We study the limits of linear modeling of swarm behavior by characterizing the inflection point beyond which linear models of swarm collective behavior break down. The problem we consider is a central place object gathering task. We design a linear model which strives to capture the underlying dynamics of object gathering in robot swarms from first principles, rather than extensively relying on post-hoc model fitting. We evaluate our model with swarms of up to 8,000 robots in simulation, demonstrating that it accurately captures underlying swarm behavioral dynamics when the swarm can be approximated using the mean-field model, and when it cannot, and finite-size effects are present. We further apply our model to swarms exhibiting non-linear behaviors, and show that it still provides accurate predictions in some scenarios, thereby establishing better practical limits on linear modeling of swarm behaviors.
We study reinforcement learning for two-player zero-sum Markov games with simultaneous moves in the finite-horizon setting, where the transition kernel of the underlying Markov games can be parameterized by a linear function over the current state, both players' actions and the next state. In particular, we assume that we can control both players and aim to find the Nash Equilibrium by minimizing the duality gap. We propose an algorithm Nash-UCRL based on the principle "Optimism-in-Face-of-Uncertainty". Our algorithm only needs to find a Coarse Correlated Equilibrium (CCE), which is computationally efficient. Specifically, we show that Nash-UCRL can provably achieve an $\tilde{O}(dH\sqrt{T})$ regret, where $d$ is the linear function dimension, $H$ is the length of the game and $T$ is the total number of steps in the game. To assess the optimality of our algorithm, we also prove an $\tilde{\Omega}( dH\sqrt{T})$ lower bound on the regret. Our upper bound matches the lower bound up to logarithmic factors, which suggests the optimality of our algorithm.
Satellites and their instruments are subject to the motion stability throughout their lifetimes. The reliability of the large flexible space structures (LFSS) is particularly important for the motion stability of satellites and their instruments. In this paper, the reliability analysis of large flexible space structures is conducted based on Bayesian support vector regression (SVR). The kinematic model of a typical large flexible space structure is first established. Based on the kinematic model, the surrogate model of the motion of the large flexible space structure is then developed to further reduce the computational cost. Finally, the reliability analysis is conducted using the surrogate model. The proposed method shows high accuracy and efficiency for the reliability assessments of the typical large flexible space structure and can be further developed for other LFSS.
Embodied AI is a recent research area that aims at creating intelligent agents that can move and operate inside an environment. Existing approaches in this field demand the agents to act in completely new and unexplored scenes. However, this setting is far from realistic use cases that instead require executing multiple tasks in the same environment. Even if the environment changes over time, the agent could still count on its global knowledge about the scene while trying to adapt its internal representation to the current state of the environment. To make a step towards this setting, we propose Spot the Difference: a novel task for Embodied AI where the agent has access to an outdated map of the environment and needs to recover the correct layout in a fixed time budget. To this end, we collect a new dataset of occupancy maps starting from existing datasets of 3D spaces and generating a number of possible layouts for a single environment. This dataset can be employed in the popular Habitat simulator and is fully compliant with existing methods that employ reconstructed occupancy maps during navigation. Furthermore, we propose an exploration policy that can take advantage of previous knowledge of the environment and identify changes in the scene faster and more effectively than existing agents. Experimental results show that the proposed architecture outperforms existing state-of-the-art models for exploration on this new setting.
Models can fail in unpredictable ways during deployment due to task ambiguity, when multiple behaviors are consistent with the provided training data. An example is an object classifier trained on red squares and blue circles: when encountering blue squares, the intended behavior is undefined. We investigate whether pretrained models are better active learners, capable of disambiguating between the possible tasks a user may be trying to specify. Intriguingly, we find that better active learning is an emergent property of the pretraining process: pretrained models require up to 5 times fewer labels when using uncertainty-based active learning, while non-pretrained models see no or even negative benefit. We find these gains come from an ability to select examples with attributes that disambiguate the intended behavior, such as rare product categories or atypical backgrounds. These attributes are far more linearly separable in pretrained model's representation spaces vs non-pretrained models, suggesting a possible mechanism for this behavior.
This article presents a synthetic dataset for machine learning models to detect and analyze drivers' various distracted behavior and different gaze zones. We collected the data in a stationary vehicle using three in-vehicle cameras positioned at locations: on the dashboard, near the rearview mirror, and on the top right-side window corner. The dataset contains two activity types: distracted activities, and gaze zones for each participant and each activity type has two sets: without appearance blocks and with appearance blocks such as wearing a hat or sunglasses. The order and duration of each activity for each participant are random. In addition, the dataset contains manual annotations for each activity, having its start and end time annotated. Researchers could use this dataset to evaluate the performance of machine learning algorithms for the classification of various distracting activities and gaze zones of drivers.
The dynamic response of the legged robot locomotion is non-Lipschitz and can be stochastic due to environmental uncertainties. To test, validate, and characterize the safety performance of legged robots, existing solutions on observed and inferred risk can be incomplete and sampling inefficient. Some formal verification methods suffer from the model precision and other surrogate assumptions. In this paper, we propose a scenario sampling based testing framework that characterizes the overall safety performance of a legged robot by specifying (i) where (in terms of a set of states) the robot is potentially safe, and (ii) how safe the robot is within the specified set. The framework can also help certify the commercial deployment of the legged robot in real-world environment along with human and compare safety performance among legged robots with different mechanical structures and dynamic properties. The proposed framework is further deployed to evaluate a group of state-of-the-art legged robot locomotion controllers from various model-based, deep neural network involved, and reinforcement learning based methods in the literature. Among a series of intended work domains of the studied legged robots (e.g. tracking speed on sloped surface, with abrupt changes on demanded velocity, and against adversarial push-over disturbances), we show that the method can adequately capture the overall safety characterization and the subtle performance insights. Many of the observed safety outcomes, to the best of our knowledge, have never been reported by the existing work in the legged robot literature.
Present-day atomistic simulations generate long trajectories of ever more complex systems. Analyzing these data, discovering metastable states, and uncovering their nature is becoming increasingly challenging. In this paper, we first use the variational approach to conformation dynamics to discover the slowest dynamical modes of the simulations. This allows the different metastable states of the system to be located and organized hierarchically. The physical descriptors that characterize metastable states are discovered by means of a machine learning method. We show in the cases of two proteins, Chignolin and Bovine Pancreatic Trypsin Inhibitor, how such analysis can be effortlessly performed in a matter of seconds. Another strength of our approach is that it can be applied to the analysis of both unbiased and biased simulations.
We present a method for the control of robot swarms which allows the shaping and the translation of patterns of simple robots ("smart particles"), using two types of devices. These two types represent a hierarchy: a larger group of simple, oblivious robots (which we call the workers) that is governed by simple local attraction forces, and a smaller group (the guides) with sufficient mission knowledge to create and maintain a desired pattern by operating on the local forces of the former. This framework exploits the knowledge of the guides, which coordinate to shape the workers like smart particles by changing their interaction parameters. We study the approach with a large scale simulation experiment in a physics based simulator with up to 1000 robots forming three different patterns. Our experiments reveal that the approach scales well with increasing robot numbers, and presents little pattern distortion for a set of target moving shapes. We evaluate the approach on a physical swarm of robots that use visual inertial odometry to compute their relative positions and obtain results that are comparable with simulation. This work lays foundation for designing and coordinating configurable smart particles, with applications in smart materials and nanomedicine.
This paper focuses on the expected difference in borrower's repayment when there is a change in the lender's credit decisions. Classical estimators overlook the confounding effects and hence the estimation error can be magnificent. As such, we propose another approach to construct the estimators such that the error can be greatly reduced. The proposed estimators are shown to be unbiased, consistent, and robust through a combination of theoretical analysis and numerical testing. Moreover, we compare the power of estimating the causal quantities between the classical estimators and the proposed estimators. The comparison is tested across a wide range of models, including linear regression models, tree-based models, and neural network-based models, under different simulated datasets that exhibit different levels of causality, different degrees of nonlinearity, and different distributional properties. Most importantly, we apply our approaches to a large observational dataset provided by a global technology firm that operates in both the e-commerce and the lending business. We find that the relative reduction of estimation error is strikingly substantial if the causal effects are accounted for correctly.
Reinforcement learning is one of the core components in designing an artificial intelligent system emphasizing real-time response. Reinforcement learning influences the system to take actions within an arbitrary environment either having previous knowledge about the environment model or not. In this paper, we present a comprehensive study on Reinforcement Learning focusing on various dimensions including challenges, the recent development of different state-of-the-art techniques, and future directions. The fundamental objective of this paper is to provide a framework for the presentation of available methods of reinforcement learning that is informative enough and simple to follow for the new researchers and academics in this domain considering the latest concerns. First, we illustrated the core techniques of reinforcement learning in an easily understandable and comparable way. Finally, we analyzed and depicted the recent developments in reinforcement learning approaches. My analysis pointed out that most of the models focused on tuning policy values rather than tuning other things in a particular state of reasoning.