OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
SAGE: Semantic-Aware Shared Sampling for Efficient Diffusion
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

Diffusion models manifest evident benefits across diverse domains, yet their high sampling cost, requiring dozens of sequential model evaluations, remains a major limitation. Prior efforts mainly accelerate sampling via optimized solvers or distillation, which treat each query independently. In contrast, we reduce total number of steps by sharing early-stage sampling across semantically similar queries. To enable such efficiency gains without sacrificing quality, we propose SAGE, a semantic-aware shared sampling framework that integrates a shared sampling scheme for efficiency and a tailored training strategy for quality preservation. Extensive experiments show that SAGE reduces sampling cost by 25.5%, while improving generation quality with 5.0% lower FID, 5.4% higher CLIP, and 160% higher diversity over baselines.
LC-SLab -- An Object-based Deep Learning Framework for Large-scale Land Cover Classification from Satellite Imagery and Sparse In-situ Labels
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2025
Year: 2025

Large-scale land cover maps generated using deep learning play a critical role across a wide range of Earth science applications. Open in-situ datasets from principled land cover surveys offer a scalable alternative to manual annotation for training such models. However, their sparse spatial coverage often leads to fragmented and noisy predictions when used with existing deep learning-based land cover mapping approaches. A promising direction to address this issue is object-based classification, which assigns labels to semantically coherent image regions rather than individual pixels, thereby imposing a minimum mapping unit. Despite this potential, object-based methods remain underexplored in deep learning-based land cover mapping pipelines, especially in the context of medium-resolution imagery and sparse supervision. To address this gap, we propose LC-SLab, the first deep learning framework for systematically exploring object-based deep learning methods for large-scale land cover classification under sparse supervision. LC-SLab supports both input-level aggregation via graph neural networks, and output-level aggregation by postprocessing results from established semantic segmentation models. Additionally, we incorporate features from a large pre-trained network to improve performance on small datasets. We evaluate the framework on annual Sentinel-2 composites with sparse LUCAS labels, focusing on the tradeoff between accuracy and fragmentation, as well as sensitivity to dataset size. Our results show that object-based methods can match or exceed the accuracy of common pixel-wise models while producing substantially more coherent maps. Input-level aggregation proves more robust on smaller datasets, whereas output-level aggregation performs best with more data. Several configurations of LC-SLab also outperform existing land cover products, highlighting the framework's practical utility.
Zero-Shot Visual Grounding in 3D Gaussians via View Retrieval
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2025
Year: 2025

3D Visual Grounding (3DVG) aims to locate objects in 3D scenes based on text prompts, which is essential for applications such as robotics. However, existing 3DVG methods encounter two main challenges: first, they struggle to handle the implicit representation of spatial textures in 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS), making per-scene training indispensable; second, they typically require larges amounts of labeled data for effective training. To this end, we propose \underline{G}rounding via \underline{V}iew \underline{R}etrieval (GVR), a novel zero-shot visual grounding framework for 3DGS to transform 3DVG as a 2D retrieval task that leverages object-level view retrieval to collect grounding clues from multiple views, which not only avoids the costly process of 3D annotation, but also eliminates the need for per-scene training. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art visual grounding performance while avoiding per-scene training, providing a solid foundation for zero-shot 3DVG research. Video demos can be found in https://github.com/leviome/GVR_demos.
A CARLA-based Simulation of Electrically Driven Forklifts
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2025
Year: 2025

This paper presents the simulation of the operation of an electric forklift fleet within an intralogistics scenario. For this purpose, the open source simulation tool CARLA is used; according to our knowledge this is a novel approach in the context of logistics simulation. First, CARLA is used to generate and visualize a realistic 3D outdoor warehouse scenario, incorporating a number of randomly moving forklifts. In a next step, intralogistics transport tasks, such as pick-and-place, are simulated for the forklift fleet, including shortest-path finding. Furthermore, the capability to play back localization data, previously recorded from a ''real'' forklift fleet, is demonstrated.This play back is done in the original recreated environment, thereby enabling the visualization of the forklifts movements. Finally, the energy consumption of the forklift trucks is simulated by integrating a physical battery model that generates the state of charge (SOC) of each truck as a function of load and activity. To demonstrate the wide range of possible applications for the CARLA simulation platform, we describe two use cases. The first deals with the problem of detecting regions with critically high traffic densities, the second with optimal placement of charging stations for the forklift trucks. Both use cases are calculated for an exemplary warehouse model.
Foundation Models as World Models: A Foundational Study in Text-Based GridWorlds
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2025
Year: 2025

While reinforcement learning from scratch has shown impressive results in solving sequential decision-making tasks with efficient simulators, real-world applications with expensive interactions require more sample-efficient agents. Foundation models (FMs) are natural candidates to improve sample efficiency as they possess broad knowledge and reasoning capabilities, but it is yet unclear how to effectively integrate them into the reinforcement learning framework. In this paper, we anticipate and, most importantly, evaluate two promising strategies. First, we consider the use of foundation world models (FWMs) that exploit the prior knowledge of FMs to enable training and evaluating agents with simulated interactions. Second, we consider the use of foundation agents (FAs) that exploit the reasoning capabilities of FMs for decision-making. We evaluate both approaches empirically in a family of grid-world environments that are suitable for the current generation of large language models (LLMs). Our results suggest that improvements in LLMs already translate into better FWMs and FAs; that FAs based on current LLMs can already provide excellent policies for sufficiently simple environments; and that the coupling of FWMs and reinforcement learning agents is highly promising for more complex settings with partial observability and stochastic elements.
A Vision-Language-Action-Critic Model for Robotic Real-World Reinforcement Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2025
Year: 2025

Robotic real-world reinforcement learning (RL) with vision-language-action (VLA) models is bottlenecked by sparse, handcrafted rewards and inefficient exploration. We introduce VLAC, a general process reward model built upon InternVL and trained on large scale heterogeneous datasets. Given pairwise observations and a language goal, it outputs dense progress delta and done signal, eliminating task-specific reward engineering, and supports one-shot in-context transfer to unseen tasks and environments. VLAC is trained on vision-language datasets to strengthen perception, dialogic and reasoning capabilities, together with robot and human trajectories data that ground action generation and progress estimation, and additionally strengthened to reject irrelevant prompts as well as detect regression or stagnation by constructing large numbers of negative and semantically mismatched samples. With prompt control, a single VLAC model alternately generating reward and action tokens, unifying critic and policy. Deployed inside an asynchronous real-world RL loop, we layer a graded human-in-the-loop protocol (offline demonstration replay, return and explore, human guided explore) that accelerates exploration and stabilizes early learning. Across four distinct real-world manipulation tasks, VLAC lifts success rates from about 30\% to about 90\% within 200 real-world interaction episodes; incorporating human-in-the-loop interventions yields a further 50% improvement in sample efficiency and achieves up to 100% final success.
EHR-MCP: Real-world Evaluation of Clinical Information Retrieval by Large Language Models via Model Context Protocol
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2025
Year: 2025

Background: Large language models (LLMs) show promise in medicine, but their deployment in hospitals is limited by restricted access to electronic health record (EHR) systems. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) enables integration between LLMs and external tools. Objective: To evaluate whether an LLM connected to an EHR database via MCP can autonomously retrieve clinically relevant information in a real hospital setting. Methods: We developed EHR-MCP, a framework of custom MCP tools integrated with the hospital EHR database, and used GPT-4.1 through a LangGraph ReAct agent to interact with it. Six tasks were tested, derived from use cases of the infection control team (ICT). Eight patients discussed at ICT conferences were retrospectively analyzed. Agreement with physician-generated gold standards was measured. Results: The LLM consistently selected and executed the correct MCP tools. Except for two tasks, all tasks achieved near-perfect accuracy. Performance was lower in the complex task requiring time-dependent calculations. Most errors arose from incorrect arguments or misinterpretation of tool results. Responses from EHR-MCP were reliable, though long and repetitive data risked exceeding the context window. Conclusions: LLMs can retrieve clinical data from an EHR via MCP tools in a real hospital setting, achieving near-perfect performance in simple tasks while highlighting challenges in complex ones. EHR-MCP provides an infrastructure for secure, consistent data access and may serve as a foundation for hospital AI agents. Future work should extend beyond retrieval to reasoning, generation, and clinical impact assessment, paving the way for effective integration of generative AI into clinical practice.
A Bouquet of Results on Maximum Range Sum: General Techniques and Hardness Reductions
Venue: arXiv cs.CG 2025
Year: 2025

We revisit the maximum range sum (MaxRS) problem: given a set $P$ of $n$ weighted points in $\mathbb{R}^d$ and a range $Q$ (typically axis-aligned $d$-box or $d$-ball), the goal is to place $Q$ to maximize the total weight of points in $P\cap Q$. We study three natural variations: (1) Dynamic MaxRS: The goal is to update the placement of a $d$-ball under point insertions and deletions. We give a randomized $(\frac{1}{2}-ε)$-approximation with update time $O_ε(\log n)$. The approximation factor holds with high probability. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first result on dynamic MaxRS. (2) Batched MaxRS: In $\mathbb{R}^1$, along with $P$ we are given $m$ intervals of varying lengths. We prove a conditional lower bound of $Ω(mn)$ time (via conjectured $(\min,+)$-convolution hardness), showing the trivial $O(mn\log n)$ upper bound in $\mathbb{R}^2$ is essentially tight. We also establish a similar bound for a related problem of batched smallest $k$-enclosing interval. (3) Colored MaxRS: Each point has a color from $[m]$, and the goal is to place $Q$ to maximize the number of uniquely colored points in $P\cap Q$. Prior work only considered axis-aligned rectangles in $\mathbb{R}^2$. For $d$-balls, we give: (a) a randomized $(\frac{1}{2}-ε)$-approximation in $O_ε(n\log n)$ time (avoiding exponential dependence on $d$), and (b) in $\mathbb{R}^2$, a $(1-ε)$-approximation in expected $O_ε(n\log n)$ time. Both approximations hold with high probability. Our algorithms rely on two techniques of broader interest. The first yields $(\frac{1}{2}-ε)$-approximations via a volume argument on $d$-balls and a randomized game. The second achieves $(1-ε)$-approximations through an exact output-sensitive algorithm, which we speed up by random sampling on colors.
Session-Level Spoken Language Assessment with a Multimodal Foundation Model via Multi-Target Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2025
Year: 2025

Spoken Language Assessment (SLA) estimates a learner's oral proficiency from spontaneous speech. The growing population of L2 English speakers has intensified the demand for reliable SLA, a critical component of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). Existing efforts often rely on cascaded pipelines, which are prone to error propagation, or end-to-end models that often operate on a short audio window, which might miss discourse-level evidence. This paper introduces a novel multimodal foundation model approach that performs session-level evaluation in a single pass. Our approach couples multi-target learning with a frozen, Whisper ASR model-based speech prior for acoustic-aware calibration, allowing for jointly learning holistic and trait-level objectives of SLA without resorting to handcrafted features. By coherently processing the entire response session of an L2 speaker, the model excels at predicting holistic oral proficiency. Experiments conducted on the Speak & Improve benchmark demonstrate that our proposed approach outperforms the previous state-of-the-art cascaded system and exhibits robust cross-part generalization, producing a compact deployable grader that is tailored for CALL applications.
Learning Safety for Obstacle Avoidance via Control Barrier Functions
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2025
Year: 2025

Obstacle avoidance is central to safe navigation, especially for robots with arbitrary and nonconvex geometries operating in cluttered environments. Existing Control Barrier Function (CBF) approaches often rely on analytic clearance computations, which are infeasible for complex geometries, or on polytopic approximations, which become intractable when robot configurations are unknown. To address these limitations, this paper trains a residual neural network on a large dataset of robot-obstacle configurations to enable fast and tractable clearance prediction, even at unseen configurations. The predicted clearance defines the radius of a Local Safety Ball (LSB), which ensures continuous-time collision-free navigation. The LSB boundary is encoded as a Discrete-Time High-Order CBF (DHOCBF), whose constraints are incorporated into a nonlinear optimization framework. To improve feasibility, a novel relaxation technique is applied. The resulting framework ensure that the robot's rigid-body motion between consecutive time steps remains collision-free, effectively bridging discrete-time control and continuous-time safety. We show that the proposed method handles arbitrary, including nonconvex, robot geometries and generates collision-free, dynamically feasible trajectories in cluttered environments. Experiments demonstrate millisecond-level solve times and high prediction accuracy, highlighting both safety and efficiency beyond existing CBF-based methods.
Software Development Aspects of Integrating Linear Algebra Libraries
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2025
Year: 2025

Many scientific discoveries are made through, or aided by, the use of simulation software. These sophisticated software applications are not built from the ground up, instead they rely on smaller parts for specific use cases, usually from domains unfamiliar to the application scientists. The software library Ginkgo is one of these building blocks to handle sparse numerical linear algebra on different platforms. By using Ginkgo, applications are able to ease the transition to modern systems, and speed up their simulations through faster numerical linear algebra routines. This paper discusses the challenges and benefits for application software in adopting Ginkgo. It will present examples from different domains, such as CFD, power grid simulation, as well as electro-cardiophysiology. For these cases, the impact of the integrations on the application code is discussed from a software engineering standpoint, and in particular, the approaches taken by Ginkgo and the applications to enable sustainable software development are highlighted.
Blind-Spot Guided Diffusion for Self-supervised Real-World Denoising
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2025
Year: 2025

In this work, we present Blind-Spot Guided Diffusion, a novel self-supervised framework for real-world image denoising. Our approach addresses two major challenges: the limitations of blind-spot networks (BSNs), which often sacrifice local detail and introduce pixel discontinuities due to spatial independence assumptions, and the difficulty of adapting diffusion models to self-supervised denoising. We propose a dual-branch diffusion framework that combines a BSN-based diffusion branch, generating semi-clean images, with a conventional diffusion branch that captures underlying noise distributions. To enable effective training without paired data, we use the BSN-based branch to guide the sampling process, capturing noise structure while preserving local details. Extensive experiments on the SIDD and DND datasets demonstrate state-of-the-art performance, establishing our method as a highly effective self-supervised solution for real-world denoising. Code and pre-trained models are released at: https://github.com/Sumching/BSGD.
AdaSports-Traj: Role- and Domain-Aware Adaptation for Multi-Agent Trajectory Modeling in Sports
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2025
Year: 2025

Trajectory prediction in multi-agent sports scenarios is inherently challenging due to the structural heterogeneity across agent roles (e.g., players vs. ball) and dynamic distribution gaps across different sports domains. Existing unified frameworks often fail to capture these structured distributional shifts, resulting in suboptimal generalization across roles and domains. We propose AdaSports-Traj, an adaptive trajectory modeling framework that explicitly addresses both intra-domain and inter-domain distribution discrepancies in sports. At its core, AdaSports-Traj incorporates a Role- and Domain-Aware Adapter to conditionally adjust latent representations based on agent identity and domain context. Additionally, we introduce a Hierarchical Contrastive Learning objective, which separately supervises role-sensitive and domain-aware representations to encourage disentangled latent structures without introducing optimization conflict. Experiments on three diverse sports datasets, Basketball-U, Football-U, and Soccer-U, demonstrate the effectiveness of our adaptive design, achieving strong performance in both unified and cross-domain trajectory prediction settings.
AnchoredAI: Contextual Anchoring of AI Comments Improves Writer Agency and Ownership
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2025
Year: 2025

Generative AI is increasingly integrated into writing support, yet current chat-based interfaces often obscure referential context and risk amplifying automation bias and overreliance. We introduce AnchoredAI, a novel system that anchors AI feedback directly to relevant text spans. AnchoredAI implements two key mechanisms: (1) an Anchoring Context Window (ACW) that maintains unique, context-rich references, and (2) an update-aware context retrieval method that preserves the intent of prior comments after document edits. In a controlled user study, we compared AnchoredAI to a chat-based LLM interface. Results show that AnchoredAI led to more targeted revisions while fostering a stronger agency metrics (e.g., control and ownership) among writers. These findings highlight how interface design shapes AI-assisted writing, suggesting that anchoring can mitigate overreliance and enable more precise, user-driven revision practices.
Analyzing and improving a classical Betti number estimation algorithm
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2025
Year: 2025

Recently, a classical algorithm for estimating the normalized Betti number of an arbitrary simplicial complex was proposed. Motivated by a quantum algorithm with a similar Monte Carlo structure and improved sample complexity, we give a more in-depth analysis of the sample complexity of this classical algorithm. To this end, we present bounds for the variance of the estimators used in the classical algorithm and show that the variance depends on certain combinatorial properties of the underlying simplicial complex. This new analysis leads us to propose an improvement to the classical algorithm which makes the "easy cases easier'', in that it reduces the sample complexity for simplicial complexes where the variance is sufficiently small. We show the effectiveness and limitations of these classical algorithms by considering Erdős-Renyi random graph models to demonstrate the existence of "easy" and "hard" cases. Namely, we show that for certain models our improvement almost always leads to a reduced sample complexity, and also produce separate regimes where the sample complexity for both algorithms is exponential.
Two Optimizations on the Stålmarck Procedure
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2025
Year: 2025

In this paper, we introduce StalmarckSAT, the a modern re-implementation of the Stålmarck Procedure for SAT solving, and present two novel strategies to improve the Procedure, Cardinality Driven Branching (CDB) and Deductive Priority Ordering (DPO). CDB is a heuristic to improve branching with the dilemma rule, and DPO intelligently orders simple rules based on their deductive potential. Our results demonstrate improved solve times with both strategies.
FocalCodec-Stream: Streaming Low-Bitrate Speech Coding via Causal Distillation
Venue: arXiv cs.SD 2025
Year: 2025

Neural audio codecs are a fundamental component of modern generative audio pipelines. Although recent codecs achieve strong low-bitrate reconstruction and provide powerful representations for downstream tasks, most are non-streamable, limiting their use in real-time applications. We present FocalCodec-Stream, a hybrid codec based on focal modulation that compresses speech into a single binary codebook at 0.55 - 0.80 kbps with a theoretical latency of 80 ms. Our approach combines multi-stage causal distillation of WavLM with targeted architectural improvements, including a lightweight refiner module that enhances quality under latency constraints. Experiments show that FocalCodec-Stream outperforms existing streamable codecs at comparable bitrates, while preserving both semantic and acoustic information. The result is a favorable trade-off between reconstruction quality, downstream task performance, latency, and efficiency. Code and checkpoints will be released at https://github.com/lucadellalib/focalcodec.