OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
When Large Vision-Language Models Meet Person Re-Identification
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) that incorporate visual models and Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved impressive results across various cross-modal understanding and reasoning tasks. In recent years, person re-identification (ReID) has also started to explore cross-modal semantics to improve the accuracy of identity recognition. However, effectively utilizing LVLMs for ReID remains an open challenge. While LVLMs operate under a generative paradigm by predicting the next output word, ReID requires the extraction of discriminative identity features to match pedestrians across cameras. In this paper, we propose LVLM-ReID, a novel framework that harnesses the strengths of LVLMs to promote ReID. Specifically, we employ instructions to guide the LVLM in generating one pedestrian semantic token that encapsulates key appearance semantics from the person image. This token is further refined through our Semantic-Guided Interaction (SGI) module, establishing a reciprocal interaction between the semantic token and visual tokens. Ultimately, the reinforced semantic token serves as the pedestrian identity representation. Our framework integrates the semantic understanding and generation capabilities of LVLMs into end-to-end ReID training, allowing LVLMs to capture rich semantic cues from pedestrian images during both training and inference. Our method achieves competitive results on multiple benchmarks without additional image-text annotations, demonstrating the potential of LVLM-generated semantics to advance person ReID and offering a promising direction for future research.
A 65-nm Reliable 6T CMOS SRAM Cell with Minimum Size Transistors
Venue: arXiv cs.AR 2024
Year: 2024

As minimum area SRAM bit-cells are obtained when using cell ratio and pull-up ratio of 1, we analyze the possibility of decreasing the cell ratio from the conventional values comprised between 1.5-2.5 to 1. The impact of this option on area, power, performance and stability is analyzed showing that the most affected parameter is read stability, although this impact can be overcome using some of the read assist circuits proposed in the literature. The main benefits are layout regularity enhancement, with its consequent higher tolerance to variability, cell area reduction by 25% (with respect to a cell having a cell ratio of 2), leakage current improvement by a 35%, as well as energy dissipation reduction and a soft error rate per bit improvement of around 30%.
Using Machine Bias To Measure Human Bias
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Biased human decisions have consequential impacts across various domains, yielding unfair treatment of individuals and resulting in suboptimal outcomes for organizations and society. In recognition of this fact, organizations regularly design and deploy interventions aimed at mitigating these biases. However, measuring human decision biases remains an important but elusive task. Organizations are frequently concerned with mistaken decisions disproportionately affecting one group. In practice, however, this is typically not possible to assess due to the scarcity of a gold standard: a label that indicates what the correct decision would have been. In this work, we propose a machine learning-based framework to assess bias in human-generated decisions when gold standard labels are scarce. We provide theoretical guarantees and empirical evidence demonstrating the superiority of our method over existing alternatives. This proposed methodology establishes a foundation for transparency in human decision-making, carrying substantial implications for managerial duties, and offering potential for alleviating algorithmic biases when human decisions are used as labels to train algorithms.
Adaptive Cell Range Expansion in Multi-Band UAV Communication Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2024
Year: 2024

This paper leverages stochastic geometry to model, analyze, and optimize multi-band unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication networks operating across low-frequency and millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands. We introduce a novel approach to modeling mmWave antenna gain in such networks, which allows us to better capture and account for interference in our analysis and optimization. We then propose a simple yet effective user-UAV association policy, which strategically biases users towards mmWave UAVs to take advantage of lower interference and wider bandwidths compared to low-frequency UAVs. Under this scheme, we analytically derive the corresponding association probability, coverage probability, and spectral efficiency. We conclude by assessing our proposed association policy through simulation and analysis, demonstrating its effectiveness based on coverage probability and per-user data rates, as well as the alignment between analytical and simulation results.
The Rn-index: a more accurate variant of the Rk-index
Venue: arXiv cs.DL 2024
Year: 2024

The contribution to pushing the boundaries of knowledge is a critical metric for evaluating the research performance of countries and institutions, which in many cases is not revealed by common bibliometric indicators. The Rk-index was specifically designed to assess such contributions, and the Rn-index is a variant that corrects the weakness of the Rk-index, particularly in the evaluation of countries that produce a high proportion of global advancements. This is the case of the USA and China in many technological fields. Additionally, the Rn-index is simple to calculate and understand, as it involves only summing the ratios between the local and global ranks of papers, ordered by their citation count. Moreover, the Rn-index may also be fractionally counted.
RPEE-HEADS: A Novel Benchmark for Pedestrian Head Detection in Crowd Videos
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

The automatic detection of pedestrian heads in crowded environments is essential for crowd analysis and management tasks, particularly in high-risk settings such as railway platforms and event entrances. These environments, characterized by dense crowds and dynamic movements, are underrepresented in public datasets, posing challenges for existing deep learning models. To address this gap, we introduce the Railway Platforms and Event Entrances-Heads (RPEE-Heads) dataset, a novel, diverse, high-resolution, and accurately annotated resource. It includes 109,913 annotated pedestrian heads across 1,886 images from 66 video recordings, with an average of 56.2 heads per image. Annotations include bounding boxes for visible head regions. In addition to introducing the RPEE-Heads dataset, this paper evaluates eight state-of-the-art object detection algorithms using the RPEE-Heads dataset and analyzes the impact of head size on detection accuracy. The experimental results show that You Only Look Once v9 and Real-Time Detection Transformer outperform the other algorithms, achieving mean average precisions of 90.7% and 90.8%, with inference times of 11 and 14 milliseconds, respectively. Moreover, the findings underscore the need for specialized datasets like RPEE-Heads for training and evaluating accurate models for head detection in railway platforms and event entrances. The dataset and pretrained models are available at https://doi.org/10.34735/ped.2024.2.
KAN See Your Face
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

With the advancement of face reconstruction (FR) systems, privacy-preserving face recognition (PPFR) has gained popularity for its secure face recognition, enhanced facial privacy protection, and robustness to various attacks. Besides, specific models and algorithms are proposed for face embedding protection by mapping embeddings to a secure space. However, there is a lack of studies on investigating and evaluating the possibility of extracting face images from embeddings of those systems, especially for PPFR. In this work, we introduce the first approach to exploit Kolmogorov-Arnold Network (KAN) for conducting embedding-to-face attacks against state-of-the-art (SOTA) FR and PPFR systems. Face embedding mapping (FEM) models are proposed to learn the distribution mapping relation between the embeddings from the initial domain and target domain. In comparison with Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLP), we provide two variants, FEM-KAN and FEM-MLP, for efficient non-linear embedding-to-embedding mapping in order to reconstruct realistic face images from the corresponding face embedding. To verify our methods, we conduct extensive experiments with various PPFR and FR models. We also measure reconstructed face images with different metrics to evaluate the image quality. Through comprehensive experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of FEMs in accurate embedding mapping and face reconstruction.
TimeMarker: A Versatile Video-LLM for Long and Short Video Understanding with Superior Temporal Localization Ability
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Rapid development of large language models (LLMs) has significantly advanced multimodal large language models (LMMs), particularly in vision-language tasks. However, existing video-language models often overlook precise temporal localization and struggle with videos of varying lengths. We introduce TimeMarker, a versatile Video-LLM designed for high-quality dialogue based on video content, emphasizing temporal localization. TimeMarker integrates Temporal Separator Tokens to enhance temporal awareness, accurately marking specific moments within videos. It employs the AnyLength mechanism for dynamic frame sampling and adaptive token merging, enabling effective handling of both short and long videos. Additionally, TimeMarker utilizes diverse datasets, including further transformed temporal-related video QA datasets, to bolster its temporal understanding capabilities. Image and interleaved data are also employed to further enhance the model's semantic perception ability. Evaluations demonstrate that TimeMarker achieves state-of-the-art performance across multiple benchmarks, excelling in both short and long video categories. Our project page is at \url{https://github.com/TimeMarker-LLM/TimeMarker/}.
PATHS: A Hierarchical Transformer for Efficient Whole Slide Image Analysis
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Computational analysis of whole slide images (WSIs) has seen significant research progress in recent years, with applications ranging across important diagnostic and prognostic tasks such as survival or cancer subtype prediction. Many state-of-the-art models process the entire slide - which may be as large as $150,000 \times 150,000$ pixels - as a bag of many patches, the size of which necessitates computationally cheap feature aggregation methods. However, a large proportion of these patches are uninformative, such as those containing only healthy or adipose tissue, adding significant noise and size to the bag. We propose Pathology Transformer with Hierarchical Selection (PATHS), a novel top-down method for hierarchical weakly supervised representation learning on slide-level tasks in computational pathology. PATHS is inspired by the cross-magnification manner in which a human pathologist examines a slide, recursively filtering patches at each magnification level to a small subset relevant to the diagnosis. Our method overcomes the complications of processing the entire slide, enabling quadratic self-attention and providing a simple interpretable measure of region importance. We apply PATHS to five datasets of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and achieve superior performance on slide-level prediction tasks when compared to previous methods, despite processing only a small proportion of the slide.
Feature-Factory: Automating Software Feature Integration Using Generative AI
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

Integrating new features into existing software projects can be a complex and time-consuming process. Feature-Factory leverages Generative AI with WatsonX.ai to automate the analysis, planning, and implementation of feature requests. By combining advanced project parsing, dependency resolution, and AI-generated code, the program ensures seamless integration of features into software systems while maintaining structural integrity. This paper presents the methodology, mathematical model, and results of the Feature-Factory framework.
Dependency-Aware CAV Task Scheduling via Diffusion-Based Reinforcement Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

In this paper, we propose a novel dependency-aware task scheduling strategy for dynamic unmanned aerial vehicle-assisted connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs). Specifically, different computation tasks of CAVs consisting of multiple dependency subtasks are judiciously assigned to nearby CAVs or the base station for promptly completing tasks. Therefore, we formulate a joint scheduling priority and subtask assignment optimization problem with the objective of minimizing the average task completion time. The problem aims at improving the long-term system performance, which is reformulated as a Markov decision process. To solve the problem, we further propose a diffusion-based reinforcement learning algorithm, named Synthetic DDQN based Subtasks Scheduling, which can make adaptive task scheduling decision in real time. A diffusion model-based synthetic experience replay is integrated into the reinforcement learning framework, which can generate sufficient synthetic data in experience replay buffer, thereby significantly accelerating convergence and improving sample efficiency. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm on reducing task completion time, comparing to benchmark schemes.
Thai Financial Domain Adaptation of THaLLE -- Technical Report
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Large Language Models (LLMs) excel in general tasks but struggle with domain-specific challenges, such as specialized terminology and localized regulations. Existing financial LLMs, like FinGPT and BloombergGPT, lack support for the Thai financial domain. We developed a Thai Financial LLM using the Investment Consultant (IC) exam dataset from the Stock Exchange of Thailand. To address dataset limitations, we applied data augmentation, ReLoRA for efficient training, Continued Pretraining (CPT) for domain knowledge, and Rank-Stabilized LoRA (rsLoRA) for fine-tuning. Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) simulated exam scenarios, while Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) refined the model using feedback. The model achieved scores of 72%, 72%, and 84% on IC exam levels P1, P2, and P3, respectively, demonstrating its effectiveness in Thai financial advisory tasks and its potential for specialized applications.
Active partitioning: inverting the paradigm of active learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Datasets often incorporate various functional patterns related to different aspects or regimes, which are typically not equally present throughout the dataset. We propose a novel, general-purpose partitioning algorithm that utilizes competition between models to detect and separate these functional patterns. This competition is induced by multiple models iteratively submitting their predictions for the dataset, with the best prediction for each data point being rewarded with training on that data point. This reward mechanism amplifies each model's strengths and encourages specialization in different patterns. The specializations can then be translated into a partitioning scheme. The amplification of each model's strengths inverts the active learning paradigm: while active learning typically focuses the training of models on their weaknesses to minimize the number of required training data points, our concept reinforces the strengths of each model, thus specializing them. We validate our concept -- called active partitioning -- with various datasets with clearly distinct functional patterns, such as mechanical stress and strain data in a porous structure. The active partitioning algorithm produces valuable insights into the datasets' structure, which can serve various further applications. As a demonstration of one exemplary usage, we set up modular models consisting of multiple expert models, each learning a single partition, and compare their performance on more than twenty popular regression problems with single models learning all partitions simultaneously. Our results show significant improvements, with up to 54% loss reduction, confirming our partitioning algorithm's utility.
Dynamic Retail Pricing via Q-Learning -- A Reinforcement Learning Framework for Enhanced Revenue Management
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

This paper explores the application of a reinforcement learning (RL) framework using the Q-Learning algorithm to enhance dynamic pricing strategies in the retail sector. Unlike traditional pricing methods, which often rely on static demand models, our RL approach continuously adapts to evolving market dynamics, offering a more flexible and responsive pricing strategy. By creating a simulated retail environment, we demonstrate how RL effectively addresses real-time changes in consumer behavior and market conditions, leading to improved revenue outcomes. Our results illustrate that the RL model not only surpasses traditional methods in terms of revenue generation but also provides insights into the complex interplay of price elasticity and consumer demand. This research underlines the significant potential of applying artificial intelligence in economic decision-making, paving the way for more sophisticated, data-driven pricing models in various commercial domains.
Grid-augmented vision: A simple yet effective approach for enhanced spatial understanding in multi-modal agents
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Recent advances in multimodal models have demonstrated impressive capabilities in object recognition and scene understanding. However, these models often struggle with precise spatial localization - a critical capability for real-world applications. Inspired by how humans use grid-based references like chess boards and maps, we propose introducing explicit visual position encoding through a simple grid overlay approach. By adding a 9x9 black grid pattern onto input images, our method provides visual spatial guidance analogous to how positional encoding works in transformers, but in an explicit, visual form. Experiments on the COCO 2017 dataset demonstrate that our grid-based approach achieves significant improvements in localization accuracy, with a 107.4% increase in IoU (from 0.27 to 0.56) and a 194.4% improvement in GIoU (from 0.18 to 0.53) compared to baseline performance. Through attention visualization analysis, we show how this visual position encoding helps models better ground spatial relationships. Our method's simplicity and effectiveness make it particularly valuable for applications requiring accurate spatial reasoning, such as robotic manipulation, medical imaging, and autonomous navigation.
Large Models Enabled Ubiquitous Wireless Sensing
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

In the era of 5G communication, the knowledge of channel state information (CSI) is crucial for enhancing network performance. This paper explores the utilization of language models for spatial CSI prediction within MIMO-OFDM systems. We begin by outlining the significance of accurate CSI in enabling advanced functionalities such as adaptive modulation. We review existing methodologies for CSI estimation, emphasizing the shift from traditional to data-driven approaches. Then a novel framework for spatial CSI prediction using realistic environment information is proposed, and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness. This research paves way for innovative strategies in managing wireless networks.
A Faster Deterministic Algorithm for Mader's $\mathcal{S}$-Path Packing
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2024
Year: 2024

Given an undirected graph $G = (V,E)$ with a set of terminals $T\subseteq V$ partitioned into a family $\mathcal{S}$ of disjoint blocks, find the maximum number of vertex-disjoint paths whose endpoints belong to two distinct blocks while no other internal vertex is a terminal. This problem is called Mader's $\mathcal{S}$-path packing. It has been of remarkable interest as a common generalization of the non-bipartite matching and vertex-disjoint $s\text{-}t$ paths problem. This paper presents a new deterministic algorithm for this problem via known reduction to linear matroid parity. The algorithm utilizes the augmenting-path algorithm of Gabow and Stallmann (1986), while replacing costly matrix operations between augmentation steps with a faster algorithm that exploits the original $\mathcal{S}$-path packing instance. The proposed algorithm runs in $O(mnk)$ time, where $n = |V|$, $m = |E|$, and $k = |T|\le n$. This improves on the previous best bound $O(mn^ω)$ for deterministic algorithms, where $ω\ge2$ denotes the matrix multiplication exponent.
HiFiVFS: High Fidelity Video Face Swapping
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Face swapping aims to generate results that combine the identity from the source with attributes from the target. Existing methods primarily focus on image-based face swapping. When processing videos, each frame is handled independently, making it difficult to ensure temporal stability. From a model perspective, face swapping is gradually shifting from generative adversarial networks (GANs) to diffusion models (DMs), as DMs have been shown to possess stronger generative capabilities. Current diffusion-based approaches often employ inpainting techniques, which struggle to preserve fine-grained attributes like lighting and makeup. To address these challenges, we propose a high fidelity video face swapping (HiFiVFS) framework, which leverages the strong generative capability and temporal prior of Stable Video Diffusion (SVD). We build a fine-grained attribute module to extract identity-disentangled and fine-grained attribute features through identity desensitization and adversarial learning. Additionally, We introduce detailed identity injection to further enhance identity similarity. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) in video face swapping, both qualitatively and quantitatively.
Enhancing MMDiT-Based Text-to-Image Models for Similar Subject Generation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Representing the cutting-edge technique of text-to-image models, the latest Multimodal Diffusion Transformer (MMDiT) largely mitigates many generation issues existing in previous models. However, we discover that it still suffers from subject neglect or mixing when the input text prompt contains multiple subjects of similar semantics or appearance. We identify three possible ambiguities within the MMDiT architecture that cause this problem: Inter-block Ambiguity, Text Encoder Ambiguity, and Semantic Ambiguity. To address these issues, we propose to repair the ambiguous latent on-the-fly by test-time optimization at early denoising steps. In detail, we design three loss functions: Block Alignment Loss, Text Encoder Alignment Loss, and Overlap Loss, each tailored to mitigate these ambiguities. Despite significant improvements, we observe that semantic ambiguity persists when generating multiple similar subjects, as the guidance provided by overlap loss is not explicit enough. Therefore, we further propose Overlap Online Detection and Back-to-Start Sampling Strategy to alleviate the problem. Experimental results on a newly constructed challenging dataset of similar subjects validate the effectiveness of our approach, showing superior generation quality and much higher success rates over existing methods. Our code will be available at https://github.com/wtybest/EnMMDiT.