OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Structural Self-adaptation for Decentralized Pervasive Intelligence
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2019
Year: 2019

Communication structure plays a key role in the learning capability of decentralized systems. Structural self-adaptation, by means of self-organization, changes the order as well as the input information of the agents' collective decision-making. This paper studies the role of agents' repositioning on the same communication structure, i.e. a tree, as the means to expand the learning capacity in complex combinatorial optimization problems, for instance, load-balancing power demand to prevent blackouts or efficient utilization of bike sharing stations. The optimality of structural self-adaptations is rigorously studied by constructing a novel large-scale benchmark that consists of 4000 agents with synthetic and real-world data performing 4 million structural self-adaptations during which almost 320 billion learning messages are exchanged. Based on this benchmark dataset, 124 deterministic structural criteria, applied as learning meta-features, are systematically evaluated as well as two online structural self-adaptation strategies designed to expand learning capacity. Experimental evaluation identifies metrics that capture agents with influential information and their optimal positioning. Significant gain in learning performance is observed for the two strategies especially under low-performing initialization. Strikingly, the strategy that triggers structural self-adaptation in a more exploratory fashion is the most cost-effective.
On Hybrid MoSK-CSK Modulation based Molecular Communication: Error Rate Performance Analysis using Stochastic Geometry
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2019
Year: 2019

Data transmission rate in molecular communication systems can be improved by using multiple transmitters and receivers. In molecular multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems which use only single type of molecules, the performance at the destination is limited by inter-symbol interference (ISI), inter-link interference (ILI) and multi-user interference (MUI). This work proposes a new hybrid modulation for a system with multiple transmitters and receivers which uses different types of molecules to eliminate ILI. Further, to enhance the data rate of the proposed system under ISI and MUI, Mary CSK modulation scheme is used between each transmitter-receiver pair. In this paper, the random locations of transmitters present in the three dimensional (3-D) space are modeled as homogeneous Poisson point process (HPPP). Using stochastic geometry tools, analytical expression is derived for the probability of symbol error for the aforementioned scenario. Finally, the performance of the proposed system is compared using the different existing modulation schemes such as on-off keying (OOK), binary concentration shift keying (BCSK) and quadruple concentration shift keying (QCSK) to develop several important insights.
Reliable Weakly Supervised Learning: Maximize Gain and Maintain Safeness
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

Weakly supervised data are widespread and have attracted much attention. However, since label quality is often difficult to guarantee, sometimes the use of weakly supervised data will lead to unsatisfactory performance, i.e., performance degradation or poor performance gains. Moreover, it is usually not feasible to manually increase the label quality, which results in weakly supervised learning being somewhat difficult to rely on. In view of this crucial issue, this paper proposes a simple and novel weakly supervised learning framework. We guide the optimization of label quality through a small amount of validation data, and to ensure the safeness of performance while maximizing performance gain. As validation set is a good approximation for describing generalization risk, it can effectively avoid the unsatisfactory performance caused by incorrect data distribution assumptions. We formalize this underlying consideration into a novel Bi-Level optimization and give an effective solution. Extensive experimental results verify that the new framework achieves impressive performance on weakly supervised learning with a small amount of validation data.
Local Deep-Feature Alignment for Unsupervised Dimension Reduction
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

This paper presents an unsupervised deep-learning framework named Local Deep-Feature Alignment (LDFA) for dimension reduction. We construct neighbourhood for each data sample and learn a local Stacked Contractive Auto-encoder (SCAE) from the neighbourhood to extract the local deep features. Next, we exploit an affine transformation to align the local deep features of each neighbourhood with the global features. Moreover, we derive an approach from LDFA to map explicitly a new data sample into the learned low-dimensional subspace. The advantage of the LDFA method is that it learns both local and global characteristics of the data sample set: the local SCAEs capture local characteristics contained in the data set, while the global alignment procedures encode the interdependencies between neighbourhoods into the final low-dimensional feature representations. Experimental results on data visualization, clustering and classification show that the LDFA method is competitive with several well-known dimension reduction techniques, and exploiting locality in deep learning is a research topic worth further exploring.
FoxNet: A Multi-face Alignment Method
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

Multi-face alignment aims to identify geometry structures of multiple faces in an image, and its performance is essential for the many practical tasks, such as face recognition, face tracking, and face animation. In this work, we present a fast bottom-up multi-face alignment approach, which can simultaneously localize multi-person facial landmarks with high precision.In more detail, our bottom-up architecture maps the landmarks to the high-dimensional space with which landmarks of all faces are represented. By clustering the features belonging to the same face, our approach can align the multi-person facial landmarks synchronously.Extensive experiments show that our method can achieve high performance in the multi-face landmark alignment task while our model is extremely fast. Moreover, we propose a new multi-face dataset to compare the speed and precision of bottom-up face alignment method with top-down methods. Our dataset is publicly available at https://github.com/AISAResearch/FoxNet
Detecting retail products in situ using CNN without human effort labeling
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

CNN is a powerful tool for many computer vision tasks, achieving much better result than traditional methods. Since CNN has a very large capacity, training such a neural network often requires many data, but it is often expensive to obtain labeled images in real practice, especially for object detection, where collecting bounding box of every object in training set requires many human efforts. This is the case in detection of retail products where there can be many different categories. In this paper, we focus on applying CNN to detect 324-categories products in situ, while requiring no extra effort of labeling bounding box for any image. Our approach is based on an algorithm that extracts bounding box from in-vitro dataset and an algorithm to simulate occlusion. We have successfully shown the effectiveness and usefulness of our methods to build up a Faster RCNN detection model. Similar idea is also applicable in other scenarios.
Power and Thermal Analysis of Commercial Mobile Platforms: Experiments and Case Studies
Venue: arXiv cs.OH 2019
Year: 2019

State-of-the-art mobile processors can deliver fast response time and high throughput to maximize the user experience. However, high performance comes at the expense of larger power density, which leads to higher skin temperatures. Since this can degrade the user experience, there is a strong need for power consumption and thermal analysis in mobile processors. In this paper, we first perform experiments on the Nexus 6P phone to study the power, performance and thermal behavior of modern smartphones. Using the insight from these experiments, we propose a control algorithm that throttles select applications without affecting other apps. We demonstrate our governor on the Exynos 5422 processor employed in the Odroid-XU3 board.
One DSL to Rule Them All: IDE-Assisted Code Generation for Agile Data Analysis
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2019
Year: 2019

Data analysis is at the core of scientific studies, a prominent task that researchers and practitioners typically undertake by programming their own set of automated scripts. While there is no shortage of tools and languages available for designing data analysis pipelines, users spend substantial effort in learning the specifics of such languages/tools and often design solutions too project specific to be reused in future studies. Furthermore, users need to put further effort into making their code scalable, as parallel implementations are typically more complex. We address these problems by proposing an advanced code recommendation tool which facilitates developing data science scripts. Users formulate their intentions in a human-readable Domain Specific Language (DSL) for dataframe manipulation and analysis. The DSL statements can be converted into executable Python code during editing. To avoid the need to learn the DSL and increase user-friendliness, our tool supports code completion in mainstream IDEs and editors. Moreover, DSL statements can generate executable code for different data analysis frameworks (currently we support Pandas and PySpark). Overall, our approach attempts to accelerate programming of common data analysis tasks and to facilitate the conversion of the implementations between frameworks. In a preliminary assessment based on a popular data processing tutorial, our tool was able to fully cover 9 out of 14 processing steps for Pandas and 10 out of 16 for PySpark, while partially covering 4 processing steps for each of the frameworks.
A Review on Energy Consumption Optimization Techniques in IoT Based Smart Building Environments
Venue: arXiv cs.OH 2019
Year: 2019

In recent years, due to the unnecessary wastage of electrical energy in residential buildings, the requirement of energy optimization and user comfort has gained vital importance. In the literature, various techniques have been proposed addressing the energy optimization problem. The goal of each technique was to maintain a balance between user comfort and energy requirements such that the user can achieve the desired comfort level with the minimum amount of energy consumption. Researchers have addressed the issue with the help of different optimization algorithms and variations in the parameters to reduce energy consumption. To the best of our knowledge, this problem is not solved yet due to its challenging nature. The gap in the literature is due to the advancements in the technology and drawbacks of the optimization algorithms and the introduction of different new optimization algorithms. Further, many newly proposed optimization algorithms which have produced better accuracy on the benchmark instances but have not been applied yet for the optimization of energy consumption in smart homes. In this paper, we have carried out a detailed literature review of the techniques used for the optimization of energy consumption and scheduling in smart homes. The detailed discussion has been carried out on different factors contributing towards thermal comfort, visual comfort, and air quality comfort. We have also reviewed the fog and edge computing techniques used in smart homes.
Ship Instance Segmentation From Remote Sensing Images Using Sequence Local Context Module
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

The performance of object instance segmentation in remote sensing images has been greatly improved through the introduction of many landmark frameworks based on convolutional neural network. However, the object densely issue still affects the accuracy of such segmentation frameworks. Objects of the same class are easily confused, which is most likely due to the close docking between objects. We think context information is critical to address this issue. So, we propose a novel framework called SLCMASK-Net, in which a sequence local context module (SLC) is introduced to avoid confusion between objects of the same class. The SLC module applies a sequence of dilation convolution blocks to progressively learn multi-scale context information in the mask branch. Besides, we try to add SLC module to different locations in our framework and experiment with the effect of different parameter settings. Comparative experiments are conducted on remote sensing images acquired by QuickBird with a resolution of $0.5m-1m$ and the results show that the proposed method achieves state-of-the-art performance.
A context-aware knowledge acquisition for planning applications using ontologies
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2019
Year: 2019

Automated planning technology has developed significantly. Designing a planning model that allows an automated agent to be capable of reacting intelligently to unexpected events in a real execution environment yet remains a challenge. This article describes a domain-independent approach to allow the agent to be context-aware of its execution environment and the task it performs, acquire new information that is guaranteed to be related and more importantly manageable, and integrate such information into its model through the use of ontologies and semantic operations to autonomously formulate new objectives, resulting in a more human-like behaviour for handling unexpected events in the context of opportunities.
Learning to Cache With No Regrets
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2019
Year: 2019

This paper introduces a novel caching analysis that, contrary to prior work, makes no modeling assumptions for the file request sequence. We cast the caching problem in the framework of Online Linear Optimization (OLO), and introduce a class of minimum regret caching policies, which minimize the losses with respect to the best static configuration in hindsight when the request model is unknown. These policies are very important since they are robust to popularity deviations in the sense that they learn to adjust their caching decisions when the popularity model changes. We first prove a novel lower bound for the regret of any caching policy, improving existing OLO bounds for our setting. Then we show that the Online Gradient Ascent (OGA) policy guarantees a regret that matches the lower bound, hence it is universally optimal. Finally, we shift our attention to a network of caches arranged to form a bipartite graph, and show that the Bipartite Subgradient Algorithm (BSA) has no regret
Learning Manipulation under Physics Constraints with Visual Perception
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2019
Year: 2019

Understanding physical phenomena is a key competence that enables humans and animals to act and interact under uncertain perception in previously unseen environments containing novel objects and their configurations. In this work, we consider the problem of autonomous block stacking and explore solutions to learning manipulation under physics constraints with visual perception inherent to the task. Inspired by the intuitive physics in humans, we first present an end-to-end learning-based approach to predict stability directly from appearance, contrasting a more traditional model-based approach with explicit 3D representations and physical simulation. We study the model's behavior together with an accompanied human subject test. It is then integrated into a real-world robotic system to guide the placement of a single wood block into the scene without collapsing existing tower structure. To further automate the process of consecutive blocks stacking, we present an alternative approach where the model learns the physics constraint through the interaction with the environment, bypassing the dedicated physics learning as in the former part of this work. In particular, we are interested in the type of tasks that require the agent to reach a given goal state that may be different for every new trial. Thereby we propose a deep reinforcement learning framework that learns policies for stacking tasks which are parametrized by a target structure.
Towards Learning of Filter-Level Heterogeneous Compression of Convolutional Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

Recently, deep learning has become a de facto standard in machine learning with convolutional neural networks (CNNs) demonstrating spectacular success on a wide variety of tasks. However, CNNs are typically very demanding computationally at inference time. One of the ways to alleviate this burden on certain hardware platforms is quantization relying on the use of low-precision arithmetic representation for the weights and the activations. Another popular method is the pruning of the number of filters in each layer. While mainstream deep learning methods train the neural networks weights while keeping the network architecture fixed, the emerging neural architecture search (NAS) techniques make the latter also amenable to training. In this paper, we formulate optimal arithmetic bit length allocation and neural network pruning as a NAS problem, searching for the configurations satisfying a computational complexity budget while maximizing the accuracy. We use a differentiable search method based on the continuous relaxation of the search space proposed by Liu et al. (arXiv:1806.09055). We show, by grid search, that heterogeneous quantized networks suffer from a high variance which renders the benefit of the search questionable. For pruning, improvement over homogeneous cases is possible, but it is still challenging to find those configurations with the proposed method. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/yochaiz/Slimmable and https://github.com/yochaiz/darts-UNIQ
Privacy-Enhancing Fall Detection from Remote Sensor Data Using Multi-Party Computation
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2019
Year: 2019

Motion-based fall detection systems are concerned with detecting falls from vulnerable users, which is typically performed by classifying measurements from a body-worn inertial measurement unit (IMU) using machine learning. Such systems, however, necessitate the collection of high-resolution measurements that may violate users' privacy, such as revealing their gait, activities of daily living (ADLs), and relative position using dead reckoning. In this paper, we investigate the application of multi-party computation (MPC) to IMU-based fall detection for protecting device measurement confidentiality. Our system is evaluated in a cloud-based setting that precludes parties from learning the underlying data using multiple, disparate cloud instances deployed in three geographical configurations. Using a publicly-available dataset, we demonstrate that MPC-based fall detection from IMU measurements is practical while achieving state-of-the-art error rates. In the best case, our system executes in 365.2 milliseconds, which falls well within the required time window for on-device data acquisition (750ms).
A Novel QoE-Aware SDN-enabled, NFV-based Management Architecture for Future Multimedia Applications on 5G Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2019
Year: 2019

This paper proposes a novel QoE-aware SDN enabled NFV architecture for controlling and managing Future Multimedia Applications on 5G systems. The aim is to improve the QoE of the delivered multimedia services through the fulfilment of personalized QoE application requirements. This novel approach provides some new features, functionalities, concepts and opportunities for overcoming the key QoE provisioning limitations in current 4G systems such as increased network management complexity and inability to adapt dynamically to changing application, network transmission or traffic or end-users demand.
Tracking and Improving Information in the Service of Fairness
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

As algorithmic prediction systems have become widespread, fears that these systems may inadvertently discriminate against members of underrepresented populations have grown. With the goal of understanding fundamental principles that underpin the growing number of approaches to mitigating algorithmic discrimination, we investigate the role of information in fair prediction. A common strategy for decision-making uses a predictor to assign individuals a risk score; then, individuals are selected or rejected on the basis of this score. In this work, we study a formal framework for measuring the information content of predictors. Central to this framework is the notion of a refinement, first studied by Degroot and Fienberg. Intuitively, a refinement of a predictor $z$ increases the overall informativeness of the predictions without losing the information already contained in $z$. We show that increasing information content through refinements improves the downstream selection rules across a wide range of fairness measures (e.g. true positive rates, false positive rates, selection rates). In turn, refinements provide a simple but effective tool for reducing disparity in treatment and impact without sacrificing the utility of the predictions. Our results suggest that in many applications, the perceived "cost of fairness" results from an information disparity across populations, and thus, may be avoided with improved information.
Strand Spaces with Choice via a Process Algebra Semantics
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2019
Year: 2019

Roles in cryptographic protocols do not always have a linear execution, but may include choice points causing the protocol to continue along different paths. In this paper we address the problem of representing choice in the strand space model of cryptographic protocols, particularly as it is used in the Maude-NPA cryptographic protocol analysis tool. To achieve this goal, we develop and give formal semantics to a process algebra for cryptographic protocols that supports a rich taxonomy of choice primitives for composing strand spaces. In our taxonomy, deterministic and non-deterministic choices are broken down further. Non-deterministic choice can be either explicit, i.e., one of two paths is chosen, or implicit, i.e., the value of a variable is chosen non-deterministically. Likewise, deterministic choice can be either an explicit if-then-else choice, i.e., one path is chosen if a predicate is satisfied, while the other is chosen if it is not, or implicit deterministic choice, i.e., execution continues only if a certain pattern is matched. We have identified a class of choices which includes finite branching and some cases of infinite branching, which we address in this paper. We provide a bisimulation result between the expected forwards execution semantics of the new process algebra and the original symbolic backwards semantics of Maude-NPA that preserves attack reachability. We have fully integrated the process algebra syntax and its transformation into strands in Maude-NPA. We illustrate its expressive power and naturalness with various examples, and show how it can be effectively used in formal analysis. This allows users to write protocols from now on using the process syntax, which is more convenient for expressing choice than the strand space syntax, in which choice can only be specified implicitly, via two or more strands that are identical until the choice point.