OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Bringing Inter-Thread Cache Benefits to Federated Scheduling -- Extended Results & Technical Report
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2020
Year: 2020

Multiprocessor scheduling of hard real-time tasks modeled by directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) exploits the inherent parallelism presented by the model. For DAG tasks, a node represents a request to execute an object on one of the available processors. In one DAG task, there may be multiple execution requests for one object, each represented by a distinct node. These distinct execution requests offer an opportunity to reduce their combined cache overhead through coordinated scheduling of objects as threads within a parallel task. The goal of this work is to realize this opportunity by incorporating the cache-aware BUNDLE-scheduling algorithm into federated scheduling of sporadic DAG task sets. This is the first work to incorporate instruction cache sharing into federated scheduling. The result is a modification of the DAG model named the DAG with objects and threads (DAG-OT). Under the DAG-OT model, descriptions of nodes explicitly include their underlying executable object and number of threads. When possible, nodes assigned the same executable object are collapsed into a single node; joining their threads when BUNDLE-scheduled. Compared to the DAG model, the DAG-OT model with cache-aware scheduling reduces the number of cores allocated to individual tasks by approximately 20 percent in the synthetic evaluation and up to 50 percent on a novel parallel computing platform implementation. By reducing the number of allocated cores, the DAG-OT model is able to schedule a subset of previously infeasible task sets.
A Video Analysis Method on Wanfang Dataset via Deep Neural Network
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

The topic of object detection has been largely improved recently, especially with the development of convolutional neural network. However, there still exist a lot of challenging cases, such as small object, compact and dense or highly overlapping object. Existing methods can detect multiple objects wonderfully, but because of the slight changes between frames, the detection effect of the model will become unstable, the detection results may result in dropping or increasing the object. In the pedestrian flow detection task, such phenomenon can not accurately calculate the flow. To solve this problem, in this paper, we describe the new function for real-time multi-object detection in sports competition and pedestrians flow detection in public based on deep learning. Our work is to extract a video clip and solve this frame of clips efficiently. More specfically, our algorithm includes two stages: judge method and optimization method. The judge can set a maximum threshold for better results under the model, the threshold value corresponds to the upper limit of the algorithm with better detection results. The optimization method to solve detection jitter problem. Because of the occurrence of frame hopping in the video, and it will result in the generation of video fragments discontinuity. We use optimization algorithm to get the key value, and then the detection result value of index is replaced by key value to stabilize the change of detection result sequence. Based on the proposed algorithm, we adopt wanfang sports competition dataset as the main test dataset and our own test dataset for YOLOv3-Abnormal Number Version(YOLOv3-ANV), which is 5.4% average improvement compared with existing methods. Also, video above the threshold value can be obtained for further analysis. Spontaneously, our work also can used for pedestrians flow detection and pedestrian alarm tasks.
UKARA 1.0 Challenge Track 1: Automatic Short-Answer Scoring in Bahasa Indonesia
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2020
Year: 2020

We describe our third-place solution to the UKARA 1.0 challenge on automated essay scoring. The task consists of a binary classification problem on two datasets | answers from two different questions. We ended up using two different models for the two datasets. For task A, we applied a random forest algorithm on features extracted using unigram with latent semantic analysis (LSA). On the other hand, for task B, we only used logistic regression on TF-IDF features. Our model results in F1 score of 0.812.
Hand-Priming in Object Localization for Assistive Egocentric Vision
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

Egocentric vision holds great promises for increasing access to visual information and improving the quality of life for people with visual impairments, with object recognition being one of the daily challenges for this population. While we strive to improve recognition performance, it remains difficult to identify which object is of interest to the user; the object may not even be included in the frame due to challenges in camera aiming without visual feedback. Also, gaze information, commonly used to infer the area of interest in egocentric vision, is often not dependable. However, blind users often tend to include their hand either interacting with the object that they wish to recognize or simply placing it in proximity for better camera aiming. We propose localization models that leverage the presence of the hand as the contextual information for priming the center area of the object of interest. In our approach, hand segmentation is fed to either the entire localization network or its last convolutional layers. Using egocentric datasets from sighted and blind individuals, we show that the hand-priming achieves higher precision than other approaches, such as fine-tuning, multi-class, and multi-task learning, which also encode hand-object interactions in localization.
Modeling Future Cost for Neural Machine Translation
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2020
Year: 2020

Existing neural machine translation (NMT) systems utilize sequence-to-sequence neural networks to generate target translation word by word, and then make the generated word at each time-step and the counterpart in the references as consistent as possible. However, the trained translation model tends to focus on ensuring the accuracy of the generated target word at the current time-step and does not consider its future cost which means the expected cost of generating the subsequent target translation (i.e., the next target word). To respond to this issue, we propose a simple and effective method to model the future cost of each target word for NMT systems. In detail, a time-dependent future cost is estimated based on the current generated target word and its contextual information to boost the training of the NMT model. Furthermore, the learned future context representation at the current time-step is used to help the generation of the next target word in the decoding. Experimental results on three widely-used translation datasets, including the WMT14 German-to-English, WMT14 English-to-French, and WMT17 Chinese-to-English, show that the proposed approach achieves significant improvements over strong Transformer-based NMT baseline.
Global Convergence and Geometric Characterization of Slow to Fast Weight Evolution in Neural Network Training for Classifying Linearly Non-Separable Data
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

In this paper, we study the dynamics of gradient descent in learning neural networks for classification problems. Unlike in existing works, we consider the linearly non-separable case where the training data of different classes lie in orthogonal subspaces. We show that when the network has sufficient (but not exceedingly large) number of neurons, (1) the corresponding minimization problem has a desirable landscape where all critical points are global minima with perfect classification; (2) gradient descent is guaranteed to converge to the global minima. Moreover, we discovered a geometric condition on the network weights so that when it is satisfied, the weight evolution transitions from a slow phase of weight direction spreading to a fast phase of weight convergence. The geometric condition says that the convex hull of the weights projected on the unit sphere contains the origin.
Exploring and Distilling Cross-Modal Information for Image Captioning
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

Recently, attention-based encoder-decoder models have been used extensively in image captioning. Yet there is still great difficulty for the current methods to achieve deep image understanding. In this work, we argue that such understanding requires visual attention to correlated image regions and semantic attention to coherent attributes of interest. Based on the Transformer, to perform effective attention, we explore image captioning from a cross-modal perspective and propose the Global-and-Local Information Exploring-and-Distilling approach that explores and distills the source information in vision and language. It globally provides the aspect vector, a spatial and relational representation of images based on caption contexts, through the extraction of salient region groupings and attribute collocations, and locally extracts the fine-grained regions and attributes in reference to the aspect vector for word selection. Our Transformer-based model achieves a CIDEr score of 129.3 in offline COCO evaluation on the COCO testing set with remarkable efficiency in terms of accuracy, speed, and parameter budget.
Deep Learning Enabled Optimization of Downlink Beamforming Under Per-Antenna Power Constraints: Algorithms and Experimental Demonstration
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2020
Year: 2020

This paper studies fast downlink beamforming algorithms using deep learning in multiuser multiple-input-single-output systems where each transmit antenna at the base station has its own power constraint. We focus on the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) balancing problem which is quasi-convex but there is no efficient solution available. We first design a fast subgradient algorithm that can achieve near-optimal solution with reduced complexity. We then propose a deep neural network structure to learn the optimal beamforming based on convolutional networks and exploitation of the duality of the original problem. Two strategies of learning various dual variables are investigated with different accuracies, and the corresponding recovery of the original solution is facilitated by the subgradient algorithm. We also develop a generalization method of the proposed algorithms so that they can adapt to the varying number of users and antennas without re-training. We carry out intensive numerical simulations and testbed experiments to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms. Results show that the proposed algorithms achieve close to optimal solution in simulations with perfect channel information and outperform the alleged theoretically optimal solution in experiments, illustrating a better performance-complexity tradeoff than existing schemes.
Reinforcement Learning through Active Inference
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

The central tenet of reinforcement learning (RL) is that agents seek to maximize the sum of cumulative rewards. In contrast, active inference, an emerging framework within cognitive and computational neuroscience, proposes that agents act to maximize the evidence for a biased generative model. Here, we illustrate how ideas from active inference can augment traditional RL approaches by (i) furnishing an inherent balance of exploration and exploitation, and (ii) providing a more flexible conceptualization of reward. Inspired by active inference, we develop and implement a novel objective for decision making, which we term the free energy of the expected future. We demonstrate that the resulting algorithm successfully balances exploration and exploitation, simultaneously achieving robust performance on several challenging RL benchmarks with sparse, well-shaped, and no rewards.
Comparison of Speech Representations for Automatic Quality Estimation in Multi-Speaker Text-to-Speech Synthesis
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2020
Year: 2020

We aim to characterize how different speakers contribute to the perceived output quality of multi-speaker Text-to-Speech (TTS) synthesis. We automatically rate the quality of TTS using a neural network (NN) trained on human mean opinion score (MOS) ratings. First, we train and evaluate our NN model on 13 different TTS and voice conversion (VC) systems from the ASVSpoof 2019 Logical Access (LA) Dataset. Since it is not known how best to represent speech for this task, we compare 8 different representations alongside MOSNet frame-based features. Our representations include image-based spectrogram features and x-vector embeddings that explicitly model different types of noise such as T60 reverberation time. Our NN predicts MOS with a high correlation to human judgments. We report prediction correlation and error. A key finding is the quality achieved for certain speakers seems consistent, regardless of the TTS or VC system. It is widely accepted that some speakers give higher quality than others for building a TTS system: our method provides an automatic way to identify such speakers. Finally, to see if our quality prediction models generalize, we predict quality scores for synthetic speech using a separate multi-speaker TTS system that was trained on LibriTTS data, and conduct our own MOS listening test to compare human ratings with our NN predictions.
MORLAB -- The Model Order Reduction LABoratory
Venue: arXiv cs.MS 2020
Year: 2020

For an easy use of model order reduction techniques in applications, software solutions are needed. In this paper, we describe the MORLAB, Model Order Reduction LABoratory, toolbox as an efficient implementation of model reduction techniques for dense, medium-scale linear time-invariant systems. Giving an introduction to the underlying programming principles of the toolbox, we show the basic idea of spectral splitting and present an overview about implemented model reduction techniques. Two numerical examples are used to illustrate different use cases of the MORLAB toolbox.
ImmuNetNAS: An Immune-network approach for searching Convolutional Neural Network Architectures
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2020
Year: 2020

In this research, we propose ImmuNetNAS, a novel Neural Architecture Search (NAS) approach inspired by the immune network theory. The core of ImmuNetNAS is built on the original immune network algorithm, which iteratively updates the population through hypermutation and selection, and eliminates the self-generation individuals that do not meet the requirements through comparing antibody affinity and inter-specific similarity. In addition, in order to facilitate the mutation operation, we propose a novel two-component based neural structure coding strategy. Furthermore, an improved mutation strategy based on Standard Genetic Algorithm (SGA) was proposed according to this encoding method. Finally, based on the proposed two-component based coding method, a new antibody affinity calculation method was developed to screen suitable neural architectures. Systematic evaluations demonstrate that our system has achieved good performance on both the MNIST and CIFAR-10 datasets. We open-source our code on GitHub in order to share it with other deep learning researchers and practitioners.
A spatio-temporalisation of ALC(D) and its translation into alternating automata augmented with spatial constraints
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2020
Year: 2020

The aim of this work is to provide a family of qualitative theories for spatial change in general, and for motion of spatial scenes in particular. To achieve this, we consider a spatio-temporalisation MTALC(Dx), of the well-known ALC(D) family of Description Logics (DLs) with a concrete domain: the MTALC(Dx) concepts are interpreted over infinite k-ary Sigma-trees, with the nodes standing for time points, and Sigma including, additionally to its uses in classical k-ary Sigma-trees, the description of the snapshot of an n-object spatial scene of interest; the roles split into m+n immediate-successor (accessibility) relations, which are serial, irreflexive and antisymmetric, and of which m are general, not necessarily functional, the other n functional; the concrete domain Dx is generated by an RCC8-like spatial Relation Algebra (RA) x, and is used to guide the change by imposing spatial constraints on objects of the "followed" spatial scene, eventually at different time points of the input trees. In order to capture the expressiveness of most modal temporal logics encountered in the literature, we introduce weakly cyclic Terminological Boxes (TBoxes) of MTALC(Dx), whose axioms capture the decreasing property of modal temporal operators. We show the important result that satisfiability of an MTALC(Dx) concept with respect to a weakly cyclic TBox can be reduced to the emptiness problem of a Buchi weak alternating automaton augmented with spatial constraints. In another work, complementary to this one, also submitted to this conference, we thoroughly investigate Buchi automata augmented with spatial constraints, and provide, in particular, a translation of an alternating into a nondeterministic, and an effective decision procedure for the emptiness problem of the latter.
Describing Physics For Physical Reasoning: Force-based Sequential Manipulation Planning
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2020
Year: 2020

Physical reasoning is a core aspect of intelligence in animals and humans. A central question is what model should be used as a basis for reasoning. Existing work considered models ranging from intuitive physics and physical simulators to contact dynamics models used in robotic manipulation and locomotion. In this work we propose descriptions of physics which directly allow us to leverage optimization methods for physical reasoning and sequential manipulation planning. The proposed multi-physics formulation enables the solver to mix various levels of abstraction and simplifications for different objects and phases of the solution. As an essential ingredient, we propose a specific parameterization of wrench exchange between object surfaces in a path optimization framework, introducing the point-of-attack as decision variable. We demonstrate the approach on various robot manipulation planning problems, such as grasping a stick in order to push or lift another object to a target, shifting and grasping a book from a shelve, and throwing an object to bounce towards a target.
Optimizing Memory-Access Patterns for Deep Learning Accelerators
Venue: arXiv cs.PF 2020
Year: 2020

Deep learning (DL) workloads are moving towards accelerators for faster processing and lower cost. Modern DL accelerators are good at handling the large-scale multiply-accumulate operations that dominate DL workloads; however, it is challenging to make full use of the compute power of an accelerator since the data must be properly staged in a software-managed scratchpad memory. Failing to do so can result in significant performance loss. This paper proposes a systematic approach which leverages the polyhedral model to analyze all operators of a DL model together to minimize the number of memory accesses. Experiments show that our approach can substantially reduce the impact of memory accesses required by common neural-network models on a homegrown AWS machine-learning inference chip named Inferentia, which is available through Amazon EC2 Inf1 instances.
Quantile Regularization: Towards Implicit Calibration of Regression Models
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

Recent works have shown that most deep learning models are often poorly calibrated, i.e., they may produce overconfident predictions that are wrong. It is therefore desirable to have models that produce predictive uncertainty estimates that are reliable. Several approaches have been proposed recently to calibrate classification models. However, there is relatively little work on calibrating regression models. We present a method for calibrating regression models based on a novel quantile regularizer defined as the cumulative KL divergence between two CDFs. Unlike most of the existing approaches for calibrating regression models, which are based on post-hoc processing of the model's output and require an additional dataset, our method is trainable in an end-to-end fashion without requiring an additional dataset. The proposed regularizer can be used with any training objective for regression. We also show that post-hoc calibration methods like Isotonic Calibration sometimes compound miscalibration whereas our method provides consistently better calibrations. We provide empirical results demonstrating that the proposed quantile regularizer significantly improves calibration for regression models trained using approaches, such as Dropout VI and Deep Ensembles.
Infrared and 3D skeleton feature fusion for RGB-D action recognition
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

A challenge of skeleton-based action recognition is the difficulty to classify actions with similar motions and object-related actions. Visual clues from other streams help in that regard. RGB data are sensible to illumination conditions, thus unusable in the dark. To alleviate this issue and still benefit from a visual stream, we propose a modular network (FUSION) combining skeleton and infrared data. A 2D convolutional neural network (CNN) is used as a pose module to extract features from skeleton data. A 3D CNN is used as an infrared module to extract visual cues from videos. Both feature vectors are then concatenated and exploited conjointly using a multilayer perceptron (MLP). Skeleton data also condition the infrared videos, providing a crop around the performing subjects and thus virtually focusing the attention of the infrared module. Ablation studies show that using pre-trained networks on other large scale datasets as our modules and data augmentation yield considerable improvements on the action classification accuracy. The strong contribution of our cropping strategy is also demonstrated. We evaluate our method on the NTU RGB+D dataset, the largest dataset for human action recognition from depth cameras, and report state-of-the-art performances.
Assuring the Integrity of Videos from Wireless-based IoT Devices using Blockchain
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2020
Year: 2020

Blockchain technology has drawn attention fromvarious communities. The underlying consensus mechanism inBlockchain enables a myriad of applications for the integrityassurance of stored data. In this paper, we utilize Blockchaintechnology to verify the authenticity of a video captured by astreaming IoT device for forensic investigation purposes. Theproposed approach computes the hash of video frames beforethey leave the IoT device and are transferred to a remote basestation. To guarantee the transmission, we ensure that this hashis sent through a TCP-based connection. The hash is then storedon multiple nodes on a permissioned blockchain platform. Incase the video is modified, the discrepancy will be detected byinvestigating the previously stored hash on the blockchain andcomparing it with the hash of the existing frame in question.In this work, we present the prototype as proof-of-concept withexperiment results. The system has been tested on a RaspberryPi with different quality of videos to evaluate performance. Theresults show that the concept can be implemented with moderatevideo resolutions.