We propose a novel a-posteriori error estimation technique where the target quantities of interest are ratios of high-dimensional integrals, as occur e.g. in PDE constrained Bayesian inversion and PDE constrained optimal control subject to an entropic risk measure. We consider in particular parametric, elliptic PDEs with affine-parametric diffusion coefficient, on high-dimensional parameter spaces. We combine our recent a-posteriori Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) error analysis, with Finite Element a-posteriori error estimation. The proposed approach yields a computable a-posteriori estimator which is reliable, up to higher order terms. The estimator's reliability is uniform with respect to the PDE discretization, and robust with respect to the parametric dimension of the uncertain PDE input.
Enumeration problems are often encountered as key subroutines in the exact computation of graph parameters such as chromatic number, treewidth, or treedepth. In the case of treedepth computation, the enumeration of inclusion-wise minimal separators plays a crucial role. However and quite surprisingly, the complexity status of this problem has not been settled since it has been posed as an open direction by Kloks and Kratsch in 1998. Recently at the PACE 2020 competition dedicated to treedepth computation, solvers have been circumventing that by listing all minimal $a$-$b$ separators and filtering out those that are not inclusion-wise minimal, at the cost of efficiency. Naturally, having an efficient algorithm for listing inclusion-wise minimal separators would drastically improve such practical algorithms. In this note, however, we show that no efficient algorithm is to be expected from an output-sensitive perspective, namely, we prove that there is no output-polynomial time algorithm for inclusion-wise minimal separators enumeration unless P = NP.
We propose and analyse an explicit boundary-preserving scheme for the strong approximations of some SDEs with non-globally Lipschitz drift and diffusion coefficients whose state-space is bounded. The scheme consists of a Lamperti transform followed by a Lie--Trotter splitting. We prove $L^{p}(\Omega)$-convergence of order $1$, for every $p \in \mathbb{N}$, of the scheme and exploit the Lamperti transform to confine the numerical approximations to the state-space of the considered SDE. We provide numerical experiments that confirm the theoretical results and compare the proposed Lamperti-splitting scheme to other numerical schemes for SDEs.
Over the past decades, cognitive neuroscientists and behavioral economists have recognized the value of describing the process of decision making in detail and modeling the emergence of decisions over time. For example, the time it takes to decide can reveal more about an agents true hidden preferences than only the decision itself. Similarly, data that track the ongoing decision process such as eye movements or neural recordings contain critical information that can be exploited, even if no decision is made. Here, we argue that artificial intelligence (AI) research would benefit from a stronger focus on insights about how decisions emerge over time and incorporate related process data to improve AI predictions in general and human-AI interactions in particular. First, we introduce a highly established computational framework that assumes decisions to emerge from the noisy accumulation of evidence, and we present related empirical work in psychology, neuroscience, and economics. Next, we discuss to what extent current approaches in multi-agent AI do or do not incorporate process data and models of decision making. Finally, we outline how a more principled inclusion of the evidence-accumulation framework into the training and use of AI can help to improve human-AI interactions in the future.
This article investigates synthetic model-predictive control (MPC) problems to demonstrate that an increased precision of the internal prediction model (PM) automatially entails an improvement of the controller as a whole. In contrast to reinforcement learning (RL), MPC uses the PM to predict subsequent states of the controlled system (CS), instead of directly recommending suitable actions. To assess how the precision of the PM translates into the quality of the model-predictive controller, we compare a DNN-based PM to the optimal baseline PM for three well-known control problems of varying complexity. The baseline PM achieves perfect accuracy by accessing the simulation of the CS itself. Based on the obtained results, we argue that an improvement of the PM will always improve the controller as a whole, without considering the impact of other components such as action selection (which, in this article, relies on evolutionary optimization).
We study a family of distances between functions of a single variable. These distances are examples of integral probability metrics, and have been used previously for comparing probability measures. Special cases include the Earth Mover's Distance and the Kolmogorov Metric. We examine their properties for general signals, proving that they are robust to a broad class of perturbations and that the distance between one-dimensional tomographic projections of a two-dimensional function is bounded by the size of the difference in projection angles. We also establish error bounds for approximating the metric from finite samples, and prove that these approximations are robust to additive Gaussian noise. The results are illustrated in numerical experiments.
Designing robotic systems that can change their physical form factor as well as their compliance to adapt to environmental constraints remains a major conceptual and technical challenge. To address this, we introduce the Granulobot, a modular system that blurs the distinction between soft, modular, and swarm robotics. The system consists of gear-like units that each contain a single actuator such that units can self-assemble into larger, granular aggregates using magnetic coupling. These aggregates can reconfigure dynamically and also split up into subsystems that might later recombine. Aggregates can self-organize into collective states with solid- and liquid-like properties, thus displaying widely differing compliances. These states can be perturbed locally via actuators or externally via mechanical feedback from the environment to produce adaptive shape shifting in a decentralized manner. This in turn can generate locomotion strategies adapted to different conditions. Aggregates can move over obstacles without using external sensors or coordinate to maintain a steady gait over different surfaces without electronic communication among units. The modular design highlights a physical, morphological form of control that advances the development of resilient robotic systems with the ability to morph and adapt to different functions and conditions.
Benefiting from the development of deep learning, text-to-speech (TTS) techniques using clean speech have achieved significant performance improvements. The data collected from real scenes often contain noise and generally needs to be denoised by speech enhancement models. Noise-robust TTS models are often trained using the enhanced speech, which thus suffer from speech distortion and background noise that affect the quality of the synthesized speech. Meanwhile, it was shown that self-supervised pre-trained models exhibit excellent noise robustness on many speech tasks, implying that the learned representation has a better tolerance for noise perturbations. In this work, we therefore explore pre-trained models to improve the noise robustness of TTS models. Based on HIFI-GAN we first propose a representation-to-waveform vocoder, which aims to learn to map the representation of pre-trained models to the waveform. We then propose a text-to-representation Fastspeech2 model, which aims to learn to map text to pre-trained model representations. Experimental results on the LJSpeech and LibriTTS datasets show that our method outperforms those using speech enhancement methods in both subjective and objective metrics. Audio samples are available at: //zqs01.github.io/rep2wav/.
This paper addresses the challenging problem of enabling reliable immersive teleoperation in scenarios where an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is remotely controlled by an operator via a cellular network. Such scenarios can be quite critical particularly when the UAV lacks advanced equipment (e.g., Lidar-based auto stop) or when the network is subject to some performance constraints (e.g., delay). To tackle these challenges, we propose a novel architecture leveraging Digital Twin (DT) technology to create a virtual representation of the physical environment. This virtual environment accurately mirrors the physical world, accounting for 3D surroundings, weather constraints, and network limitations. To enhance teleoperation, the UAV in the virtual environment is equipped with advanced features that maybe absent in the real UAV. Furthermore, the proposed architecture introduces an intelligent logic that utilizes information from both virtual and physical environments to approve, deny, or correct actions initiated by the UAV operator. This anticipatory approach helps to mitigate potential risks. Through a series of field trials, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed architecture in significantly improving the reliability of UAV teleoperation.
We study the continuous multi-reference alignment model of estimating a periodic function on the circle from noisy and circularly-rotated observations. Motivated by analogous high-dimensional problems that arise in cryo-electron microscopy, we establish minimax rates for estimating generic signals that are explicit in the dimension $K$. In a high-noise regime with noise variance $\sigma^2 \gtrsim K$, for signals with Fourier coefficients of roughly uniform magnitude, the rate scales as $\sigma^6$ and has no further dependence on the dimension. This rate is achieved by a bispectrum inversion procedure, and our analyses provide new stability bounds for bispectrum inversion that may be of independent interest. In a low-noise regime where $\sigma^2 \lesssim K/\log K$, the rate scales instead as $K\sigma^2$, and we establish this rate by a sharp analysis of the maximum likelihood estimator that marginalizes over latent rotations. A complementary lower bound that interpolates between these two regimes is obtained using Assouad's hypercube lemma. We extend these analyses also to signals whose Fourier coefficients have a slow power law decay.
The numerical solution of continuum damage mechanics (CDM) problems suffers from critical points during the material softening stage, and consequently existing iterative solvers are subject to a trade-off between computational expense and solution accuracy. Displacement-controlled arc-length methods were developed to address these challenges, but are currently applicable only to geometrically non-linear problems. In this work, we present a novel displacement-controlled arc-length (DAL) method for CDM problems in both local damage and non-local gradient damage versions. The analytical tangent matrix is derived for the DAL solver in both of the local and the non-local models. In addition, several consistent and non-consistent implementation algorithms are proposed, implemented, and evaluated. Unlike existing force-controlled arc-length solvers that monolithically scale the external force vector, the proposed method treats the external force vector as an independent variable and determines the position of the system on the equilibrium path based on all the nodal variations of the external force vector. Such a flexible approach renders the proposed solver to be substantially more efficient and versatile than existing solvers used in CDM problems. The considerable advantages of the proposed DAL algorithm are demonstrated against several benchmark 1D problems with sharp snap-backs and 2D examples with various boundary conditions and loading scenarios, where the proposed method drastically outperforms existing conventional approaches in terms of accuracy, computational efficiency, and the ability to predict the complete equilibrium path including all critical points.