pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Reinforced Workload Distribution Fairness
Authors: Zhiyuan Yao, Zihan Ding, Thomas Heide Clausen
Date: 2021-10-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Fairness, Reinforcement Learning (RL)

Network load balancers are central components in data centers, that distributes workloads across multiple servers and thereby contribute to offering scalable services. However, when load balancers operate in dynamic environments with limited monitoring of application server loads, they rely on heuristic algorithms that require manual configurations for fairness and performance. To alleviate that, this paper proposes a distributed asynchronous reinforcement learning mechanism to-with no active load balancer state monitoring and limited network observations-improve the fairness of the workload distribution achieved by a load balancer. The performance of proposed mechanism is evaluated and compared with stateof-the-art load balancing algorithms in a simulator, under configurations with progressively increasing complexities. Preliminary results show promise in RLbased load balancing algorithms, and identify additional challenges and future research directions, including reward function design and model scalability.
Adaptive Hierarchical Similarity Metric Learning with Noisy Labels
Authors: Jiexi Yan, Lei Luo, Cheng Deng, Heng Huang
Date: 2021-10-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Learning with noisy labels, Metric Learning

Deep Metric Learning (DML) plays a critical role in various machine learning tasks. However, most existing deep metric learning methods with binary similarity are sensitive to noisy labels, which are widely present in real-world data. Since these noisy labels often cause severe performance degradation, it is crucial to enhance the robustness and generalization ability of DML. In this paper, we propose an Adaptive Hierarchical Similarity Metric Learning method. It considers two noise-insensitive information, \textit{i.e.}, class-wise divergence and sample-wise consistency. Specifically, class-wise divergence can effectively excavate richer similarity information beyond binary in modeling by taking advantage of Hyperbolic metric learning, while sample-wise consistency can further improve the generalization ability of the model using contrastive augmentation. More importantly, we design an adaptive strategy to integrate this information in a unified view. It is noteworthy that the new method can be extended to any pair-based metric loss. Extensive experimental results on benchmark datasets demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance compared with current deep metric learning approaches.
Concept and Attribute Reduction Based on Rectangle Theory of Formal Concept
Authors: Jianqin Zhou, Sichun Yang, Xifeng Wang, Wanquan Liu
Date: 2021-10-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Attribute

Based on rectangle theory of formal concept and set covering theory, the concept reduction preserving binary relations is investigated in this paper. It is known that there are three types of formal concepts: core concepts, relative necessary concepts and unnecessary concepts. First, we present the new judgment results for relative necessary concepts and unnecessary concepts. Second, we derive the bounds for both the maximum number of relative necessary concepts and the maximum number of unnecessary concepts and it is a difficult problem as either in concept reduction preserving binary relations or attribute reduction of decision formal contexts, the computation of formal contexts from formal concepts is a challenging problem. Third, based on rectangle theory of formal concept, a fast algorithm for reducing attributes while preserving the extensions for a set of formal concepts is proposed using the extension bit-array technique, which allows multiple context cells to be processed by a single 32-bit or 64-bit operator. Technically, the new algorithm could store both formal context and extent of a concept as bit-arrays, and we can use bit-operations to process set operations "or" as well as "and". One more merit is that the new algorithm does not need to consider other concepts in the concept lattice, thus the algorithm is explicit to understand and fast. Experiments demonstrate that the new algorithm is effective in the computation of attribute reductions.
Granule Description based on Compound Concepts
Authors: Jianqin Zhou, Sichun Yang, Xifeng Wang, Wanquan Liu
Date: 2021-10-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Object

Concise granule descriptions for definable granules and approaching descriptions for indefinable granules are challenging and important issues in granular computing. The concept with only common attributes has been intensively studied. To investigate the granules with some special needs, we propose a novel type of compound concepts in this paper, i.e., common-and-necessary concept. Based on the definitions of concept-forming operations, the logical formulas are derived for each of the following types of concepts: formal concept, object-induced three-way concept, object oriented concept and common-and-necessary concept. Furthermore, by utilizing the logical relationship among various concepts, we have derived concise and unified equivalent conditions for definable granules and approaching descriptions for indefinable granules for all four kinds of concepts.
A New Algorithm based on Extent Bit-array for Computing Formal Concepts
Authors: Jianqin Zhou, Sichun Yang, Xifeng Wang, Wanquan Liu
Date: 2021-10-29 00:00:00

The emergence of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) as a data analysis technique has increased the need for developing algorithms which can compute formal concepts quickly. The current efficient algorithms for FCA are variants of the Close-By-One (CbO) algorithm, such as In-Close2, In-Close3 and In-Close4, which are all based on horizontal storage of contexts. In this paper, based on algorithm In-Close4, a new algorithm based on the vertical storage of contexts, called In-Close5, is proposed, which can significantly reduce both the time complexity and space complexity of algorithm In-Close4. Technically, the new algorithm stores both context and extent of a concept as a vertical bit-array, while within In-Close4 algorithm the context is stored only as a horizontal bit-array, which is very slow in finding the intersection of two extent sets. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is much more effective than In-Close4 algorithm, and it also has a broader scope of applicability in computing formal concept in which one can solve the problems that cannot be solved by the In-Close4 algorithm.
Smart Fashion: A Review of AI Applications in the Fashion & Apparel Industry
Authors: Seyed Omid Mohammadi, Ahmad Kalhor
Date: 2021-10-28 00:00:00
Tasks: Articles, Multi-Label Classification, MUlTI-LABEL-ClASSIFICATION

The fashion industry is on the verge of an unprecedented change. The implementation of machine learning, computer vision, and artificial intelligence (AI) in fashion applications is opening lots of new opportunities for this industry. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on this matter, categorizing more than 580 related articles into 22 well-defined fashion-related tasks. Such structured task-based multi-label classification of fashion research articles provides researchers with explicit research directions and facilitates their access to the related studies, improving the visibility of studies simultaneously. For each task, a time chart is provided to analyze the progress through the years. Furthermore, we provide a list of 86 public fashion datasets accompanied by a list of suggested applications and additional information for each.
Combining expert knowledge and neural networks to model environmental stresses in agriculture
Authors: Kostadin Cvejoski, Jannis Schuecker, Anne-Katrin Mahlein, Bogdan Georgiev
Date: 2021-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Clustering, Representation Learning, Sensitivity

In this work we combine representation learning capabilities of neural network with agricultural knowledge from experts to model environmental heat and drought stresses. We first design deterministic expert models which serve as a benchmark and inform the design of flexible neural-network architectures. Finally, a sensitivity analysis of the latter allows a clustering of hybrids into susceptible and resistant ones.
Fuzzy Conceptual Graphs: a comparative discussion
Authors: Adam Faci, Marie-Jeanne Lesot, Claire Laudy
Date: 2021-10-26 00:00:00

Conceptual Graphs (CG) are a graph-based knowledge representation and reasoning formalism; fuzzy Conceptual Graphs (fCG) constitute an extension that enriches their expressiveness, exploiting the fuzzy set theory so as to relax their constraints at various levels. This paper proposes a comparative study of existing approaches over their respective advantages and possible limitations. The discussion revolves around three axes: (a) Critical view of each approach and comparison with previous propositions from the state of the art; (b) Presentation of the many possible interpretations of each definition to illustrate its potential and its limits; (c) Clarification of the part of CG impacted by the definition as well as the relaxed constraint.
Multi-Agent Advisor Q-Learning
Authors: Sriram Ganapathi Subramanian, Matthew E. Taylor, Kate Larson, Mark Crowley
Date: 2021-10-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making, Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning, Q-Learning, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning (RL)

In the last decade, there have been significant advances in multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) but there are still numerous challenges, such as high sample complexity and slow convergence to stable policies, that need to be overcome before wide-spread deployment is possible. However, many real-world environments already, in practice, deploy sub-optimal or heuristic approaches for generating policies. An interesting question that arises is how to best use such approaches as advisors to help improve reinforcement learning in multi-agent domains. In this paper, we provide a principled framework for incorporating action recommendations from online sub-optimal advisors in multi-agent settings. We describe the problem of ADvising Multiple Intelligent Reinforcement Agents (ADMIRAL) in nonrestrictive general-sum stochastic game environments and present two novel Q-learning based algorithms: ADMIRAL - Decision Making (ADMIRAL-DM) and ADMIRAL - Advisor Evaluation (ADMIRAL-AE), which allow us to improve learning by appropriately incorporating advice from an advisor (ADMIRAL-DM), and evaluate the effectiveness of an advisor (ADMIRAL-AE). We analyze the algorithms theoretically and provide fixed-point guarantees regarding their learning in general-sum stochastic games. Furthermore, extensive experiments illustrate that these algorithms: can be used in a variety of environments, have performances that compare favourably to other related baselines, can scale to large state-action spaces, and are robust to poor advice from advisors.
FREGAN : an application of generative adversarial networks in enhancing the frame rate of videos
Authors: Rishik Mishra, Neeraj Gupta, Nitya Shukla
Date: 2021-11-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Generative Adversarial Network, SSIM, Super-Resolution

A digital video is a collection of individual frames, while streaming the video the scene utilized the time slice for each frame. High refresh rate and high frame rate is the demand of all high technology applications. The action tracking in videos becomes easier and motion becomes smoother in gaming applications due to the high refresh rate. It provides a faster response because of less time in between each frame that is displayed on the screen. FREGAN (Frame Rate Enhancement Generative Adversarial Network) model has been proposed, which predicts future frames of a video sequence based on a sequence of past frames. In this paper, we investigated the GAN model and proposed FREGAN for the enhancement of frame rate in videos. We have utilized Huber loss as a loss function in the proposed FREGAN. It provided excellent results in super-resolution and we have tried to reciprocate that performance in the application of frame rate enhancement. We have validated the effectiveness of the proposed model on the standard datasets (UCF101 and RFree500). The experimental outcomes illustrate that the proposed model has a Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of 34.94 and a Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) of 0.95.
Correlation between image quality metrics of magnetic resonance images and the neural network segmentation accuracy
Authors: Rajarajeswari Muthusivarajan, Adrian Celaya, Joshua P. Yung, Satish Viswanath, Daniel S. Marcus, Caroline Chung, David Fuentes
Date: 2021-11-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Image Segmentation, Segmentation, Semantic Segmentation, Skull Stripping, Tumor Segmentation

Deep neural networks with multilevel connections process input data in complex ways to learn the information.A networks learning efficiency depends not only on the complex neural network architecture but also on the input training images.Medical image segmentation with deep neural networks for skull stripping or tumor segmentation from magnetic resonance images enables learning both global and local features of the images.Though medical images are collected in a controlled environment,there may be artifacts or equipment based variance that cause inherent bias in the input set.In this study, we investigated the correlation between the image quality metrics of MR images with the neural network segmentation accuracy.For that we have used the 3D DenseNet architecture and let the network trained on the same input but applying different methodologies to select the training data set based on the IQM values.The difference in the segmentation accuracy between models based on the random training inputs with IQM based training inputs shed light on the role of image quality metrics on segmentation accuracy.By running the image quality metrics to choose the training inputs,further we may tune the learning efficiency of the network and the segmentation accuracy.
FaceScape: 3D Facial Dataset and Benchmark for Single-View 3D Face Reconstruction
Authors: Hao Zhu, Haotian Yang, Longwei Guo, Yidi Zhang, Yanru Wang, Mingkai Huang, Menghua Wu, Qiu Shen, Ruigang Yang, Xun Cao
Date: 2021-11-01 00:00:00
Tasks: 3D Face Reconstruction, 3D Reconstruction, Face Reconstruction

In this paper, we present a large-scale detailed 3D face dataset, FaceScape, and the corresponding benchmark to evaluate single-view facial 3D reconstruction. By training on FaceScape data, a novel algorithm is proposed to predict elaborate riggable 3D face models from a single image input. FaceScape dataset releases $16,940$ textured 3D faces, captured from $847$ subjects and each with $20$ specific expressions. The 3D models contain the pore-level facial geometry that is also processed to be topologically uniform. These fine 3D facial models can be represented as a 3D morphable model for coarse shapes and displacement maps for detailed geometry. Taking advantage of the large-scale and high-accuracy dataset, a novel algorithm is further proposed to learn the expression-specific dynamic details using a deep neural network. The learned relationship serves as the foundation of our 3D face prediction system from a single image input. Different from most previous methods, our predicted 3D models are riggable with highly detailed geometry under different expressions. We also use FaceScape data to generate the in-the-wild and in-the-lab benchmark to evaluate recent methods of single-view face reconstruction. The accuracy is reported and analyzed on the dimensions of camera pose and focal length, which provides a faithful and comprehensive evaluation and reveals new challenges. The unprecedented dataset, benchmark, and code have been released at https://github.com/zhuhao-nju/facescape.
OctField: Hierarchical Implicit Functions for 3D Modeling
Authors: Jia-Heng Tang, Weikai Chen, Jie Yang, Bo wang, Songrun Liu, Bo Yang, Lin Gao
Date: 2021-11-01 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2021 12

Recent advances in localized implicit functions have enabled neural implicit representation to be scalable to large scenes. However, the regular subdivision of 3D space employed by these approaches fails to take into account the sparsity of the surface occupancy and the varying granularities of geometric details. As a result, its memory footprint grows cubically with the input volume, leading to a prohibitive computational cost even at a moderately dense decomposition. In this work, we present a learnable hierarchical implicit representation for 3D surfaces, coded OctField, that allows high-precision encoding of intricate surfaces with low memory and computational budget. The key to our approach is an adaptive decomposition of 3D scenes that only distributes local implicit functions around the surface of interest. We achieve this goal by introducing a hierarchical octree structure to adaptively subdivide the 3D space according to the surface occupancy and the richness of part geometry. As octree is discrete and non-differentiable, we further propose a novel hierarchical network that models the subdivision of octree cells as a probabilistic process and recursively encodes and decodes both octree structure and surface geometry in a differentiable manner. We demonstrate the value of OctField for a range of shape modeling and reconstruction tasks, showing superiority over alternative approaches.
A Unified View of cGANs with and without Classifiers
Authors: Si-An Chen, Chun-Liang Li, Hsuan-Tien Lin
Date: 2021-11-01 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2021 12

Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks (cGANs) are implicit generative models which allow to sample from class-conditional distributions. Existing cGANs are based on a wide range of different discriminator designs and training objectives. One popular design in earlier works is to include a classifier during training with the assumption that good classifiers can help eliminate samples generated with wrong classes. Nevertheless, including classifiers in cGANs often comes with a side effect of only generating easy-to-classify samples. Recently, some representative cGANs avoid the shortcoming and reach state-of-the-art performance without having classifiers. Somehow it remains unanswered whether the classifiers can be resurrected to design better cGANs. In this work, we demonstrate that classifiers can be properly leveraged to improve cGANs. We start by using the decomposition of the joint probability distribution to connect the goals of cGANs and classification as a unified framework. The framework, along with a classic energy model to parameterize distributions, justifies the use of classifiers for cGANs in a principled manner. It explains several popular cGAN variants, such as ACGAN, ProjGAN, and ContraGAN, as special cases with different levels of approximations, which provides a unified view and brings new insights to understanding cGANs. Experimental results demonstrate that the design inspired by the proposed framework outperforms state-of-the-art cGANs on multiple benchmark datasets, especially on the most challenging ImageNet. The code is available at https://github.com/sian-chen/PyTorch-ECGAN.
Render In-between: Motion Guided Video Synthesis for Action Interpolation
Authors: Hsuan-I Ho, Xu Chen, Jie Song, Otmar Hilliges
Date: 2021-11-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Neural Rendering

Upsampling videos of human activity is an interesting yet challenging task with many potential applications ranging from gaming to entertainment and sports broadcasting. The main difficulty in synthesizing video frames in this setting stems from the highly complex and non-linear nature of human motion and the complex appearance and texture of the body. We propose to address these issues in a motion-guided frame-upsampling framework that is capable of producing realistic human motion and appearance. A novel motion model is trained to inference the non-linear skeletal motion between frames by leveraging a large-scale motion-capture dataset (AMASS). The high-frame-rate pose predictions are then used by a neural rendering pipeline to produce the full-frame output, taking the pose and background consistency into consideration. Our pipeline only requires low-frame-rate videos and unpaired human motion data but does not require high-frame-rate videos for training. Furthermore, we contribute the first evaluation dataset that consists of high-quality and high-frame-rate videos of human activities for this task. Compared with state-of-the-art video interpolation techniques, our method produces in-between frames with better quality and accuracy, which is evident by state-of-the-art results on pixel-level, distributional metrics and comparative user evaluations. Our code and the collected dataset are available at https://git.io/Render-In-Between.
With a Little Help from my Temporal Context: Multimodal Egocentric Action Recognition
Authors: Evangelos Kazakos, Jaesung Huh, Arsha Nagrani, Andrew Zisserman, Dima Damen
Date: 2021-11-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Action Recognition, Language Modeling, Language Modelling

In egocentric videos, actions occur in quick succession. We capitalise on the action's temporal context and propose a method that learns to attend to surrounding actions in order to improve recognition performance. To incorporate the temporal context, we propose a transformer-based multimodal model that ingests video and audio as input modalities, with an explicit language model providing action sequence context to enhance the predictions. We test our approach on EPIC-KITCHENS and EGTEA datasets reporting state-of-the-art performance. Our ablations showcase the advantage of utilising temporal context as well as incorporating audio input modality and language model to rescore predictions. Code and models at: https://github.com/ekazakos/MTCN.
Projected GANs Converge Faster
Authors: Axel Sauer, Kashyap Chitta, Jens Müller, Andreas Geiger
Date: 2021-11-01 00:00:00
Proceeding: NeurIPS 2021 12
Tasks: Conditional Image Generation, Image Generation

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) produce high-quality images but are challenging to train. They need careful regularization, vast amounts of compute, and expensive hyper-parameter sweeps. We make significant headway on these issues by projecting generated and real samples into a fixed, pretrained feature space. Motivated by the finding that the discriminator cannot fully exploit features from deeper layers of the pretrained model, we propose a more effective strategy that mixes features across channels and resolutions. Our Projected GAN improves image quality, sample efficiency, and convergence speed. It is further compatible with resolutions of up to one Megapixel and advances the state-of-the-art Fr\'echet Inception Distance (FID) on twenty-two benchmark datasets. Importantly, Projected GANs match the previously lowest FIDs up to 40 times faster, cutting the wall-clock time from 5 days to less than 3 hours given the same computational resources.