Many variability management techniques rely on sophisticated language extension or tools to support it. While this can provide dedicated syntax and operational mechanism but it struggling practical adaptation for the cost of adapting new technology as part of development process. We present Self-composable Programming, a language-driven, composition-based variability implementation which takes an object-oriented approach to modeling and composing behaviors in software. Self-composable Programming introduces hierarchical relationship of behavior by providing concepts of abstract function, which modularise commonalities, and specific function which inherits from abstract function and be apply refinement to contain variabilities to fulfill desired functionality. Various object-oriented techniques can applicable in the refinement process including explicit method-based, and implicit traits-based refinement. In order to evaluate the potential independence of behavior from the object by applying object-orientation to function, we compare it to Aspect-oriented Programming both conceptually and empirically.
Probabilistic pushdown automata (pPDA) are a standard operational model for programming languages involving discrete random choices, procedures, and returns. Temporal properties are useful for gaining insight into the chronological order of events during program execution. Existing approaches in the literature have focused mostly on $\omega$-regular and LTL properties. In this paper, we study the model checking problem of pPDA against $\omega$-visibly pushdown languages that can be described by specification logics such as CaRet and are strictly more expressive than $\omega$-regular properties. With these logical formulae, it is possible to specify properties that explicitly take the structured computations arising from procedural programs into account. For example, CaRet is able to match procedure calls with their corresponding future returns, and thus allows to express fundamental program properties like total and partial correctness.
There has been increasing interest in characterising the error behaviour of systems which contain deep learning models before deploying them into any safety-critical scenario. However, characterising such behaviour usually requires large-scale testing of the model that can be extremely computationally expensive for complex real-world tasks. For example, tasks involving compute intensive object detectors as one of their components. In this work, we propose an approach that enables efficient large-scale testing using simplified low-fidelity simulators and without the computational cost of executing expensive deep learning models. Our approach relies on designing an efficient surrogate model corresponding to the compute intensive components of the task under test. We demonstrate the efficacy of our methodology by evaluating the performance of an autonomous driving task in the Carla simulator with reduced computational expense by training efficient surrogate models for PIXOR and CenterPoint LiDAR detectors, whilst demonstrating that the accuracy of the simulation is maintained.
Efficient and reliable generation of global path plans are necessary for safe execution and deployment of autonomous systems. In order to generate planning graphs which adequately resolve the topology of a given environment, many sampling-based motion planners resort to coarse, heuristically-driven strategies which often fail to generalize to new and varied surroundings. Further, many of these approaches are not designed to contend with partial-observability. We posit that such uncertainty in environment geometry can, in fact, help \textit{drive} the sampling process in generating feasible, and probabilistically-safe planning graphs. We propose a method for Probabilistic Roadmaps which relies on particle-based Variational Inference to efficiently cover the posterior distribution over feasible regions in configuration space. Our approach, Stein Variational Probabilistic Roadmap (SV-PRM), results in sample-efficient generation of planning-graphs and large improvements over traditional sampling approaches. We demonstrate the approach on a variety of challenging planning problems, including real-world probabilistic occupancy maps and high-dof manipulation problems common in robotics.
When processing data with uncertainty, it is desirable that the output of the algorithm is stable against small perturbations in the input. Varma and Yoshida [SODA'21] recently formalized this idea and proposed the notion of average sensitivity of algorithms, which is roughly speaking, the average Hamming distance between solutions for the original input and that obtained by deleting one element from the input, where the average is taken over the deleted element. In this work, we consider average sensitivity of algorithms for problems that can be solved by dynamic programming. We first present a $(1-\delta)$-approximation algorithm for finding a maximum weight chain (MWC) in a transitive directed acyclic graph with average sensitivity $O(\delta^{-1}\log^3 n)$, where $n$ is the number of vertices in the graph. We then show algorithms with small average sensitivity for various dynamic programming problems by reducing them to the MWC problem while preserving average sensitivity, including the longest increasing subsequence problem, the interval scheduling problem, the longest common subsequence problem, the longest palindromic subsequence problem, the knapsack problem with integral weight, and the RNA folding problem. For the RNA folding problem, our reduction is highly nontrivial because a naive reduction generates an exponentially large graph, which only provides a trivial average sensitivity bound.
Imitation learning aims to extract knowledge from human experts' demonstrations or artificially created agents in order to replicate their behaviors. Its success has been demonstrated in areas such as video games, autonomous driving, robotic simulations and object manipulation. However, this replicating process could be problematic, such as the performance is highly dependent on the demonstration quality, and most trained agents are limited to perform well in task-specific environments. In this survey, we provide a systematic review on imitation learning. We first introduce the background knowledge from development history and preliminaries, followed by presenting different taxonomies within Imitation Learning and key milestones of the field. We then detail challenges in learning strategies and present research opportunities with learning policy from suboptimal demonstration, voice instructions and other associated optimization schemes.
Specialized domain knowledge is often necessary to accurately annotate training sets for in-depth analysis, but can be burdensome and time-consuming to acquire from domain experts. This issue arises prominently in automated behavior analysis, in which agent movements or actions of interest are detected from video tracking data. To reduce annotation effort, we present TREBA: a method to learn annotation-sample efficient trajectory embedding for behavior analysis, based on multi-task self-supervised learning. The tasks in our method can be efficiently engineered by domain experts through a process we call "task programming", which uses programs to explicitly encode structured knowledge from domain experts. Total domain expert effort can be reduced by exchanging data annotation time for the construction of a small number of programmed tasks. We evaluate this trade-off using data from behavioral neuroscience, in which specialized domain knowledge is used to identify behaviors. We present experimental results in three datasets across two domains: mice and fruit flies. Using embeddings from TREBA, we reduce annotation burden by up to a factor of 10 without compromising accuracy compared to state-of-the-art features. Our results thus suggest that task programming and self-supervision can be an effective way to reduce annotation effort for domain experts.
Interpretation of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) training as an optimal control problem with nonlinear dynamical systems has received considerable attention recently, yet the algorithmic development remains relatively limited. In this work, we make an attempt along this line by reformulating the training procedure from the trajectory optimization perspective. We first show that most widely-used algorithms for training DNNs can be linked to the Differential Dynamic Programming (DDP), a celebrated second-order trajectory optimization algorithm rooted in the Approximate Dynamic Programming. In this vein, we propose a new variant of DDP that can accept batch optimization for training feedforward networks, while integrating naturally with the recent progress in curvature approximation. The resulting algorithm features layer-wise feedback policies which improve convergence rate and reduce sensitivity to hyper-parameter over existing methods. We show that the algorithm is competitive against state-ofthe-art first and second order methods. Our work opens up new avenues for principled algorithmic design built upon the optimal control theory.
The use of orthogonal projections on high-dimensional input and target data in learning frameworks is studied. First, we investigate the relations between two standard objectives in dimension reduction, maximizing variance and preservation of pairwise relative distances. The derivation of their asymptotic correlation and numerical experiments tell that a projection usually cannot satisfy both objectives. In a standard classification problem we determine projections on the input data that balance them and compare subsequent results. Next, we extend our application of orthogonal projections to deep learning frameworks. We introduce new variational loss functions that enable integration of additional information via transformations and projections of the target data. In two supervised learning problems, clinical image segmentation and music information classification, the application of the proposed loss functions increase the accuracy.
Verifiability is one of the core editing principles in Wikipedia, where editors are encouraged to provide citations for the added statements. Statements can be any arbitrary piece of text, ranging from a sentence up to a paragraph. However, in many cases, citations are either outdated, missing, or link to non-existing references (e.g. dead URL, moved content etc.). In total, 20\% of the cases such citations refer to news articles and represent the second most cited source. Even in cases where citations are provided, there are no explicit indicators for the span of a citation for a given piece of text. In addition to issues related with the verifiability principle, many Wikipedia entity pages are incomplete, with relevant information that is already available in online news sources missing. Even for the already existing citations, there is often a delay between the news publication time and the reference time. In this thesis, we address the aforementioned issues and propose automated approaches that enforce the verifiability principle in Wikipedia, and suggest relevant and missing news references for further enriching Wikipedia entity pages.
In this paper, we propose a listwise approach for constructing user-specific rankings in recommendation systems in a collaborative fashion. We contrast the listwise approach to previous pointwise and pairwise approaches, which are based on treating either each rating or each pairwise comparison as an independent instance respectively. By extending the work of (Cao et al. 2007), we cast listwise collaborative ranking as maximum likelihood under a permutation model which applies probability mass to permutations based on a low rank latent score matrix. We present a novel algorithm called SQL-Rank, which can accommodate ties and missing data and can run in linear time. We develop a theoretical framework for analyzing listwise ranking methods based on a novel representation theory for the permutation model. Applying this framework to collaborative ranking, we derive asymptotic statistical rates as the number of users and items grow together. We conclude by demonstrating that our SQL-Rank method often outperforms current state-of-the-art algorithms for implicit feedback such as Weighted-MF and BPR and achieve favorable results when compared to explicit feedback algorithms such as matrix factorization and collaborative ranking.