pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
GAQAT: gradient-adaptive quantization-aware training for domain generalization
Authors: Jiacheng Jiang, Yuan Meng, Chen Tang, Han Yu, Qun Li, Zhi Wang, Wenwu Zhu
Date: 2024-12-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Domain Generalization, Quantization

Research on loss surface geometry, such as Sharpness-Aware Minimization (SAM), shows that flatter minima improve generalization. Recent studies further reveal that flatter minima can also reduce the domain generalization (DG) gap. However, existing flatness-based DG techniques predominantly operate within a full-precision training process, which is impractical for deployment on resource-constrained edge devices that typically rely on lower bit-width representations (e.g., 4 bits, 3 bits). Consequently, low-precision quantization-aware training is critical for optimizing these techniques in real-world applications. In this paper, we observe a significant degradation in performance when applying state-of-the-art DG-SAM methods to quantized models, suggesting that current approaches fail to preserve generalizability during the low-precision training process. To address this limitation, we propose a novel Gradient-Adaptive Quantization-Aware Training (GAQAT) framework for DG. Our approach begins by identifying the scale-gradient conflict problem in low-precision quantization, where the task loss and smoothness loss induce conflicting gradients for the scaling factors of quantizers, with certain layers exhibiting opposing gradient directions. This conflict renders the optimization of quantized weights highly unstable. To mitigate this, we further introduce a mechanism to quantify gradient inconsistencies and selectively freeze the gradients of scaling factors, thereby stabilizing the training process and enhancing out-of-domain generalization. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of the proposed GAQAT framework. On PACS, our 3-bit and 4-bit models outperform direct DG-QAT integration by up to 4.5%. On DomainNet, the 4-bit model achieves near-lossless performance compared to full precision, with improvements of 1.39% (4-bit) and 1.06% (3-bit) over the SOTA QAT baseline.
Street Gaussians without 3D Object Tracker
Authors: Ruida Zhang, Chengxi Li, Chenyangguang Zhang, Xingyu Liu, Haili Yuan, Yanyan Li, Xiangyang Ji, Gim Hee Lee
Date: 2024-12-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Object, Object Tracking

Realistic scene reconstruction in driving scenarios poses significant challenges due to fast-moving objects. Most existing methods rely on labor-intensive manual labeling of object poses to reconstruct dynamic objects in canonical space and move them based on these poses during rendering. While some approaches attempt to use 3D object trackers to replace manual annotations, the limited generalization of 3D trackers -- caused by the scarcity of large-scale 3D datasets -- results in inferior reconstructions in real-world settings. In contrast, 2D foundation models demonstrate strong generalization capabilities. To eliminate the reliance on 3D trackers and enhance robustness across diverse environments, we propose a stable object tracking module by leveraging associations from 2D deep trackers within a 3D object fusion strategy. We address inevitable tracking errors by further introducing a motion learning strategy in an implicit feature space that autonomously corrects trajectory errors and recovers missed detections. Experimental results on Waymo-NOTR datasets show we achieve state-of-the-art performance. Our code will be made publicly available.
Radiant: Large-scale 3D Gaussian Rendering based on Hierarchical Framework
Authors: Haosong Peng, Tianyu Qi, Yufeng Zhan, Hao Li, Yalun Dai, Yuanqing Xia
Date: 2024-12-07 00:00:00
Tasks: 3DGS

With the advancement of computer vision, the recently emerged 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has increasingly become a popular scene reconstruction algorithm due to its outstanding performance. Distributed 3DGS can efficiently utilize edge devices to directly train on the collected images, thereby offloading computational demands and enhancing efficiency. However, traditional distributed frameworks often overlook computational and communication challenges in real-world environments, hindering large-scale deployment and potentially posing privacy risks. In this paper, we propose Radiant, a hierarchical 3DGS algorithm designed for large-scale scene reconstruction that considers system heterogeneity, enhancing the model performance and training efficiency. Via extensive empirical study, we find that it is crucial to partition the regions for each edge appropriately and allocate varying camera positions to each device for image collection and training. The core of Radiant is partitioning regions based on heterogeneous environment information and allocating workloads to each device accordingly. Furthermore, we provide a 3DGS model aggregation algorithm that enhances the quality and ensures the continuity of models' boundaries. Finally, we develop a testbed, and experiments demonstrate that Radiant improved reconstruction quality by up to 25.7\% and reduced up to 79.6\% end-to-end latency.
Not Just Text: Uncovering Vision Modality Typographic Threats in Image Generation Models
Authors: Hao Cheng, Erjia Xiao, Jiayan Yang, Jiahang Cao, Qiang Zhang, Jize Zhang, Kaidi Xu, Jindong Gu, Renjing Xu
Date: 2024-12-07 00:00:00
Proceeding: CVPR 2025 1
Tasks: Image Generation

Current image generation models can effortlessly produce high-quality, highly realistic images, but this also increases the risk of misuse. In various Text-to-Image or Image-to-Image tasks, attackers can generate a series of images containing inappropriate content by simply editing the language modality input. To mitigate this security concern, numerous guarding or defensive strategies have been proposed, with a particular emphasis on safeguarding language modality. However, in practical applications, threats in the vision modality, particularly in tasks involving the editing of real-world images, present heightened security risks as they can easily infringe upon the rights of the image owner. Therefore, this paper employs a method named typographic attack to reveal that various image generation models are also susceptible to threats within the vision modality. Furthermore, we also evaluate the defense performance of various existing methods when facing threats in the vision modality and uncover their ineffectiveness. Finally, we propose the Vision Modal Threats in Image Generation Models (VMT-IGMs) dataset, which would serve as a baseline for evaluating the vision modality vulnerability of various image generation models.
CLIP-TNseg: A Multi-Modal Hybrid Framework for Thyroid Nodule Segmentation in Ultrasound Images
Authors: Xinjie Sun, Boxiong Wei, Yalong Jiang, Liquan Mao, Qi Zhao
Date: 2024-12-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Segmentation

Thyroid nodule segmentation in ultrasound images is crucial for accurate diagnosis and treatment planning. However, existing methods face challenges in segmentation accuracy, interpretability, and generalization, which hinder their performance. This letter proposes a novel framework, CLIP-TNseg, to address these issues by integrating a multimodal large model with a neural network architecture. CLIP-TNseg consists of two main branches: the Coarse-grained Branch, which extracts high-level semantic features from a frozen CLIP model, and the Fine-grained Branch, which captures fine-grained features using U-Net style residual blocks. These features are fused and processed by the prediction head to generate precise segmentation maps. CLIP-TNseg leverages the Coarse-grained Branch to enhance semantic understanding through textual and high-level visual features, while the Fine-grained Branch refines spatial details, enabling precise and robust segmentation. Extensive experiments on public and our newly collected datasets demonstrate its competitive performance. Our code and the original dataset are available at https://github.com/jayxjsun/CLIP-TNseg.
Test-time Cost-and-Quality Controllable Arbitrary-Scale Super-Resolution with Variable Fourier Components
Authors: Kazutoshi Akita, Norimichi Ukita
Date: 2024-12-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Super-Resolution

Super-resolution (SR) with arbitrary scale factor and cost-and-quality controllability at test time is essential for various applications. While several arbitrary-scale SR methods have been proposed, these methods require us to modify the model structure and retrain it to control the computational cost and SR quality. To address this limitation, we propose a novel SR method using a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) with the Fourier representation. In our method, the RNN sequentially estimates Fourier components, each consisting of frequency and amplitude, and aggregates these components to reconstruct an SR image. Since the RNN can adjust the number of recurrences at test time, we can control the computational cost and SR quality in a single model: fewer recurrences (i.e., fewer Fourier components) lead to lower cost but lower quality, while more recurrences (i.e., more Fourier components) lead to better quality but more cost. Experimental results prove that more Fourier components improve the PSNR score. Furthermore, even with fewer Fourier components, our method achieves a lower PSNR drop than other state-of-the-art arbitrary-scale SR methods.
Video2Reward: Generating Reward Function from Videos for Legged Robot Behavior Learning
Authors: Runhao Zeng, Dingjie Zhou, Qiwei Liang, Junlin Liu, Hui Li, Changxin Huang, Jianqiang Li, Xiping Hu, Fuchun Sun
Date: 2024-12-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Large Language Model

Learning behavior in legged robots presents a significant challenge due to its inherent instability and complex constraints. Recent research has proposed the use of a large language model (LLM) to generate reward functions in reinforcement learning, thereby replacing the need for manually designed rewards by experts. However, this approach, which relies on textual descriptions to define learning objectives, fails to achieve controllable and precise behavior learning with clear directionality. In this paper, we introduce a new video2reward method, which directly generates reward functions from videos depicting the behaviors to be mimicked and learned. Specifically, we first process videos containing the target behaviors, converting the motion information of individuals in the videos into keypoint trajectories represented as coordinates through a video2text transforming module. These trajectories are then fed into an LLM to generate the reward function, which in turn is used to train the policy. To enhance the quality of the reward function, we develop a video-assisted iterative reward refinement scheme that visually assesses the learned behaviors and provides textual feedback to the LLM. This feedback guides the LLM to continually refine the reward function, ultimately facilitating more efficient behavior learning. Experimental results on tasks involving bipedal and quadrupedal robot motion control demonstrate that our method surpasses the performance of state-of-the-art LLM-based reward generation methods by over 37.6% in terms of human normalized score. More importantly, by switching video inputs, we find our method can rapidly learn diverse motion behaviors such as walking and running.
AutoURDF: Unsupervised Robot Modeling from Point Cloud Frames Using Cluster Registration
Authors: Jiong Lin, Lechen Zhang, Kwansoo Lee, Jialong Ning, Judah Goldfeder, Hod Lipson
Date: 2024-12-07 00:00:00
Proceeding: CVPR 2025 1
Tasks: parameter estimation, Point Cloud Registration

Robot description models are essential for simulation and control, yet their creation often requires significant manual effort. To streamline this modeling process, we introduce AutoURDF, an unsupervised approach for constructing description files for unseen robots from point cloud frames. Our method leverages a cluster-based point cloud registration model that tracks the 6-DoF transformations of point clusters. Through analyzing cluster movements, we hierarchically address the following challenges: (1) moving part segmentation, (2) body topology inference, and (3) joint parameter estimation. The complete pipeline produces robot description files that are fully compatible with existing simulators. We validate our method across a variety of robots, using both synthetic and real-world scan data. Results indicate that our approach outperforms previous methods in registration and body topology estimation accuracy, offering a scalable solution for automated robot modeling.
A Comparative Study of Image Denoising Algorithms
Authors: Muhammad Umair Danish
Date: 2024-12-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Denoising, Image Denoising

With the recent advancements in the field of information industry, critical data in the form of digital images is best understood by the human brain. Therefore, digital images play a significant part and backbone role in many areas such as image processing, vision computing, robotics, and bio-medical. Such use of digital images is practically implementable in various real-time scenarios like biological sciences, medicine, gaming technology, computer information and communication technology, data and statistical science, radiological sciences and medical imaging technology, and medical lab technology. However, when any digital image is sent electronically or captured via camera, it is likely to get corrupted or degraded by the available of degradation factors. To eradicate this problem, several image denoising algorithms have been proposed in the literature focusing on robust, low-cost and fast techniques to improve output performance. Consequently, in this research project, an earnest effort has been made to study various image denoising algorithms. A specific focus is given to the start-of-the-art techniques namely: NL-means, K-SVD, and BM3D. The standard images, natural images, texture images, synthetic images, and images from other datasets have been tested via these algorithms, and a detailed set of convincing results have been provided for efficient comparison.
Enhancing Sample Generation of Diffusion Models using Noise Level Correction
Authors: Abulikemu Abuduweili, Chenyang Yuan, Changliu Liu, Frank Permenter
Date: 2024-12-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Colorization, compressed sensing, Deblurring, Denoising, Image Restoration, Super-Resolution

The denoising process of diffusion models can be interpreted as an approximate projection of noisy samples onto the data manifold. Moreover, the noise level in these samples approximates their distance to the underlying manifold. Building on this insight, we propose a novel method to enhance sample generation by aligning the estimated noise level with the true distance of noisy samples to the manifold. Specifically, we introduce a noise level correction network, leveraging a pre-trained denoising network, to refine noise level estimates during the denoising process. Additionally, we extend this approach to various image restoration tasks by integrating task-specific constraints, including inpainting, deblurring, super-resolution, colorization, and compressed sensing. Experimental results demonstrate that our method significantly improves sample quality in both unconstrained and constrained generation scenarios. Notably, the proposed noise level correction framework is compatible with existing denoising schedulers (e.g., DDIM), offering additional performance improvements.
Securing Social Media Against Deepfakes using Identity, Behavioral, and Geometric Signatures
Authors: Muhammad Umar Farooq, Awais Khan, Ijaz Ul Haq, Khalid Mahmood Malik
Date: 2024-12-07 00:00:00
Tasks: DeepFake Detection, Face Swapping, Representation Learning, Triplet

Trust in social media is a growing concern due to its ability to influence significant societal changes. However, this space is increasingly compromised by various types of deepfake multimedia, which undermine the authenticity of shared content. Although substantial efforts have been made to address the challenge of deepfake content, existing detection techniques face a major limitation in generalization: they tend to perform well only on specific types of deepfakes they were trained on.This dependency on recognizing specific deepfake artifacts makes current methods vulnerable when applied to unseen or varied deepfakes, thereby compromising their performance in real-world applications such as social media platforms. To address the generalizability of deepfake detection, there is a need for a holistic approach that can capture a broader range of facial attributes and manipulations beyond isolated artifacts. To address this, we propose a novel deepfake detection framework featuring an effective feature descriptor that integrates Deep identity, Behavioral, and Geometric (DBaG) signatures, along with a classifier named DBaGNet. Specifically, the DBaGNet classifier utilizes the extracted DBaG signatures, leveraging a triplet loss objective to enhance generalized representation learning for improved classification. Specifically, the DBaGNet classifier utilizes the extracted DBaG signatures and applies a triplet loss objective to enhance generalized representation learning for improved classification. To test the effectiveness and generalizability of our proposed approach, we conduct extensive experiments using six benchmark deepfake datasets: WLDR, CelebDF, DFDC, FaceForensics++, DFD, and NVFAIR. Specifically, to ensure the effectiveness of our approach, we perform cross-dataset evaluations, and the results demonstrate significant performance gains over several state-of-the-art methods.
TACO: Learning Multi-modal Action Models with Synthetic Chains-of-Thought-and-Action
Authors: Zixian Ma, JianGuo Zhang, Zhiwei Liu, Jieyu Zhang, Juntao Tan, Manli Shu, Juan Carlos Niebles, Shelby Heinecke, Huan Wang, Caiming Xiong, Ranjay Krishna, Silvio Savarese
Date: 2024-12-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Depth Estimation, Mathematical Reasoning, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Question Answering, Spatial Reasoning, Visual Grounding, Visual Question Answering

While open-source multi-modal language models perform well on simple question answering tasks, they often fail on complex questions that require multiple capabilities, such as fine-grained recognition, visual grounding, and reasoning, and that demand multi-step solutions. We present TACO, a family of multi-modal large action models designed to improve performance on such complex, multi-step, and multi-modal tasks. During inference, TACO produces chains-of-thought-and-action (CoTA), executes intermediate steps by invoking external tools such as OCR, depth estimation and calculator, then integrates both the thoughts and action outputs to produce coherent responses. To train TACO, we create a large dataset of over 1M synthetic CoTA traces generated with GPT-4o and Python programs. We then experiment with various data filtering and mixing techniques and obtain a final subset of 293K high-quality CoTA examples. This dataset enables TACO to learn complex reasoning and action paths, surpassing existing models trained on instruction tuning data with only direct answers. Our model TACO outperforms the instruction-tuned baseline across 8 benchmarks, achieving a 3.6% improvement on average, with gains of up to 15% in MMVet tasks involving OCR, mathematical reasoning, and spatial reasoning. Training on high-quality CoTA traces sets a new standard for complex multi-modal reasoning, highlighting the need for structured, multi-step instruction tuning in advancing open-source mutli-modal models' capabilities.
Multi-Armed Bandit Approach for Optimizing Training on Synthetic Data
Authors: Abdulrahman Kerim, Leandro Soriano Marcolino, Erickson R. Nascimento, Richard Jiang
Date: 2024-12-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Attribute, Large Language Model

Supervised machine learning methods require large-scale training datasets to perform well in practice. Synthetic data has been showing great progress recently and has been used as a complement to real data. However, there is yet a great urge to assess the usability of synthetically generated data. To this end, we propose a novel UCB-based training procedure combined with a dynamic usability metric. Our proposed metric integrates low-level and high-level information from synthetic images and their corresponding real and synthetic datasets, surpassing existing traditional metrics. By utilizing a UCB-based dynamic approach ensures continual enhancement of model learning. Unlike other approaches, our method effectively adapts to changes in the machine learning model's state and considers the evolving utility of training samples during the training process. We show that our metric is an effective way to rank synthetic images based on their usability. Furthermore, we propose a new attribute-aware bandit pipeline for generating synthetic data by integrating a Large Language Model with Stable Diffusion. Quantitative results show that our approach can boost the performance of a wide range of supervised classifiers. Notably, we observed an improvement of up to 10% in classification accuracy compared to traditional approaches, demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach. Our source code, datasets, and additional materials are publically available at https://github.com/A-Kerim/Synthetic-Data-Usability-2024.
COOOL: Challenge Of Out-Of-Label A Novel Benchmark for Autonomous Driving
Authors: Ali K. AlShami, Ananya Kalita, Ryan Rabinowitz, Khang Lam, Rishabh Bezbarua, Terrance Boult, Jugal Kalita
Date: 2024-12-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Anomaly Detection, Autonomous Driving, Domain Adaptation, Open Set Learning, Self-Driving Cars

As the Computer Vision community rapidly develops and advances algorithms for autonomous driving systems, the goal of safer and more efficient autonomous transportation is becoming increasingly achievable. However, it is 2024, and we still do not have fully self-driving cars. One of the remaining core challenges lies in addressing the novelty problem, where self-driving systems still struggle to handle previously unseen situations on the open road. With our Challenge of Out-Of-Label (COOOL) benchmark, we introduce a novel dataset for hazard detection, offering versatile evaluation metrics applicable across various tasks, including novelty-adjacent domains such as Anomaly Detection, Open-Set Recognition, Open Vocabulary, and Domain Adaptation. COOOL comprises over 200 collections of dashcam-oriented videos, annotated by human labelers to identify objects of interest and potential driving hazards. It includes a diverse range of hazards and nuisance objects. Due to the dataset's size and data complexity, COOOL serves exclusively as an evaluation benchmark.
CigTime: Corrective Instruction Generation Through Inverse Motion Editing
Authors: Qihang Fang, Chengcheng Tang, Bugra Tekin, Yanchao Yang
Date: 2024-12-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Motion Generation

Recent advancements in models linking natural language with human motions have shown significant promise in motion generation and editing based on instructional text. Motivated by applications in sports coaching and motor skill learning, we investigate the inverse problem: generating corrective instructional text, leveraging motion editing and generation models. We introduce a novel approach that, given a user's current motion (source) and the desired motion (target), generates text instructions to guide the user towards achieving the target motion. We leverage large language models to generate corrective texts and utilize existing motion generation and editing frameworks to compile datasets of triplets (source motion, target motion, and corrective text). Using this data, we propose a new motion-language model for generating corrective instructions. We present both qualitative and quantitative results across a diverse range of applications that largely improve upon baselines. Our approach demonstrates its effectiveness in instructional scenarios, offering text-based guidance to correct and enhance user performance.