OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Optimal UCA Design for OAM Based Wireless Backhaul Transmission
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2024
Year: 2024

Orbital angular momentum (OAM), which is considered as a novel way to achieve high capacity, has been attracted much attention recently. OAM signals emitted by uniform circular array (UCA) are widely regarded to go through the Bessel-form channels. However, the channel gains corresponding to the Bessel-form channels are with low signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) on OAM-modes and it is difficult to achieve high capacity using all OAM modes. To achieve maximum capacity offered by OAM multiplexing for wireless backhaul communications, in this paper we propose the optimal UCA design, which selects the optimal OAM-modes and radius of receive UCA. We formulate the capacity maximization problem and divide it into two subproblems for obtaining the corresponding optimal UCA design for OAM multiplexing based wireless backhaul communications. In particular, the optimal radius of the receive UCA is firstly derived. Then, we propose an mode selection scheme to choose appropriate OAM-modes for data transmission to maximize the capacity. Extensive simulations obtained validate that the capacity of OAM multiplexing can be significantly increased with our developed scheme.
Online Behavior Modification for Expressive User Control of RL-Trained Robots
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is an effective method for robots to learn tasks. However, in typical RL, end-users have little to no control over how the robot does the task after the robot has been deployed. To address this, we introduce the idea of online behavior modification, a paradigm in which users have control over behavior features of a robot in real time as it autonomously completes a task using an RL-trained policy. To show the value of this user-centered formulation for human-robot interaction, we present a behavior diversity based algorithm, Adjustable Control Of RL Dynamics (ACORD), and demonstrate its applicability to online behavior modification in simulation and a user study. In the study (n=23) users adjust the style of paintings as a robot traces a shape autonomously. We compare ACORD to RL and Shared Autonomy (SA), and show ACORD affords user-preferred levels of control and expression, comparable to SA, but with the potential for autonomous execution and robustness of RL.
Raising AI Ethics Awareness through an AI Ethics Quiz for Software Practitioners
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

Context:Today, ethical issues surrounding AI systems are increasingly prevalent, highlighting the critical need to integrate AI ethics into system design to prevent societal harm. Raising awareness and fostering a deep understanding of AI ethics among software practitioners is essential for achieving this goal. However, research indicates a significant gap in practitioners' awareness and knowledge of AI ethics and ethical principles. While much effort has been directed toward helping practitioners operationalise AI ethical principles such as fairness, transparency, accountability, and privacy, less attention has been paid to raising initial awareness, which should be the foundational step. Objective: Addressing this gap, we developed a software-based tool, the AI Ethics Quiz, to raise awareness and enhance the knowledge of AI ethics among software practitioners. Our objective was to organise interactive workshops, introduce the AI Ethics Quiz, and evaluate its effectiveness in enhancing awareness and knowledge of AI ethics and ethical principles among practitioners. Method: We conducted two one-hour workshops (one in-person and one online) involving 29 software practitioners. Data was collected through pre-quiz questionnaire, the AI Ethics Quiz, and a post-quiz questionnaire. Results: The anonymous responses revealed that the quiz significantly improved practitioners' awareness and understanding of AI ethics. Additionally, practitioners found the quiz engaging and reported it created a meaningful learning experience regarding AI ethics. In this paper, we share insights gained from conducting these interactive workshops and introducing the AI Ethics Quiz to practitioners. Conclusion: We also provide recommendations for software companies and leaders to adopt similar initiatives, which may help them enhance practitioners' awareness and understanding of AI ethics.
AdapShare: An RL-Based Dynamic Spectrum Sharing Solution for O-RAN
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2024
Year: 2024

The Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) initiative, characterized by open interfaces and AI/ML-capable RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), facilitates effective spectrum sharing among RANs. In this context, we introduce AdapShare, an ORAN-compatible solution leveraging Reinforcement Learning (RL) for intent-based spectrum management, with the primary goal of minimizing resource surpluses or deficits in RANs. By employing RL agents, AdapShare intelligently learns network demand patterns and uses them to allocate resources. We demonstrate the efficacy of AdapShare in the spectrum sharing scenario between LTE and NR networks, incorporating real-world LTE resource usage data and synthetic NR usage data to demonstrate its practical use. We use the average surplus or deficit and fairness index to measure the system's performance in various scenarios. AdapShare outperforms a quasi-static resource allocation scheme based on long-term network demand statistics, particularly when available resources are scarce or exceed the aggregate demand from the networks. Lastly, we present a high-level O-RAN compatible architecture using RL agents, which demonstrates the seamless integration of AdapShare into real-world deployment scenarios.
RIS-Aided Backscattering Tag-to-Tag Networks: Performance Analysis
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2024
Year: 2024

Backscattering tag-to-tag networks (BTTNs) represent a passive radio frequency identification (RFID) system that enables direct communication between tags within an external radio frequency (RF) field. However, low spectral efficiency and short-range communication capabilities, along with the ultra-low power nature of the tags, create significant challenges for reliable and practical applications of BTTNs. To address these challenges, this paper introduces integrating an indoor reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) into BTTN and studying RIS's impact on the system's performance. To that end, we first derive compact analytical expressions of the probability density function (PDF) and cumulative distribution function (CDF) for the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the receiver tag by exploiting the moment matching technique. Then, based on the derived PDF and CDF, we further derive analytical expressions of outage probability (OP), bit error rate (BER), and average capacity (AC) rate. Eventually, the Monte Carlo simulation is used to validate the accuracy of the analytical results, revealing that utilizing RIS can greatly improve the performance of BTTNs in terms of AC, BER, OP, and coverage region relative to traditional BTTNs setups that do not incorporate RIS.
FlowRetrieval: Flow-Guided Data Retrieval for Few-Shot Imitation Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

Few-shot imitation learning relies on only a small amount of task-specific demonstrations to efficiently adapt a policy for a given downstream tasks. Retrieval-based methods come with a promise of retrieving relevant past experiences to augment this target data when learning policies. However, existing data retrieval methods fall under two extremes: they either rely on the existence of exact behaviors with visually similar scenes in the prior data, which is impractical to assume; or they retrieve based on semantic similarity of high-level language descriptions of the task, which might not be that informative about the shared low-level behaviors or motions across tasks that is often a more important factor for retrieving relevant data for policy learning. In this work, we investigate how we can leverage motion similarity in the vast amount of cross-task data to improve few-shot imitation learning of the target task. Our key insight is that motion-similar data carries rich information about the effects of actions and object interactions that can be leveraged during few-shot adaptation. We propose FlowRetrieval, an approach that leverages optical flow representations for both extracting similar motions to target tasks from prior data, and for guiding learning of a policy that can maximally benefit from such data. Our results show FlowRetrieval significantly outperforms prior methods across simulated and real-world domains, achieving on average 27% higher success rate than the best retrieval-based prior method. In the Pen-in-Cup task with a real Franka Emika robot, FlowRetrieval achieves 3.7x the performance of the baseline imitation learning technique that learns from all prior and target data. Website: https://flow-retrieval.github.io
Discovery of False Data Injection Schemes on Frequency Controllers with Reinforcement Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

While inverter-based distributed energy resources (DERs) play a crucial role in integrating renewable energy into the power system, they concurrently diminish the grid's system inertia, elevating the risk of frequency instabilities. Furthermore, smart inverters, interfaced via communication networks, pose a potential vulnerability to cyber threats if not diligently managed. To proactively fortify the power grid against sophisticated cyber attacks, we propose to employ reinforcement learning (RL) to identify potential threats and system vulnerabilities. This study concentrates on analyzing adversarial strategies for false data injection, specifically targeting smart inverters involved in primary frequency control. Our findings demonstrate that an RL agent can adeptly discern optimal false data injection methods to manipulate inverter settings, potentially causing catastrophic consequences.
Synthetic Lunar Terrain: A Multimodal Open Dataset for Training and Evaluating Neuromorphic Vision Algorithms
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Synthetic Lunar Terrain (SLT) is an open dataset collected from an analogue test site for lunar missions, featuring synthetic craters in a high-contrast lighting setup. It includes several side-by-side captures from event-based and conventional RGB cameras, supplemented with a high-resolution 3D laser scan for depth estimation. The event-stream recorded from the neuromorphic vision sensor of the event-based camera is of particular interest as this emerging technology provides several unique advantages, such as high data rates, low energy consumption and resilience towards scenes of high dynamic range. SLT provides a solid foundation to analyse the limits of RGB-cameras and potential advantages or synergies in utilizing neuromorphic visions with the goal of enabling and improving lunar specific applications like rover navigation, landing in cratered environments or similar.
Tool-Assisted Agent on SQL Inspection and Refinement in Real-World Scenarios
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Recent Text-to-SQL methods leverage large language models (LLMs) by incorporating feedback from the database management system. While these methods effectively address execution errors in SQL queries, they struggle with database mismatches -- errors that do not trigger execution exceptions. Database mismatches include issues such as condition mismatches and stricter constraint mismatches, both of which are more prevalent in real-world scenarios. To address these challenges, we propose a tool-assisted agent framework for SQL inspection and refinement, equipping the LLM-based agent with two specialized tools: a retriever and a detector, designed to diagnose and correct SQL queries with database mismatches. These tools enhance the capability of LLMs to handle real-world queries more effectively. We also introduce Spider-Mismatch, a new dataset specifically constructed to reflect the condition mismatch problems encountered in real-world scenarios. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves the highest performance on the averaged results of the Spider and Spider-Realistic datasets in few-shot settings, and it significantly outperforms baseline methods on the more realistic dataset, Spider-Mismatch.
Retrieval-Augmented Natural Language Reasoning for Explainable Visual Question Answering
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Visual Question Answering with Natural Language Explanation (VQA-NLE) task is challenging due to its high demand for reasoning-based inference. Recent VQA-NLE studies focus on enhancing model networks to amplify the model's reasoning capability but this approach is resource-consuming and unstable. In this work, we introduce a new VQA-NLE model, ReRe (Retrieval-augmented natural language Reasoning), using leverage retrieval information from the memory to aid in generating accurate answers and persuasive explanations without relying on complex networks and extra datasets. ReRe is an encoder-decoder architecture model using a pre-trained clip vision encoder and a pre-trained GPT-2 language model as a decoder. Cross-attention layers are added in the GPT-2 for processing retrieval features. ReRe outperforms previous methods in VQA accuracy and explanation score and shows improvement in NLE with more persuasive, reliability.
Evaluation of Table Representations to Answer Questions from Tables in Documents : A Case Study using 3GPP Specifications
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2024
Year: 2024

With the ubiquitous use of document corpora for question answering, one important aspect which is especially relevant for technical documents is the ability to extract information from tables which are interspersed with text. The major challenge in this is that unlike free-flow text or isolated set of tables, the representation of a table in terms of what is a relevant chunk is not obvious. We conduct a series of experiments examining various representations of tabular data interspersed with text to understand the relative benefits of different representations. We choose a corpus of $3^{rd}$ Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) documents since they are heavily interspersed with tables. We create expert curated dataset of question answers to evaluate our approach. We conclude that row level representations with corresponding table header information being included in every cell improves the performance of the retrieval, thus leveraging the structural information present in the tabular data.
BTMuda: A Bi-level Multi-source unsupervised domain adaptation framework for breast cancer diagnosis
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Deep learning has revolutionized the early detection of breast cancer, resulting in a significant decrease in mortality rates. However, difficulties in obtaining annotations and huge variations in distribution between training sets and real scenes have limited their clinical applications. To address these limitations, unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) methods have been used to transfer knowledge from one labeled source domain to the unlabeled target domain, yet these approaches suffer from severe domain shift issues and often ignore the potential benefits of leveraging multiple relevant sources in practical applications. To address these limitations, in this work, we construct a Three-Branch Mixed extractor and propose a Bi-level Multi-source unsupervised domain adaptation method called BTMuda for breast cancer diagnosis. Our method addresses the problems of domain shift by dividing domain shift issues into two levels: intra-domain and inter-domain. To reduce the intra-domain shift, we jointly train a CNN and a Transformer as two paths of a domain mixed feature extractor to obtain robust representations rich in both low-level local and high-level global information. As for the inter-domain shift, we redesign the Transformer delicately to a three-branch architecture with cross-attention and distillation, which learns domain-invariant representations from multiple domains. Besides, we introduce two alignment modules - one for feature alignment and one for classifier alignment - to improve the alignment process. Extensive experiments conducted on three public mammographic datasets demonstrate that our BTMuda outperforms state-of-the-art methods.
Novel-WD: Exploring acquisition of Novel World Knowledge in LLMs Using Prefix-Tuning
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Teaching new information to pre-trained large language models (PLM) is a crucial but challenging task. Model adaptation techniques, such as fine-tuning and parameter-efficient training have been shown to store new facts at a slow rate; continual learning is an option but is costly and prone to catastrophic forgetting. This work studies and quantifies how PLM may learn and remember new world knowledge facts that do not occur in their pre-training corpus, which only contains world knowledge up to a certain date. To that purpose, we first propose Novel-WD, a new dataset consisting of sentences containing novel facts extracted from recent Wikidata updates, along with two evaluation tasks in the form of causal language modeling and multiple choice questions (MCQ). We make this dataset freely available to the community, and release a procedure to later build new versions of similar datasets with up-to-date information. We also explore the use of prefix-tuning for novel information learning, and analyze how much information can be stored within a given prefix. We show that a single fact can reliably be encoded within a single prefix, and that the prefix capacity increases with its length and with the base model size.
A survey on multi-fidelity surrogates for simulators with functional outputs: unified framework and benchmark
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2024
Year: 2024

Multi-fidelity surrogate models combining dimensionality reduction and an intermediate surrogate in the reduced space allow a cost-effective emulation of simulators with functional outputs. The surrogate is an input-output mapping learned from a limited number of simulator evaluations. This computational efficiency makes surrogates commonly used for many-query tasks. Diverse methods for building them have been proposed in the literature, but they have only been partially compared. This paper introduces a unified framework encompassing the different surrogate families, followed by a methodological comparison and the exposition of practical considerations. More than a dozen of existing multi-fidelity surrogates have been implemented under the unified framework and evaluated on a set of benchmark problems. Based on the results, guidelines and recommendations are proposed regarding multi-fidelity surrogates with functional outputs. Our study shows that most multi-fidelity surrogates outperform their tested single-fidelity counterparts under the considered settings. But no particular surrogate is performing better on every test case. Therefore, the selection of a surrogate should consider the specific properties of the emulated functions, in particular the correlation between the low- and high-fidelity simulators, the size of the training set, the local nonlinear variations in the residual fields, and the size of the training datasets.
RISSOLE: Parameter-efficient Diffusion Models via Block-wise Generation and Retrieval-Guidance
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Diffusion-based models demonstrate impressive generation capabilities. However, they also have a massive number of parameters, resulting in enormous model sizes, thus making them unsuitable for deployment on resource-constraint devices. Block-wise generation can be a promising alternative for designing compact-sized (parameter-efficient) deep generative models since the model can generate one block at a time instead of generating the whole image at once. However, block-wise generation is also considerably challenging because ensuring coherence across generated blocks can be non-trivial. To this end, we design a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) approach and leverage the corresponding blocks of the images retrieved by the RAG module to condition the training and generation stages of a block-wise denoising diffusion model. Our conditioning schemes ensure coherence across the different blocks during training and, consequently, during generation. While we showcase our approach using the latent diffusion model (LDM) as the base model, it can be used with other variants of denoising diffusion models. We validate the solution of the coherence problem through the proposed approach by reporting substantive experiments to demonstrate our approach's effectiveness in compact model size and excellent generation quality.
Sparse Uncertainty-Informed Sampling from Federated Streaming Data
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

We present a numerically robust, computationally efficient approach for non-I.I.D. data stream sampling in federated client systems, where resources are limited and labeled data for local model adaptation is sparse and expensive. The proposed method identifies relevant stream observations to optimize the underlying client model, given a local labeling budget, and performs instantaneous labeling decisions without relying on any memory buffering strategies. Our experiments show enhanced training batch diversity and an improved numerical robustness of the proposal compared to existing strategies over large-scale data streams, making our approach an effective and convenient solution in FL environments.
VQ4DiT: Efficient Post-Training Vector Quantization for Diffusion Transformers
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

The Diffusion Transformers Models (DiTs) have transitioned the network architecture from traditional UNets to transformers, demonstrating exceptional capabilities in image generation. Although DiTs have been widely applied to high-definition video generation tasks, their large parameter size hinders inference on edge devices. Vector quantization (VQ) can decompose model weight into a codebook and assignments, allowing extreme weight quantization and significantly reducing memory usage. In this paper, we propose VQ4DiT, a fast post-training vector quantization method for DiTs. We found that traditional VQ methods calibrate only the codebook without calibrating the assignments. This leads to weight sub-vectors being incorrectly assigned to the same assignment, providing inconsistent gradients to the codebook and resulting in a suboptimal result. To address this challenge, VQ4DiT calculates the candidate assignment set for each weight sub-vector based on Euclidean distance and reconstructs the sub-vector based on the weighted average. Then, using the zero-data and block-wise calibration method, the optimal assignment from the set is efficiently selected while calibrating the codebook. VQ4DiT quantizes a DiT XL/2 model on a single NVIDIA A100 GPU within 20 minutes to 5 hours depending on the different quantization settings. Experiments show that VQ4DiT establishes a new state-of-the-art in model size and performance trade-offs, quantizing weights to 2-bit precision while retaining acceptable image generation quality.