OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Large-scale Mobile App Identification Using Deep Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2019
Year: 2019

Many network services and tools (e.g. network monitors, malware-detection systems, routing and billing policy enforcement modules in ISPs) depend on identifying the type of traffic that passes through the network. With the widespread use of mobile devices, the vast diversity of mobile apps, and the massive adoption of encryption protocols (such as TLS), large-scale encrypted traffic classification becomes increasingly difficult. In this paper, we propose a deep learning model for mobile app identification that works even with encrypted traffic. The proposed model only needs the payload of the first few packets for classification, and, hence, it is suitable even for applications that rely on early prediction, such as routing and QoS provisioning. The deep model achieves between 84% to 98% accuracy for the identification of 80 popular apps. We also perform occlusion analysis to bring insight into what data is leaked from SSL/TLS protocol that allows accurate app identification. Moreover, our traffic analysis shows that many apps generate not only app-specific traffic, but also numerous ambiguous flows. Ambiguous flows are flows generated by common functionality modules, such as advertisement and traffic analytics. Because such flows are common among many different apps, identifying the source app that generates ambiguous flows is challenging. To address this challenge, we propose a CNN+LSTM model that uses adjacent flows to learn the order and pattern of multiple flows, to better identify the app that generates them. We show that such flow association considerably improves the accuracy, particularly for ambiguous flows. Furthermore, we show that our approach is robust to mixed traffic scenarios where some unrelated flows may appear in adjacent flows. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that identifies the source app for ambiguous flows.
Clustering case statements for indirect branch predictors
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2019
Year: 2019

We present an O(nlogn) algorithm to compile a switch statement into jump tables. To generate jump tables that can be efficiently predicted by current hardware branch predictors, we added an upper bound on the number of entries for each table. This modification of the previously best known algorithm reduces the complexity from O(n^2) to O(nlogn).
Citation network centrality: a scientific awards predictor?
Venue: arXiv cs.DL 2019
Year: 2019

The $K$-index is an easily computable centrality index in complex networks, such as a scientific citations network. A researcher has a $K$-index equal to $K$ if he or she is cited by $K$ articles that have at least $K$ citations. The $K$-index has several advantages over Hirsh's $h$-index and, in previous studies, has shown better correlation with Nobel prizes than any other index given by the {\em Web of Science}, including the $h$-index. It is plausible that researchers who are the most connected to other scientifically well-connected researchers are the most likely to be doing important work and more likely to be awarded major prizes in a given area. However, the correlation found does not imply causation. Here we perform an experiment using the $K$-index, producing a shortlist of twelve candidates for major scientific prizes, including the Physics Nobel award, in the near future. For example, our top-12 $K$-index list naturally selects the 2019 Nobel laureate, James Peebles. The list can be updated annually and should be compared to laureates of the following years
Increasing the Quality of 360° Video Streaming by Transitioning between Viewport Quality Adaptation Mechanisms
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2019
Year: 2019

Virtual reality has been gaining popularity in recent years caused by the proliferation of affordable consumer-grade devices such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Samsung VR. Amongst the various VR applications, 360° video streaming is currently one of the most popular ones. It allows user to change their field-of-view (FoV) based on head movement, which enables them to freely select an area anywhere from the sphere the video is (virtually) projected to. While 360° video streaming offers new exciting ways of consuming content for viewers, it poses a series of challenges to the systems that are responsible for the distribution of such content from the origin to the viewer. One challenge is the significantly increased bandwidth requirement for streaming such content in real time. Recent research has shown that only streaming the content that is in the user's FoV in high quality can lead to strong bandwidth savings. This can be achieved by analyzing the viewers head orientation and movement based on sensor information. Alternatively, historic information from users that watched the content in the past can be taken into account to prefetch 360° video data in high quality assuming the viewer will direct the FoV to these areas. In this paper, we present a 360° video streaming system that transitions between sensor- and content-based predictive mechanisms. We evaluate the effects of this transition-based approach on the Quality of Experience (QoE) of such a VR streaming system and show that the perceived quality can be increased between 50\% and 80\% compared to systems that only apply either one of the two approaches.
Named Entity Recognition -- Is there a glass ceiling?
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2019
Year: 2019

Recent developments in Named Entity Recognition (NER) have resulted in better and better models. However, is there a glass ceiling? Do we know which types of errors are still hard or even impossible to correct? In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of the types of errors in state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) methods. Our study reveals the weak and strong points of the Stanford, CMU, FLAIR, ELMO and BERT models, as well as their shared limitations. We also introduce new techniques for improving annotation, for training processes and for checking a model's quality and stability. Presented results are based on the CoNLL 2003 data set for the English language. A new enriched semantic annotation of errors for this data set and new diagnostic data sets are attached in the supplementary materials.
Transforming the output of GANs by fine-tuning them with features from different datasets
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

In this work we present a method for fine-tuning pre-trained GANs with features from different datasets, resulting in the transformation of the output distribution into a new distribution with novel characteristics. The weights of the generator are updated using the weighted sum of the losses from a cross-dataset classifier and the frozen weights of the pre-trained discriminator. We discuss details of the technical implementation and share some of the visual results from this training process.
Enhanced Human-Machine Interaction by Combining Proximity Sensing with Global Perception
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

The raise of collaborative robotics has led to wide range of sensor technologies to detect human-machine interactions: at short distances, proximity sensors detect nontactile gestures virtually occlusion-free, while at medium distances, active depth sensors are frequently used to infer human intentions. We describe an optical system for large workspaces to capture human pose based on a single panoramic color camera. Despite the two-dimensional input, our system is able to predict metric 3D pose information over larger field of views than would be possible with active depth measurement cameras. We merge posture context with proximity perception to reduce occlusions and improve accuracy at long distances. We demonstrate the capabilities of our system in two use cases involving multiple humans and robots.
On the Probabilistic Degrees of Symmetric Boolean functions
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2019
Year: 2019

The probabilistic degree of a Boolean function $f:\{0,1\}^n\rightarrow \{0,1\}$ is defined to be the smallest $d$ such that there is a random polynomial $\mathbf{P}$ of degree at most $d$ that agrees with $f$ at each point with high probability. Introduced by Razborov (1987), upper and lower bounds on probabilistic degrees of Boolean functions --- specifically symmetric Boolean functions --- have been used to prove explicit lower bounds, design pseudorandom generators, and devise algorithms for combinatorial problems. In this paper, we characterize the probabilistic degrees of all symmetric Boolean functions up to polylogarithmic factors over all fields of fixed characteristic (positive or zero).
Auto-Rotating Perceptrons
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

This paper proposes an improved design of the perceptron unit to mitigate the vanishing gradient problem. This nuisance appears when training deep multilayer perceptron networks with bounded activation functions. The new neuron design, named auto-rotating perceptron (ARP), has a mechanism to ensure that the node always operates in the dynamic region of the activation function, by avoiding saturation of the perceptron. The proposed method does not change the inference structure learned at each neuron. We test the effect of using ARP units in some network architectures which use the sigmoid activation function. The results support our hypothesis that neural networks with ARP units can achieve better learning performance than equivalent models with classic perceptrons.
ClearGrasp: 3D Shape Estimation of Transparent Objects for Manipulation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

Transparent objects are a common part of everyday life, yet they possess unique visual properties that make them incredibly difficult for standard 3D sensors to produce accurate depth estimates for. In many cases, they often appear as noisy or distorted approximations of the surfaces that lie behind them. To address these challenges, we present ClearGrasp -- a deep learning approach for estimating accurate 3D geometry of transparent objects from a single RGB-D image for robotic manipulation. Given a single RGB-D image of transparent objects, ClearGrasp uses deep convolutional networks to infer surface normals, masks of transparent surfaces, and occlusion boundaries. It then uses these outputs to refine the initial depth estimates for all transparent surfaces in the scene. To train and test ClearGrasp, we construct a large-scale synthetic dataset of over 50,000 RGB-D images, as well as a real-world test benchmark with 286 RGB-D images of transparent objects and their ground truth geometries. The experiments demonstrate that ClearGrasp is substantially better than monocular depth estimation baselines and is capable of generalizing to real-world images and novel objects. We also demonstrate that ClearGrasp can be applied out-of-the-box to improve grasping algorithms' performance on transparent objects. Code, data, and benchmarks will be released. Supplementary materials available on the project website: https://sites.google.com/view/cleargrasp
Pushing the limits of RNN Compression
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) can be difficult to deploy on resource constrained devices due to their size. As a result, there is a need for compression techniques that can significantly compress RNNs without negatively impacting task accuracy. This paper introduces a method to compress RNNs for resource constrained environments using Kronecker product (KP). KPs can compress RNN layers by 16-38x with minimal accuracy loss. We show that KP can beat the task accuracy achieved by other state-of-the-art compression techniques (pruning and low-rank matrix factorization) across 4 benchmarks spanning 3 different applications, while simultaneously improving inference run-time.
Action-conditioned Benchmarking of Robotic Video Prediction Models: a Comparative Study
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

A defining characteristic of intelligent systems is the ability to make action decisions based on the anticipated outcomes. Video prediction systems have been demonstrated as a solution for predicting how the future will unfold visually, and thus, many models have been proposed that are capable of predicting future frames based on a history of observed frames~(and sometimes robot actions). However, a comprehensive method for determining the fitness of different video prediction models at guiding the selection of actions is yet to be developed. Current metrics assess video prediction models based on human perception of frame quality. In contrast, we argue that if these systems are to be used to guide action, necessarily, the actions the robot performs should be encoded in the predicted frames. In this paper, we are proposing a new metric to compare different video prediction models based on this argument. More specifically, we propose an action inference system and quantitatively rank different models based on how well we can infer the robot actions from the predicted frames. Our extensive experiments show that models with high perceptual scores can perform poorly in the proposed action inference tests and thus, may not be suitable options to be used in robot planning systems.
CrowdFix: An Eyetracking Dataset of Real Life Crowd Videos
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

Understanding human visual attention and saliency is an integral part of vision research. In this context, there is an ever-present need for fresh and diverse benchmark datasets, particularly for insight into special use cases like crowded scenes. We contribute to this end by: (1) reviewing the dynamics behind saliency and crowds. (2) using eye tracking to create a dynamic human eye fixation dataset over a new set of crowd videos gathered from the Internet. The videos are annotated into three distinct density levels. (3) Finally, we evaluate state-of-the-art saliency models on our dataset to identify possible improvements for the design and creation of a more robust saliency model.
Four-Dimension Cross Constellations with Gray Mapping
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2019
Year: 2019

Recently a four-dimension (4D) cross constellation has been proposed, where a 4D-vector is drawn from two $(3\times 4^m)$-ary QAM constellations, in an effort to reduce the peak-to-average-power ratio (PAPR). We construct a bits-to-signal mapping and prove that it is a Gray mapping. Simulation results show that the proposed modulation scheme is effective in reducing the PAPR while providing better error performance than existing 4D modulation schemes.
Irregular Convolutional Auto-Encoder on Point Clouds
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

We proposed a novel graph convolutional neural network that could construct a coarse, sparse latent point cloud from a dense, raw point cloud. With a novel non-isotropic convolution operation defined on irregular geometries, the model then can reconstruct the original point cloud from this latent cloud with fine details. Furthermore, we proposed that it is even possible to perform particle simulation using the latent cloud encoded from some simulated particle cloud (e.g. fluids), to accelerate the particle simulation process. Our model has been tested on ShapeNetCore dataset for Auto-Encoding with a limited latent dimension and tested on a synthesis dataset for fluids simulation. We also compare the model with other state-of-the-art models, and several visualizations were done to intuitively understand the model.
Push it to the Limit: Discover Edge-Cases in Image Data with Autoencoders
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

In this paper, we focus on the problem of identifying semantic factors of variation in large image datasets. By training a convolutional Autoencoder on the image data, we create encodings, which describe each datapoint at a higher level of abstraction than pixel-space. We then apply Principal Component Analysis to the encodings to disentangle the factors of variation in the data. Sorting the dataset according to the values of individual principal components, we find that samples at the high and low ends of the distribution often share specific semantic characteristics. We refer to these groups of samples as semantic groups. When applied to real-world data, this method can help discover unwanted edge-cases.
Semantic Preserving Generative Adversarial Models
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

We introduce generative adversarial models in which the discriminator is replaced by a calibrated (non-differentiable) classifier repeatedly enhanced by domain relevant features. The role of the classifier is to prove that the actual and generated data differ over a controlled semantic space. We demonstrate that such models have the ability to generate objects with strong guarantees on their properties in a wide range of domains. They require less data than ordinary GANs, provide natural stopping conditions, uncover important properties of the data, and enhance transfer learning. Our techniques can be combined with standard generative models. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach by applying it to several unrelated domains: generating good locations for cellular antennae, molecule generation preserving key chemical properties, and generating and extrapolating lines from very few data points. Intriguing open problems are presented as well.
Approximation-Refinement Testing of Compute-Intensive Cyber-Physical Models: An Approach Based on System Identification
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2019
Year: 2019

Black-box testing has been extensively applied to test models of Cyber-Physical systems (CPS) since these models are not often amenable to static and symbolic testing and verification. Black-box testing, however, requires to execute the model under test for a large number of candidate test inputs. This poses a challenge for a large and practically-important category of CPS models, known as compute-intensive CPS (CI-CPS) models, where a single simulation may take hours to complete. We propose a novel approach, namely ARIsTEO, to enable effective and efficient testing of CI-CPS models. Our approach embeds black-box testing into an iterative approximation-refinement loop. At the start, some sampled inputs and outputs of the CI-CPS model under test are used to generate a surrogate model that is faster to execute and can be subjected to black-box testing. Any failure-revealing test identified for the surrogate model is checked on the original model. If spurious, the test results are used to refine the surrogate model to be tested again. Otherwise, the test reveals a valid failure. We evaluated ARIsTEO by comparing it with S-Taliro, an open-source and industry-strength tool for testing CPS models. Our results, obtained based on five publicly-available CPS models, show that, on average, ARIsTEO is able to find 24% more requirements violations than S-Taliro and is 31% faster than S-Taliro in finding those violations. We further assessed the effectiveness and efficiency of ARIsTEO on a large industrial case study from the satellite domain. In contrast to S-Taliro, ARIsTEO successfully tested two different versions of this model and could identify three requirements violations, requiring four hours, on average, for each violation.
Reinforcement Learning with Structured Hierarchical Grammar Representations of Actions
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

From a young age humans learn to use grammatical principles to hierarchically combine words into sentences. Action grammars is the parallel idea, that there is an underlying set of rules (a "grammar") that govern how we hierarchically combine actions to form new, more complex actions. We introduce the Action Grammar Reinforcement Learning (AG-RL) framework which leverages the concept of action grammars to consistently improve the sample efficiency of Reinforcement Learning agents. AG-RL works by using a grammar inference algorithm to infer the "action grammar" of an agent midway through training. The agent's action space is then augmented with macro-actions identified by the grammar. We apply this framework to Double Deep Q-Learning (AG-DDQN) and a discrete action version of Soft Actor-Critic (AG-SAC) and find that it improves performance in 8 out of 8 tested Atari games (median +31%, max +668%) and 19 out of 20 tested Atari games (median +96%, maximum +3,756%) respectively without substantive hyperparameter tuning. We also show that AG-SAC beats the model-free state-of-the-art for sample efficiency in 17 out of the 20 tested Atari games (median +62%, maximum +13,140%), again without substantive hyperparameter tuning.
Automated Enriched Medical Concept Generation for Chest X-ray Images
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

Decision support tools that rely on supervised learning require large amounts of expert annotations. Using past radiological reports obtained from hospital archiving systems has many advantages as training data above manual single-class labels: they are expert annotations available in large quantities, covering a population-representative variety of pathologies, and they provide additional context to pathology diagnoses, such as anatomical location and severity. Learning to auto-generate such reports from images present many challenges such as the difficulty in representing and generating long, unstructured textual information, accounting for spelling errors and repetition/redundancy, and the inconsistency across different annotators. We therefore propose to first learn visually-informative medical concepts from raw reports, and, using the concept predictions as image annotations, learn to auto-generate structured reports directly from images. We validate our approach on the OpenI [2] chest x-ray dataset, which consists of frontal and lateral views of chest x-ray images, their corresponding raw textual reports and manual medical subject heading (MeSH ) annotations made by radiologists.
Artificial Intelligence: Powering Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2019
Year: 2019

Over the past decade, the NASA Autonomous Systems and Operations (ASO) project has developed and demonstrated numerous autonomy enabling technologies employing AI techniques. Our work has employed AI in three distinct ways to enable autonomous mission operations capabilities. Crew Autonomy gives astronauts tools to assist in the performance of each of these mission operations functions. Vehicle System Management uses AI techniques to turn the astronaut's spacecraft into a robot, allowing it to operate when astronauts are not present, or to reduce astronaut workload. AI technology also enables Autonomous Robots as crew assistants or proxies when the crew are not present. We first describe human spaceflight mission operations capabilities. We then describe the ASO project, and the development and demonstration performed by ASO since 2011. We will describe the AI techniques behind each of these demonstrations, which include a variety of symbolic automated reasoning and machine learning based approaches. Finally, we conclude with an assessment of future development needs for AI to enable NASA's future Exploration missions.
IoTSim-Edge: A Simulation Framework for Modeling the Behaviour of IoT and Edge Computing Environments
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2019
Year: 2019

This paper proposes a novel simulator IoTSim-Edge, which captures the behavior of heterogeneous IoT and edge computing infrastructure and allows users to test their infrastructure and framework in an easy and configurable manner. IoTSim-Edge extends the capability of CloudSim to incorporate the different features of edge and IoT devices. The effectiveness of IoTSim-Edge is described using three test cases. The results show the varying capability of IoTSim-Edge in terms of application composition, battery-oriented modeling, heterogeneous protocols modeling and mobility modeling along with the resources provisioning for IoT applications.