OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Exploratory Study: Children's with Autism Awareness of being Imitated by Nao Robot
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2020
Year: 2020

This paper presents an exploratory study designed for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) that investigates children's awareness of being imitated by a robot in a play/game scenario. The Nao robot imitates all the arm movement behaviors of the child in real-time in dyadic and triadic interactions. Different behavioral criteria (i.e., eye gaze, gaze shifting, initiation and imitation of arm movements, smile/laughter) were analyzed based on the video data of the interaction. The results confirm only parts of the research hypothesis. However, these results are promising for the future directions of this work.
SkillCheck: An Incentive-based Certification System using Blockchains
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2020
Year: 2020

Skill verification is a central problem in workforce hiring. Companies and academia often face the difficulty of ascertaining the skills of an applicant since the certifications of the skills claimed by a candidate are generally not immediately verifiable and costly to test. Blockchains have been proposed in the literature for skill verification and tamper-proof information storage in a decentralized manner. However, most of these approaches deal with storing the certificates issued by traditional universities on the blockchain. Among the few techniques that consider the certification procedure itself, questions like (a) scalability with limited staff, (b) uniformity of grades over multiple evaluators, or (c) honest effort extraction from the evaluators are usually not addressed. We propose a blockchain-based platform named SkillCheck, which considers the questions above, and ensure several desirable properties. The platform incentivizes effort in grading via payments with tokens which it generates from the payments of the users of the platform, e.g., the recruiters and test-takers. We provide a detailed description of the design of the platform along with the provable properties of the algorithm.
A Human-Centered Review of the Algorithms used within the U.S. Child Welfare System
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2020
Year: 2020

The U.S. Child Welfare System (CWS) is charged with improving outcomes for foster youth; yet, they are overburdened and underfunded. To overcome this limitation, several states have turned towards algorithmic decision-making systems to reduce costs and determine better processes for improving CWS outcomes. Using a human-centered algorithmic design approach, we synthesize 50 peer-reviewed publications on computational systems used in CWS to assess how they were being developed, common characteristics of predictors used, as well as the target outcomes. We found that most of the literature has focused on risk assessment models but does not consider theoretical approaches (e.g., child-foster parent matching) nor the perspectives of caseworkers (e.g., case notes). Therefore, future algorithms should strive to be context-aware and theoretically robust by incorporating salient factors identified by past research. We provide the HCI community with research avenues for developing human-centered algorithms that redirect attention towards more equitable outcomes for CWS.
Crowd Counting via Hierarchical Scale Recalibration Network
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2020
Year: 2020

The task of crowd counting is extremely challenging due to complicated difficulties, especially the huge variation in vision scale. Previous works tend to adopt a naive concatenation of multi-scale information to tackle it, while the scale shifts between the feature maps are ignored. In this paper, we propose a novel Hierarchical Scale Recalibration Network (HSRNet), which addresses the above issues by modeling rich contextual dependencies and recalibrating multiple scale-associated information. Specifically, a Scale Focus Module (SFM) first integrates global context into local features by modeling the semantic inter-dependencies along channel and spatial dimensions sequentially. In order to reallocate channel-wise feature responses, a Scale Recalibration Module (SRM) adopts a step-by-step fusion to generate final density maps. Furthermore, we propose a novel Scale Consistency loss to constrain that the scale-associated outputs are coherent with groundtruth of different scales. With the proposed modules, our approach can ignore various noises selectively and focus on appropriate crowd scales automatically. Extensive experiments on crowd counting datasets (ShanghaiTech, MALL, WorldEXPO'10, and UCSD) show that our HSRNet can deliver superior results over all state-of-the-art approaches. More remarkably, we extend experiments on an extra vehicle dataset, whose results indicate that the proposed model is generalized to other applications.
STD-Net: Structure-preserving and Topology-adaptive Deformation Network for 3D Reconstruction from a Single Image
Venue: arXiv cs.GR 2020
Year: 2020

3D reconstruction from a single view image is a long-standing prob-lem in computer vision. Various methods based on different shape representations(such as point cloud or volumetric representations) have been proposed. However,the 3D shape reconstruction with fine details and complex structures are still chal-lenging and have not yet be solved. Thanks to the recent advance of the deepshape representations, it becomes promising to learn the structure and detail rep-resentation using deep neural networks. In this paper, we propose a novel methodcalled STD-Net to reconstruct the 3D models utilizing the mesh representationthat is well suitable for characterizing complex structure and geometry details.To reconstruct complex 3D mesh models with fine details, our method consists of(1) an auto-encoder network for recovering the structure of an object with bound-ing box representation from a single image, (2) a topology-adaptive graph CNNfor updating vertex position for meshes of complex topology, and (3) an unifiedmesh deformation block that deforms the structural boxes into structure-awaremeshed models. Experimental results on the images from ShapeNet show that ourproposed STD-Net has better performance than other state-of-the-art methods onreconstructing 3D objects with complex structures and fine geometric details.
Improving IoT Analytics through Selective Edge Execution
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2020
Year: 2020

A large number of emerging IoT applications rely on machine learning routines for analyzing data. Executing such tasks at the user devices improves response time and economizes network resources. However, due to power and computing limitations, the devices often cannot support such resource-intensive routines and fail to accurately execute the analytics. In this work, we propose to improve the performance of analytics by leveraging edge infrastructure. We devise an algorithm that enables the IoT devices to execute their routines locally; and then outsource them to cloudlet servers, only if they predict they will gain a significant performance improvement. It uses an approximate dual subgradient method, making minimal assumptions about the statistical properties of the system's parameters. Our analysis demonstrates that our proposed algorithm can intelligently leverage the cloudlet, adapting to the service requirements.
RCC-Dual-GAN: An Efficient Approach for Outlier Detection with Few Identified Anomalies
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

Outlier detection is an important task in data mining and many technologies have been explored in various applications. However, due to the default assumption that outliers are non-concentrated, unsupervised outlier detection may not correctly detect group anomalies with higher density levels. As for the supervised outlier detection, although high detection rates and optimal parameters can usually be achieved, obtaining sufficient and correct labels is a time-consuming task. To address these issues, we focus on semi-supervised outlier detection with few identified anomalies, in the hope of using limited labels to achieve high detection accuracy. First, we propose a novel detection model Dual-GAN, which can directly utilize the potential information in identified anomalies to detect discrete outliers and partially identified group anomalies simultaneously. And then, considering the instances with similar output values may not all be similar in a complex data structure, we replace the two MO-GAN components in Dual-GAN with the combination of RCC and M-GAN (RCC-Dual-GAN). In addition, to deal with the evaluation of Nash equilibrium and the selection of optimal model, two evaluation indicators are created and introduced into the two models to make the detection process more intelligent. Extensive experiments on both benchmark datasets and two practical tasks demonstrate that our proposed approaches (i.e., Dual-GAN and RCC-Dual-GAN) can significantly improve the accuracy of outlier detection even with only a few identified anomalies. Moreover, compared with the two MO-GAN components in Dual-GAN, the network structure combining RCC and M-GAN has greater stability in various situations.
Knowledge Graphs and Knowledge Networks: The Story in Brief
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2020
Year: 2020

Knowledge Graphs (KGs) represent real-world noisy raw information in a structured form, capturing relationships between entities. However, for dynamic real-world applications such as social networks, recommender systems, computational biology, relational knowledge representation has emerged as a challenging research problem where there is a need to represent the changing nodes, attributes, and edges over time. The evolution of search engine responses to user queries in the last few years is partly because of the role of KGs such as Google KG. KGs are significantly contributing to various AI applications from link prediction, entity relations prediction, node classification to recommendation and question answering systems. This article is an attempt to summarize the journey of KG for AI.
Discovering linguistic (ir)regularities in word embeddings through max-margin separating hyperplanes
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2020
Year: 2020

We experiment with new methods for learning how related words are positioned relative to each other in word embedding spaces. Previous approaches learned constant vector offsets: vectors that point from source tokens to target tokens with an assumption that these offsets were parallel to each other. We show that the offsets between related tokens are closer to orthogonal than parallel, and that they have low cosine similarities. We proceed by making a different assumption; target tokens are linearly separable from source and un-labeled tokens. We show that a max-margin hyperplane can separate target tokens and that vectors orthogonal to this hyperplane represent the relationship between source and targets. We find that this representation of the relationship obtains the best results in dis-covering linguistic regularities. We experiment with vector space models trained by a variety of algorithms (Word2vec: CBOW/skip-gram, fastText, or GloVe), and various word context choices such as linear word-order, syntax dependency grammars, and with and without knowledge of word position. These experiments show that our model, SVMCos, is robust to a range of experimental choices when training word embeddings.
Advanced Receiver Architectures for Millimeter Wave Communications with Low-Resolution ADCs
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2020
Year: 2020

Employing low-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) for millimeter wave receivers with large antenna arrays provides opportunity to efficiently reduce power consumption of the receiver. Reducing ADC resolution, however, results in performance degradation due to non-negligible quantization error. In addition, the large number of radio frequency (RF) chains is still not desirable. Accordingly, conventional low-resolution ADC systems require more efficient designs to minimize the cost and complexity while maximizing performance. In this article, we discuss advanced low-resolution ADC receiver architectures that further improve the spectral and energy efficiency tradeoff. To reduce both the numbers of RF chains and ADC bits, hybrid analog-and-digital beamforming is jointly considered with low-resolution ADCs. We explore the challenges in designing such receivers and present key insights on how the advanced architectures overcome such challenges. As an alternative low-resolution ADC receiver, we also introduce receivers with learning-based detection. The receiver does not require explicit channel estimation, thereby is suitable for one-bit ADC systems. Finally, future challenges and research issues are discussed.
Isolation Mondrian Forest for Batch and Online Anomaly Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

We propose a new method, named isolation Mondrian forest (iMondrian forest), for batch and online anomaly detection. The proposed method is a novel hybrid of isolation forest and Mondrian forest which are existing methods for batch anomaly detection and online random forest, respectively. iMondrian forest takes the idea of isolation, using the depth of a node in a tree, and implements it in the Mondrian forest structure. The result is a new data structure which can accept streaming data in an online manner while being used for anomaly detection. Our experiments show that iMondrian forest mostly performs better than isolation forest in batch settings and has better or comparable performance against other batch and online anomaly detection methods.
On the Robustness of Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

In cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (c-MARL), agents learn to cooperatively take actions as a team to maximize a total team reward. We analyze the robustness of c-MARL to adversaries capable of attacking one of the agents on a team. Through the ability to manipulate this agent's observations, the adversary seeks to decrease the total team reward. Attacking c-MARL is challenging for three reasons: first, it is difficult to estimate team rewards or how they are impacted by an agent mispredicting; second, models are non-differentiable; and third, the feature space is low-dimensional. Thus, we introduce a novel attack. The attacker first trains a policy network with reinforcement learning to find a wrong action it should encourage the victim agent to take. Then, the adversary uses targeted adversarial examples to force the victim to take this action. Our results on the StartCraft II multi-agent benchmark demonstrate that c-MARL teams are highly vulnerable to perturbations applied to one of their agent's observations. By attacking a single agent, our attack method has highly negative impact on the overall team reward, reducing it from 20 to 9.4. This results in the team's winning rate to go down from 98.9% to 0%.
Electronics-Free Pneumatic Logic Circuits for Localized Feedback Control of Multi-Actuator Soft Robots
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2020
Year: 2020

The vision of creating entirely-soft robots capable of performing complex tasks will be accomplished only when the controllers required for autonomous operation can be fully implemented on soft components. Despite recent advances in compliant fluidic circuitry for mechanical signal processing, the applicability of this technology for soft robot control has been limited by complicated fabrication and tuning processes, and also the need for external signals such as clocks and digital references. We propose a method to develop pneumatic soft robots in which coordinated interactions between multiple actuators are performed using controllers implemented on components distributedly embedded in the soft structures of the system. In this approach, the notions of binary and multi-valued actuator logic states are introduced. In this way, the physical local dynamical couplings between the analog states of the actuators, established using soft valves of a new type, can be thought of as logic-gate-based mappings acting on discretized representations of the actuator states. Consequently, techniques for digital logic design can be applied to derive the architectures of the localized mechanical couplings that intelligently coordinate the oscillation patterns of the actuator responses. For the purposes of controller tuning, the soft valves are conceived so that their main physical parameters can be adjusted from the exterior of the robot through simple geometrical changes of the corresponding structural elements. To demonstrate the proposed approach, we present the development of a six-state locomoting soft robot.
Influence of Initialization on the Performance of Metaheuristic Optimizers
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2020
Year: 2020

All metaheuristic optimization algorithms require some initialization, and the initialization for such optimizers is usually carried out randomly. However, initialization can have some significant influence on the performance of such algorithms. This paper presents a systematic comparison of 22 different initialization methods on the convergence and accuracy of five optimizers: differential evolution (DE), particle swarm optimization (PSO), cuckoo search (CS), artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm and genetic algorithm (GA). We have used 19 different test functions with different properties and modalities to compare the possible effects of initialization, population sizes and the numbers of iterations. Rigorous statistical ranking tests indicate that 43.37\% of the functions using the DE algorithm show significant differences for different initialization methods, while 73.68\% of the functions using both PSO and CS algorithms are significantly affected by different initialization methods. The simulations show that DE is less sensitive to initialization, while both PSO and CS are more sensitive to initialization. In addition, under the condition of the same maximum number of function evaluations (FEs), the population size can also have a strong effect. Particle swarm optimization usually requires a larger population, while the cuckoo search needs only a small population size. Differential evolution depends more heavily on the number of iterations, a relatively small population with more iterations can lead to better results. Furthermore, ABC is more sensitive to initialization, while such initialization has little effect on GA. Some probability distributions such as the beta distribution, exponential distribution and Rayleigh distribution can usually lead to better performance. The implications of this study and further research topics are also discussed in detail.
An energy stable one-field monolithic arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation for fluid-structure interaction
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2020
Year: 2020

In this article we present a one-field monolithic finite element method in the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) formulation for Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) problems. The method only solves for one velocity field in the whole FSI domain, and it solves in a monolithic manner so that the fluid solid interface conditions are satisfied automatically. We prove that the proposed scheme is unconditionally stable, through energy analysis, by utilising a conservative formulation and an exact quadrature rule. We implement the algorithm using both ${\bf F}$-scheme and ${\bf d}$-scheme, and demonstrate that the former has the same formulation in two and three dimensions. Finally several numerical examples are presented to validate this methodology, including combination with remesh techniques to handle the case of very large solid displacement.
Overview of the CCKS 2019 Knowledge Graph Evaluation Track: Entity, Relation, Event and QA
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2020
Year: 2020

Knowledge graph models world knowledge as concepts, entities, and the relationships between them, which has been widely used in many real-world tasks. CCKS 2019 held an evaluation track with 6 tasks and attracted more than 1,600 teams. In this paper, we give an overview of the knowledge graph evaluation tract at CCKS 2019. By reviewing the task definition, successful methods, useful resources, good strategies and research challenges associated with each task in CCKS 2019, this paper can provide a helpful reference for developing knowledge graph applications and conducting future knowledge graph researches.
Theoretical Analysis of Divide-and-Conquer ERM: Beyond Square Loss and RKHS
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2020
Year: 2020

Theoretical analysis of the divide-and-conquer based distributed learning with least square loss in the reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) have recently been explored within the framework of learning theory. However, the studies on learning theory for general loss functions and hypothesis spaces remain limited. To fill the gap, we study the risk performance of distributed empirical risk minimization (ERM) for general loss functions and hypothesis spaces. The main contributions are two-fold. First, we derive two tight risk bounds under certain basic assumptions on the hypothesis space, as well as the smoothness, Lipschitz continuity, strong convexity of the loss function. Second, we further develop a more general risk bound for distributed ERM without the restriction of strong convexity.
Fast Collision Probability Estimation Based on Finite-Dimensional Monte Carlo Method
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2020
Year: 2020

The safety concern for unmanned systems, namely the concern for the potential casualty caused by system abnormalities, has been a bottleneck for their development, especially in populated areas. Evidently, the collision between the unmanned system and the obstacles, including both moving and static objects, accounts for a great proportion of the system abnormalities. The route planning and corresponding controller are established in order to avoid the collision, whereas, in the presence of uncertainties, it is possible that the unmanned system would deviate from the predetermined route and collide with the obstacles. Therefore, for the safety of unmanned systems, collision probability estimation and further safety decision are very important. To estimate the collision probability, the Monte Carlo method could be applied, however, it is generally rather slow. This paper introduces a fast collision probability estimation method based on finite-dimensional distribution, whose main idea is to filter out the sampling points needed and generate the states directly by samples of finite-dimensional distribution, reducing the estimation time significantly. Besides, further techniques including the probabilistic equidistance sampling and dimension reduction, also serve to reduce the estimation time. The simulation shows that the proposed method reduces over 99% of the estimation time.