adopt motion control strategies for yielding terrain conditions such as sand. The dataset also provides a source of locomotion data for researchers to study human activity recognition and assistive devices for walking on different terrains.
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.
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have gained momentum in graph representation learning and boosted the state of the art in a variety of areas, such as data mining (\emph{e.g.,} social network analysis and recommender systems), computer vision (\emph{e.g.,} object detection and point cloud learning), and natural language processing (\emph{e.g.,} relation extraction and sequence learning), to name a few. With the emergence of Transformers in natural language processing and computer vision, graph Transformers embed a graph structure into the Transformer architecture to overcome the limitations of local neighborhood aggregation while avoiding strict structural inductive biases. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of GNNs and graph Transformers in computer vision from a task-oriented perspective. Specifically, we divide their applications in computer vision into five categories according to the modality of input data, \emph{i.e.,} 2D natural images, videos, 3D data, vision + language, and medical images. In each category, we further divide the applications according to a set of vision tasks. Such a task-oriented taxonomy allows us to examine how each task is tackled by different GNN-based approaches and how well these approaches perform. Based on the necessary preliminaries, we provide the definitions and challenges of the tasks, in-depth coverage of the representative approaches, as well as discussions regarding insights, limitations, and future directions.
Seeking the equivalent entities among multi-source Knowledge Graphs (KGs) is the pivotal step to KGs integration, also known as \emph{entity alignment} (EA). However, most existing EA methods are inefficient and poor in scalability. A recent summary points out that some of them even require several days to deal with a dataset containing 200,000 nodes (DWY100K). We believe over-complex graph encoder and inefficient negative sampling strategy are the two main reasons. In this paper, we propose a novel KG encoder -- Dual Attention Matching Network (Dual-AMN), which not only models both intra-graph and cross-graph information smartly, but also greatly reduces computational complexity. Furthermore, we propose the Normalized Hard Sample Mining Loss to smoothly select hard negative samples with reduced loss shift. The experimental results on widely used public datasets indicate that our method achieves both high accuracy and high efficiency. On DWY100K, the whole running process of our method could be finished in 1,100 seconds, at least 10* faster than previous work. The performances of our method also outperform previous works across all datasets, where Hits@1 and MRR have been improved from 6% to 13%.