OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Accurate Portraits of Scientific Resources and Knowledge Service Components
Venue: arXiv cs.DL 2022
Year: 2022

With the advent of the cloud computing era, the cost of creating, capturing and managing information has gradually decreased. The amount of data in the Internet is also showing explosive growth, and more and more scientific and technological resources are uploaded to the network. Different from news and social media data ubiquitous in the Internet, the main body of scientific and technological resources is composed of academic-style resources or entities such as papers, patents, authors, and research institutions. There is a rich relationship network between resources, from which a large amount of cutting-edge scientific and technological information can be mined. There are a large number of management and classification standards for existing scientific and technological resources, but these standards are difficult to completely cover all entities and associations of scientific and technological resources, and cannot accurately extract important information contained in scientific and technological resources. How to construct a complete and accurate representation of scientific and technological resources from structured and unstructured reports and texts in the network, and how to tap the potential value of scientific and technological resources is an urgent problem. The solution is to construct accurate portraits of scientific and technological resources in combination with knowledge graph related technologies.
PM4Py-GPU: a High-Performance General-Purpose Library for Process Mining
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2022
Year: 2022

Open-source process mining provides many algorithms for the analysis of event data which could be used to analyze mainstream processes (e.g., O2C, P2P, CRM). However, compared to commercial tools, they lack the performance and struggle to analyze large amounts of data. This paper presents PM4Py-GPU, a Python process mining library based on the NVIDIA RAPIDS framework. Thanks to the dataframe columnar storage and the high level of parallelism, a significant speed-up is achieved on classic process mining computations and processing activities.
IC-GVINS: A Robust, Real-time, INS-Centric GNSS-Visual-Inertial Navigation System for Wheeled Robot
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2022
Year: 2022

In this letter, we present a robust, real-time, inertial navigation system (INS)-Centric GNSS-Visual-Inertial navigation system (IC-GVINS) for wheeled robot, in which the precise INS is fully utilized in both the state estimation and visual process. To improve the system robustness, the INS information is employed during the whole keyframe-based visual process, with strict outlier-culling strategy. GNSS is adopted to perform an accurate and convenient initialization of the IC-GVINS, and is further employed to achieve absolute positioning in large-scale environments. The IMU, visual, and GNSS measurements are tightly fused within the framework of factor graph optimization. Dedicated experiments were conducted to evaluate the robustness and accuracy of the IC-GVINS on a wheeled robot. The IC-GVINS demonstrates superior robustness in various visual-degenerated scenes with moving objects. Compared to the state-of-the-art visual-inertial navigation systems, the proposed method yields improved robustness and accuracy in various environments. We open source our codes combined with the dataset on GitHub
T- Hop: Tensor representation of paths in graph convolutional networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

We describe a method for encoding path information in graphs into a 3-d tensor. We show a connection between the introduced path representation scheme and powered adjacency matrices. To alleviate the heavy computational demands of working with the 3-d tensor, we propose to apply dimensionality reduction on the depth axis of the tensor. We then describe our the reduced 3-d matrix can be parlayed into a plausible graph convolutional layer, by infusing it into an established graph convolutional network framework such as MixHop.
gTLO: A Generalized and Non-linear Multi-Objective Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

In real-world decision optimization, often multiple competing objectives must be taken into account. Following classical reinforcement learning, these objectives have to be combined into a single reward function. In contrast, multi-objective reinforcement learning (MORL) methods learn from vectors of per-objective rewards instead. In the case of multi-policy MORL, sets of decision policies for various preferences regarding the conflicting objectives are optimized. This is especially important when target preferences are not known during training or when preferences change dynamically during application. While it is, in general, straightforward to extend a single-objective reinforcement learning method for MORL based on linear scalarization, solutions that are reachable by these methods are limited to convex regions of the Pareto front. Non-linear MORL methods like Thresholded Lexicographic Ordering (TLO) are designed to overcome this limitation. Generalized MORL methods utilize function approximation to generalize across objective preferences and thereby implicitly learn multiple policies in a data-efficient manner, even for complex decision problems with high-dimensional or continuous state spaces. In this work, we propose \textit{generalized Thresholded Lexicographic Ordering} (gTLO), a novel method that aims to combine non-linear MORL with the advantages of generalized MORL. We introduce a deep reinforcement learning realization of the algorithm and present promising results on a standard benchmark for non-linear MORL and a real-world application from the domain of manufacturing process control.
HiMODE: A Hybrid Monocular Omnidirectional Depth Estimation Model
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

Monocular omnidirectional depth estimation is receiving considerable research attention due to its broad applications for sensing 360° surroundings. Existing approaches in this field suffer from limitations in recovering small object details and data lost during the ground-truth depth map acquisition. In this paper, a novel monocular omnidirectional depth estimation model, namely HiMODE is proposed based on a hybrid CNN+Transformer (encoder-decoder) architecture whose modules are efficiently designed to mitigate distortion and computational cost, without performance degradation. Firstly, we design a feature pyramid network based on the HNet block to extract high-resolution features near the edges. The performance is further improved, benefiting from a self and cross attention layer and spatial/temporal patches in the Transformer encoder and decoder, respectively. Besides, a spatial residual block is employed to reduce the number of parameters. By jointly passing the deep features extracted from an input image at each backbone block, along with the raw depth maps predicted by the transformer encoder-decoder, through a context adjustment layer, our model can produce resulting depth maps with better visual quality than the ground-truth. Comprehensive ablation studies demonstrate the significance of each individual module. Extensive experiments conducted on three datasets; Stanford3D, Matterport3D, and SunCG, demonstrate that HiMODE can achieve state-of-the-art performance for 360° monocular depth estimation.
Pareto Conditioned Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

In multi-objective optimization, learning all the policies that reach Pareto-efficient solutions is an expensive process. The set of optimal policies can grow exponentially with the number of objectives, and recovering all solutions requires an exhaustive exploration of the entire state space. We propose Pareto Conditioned Networks (PCN), a method that uses a single neural network to encompass all non-dominated policies. PCN associates every past transition with its episode's return. It trains the network such that, when conditioned on this same return, it should reenact said transition. In doing so we transform the optimization problem into a classification problem. We recover a concrete policy by conditioning the network on the desired Pareto-efficient solution. Our method is stable as it learns in a supervised fashion, thus avoiding moving target issues. Moreover, by using a single network, PCN scales efficiently with the number of objectives. Finally, it makes minimal assumptions on the shape of the Pareto front, which makes it suitable to a wider range of problems than previous state-of-the-art multi-objective reinforcement learning algorithms.
Performance Metrics for Communication Systems with Forward Error Correction
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2022
Year: 2022

We revisit performance metrics for optical communication systems with FEC. We illustrate the concept of universality and discuss the most widespread performance thresholds. Finally, we show by example how to include FEC into transmission experiments.
End-to-End Speech Translation for Code Switched Speech
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2022
Year: 2022

Code switching (CS) refers to the phenomenon of interchangeably using words and phrases from different languages. CS can pose significant accuracy challenges to NLP, due to the often monolingual nature of the underlying systems. In this work, we focus on CS in the context of English/Spanish conversations for the task of speech translation (ST), generating and evaluating both transcript and translation. To evaluate model performance on this task, we create a novel ST corpus derived from existing public data sets. We explore various ST architectures across two dimensions: cascaded (transcribe then translate) vs end-to-end (jointly transcribe and translate) and unidirectional (source -> target) vs bidirectional (source <-> target). We show that our ST architectures, and especially our bidirectional end-to-end architecture, perform well on CS speech, even when no CS training data is used.
An approach to improving sound-based vehicle speed estimation
Venue: arXiv cs.SD 2022
Year: 2022

We consider improving the performance of a recently proposed sound-based vehicle speed estimation method. In the original method, an intermediate feature, referred to as the modified attenuation (MA), has been proposed for both vehicle detection and speed estimation. The MA feature maximizes at the instant of the vehicle's closest point of approach, which represents a training label extracted from video recording of the vehicle's pass by. In this paper, we show that the original labeling approach is suboptimal and propose a method for label correction. The method is tested on the VS10 dataset, which contains 304 audio-video recordings of ten different vehicles. The results show that the proposed label correction method reduces average speed estimation error from 7.39 km/h to 6.92 km/h. If the speed is discretized into 10 km/h classes, the accuracy of correct class prediction is improved from 53.2% to 53.8%, whereas when tolerance of one class offset is allowed, accuracy is improved from 93.4% to 94.3%.
On the link between conscious function and general intelligence in humans and machines
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2022
Year: 2022

In popular media, there is often a connection drawn between the advent of awareness in artificial agents and those same agents simultaneously achieving human or superhuman level intelligence. In this work, we explore the validity and potential application of this seemingly intuitive link between consciousness and intelligence. We do so by examining the cognitive abilities associated with three contemporary theories of conscious function: Global Workspace Theory (GWT), Information Generation Theory (IGT), and Attention Schema Theory (AST). We find that all three theories specifically relate conscious function to some aspect of domain-general intelligence in humans. With this insight, we turn to the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and find that, while still far from demonstrating general intelligence, many state-of-the-art deep learning methods have begun to incorporate key aspects of each of the three functional theories. Having identified this trend, we use the motivating example of mental time travel in humans to propose ways in which insights from each of the three theories may be combined into a single unified and implementable model. Given that it is made possible by cognitive abilities underlying each of the three functional theories, artificial agents capable of mental time travel would not only possess greater general intelligence than current approaches, but also be more consistent with our current understanding of the functional role of consciousness in humans, thus making it a promising near-term goal for AI research.
Towards Painless Policy Optimization for Constrained MDPs
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

We study policy optimization in an infinite horizon, $γ$-discounted constrained Markov decision process (CMDP). Our objective is to return a policy that achieves large expected reward with a small constraint violation. We consider the online setting with linear function approximation and assume global access to the corresponding features. We propose a generic primal-dual framework that allows us to bound the reward sub-optimality and constraint violation for arbitrary algorithms in terms of their primal and dual regret on online linear optimization problems. We instantiate this framework to use coin-betting algorithms and propose the Coin Betting Politex (CBP) algorithm. Assuming that the action-value functions are $\varepsilon_b$-close to the span of the $d$-dimensional state-action features and no sampling errors, we prove that $T$ iterations of CBP result in an $O\left(\frac{1}{(1 - γ)^3 \sqrt{T}} + \frac{\varepsilon_b\sqrt{d}}{(1 - γ)^2} \right)$ reward sub-optimality and an $O\left(\frac{1}{(1 - γ)^2 \sqrt{T}} + \frac{\varepsilon_b \sqrt{d}}{1 - γ} \right)$ constraint violation. Importantly, unlike gradient descent-ascent and other recent methods, CBP does not require extensive hyperparameter tuning. Via experiments on synthetic and Cartpole environments, we demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of CBP.
Single-Turn Debate Does Not Help Humans Answer Hard Reading-Comprehension Questions
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2022
Year: 2022

Current QA systems can generate reasonable-sounding yet false answers without explanation or evidence for the generated answer, which is especially problematic when humans cannot readily check the model's answers. This presents a challenge for building trust in machine learning systems. We take inspiration from real-world situations where difficult questions are answered by considering opposing sides (see Irving et al., 2018). For multiple-choice QA examples, we build a dataset of single arguments for both a correct and incorrect answer option in a debate-style set-up as an initial step in training models to produce explanations for two candidate answers. We use long contexts -- humans familiar with the context write convincing explanations for pre-selected correct and incorrect answers, and we test if those explanations allow humans who have not read the full context to more accurately determine the correct answer. We do not find that explanations in our set-up improve human accuracy, but a baseline condition shows that providing human-selected text snippets does improve accuracy. We use these findings to suggest ways of improving the debate set up for future data collection efforts.
Persona-driven Dominant/Submissive Map (PDSM) Generation for Tutorials
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2022
Year: 2022

In this paper, we present a method for automated persona-driven video game tutorial level generation. Tutorial levels are scenarios in which the player can explore and discover different rules and game mechanics. Procedural personas can guide generators to create content which encourages or discourages certain playstyle behaviors. In this system, we use procedural personas to calculate the behavioral characteristics of levels which are evolved using the quality-diversity algorithm known as Constrained MAP-Elites. An evolved map's quality is determined by its simplicity: the simpler it is, the better it is. Within this work, we show that the generated maps can strongly encourage or discourage different persona-like behaviors and range from simple solutions to complex puzzle-levels, making them perfect candidates for a tutorial generative system.
Position-wise optimizer: A nature-inspired optimization algorithm
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2022
Year: 2022

The human nervous system utilizes synaptic plasticity to solve optimization problems. Previous studies have tried to add the plasticity factor to the training process of artificial neural networks, but most of those models require complex external control over the network or complex novel rules. In this manuscript, a novel nature-inspired optimization algorithm is introduced that imitates biological neural plasticity. Furthermore, the model is tested on three datasets and the results are compared with gradient descent optimization.
Graph Ordering Attention Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have been successfully used in many problems involving graph-structured data, achieving state-of-the-art performance. GNNs typically employ a message-passing scheme, in which every node aggregates information from its neighbors using a permutation-invariant aggregation function. Standard well-examined choices such as the mean or sum aggregation functions have limited capabilities, as they are not able to capture interactions among neighbors. In this work, we formalize these interactions using an information-theoretic framework that notably includes synergistic information. Driven by this definition, we introduce the Graph Ordering Attention (GOAT) layer, a novel GNN component that captures interactions between nodes in a neighborhood. This is achieved by learning local node orderings via an attention mechanism and processing the ordered representations using a recurrent neural network aggregator. This design allows us to make use of a permutation-sensitive aggregator while maintaining the permutation-equivariance of the proposed GOAT layer. The GOAT model demonstrates its increased performance in modeling graph metrics that capture complex information, such as the betweenness centrality and the effective size of a node. In practical use-cases, its superior modeling capability is confirmed through its success in several real-world node classification benchmarks.
A Generative Language Model for Few-shot Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2022
Year: 2022

Sentiment analysis is an important task in natural language processing. In recent works, pre-trained language models are often used to achieve state-of-the-art results, especially when training data is scarce. It is common to fine-tune on the downstream task, usually by adding task-specific layers on top of the model. In this paper, we focus on aspect-based sentiment analysis, which involves extracting aspect term, category, and predicting their corresponding polarities. In particular, we are interested in few-shot settings. We propose to reformulate the extraction and prediction tasks into the sequence generation task, using a generative language model with unidirectional attention (GPT2 is used unless stated otherwise). This way, the model learns to accomplish the tasks via language generation without the need of training task-specific layers. Our evaluation results on the single-task polarity prediction show that our approach outperforms the previous state-of-the-art (based on BERT) on average performance by a large margins in few-shot and full-shot settings. More importantly, our generative approach significantly reduces the model variance caused by low-resource data. We further demonstrate that the proposed generative language model can handle joint and multi-task settings, unlike previous work. We observe that the proposed sequence generation method achieves further improved performances on polarity prediction when the model is trained via joint and multi-task settings. Further evaluation on similar sentiment analysis datasets, SST-2, SST- and OOS intent detection validates the superiority and noise robustness of generative language model in few-shot settings.
A Survey on Crowdsourcing Applications in Smart Cities
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2022
Year: 2022

With the emergence of the Internet of things (IoT), human life is now progressing towards smartification faster than ever before. Thus, smart cities become automated in different aspects such as business, education, economy, medicine, and urban areas. Since smartification requires a variety of dynamic information in different urban dimensions, mobile crowdsourcing has gained importance in smart cities. This chapter systematically reviews the related applications of smart cities that use mobile crowdsourcing for data acquisition. For this purpose, the applications are classified as environmental, urban life, and transportation categories and then investigated in detail. This survey helps in understanding the current situation of smart cities from the viewpoint of crowdsourcing and discusses the future research directions in this field.
Generalizing Adversarial Explanations with Grad-CAM
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad- CAM), is an example-based explanation method that provides a gradient activation heat map as an explanation for Convolution Neural Network (CNN) models. The drawback of this method is that it cannot be used to generalize CNN behaviour. In this paper, we present a novel method that extends Grad-CAM from example-based explanations to a method for explaining global model behaviour. This is achieved by introducing two new metrics, (i) Mean Observed Dissimilarity (MOD) and (ii) Variation in Dissimilarity (VID), for model generalization. These metrics are computed by comparing a Normalized Inverted Structural Similarity Index (NISSIM) metric of the Grad-CAM generated heatmap for samples from the original test set and samples from the adversarial test set. For our experiment, we study adversarial attacks on deep models such as VGG16, ResNet50, and ResNet101, and wide models such as InceptionNetv3 and XceptionNet using Fast Gradient Sign Method (FGSM). We then compute the metrics MOD and VID for the automatic face recognition (AFR) use case with the VGGFace2 dataset. We observe a consistent shift in the region highlighted in the Grad-CAM heatmap, reflecting its participation to the decision making, across all models under adversarial attacks. The proposed method can be used to understand adversarial attacks and explain the behaviour of black box CNN models for image analysis.
Implementing Online Reinforcement Learning with Temporal Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2022
Year: 2022

A Temporal Neural Network (TNN) architecture for implementing efficient online reinforcement learning is proposed and studied via simulation. The proposed T-learning system is composed of a frontend TNN that implements online unsupervised clustering and a backend TNN that implements online reinforcement learning. The reinforcement learning paradigm employs biologically plausible neo-Hebbian three-factor learning rules. As a working example, a prototype implementation of the cart-pole problem (balancing an inverted pendulum) is studied via simulation.