In this paper, we address the problem of autonomous search and vessel detection in an unknown GNSS-denied maritime environment with fixed-wing UAVs. The main challenge in such environments with limited localization, communication range, and the total number of UAVs and sensors is to implement an appropriate search strategy so that a target vessel can be detected as soon as possible. Thus we present informed and non-informed methods used to search the environment. The informed method relies on an obtained probabilistic map, while the non-informed method navigates the UAVs along predefined paths computed with respect to the environment. The vessel detection method is trained on synthetic data collected in the simulator with data annotation tools. Comparative experiments in simulation have shown that our combination of sensors, search methods and a vessel detection algorithm leads to a successful search for the target vessel in such challenging environments.
We investigate the impact of pre-defined keypoints for pose estimation, and found that accuracy and efficiency can be improved by training a graph network to select a set of disperse keypoints with similarly distributed votes. These votes, learned by a regression network to accumulate evidence for the keypoint locations, can be regressed more accurately compared to previous heuristic keypoint algorithms. The proposed KeyGNet, supervised by a combined loss measuring both Wassserstein distance and dispersion, learns the color and geometry features of the target objects to estimate optimal keypoint locations. Experiments demonstrate the keypoints selected by KeyGNet improved the accuracy for all evaluation metrics of all seven datasets tested, for three keypoint voting methods. The challenging Occlusion LINEMOD dataset notably improved ADD(S) by +16.4% on PVN3D, and all core BOP datasets showed an AR improvement for all objects, of between +1% and +21.5%. There was also a notable increase in performance when transitioning from single object to multiple object training using KeyGNet keypoints, essentially eliminating the SISO-MIMO gap for Occlusion LINEMOD.
In this paper, we study terahertz (THz) simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) for future micro-scale 6G Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks. Since Schottky diodes are not efficient for THz energy harvesting (EH), we propose resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs) for EH at the IoT receiver (RX). As the electrical properties of RTDs are different from those of Schottky diodes, we develop a novel closed-form EH model for RTD-based RXs. In particular, we model the dependency of the instantaneous RX output power on the instantaneous received power by a non-linear piecewise function, whose parameters are adjusted to fit circuit simulation results. Furthermore, since coherent information detection is challenging at THz frequencies, we employ unipolar amplitude shift keying (ASK) modulation at the transmitter (TX) and utilize the RTD-based EH circuit at the RX to extract both information and energy from the received signal. We formulate an optimization problem to maximize the mutual information between the TX and RX signals subject to constraints on the peak amplitude of the transmitted signal and the required average harvested power at the RX. Moreover, we determine a feasibility condition for the formulated problem and, for high and low required average harvested powers, we derive the achievable information rate numerically and in closed form, respectively. Our simulation results highlight a tradeoff between the information rate and the average harvested power. Finally, we show that this tradeoff is determined by the peak amplitude of the transmitted signal and the maximum instantaneous harvested power for low and high received signal powers, respectively.
A new, geometric and easy to understand approach to finite population sampling is presented. In this approach, first-order inclusion probabilities (FIPs) are represented by bars in a two-dimensional coordinate system, and their different arrangements lead to different designs. Only based on the geometric approach, designs can be fully implemented, without the need for mathematical algorithms. An special arrangement of the bars, is equivalent to Madow 1949 systematic method, which easily, with rearranging the bars, while keeping the FIPs unchanged, results in different second-order inclusion probabilities (SIPs) equivalent to other famous finite population sampling designs, such as Poisson sampling, maximum entropy sampling, etc. Geometric visualization of sampling designs leads to increased creativity of researchers to provide new efficient designs. This approach opens a new gate to finite population sampling that can deal with problems such as optimal designs, implementation of maximum entropy sampling, etc.
This paper proposes a novel unsupervised domain adaption (UDA) method based on contrastive bi-projector (CBP), which can improve the existing UDA methods. It is called CBPUDA here, which effectively promotes the feature extractors (FEs) to reduce the generation of ambiguous features for classification and domain adaption. The CBP differs from traditional bi-classifier-based methods at that these two classifiers are replaced with two projectors of performing a mapping from the input feature to two distinct features. These two projectors and the FEs in the CBPUDA can be trained adversarially to obtain more refined decision boundaries so that it can possess powerful classification performance. Two properties of the proposed loss function are analyzed here. The first property is to derive an upper bound of joint prediction entropy, which is used to form the proposed loss function, contrastive discrepancy (CD) loss. The CD loss takes the advantages of the contrastive learning and the bi-classifier. The second property is to analyze the gradient of the CD loss and then overcome the drawback of the CD loss. The result of the second property is utilized in the development of the gradient scaling (GS) scheme in this paper. The GS scheme can be exploited to tackle the unstable problem of the CD loss because training the CBPUDA requires using contrastive learning and adversarial learning at the same time. Therefore, using the CD loss with the GS scheme overcomes the problem mentioned above to make features more compact for intra-class and distinguishable for inter-class. Experimental results express that the CBPUDA is superior to conventional UDA methods under consideration in this paper for UDA and fine-grained UDA tasks.
The field of motion prediction for automated driving has seen tremendous progress recently, bearing ever-more mighty neural network architectures. Leveraging these powerful models bears great potential for the closely related planning task. In this letter we propose a novel goal-conditioning method and show its potential to transform a state-of-the-art prediction model into a goal-directed planner. Our key insight is that conditioning prediction on a navigation goal at the behaviour level outperforms other widely adopted methods, with the additional benefit of increased model interpretability. We train our model on a large open-source dataset and show promising performance in a comprehensive benchmark.
In this paper, we consider the closed-loop control problem of nonlinear robotic systems in the presence of probabilistic uncertainties and disturbances. More precisely, we design a state feedback controller that minimizes deviations of the states of the system from the nominal state trajectories due to uncertainties and disturbances. Existing approaches to address the control problem of probabilistic systems are limited to particular classes of uncertainties and systems such as Gaussian uncertainties and processes and linearized systems. We present an approach that deals with nonlinear dynamics models and arbitrary known probabilistic uncertainties. We formulate the controller design problem as an optimization problem in terms of statistics of the probability distributions including moments and characteristic functions. In particular, in the provided optimization problem, we use moments and characteristic functions to propagate uncertainties throughout the nonlinear motion model of robotic systems. In order to reduce the tracking deviations, we minimize the uncertainty of the probabilistic states around the nominal trajectory by minimizing the trace and the determinant of the covariance matrix of the probabilistic states. To obtain the state feedback gains, we solve deterministic optimization problems in terms of moments, characteristic functions, and state feedback gains using off-the-shelf interior-point optimization solvers. To illustrate the performance of the proposed method, we compare our method with existing probabilistic control methods.
This paper studies a novel movable antenna (MA)-enhanced multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system to leverage the corresponding spatial degrees of freedom (DoFs) for improving the performance of wireless communications. We aim to maximize the achievable rate by jointly optimizing the MA positions and the transmit covariance matrix based on statistical channel state information (CSI). To solve the resulting design problem, we develop a constrained stochastic successive convex approximation (CSSCA) algorithm applicable for the general movement mode. Furthermore, we propose two simplified antenna movement modes, namely the linear movement mode and the planar movement mode, to facilitate efficient antenna movement and reduce the computational complexity of the CSSCA algorithm. Numerical results show that the considered MA-enhanced system can significantly improve the achievable rate compared to conventional MIMO systems employing uniform planar arrays (UPAs) and that the proposed planar movement mode performs closely to the performance upper bound achieved by the general movement mode.
In this paper, we consider a general task of jumping varying distances and heights for a quadrupedal robot in noisy environments, such as off of uneven terrain and with variable robot dynamics parameters. To accurately jump in such conditions, we propose a framework using deep reinforcement learning that leverages and augments the complex solution of nonlinear trajectory optimization for quadrupedal jumping. While the standalone optimization limits jumping to take-off from flat ground and requires accurate assumptions of robot dynamics, our proposed approach improves the robustness to allow jumping off of significantly uneven terrain with variable robot dynamical parameters and environmental conditions. Compared with walking and running, the realization of aggressive jumping on hardware necessitates accounting for the motors' torque-speed relationship as well as the robot's total power limits. By incorporating these constraints into our learning framework, we successfully deploy our policy sim-to-real without further tuning, fully exploiting the available onboard power supply and motors. We demonstrate robustness to environment noise of foot disturbances of up to 6 cm in height, or 33% of the robot's nominal standing height, while jumping 2x the body length in distance.
Various autonomous applications rely on recognizing specific known landmarks in their environment. For example, Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) is an important technique that lays the foundation for many common tasks, such as navigation and long-term object tracking. This entails building a map on the go based on sensory inputs which are prone to accumulating errors. Recognizing landmarks in the environment plays a vital role in correcting these errors and further improving the accuracy of SLAM. The most popular choice of sensors for conducting SLAM today is optical sensors such as cameras or LiDAR sensors. These can use landmarks such as QR codes as a prerequisite. However, such sensors become unreliable in certain conditions, e.g., foggy, dusty, reflective, or glass-rich environments. Sonar has proven to be a viable alternative to manage such situations better. However, acoustic sensors also require a different type of landmark. In this paper, we put forward a method to detect the presence of bio-mimetic acoustic landmarks using support vector machines trained on the frequency bands of the reflecting acoustic echoes using an embedded real-time imaging sonar.
Advances in artificial intelligence often stem from the development of new environments that abstract real-world situations into a form where research can be done conveniently. This paper contributes such an environment based on ideas inspired by elementary Microeconomics. Agents learn to produce resources in a spatially complex world, trade them with one another, and consume those that they prefer. We show that the emergent production, consumption, and pricing behaviors respond to environmental conditions in the directions predicted by supply and demand shifts in Microeconomics. We also demonstrate settings where the agents' emergent prices for goods vary over space, reflecting the local abundance of goods. After the price disparities emerge, some agents then discover a niche of transporting goods between regions with different prevailing prices -- a profitable strategy because they can buy goods where they are cheap and sell them where they are expensive. Finally, in a series of ablation experiments, we investigate how choices in the environmental rewards, bartering actions, agent architecture, and ability to consume tradable goods can either aid or inhibit the emergence of this economic behavior. This work is part of the environment development branch of a research program that aims to build human-like artificial general intelligence through multi-agent interactions in simulated societies. By exploring which environment features are needed for the basic phenomena of elementary microeconomics to emerge automatically from learning, we arrive at an environment that differs from those studied in prior multi-agent reinforcement learning work along several dimensions. For example, the model incorporates heterogeneous tastes and physical abilities, and agents negotiate with one another as a grounded form of communication.