We consider the problem of learning observation models for robot state estimation with incremental non-differentiable optimizers in the loop. Convergence to the correct belief over the robot state is heavily dependent on a proper tuning of observation models which serve as input to the optimizer. We propose a gradient-based learning method which converges much quicker to model estimates that lead to solutions of much better quality compared to an existing state-of-the-art method as measured by the tracking accuracy over unseen robot test trajectories.
Data preprocessing is a crucial part of any machine learning pipeline, and it can have a significant impact on both performance and training efficiency. This is especially evident when using deep neural networks for time series prediction and classification: real-world time series data often exhibit irregularities such as multi-modality, skewness and outliers, and the model performance can degrade rapidly if these characteristics are not adequately addressed. In this work, we propose the EDAIN (Extended Deep Adaptive Input Normalization) layer, a novel adaptive neural layer that learns how to appropriately normalize irregular time series data for a given task in an end-to-end fashion, instead of using a fixed normalization scheme. This is achieved by optimizing its unknown parameters simultaneously with the deep neural network using back-propagation. Our experiments, conducted using synthetic data, a credit default prediction dataset, and a large-scale limit order book benchmark dataset, demonstrate the superior performance of the EDAIN layer when compared to conventional normalization methods and existing adaptive time series preprocessing layers.
Large web crawl datasets have already played an important role in learning multimodal features with high generalization capabilities. However, there are still very limited studies investigating the details or improvements of data design. Recently, a DataComp challenge has been designed to propose the best training data with the fixed models. This paper presents our solution to both filtering track and BYOD track of the DataComp challenge. Our solution adopts large multimodal models CLIP and BLIP-2 to filter and modify web crawl data, and utilize external datasets along with a bag of tricks to improve the data quality. Experiments show our solution significantly outperforms DataComp baselines (filtering track: 6.6% improvement, BYOD track: 48.5% improvement).
We propose a model of treatment interference where the response of a unit depends only on its treatment status and the statuses of units within its K-neighborhood. Current methods for detecting interference include carefully designed randomized experiments and conditional randomization tests on a set of focal units. We give guidance on how to choose focal units under this model of interference. We then conduct a simulation study to evaluate the efficacy of existing methods for detecting network interference. We show that this choice of focal units leads to powerful tests of treatment interference which outperform current experimental methods.
The increasing use of deep learning techniques has reduced interpretation time and, ideally, reduced interpreter bias by automatically deriving geological maps from digital outcrop models. However, accurate validation of these automated mapping approaches is a significant challenge due to the subjective nature of geological mapping and the difficulty in collecting quantitative validation data. Additionally, many state-of-the-art deep learning methods are limited to 2D image data, which is insufficient for 3D digital outcrops, such as hyperclouds. To address these challenges, we present Tinto, a multi-sensor benchmark digital outcrop dataset designed to facilitate the development and validation of deep learning approaches for geological mapping, especially for non-structured 3D data like point clouds. Tinto comprises two complementary sets: 1) a real digital outcrop model from Corta Atalaya (Spain), with spectral attributes and ground-truth data, and 2) a synthetic twin that uses latent features in the original datasets to reconstruct realistic spectral data (including sensor noise and processing artifacts) from the ground-truth. The point cloud is dense and contains 3,242,964 labeled points. We used these datasets to explore the abilities of different deep learning approaches for automated geological mapping. By making Tinto publicly available, we hope to foster the development and adaptation of new deep learning tools for 3D applications in Earth sciences. The dataset can be accessed through this link: //doi.org/10.14278/rodare.2256.
In end-to-end autonomous driving, the utilization of existing sensor fusion techniques for imitation learning proves inadequate in challenging situations that involve numerous dynamic agents. To address this issue, we introduce LeTFuser, a transformer-based algorithm for fusing multiple RGB-D camera representations. To perform perception and control tasks simultaneously, we utilize multi-task learning. Our model comprises of two modules, the first being the perception module that is responsible for encoding the observation data obtained from the RGB-D cameras. It carries out tasks such as semantic segmentation, semantic depth cloud mapping (SDC), and traffic light state recognition. Our approach employs the Convolutional vision Transformer (CvT) \cite{wu2021cvt} to better extract and fuse features from multiple RGB cameras due to local and global feature extraction capability of convolution and transformer modules, respectively. Following this, the control module undertakes the decoding of the encoded characteristics together with supplementary data, comprising a rough simulator for static and dynamic environments, as well as various measurements, in order to anticipate the waypoints associated with a latent feature space. We use two methods to process these outputs and generate the vehicular controls (e.g. steering, throttle, and brake) levels. The first method uses a PID algorithm to follow the waypoints on the fly, whereas the second one directly predicts the control policy using the measurement features and environmental state. We evaluate the model and conduct a comparative analysis with recent models on the CARLA simulator using various scenarios, ranging from normal to adversarial conditions, to simulate real-world scenarios. Our code is available at \url{//github.com/pagand/e2etransfuser/tree/cvpr-w} to facilitate future studies.
When applying deep learning to remote sensing data in archaeological research, a notable obstacle is the limited availability of suitable datasets for training models. The application of transfer learning is frequently employed to mitigate this drawback. However, there is still a need to explore its effectiveness when applied across different archaeological datasets. This paper compares the performance of various transfer learning configurations using two semantic segmentation deep neural networks on two LiDAR datasets. The experimental results indicate that transfer learning-based approaches in archaeology can lead to performance improvements, although a systematic enhancement has not yet been observed. We provide specific insights about the validity of such techniques that can serve as a baseline for future works.
The existence of representative datasets is a prerequisite of many successful artificial intelligence and machine learning models. However, the subsequent application of these models often involves scenarios that are inadequately represented in the data used for training. The reasons for this are manifold and range from time and cost constraints to ethical considerations. As a consequence, the reliable use of these models, especially in safety-critical applications, is a huge challenge. Leveraging additional, already existing sources of knowledge is key to overcome the limitations of purely data-driven approaches, and eventually to increase the generalization capability of these models. Furthermore, predictions that conform with knowledge are crucial for making trustworthy and safe decisions even in underrepresented scenarios. This work provides an overview of existing techniques and methods in the literature that combine data-based models with existing knowledge. The identified approaches are structured according to the categories integration, extraction and conformity. Special attention is given to applications in the field of autonomous driving.
Deep reinforcement learning algorithms can perform poorly in real-world tasks due to the discrepancy between source and target environments. This discrepancy is commonly viewed as the disturbance in transition dynamics. Many existing algorithms learn robust policies by modeling the disturbance and applying it to source environments during training, which usually requires prior knowledge about the disturbance and control of simulators. However, these algorithms can fail in scenarios where the disturbance from target environments is unknown or is intractable to model in simulators. To tackle this problem, we propose a novel model-free actor-critic algorithm -- namely, state-conservative policy optimization (SCPO) -- to learn robust policies without modeling the disturbance in advance. Specifically, SCPO reduces the disturbance in transition dynamics to that in state space and then approximates it by a simple gradient-based regularizer. The appealing features of SCPO include that it is simple to implement and does not require additional knowledge about the disturbance or specially designed simulators. Experiments in several robot control tasks demonstrate that SCPO learns robust policies against the disturbance in transition dynamics.
We introduce a multi-task setup of identifying and classifying entities, relations, and coreference clusters in scientific articles. We create SciERC, a dataset that includes annotations for all three tasks and develop a unified framework called Scientific Information Extractor (SciIE) for with shared span representations. The multi-task setup reduces cascading errors between tasks and leverages cross-sentence relations through coreference links. Experiments show that our multi-task model outperforms previous models in scientific information extraction without using any domain-specific features. We further show that the framework supports construction of a scientific knowledge graph, which we use to analyze information in scientific literature.
In this paper, we propose the joint learning attention and recurrent neural network (RNN) models for multi-label classification. While approaches based on the use of either model exist (e.g., for the task of image captioning), training such existing network architectures typically require pre-defined label sequences. For multi-label classification, it would be desirable to have a robust inference process, so that the prediction error would not propagate and thus affect the performance. Our proposed model uniquely integrates attention and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) models, which not only addresses the above problem but also allows one to identify visual objects of interests with varying sizes without the prior knowledge of particular label ordering. More importantly, label co-occurrence information can be jointly exploited by our LSTM model. Finally, by advancing the technique of beam search, prediction of multiple labels can be efficiently achieved by our proposed network model.