pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
ACT-Bench: Towards Action Controllable World Models for Autonomous Driving
Authors: Hidehisa Arai, Keishi Ishihara, Tsubasa Takahashi, Yu Yamaguchi
Date: 2024-12-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Autonomous Driving, Benchmarking

World models have emerged as promising neural simulators for autonomous driving, with the potential to supplement scarce real-world data and enable closed-loop evaluations. However, current research primarily evaluates these models based on visual realism or downstream task performance, with limited focus on fidelity to specific action instructions - a crucial property for generating targeted simulation scenes. Although some studies address action fidelity, their evaluations rely on closed-source mechanisms, limiting reproducibility. To address this gap, we develop an open-access evaluation framework, ACT-Bench, for quantifying action fidelity, along with a baseline world model, Terra. Our benchmarking framework includes a large-scale dataset pairing short context videos from nuScenes with corresponding future trajectory data, which provides conditional input for generating future video frames and enables evaluation of action fidelity for executed motions. Furthermore, Terra is trained on multiple large-scale trajectory-annotated datasets to enhance action fidelity. Leveraging this framework, we demonstrate that the state-of-the-art model does not fully adhere to given instructions, while Terra achieves improved action fidelity. All components of our benchmark framework will be made publicly available to support future research.
Evaluating the Impact of Discriminative and Generative E2E Speech Enhancement Models on Syllable Stress Preservation
Authors: Rangavajjala Sankara Bharadwaj, Jhansi Mallela, Sai Harshitha Aluru, Chiranjeevi Yarra
Date: 2024-12-11 00:00:00
Tasks: Speech Enhancement

Automatic syllable stress detection is a crucial component in Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) systems for language learners. Current stress detection models are typically trained on clean speech, which may not be robust in real-world scenarios where background noise is prevalent. To address this, speech enhancement (SE) models, designed to enhance speech by removing noise, might be employed, but their impact on preserving syllable stress patterns is not well studied. This study examines how different SE models, representing discriminative and generative modeling approaches, affect syllable stress detection under noisy conditions. We assess these models by applying them to speech data with varying signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) from 0 to 20 dB, and evaluating their effectiveness in maintaining stress patterns. Additionally, we explore different feature sets to determine which ones are most effective for capturing stress patterns amidst noise. To further understand the impact of SE models, a human-based perceptual study is conducted to compare the perceived stress patterns in SE-enhanced speech with those in clean speech, providing insights into how well these models preserve syllable stress as perceived by listeners. Experiments are performed on English speech data from non-native speakers of German and Italian. And the results reveal that the stress detection performance is robust with the generative SE models when heuristic features are used. Also, the observations from the perceptual study are consistent with the stress detection outcomes under all SE models.
Leveraging Prompt Learning and Pause Encoding for Alzheimer's Disease Detection
Authors: Yin-Long Liu, Rui Feng, Jia-Hong Yuan, Zhen-Hua Ling
Date: 2024-12-09 00:00:00
Tasks: Alzheimer's Disease Detection, Automatic Speech Recognition, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Masked Language Modeling, Prompt Learning, speech-recognition, Speech Recognition

Compared to other clinical screening techniques, speech-and-language-based automated Alzheimer's disease (AD) detection methods are characterized by their non-invasiveness, cost-effectiveness, and convenience. Previous studies have demonstrated the efficacy of fine-tuning pre-trained language models (PLMs) for AD detection. However, the objective of this traditional fine-tuning method, which involves inputting only transcripts, is inconsistent with the masked language modeling (MLM) task used during the pre-training phase of PLMs. In this paper, we investigate prompt-based fine-tuning of PLMs, converting the classification task into a MLM task by inserting prompt templates into the transcript inputs. We also explore the impact of incorporating pause information from forced alignment into manual transcripts. Additionally, we compare the performance of various automatic speech recognition (ASR) models and select the Whisper model to generate ASR-based transcripts for comparison with manual transcripts. Furthermore, majority voting and ensemble techniques are applied across different PLMs (BERT and RoBERTa) using different random seeds. Ultimately, we obtain maximum detection accuracy of 95.8% (with mean 87.9%, std 3.3%) using manual transcripts, achieving state-of-the-art performance for AD detection using only transcripts on the ADReSS test set.
SQ-Whisper: Speaker-Querying based Whisper Model for Target-Speaker ASR
Authors: Pengcheng Guo, Xuankai Chang, Hang Lv, Shinji Watanabe, Lei Xie
Date: 2024-12-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Automatic Speech Recognition, Data Augmentation, speech-recognition, Speech Recognition, Transfer Learning

Benefiting from massive and diverse data sources, speech foundation models exhibit strong generalization and knowledge transfer capabilities to a wide range of downstream tasks. However, a limitation arises from their exclusive handling of single-speaker speech input, making them ineffective in recognizing multi-speaker overlapped speech, a common occurrence in real-world scenarios. In this study, we delve into the adaptation of speech foundation models to eliminate interfering speakers from overlapping speech and perform target-speaker automatic speech recognition (TS-ASR). Initially, we utilize the Whisper model as the foundation for adaptation and conduct a thorough comparison of its integration with existing target-speaker adaptation techniques. We then propose an innovative model termed Speaker-Querying Whisper (SQ-Whisper), which employs a set number of trainable queries to capture speaker prompts from overlapping speech based on target-speaker enrollment. These prompts serve to steer the model in extracting speaker-specific features and accurately recognizing target-speaker transcriptions. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach effectively adapts the pre-trained speech foundation model to TS-ASR. Compared with the robust TS-HuBERT model, the proposed SQ-Whisper significantly improves performance, yielding up to 15% and 10% relative reductions in word error rates (WERs) on the Libri2Mix and WSJ0-2Mix datasets, respectively. With data augmentation, we establish new state-of-the-art WERs of 14.6% on the Libri2Mix Test set and 4.4% on the WSJ0-2Mix Test set. Furthermore, we evaluate our model on the real-world AMI meeting dataset, which shows consistent improvement over other adaptation methods.
Enhancing Code-Switching ASR Leveraging Non-Peaky CTC Loss and Deep Language Posterior Injection
Authors: Tzu-Ting Yang, Hsin-Wei Wang, Yi-Cheng Wang, Berlin Chen
Date: 2024-11-26 00:00:00
Tasks: Automatic Speech Recognition, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Language Identification, Mixture-of-Experts, speech-recognition, Speech Recognition

Code-switching-where multilingual speakers alternately switch between languages during conversations-still poses significant challenges to end-to-end (E2E) automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems due to phenomena of both acoustic and semantic confusion. This issue arises because ASR systems struggle to handle the rapid alternation of languages effectively, which often leads to significant performance degradation. Our main contributions are at least threefold: First, we incorporate language identification (LID) information into several intermediate layers of the encoder, aiming to enrich output embeddings with more detailed language information. Secondly, through the novel application of language boundary alignment loss, the subsequent ASR modules are enabled to more effectively utilize the knowledge of internal language posteriors. Third, we explore the feasibility of using language posteriors to facilitate deep interaction between shared encoder and language-specific encoders. Through comprehensive experiments on the SEAME corpus, we have verified that our proposed method outperforms the prior-art method, disentangle based mixture-of-experts (D-MoE), further enhancing the acuity of the encoder to languages.
Detecting Fake News on Social Media: A Novel Reliability Aware Machine-Crowd Hybrid Intelligence-Based Method
Authors: Yidong Chai, Kangwei Shi, Jiaheng Xie, Chunli Liu, Yuanchun Jiang, Yezheng Liu
Date: 2024-12-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Fake News Detection

Fake news on social media platforms poses a significant threat to societal systems, underscoring the urgent need for advanced detection methods. The existing detection methods can be divided into machine intelligence-based, crowd intelligence-based, and hybrid intelligence-based methods. Among them, hybrid intelligence-based methods achieve the best performance but fail to consider the reliability issue in detection. In light of this, we propose a novel Reliability Aware Hybrid Intelligence (RAHI) method for fake news detection. Our method comprises three integral modules. The first module employs a Bayesian deep learning model to capture the inherent reliability within machine intelligence. The second module uses an Item Response Theory (IRT)-based user response aggregation to account for the reliability in crowd intelligence. The third module introduces a new distribution fusion mechanism, which takes the distributions derived from both machine and crowd intelligence as input, and outputs a fused distribution that provides predictions along with the associated reliability. The experiments on the Weibo dataset demonstrate the advantages of our method. This study contributes to the research field with a novel RAHI-based method, and the code is shared at https://github.com/Kangwei-g/RAHI. This study has practical implications for three key stakeholders: internet users, online platform managers, and the government.
Nonlinear control and stability analysis of a unified Tethered UAV-winder system
Authors: Samuel Folorunsho, Maggie Ni, William Norris
Date: 2024-12-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Position

This paper presents the development of a comprehensive dynamics and stabilizing control architecture for Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (TUAV) systems. The proposed architecture integrates both onboard and ground-based controllers, employing nonlinear backstepping control techniques to achieve asymptotic stability of the TUAV's equilibrium. The onboard controllers are responsible for the position and attitude control of the TUAV, while the ground controllers regulate the winder mechanism to maintain the desired tether length, ensuring it retains its catenary form. Simulation results demonstrate the ability of the TUAV system to accurately track linear and circular trajectories, ensuring robust performance under various operational scenarios. The code and movies demonstrating the performance of the system can be found at https://github.com/sof-danny/TUAV\_system\_control.
NExT-LF: A Novel Operational Modal Analysis Method via Tangential Interpolation
Authors: Gabriele Dessena, Marco Civera, Ali Yousefi, Cecilia Surace
Date: 2024-12-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Cantilever Beam

Operational Modal Analysis (OMA) is vital for identifying modal parameters under real-world conditions, yet existing methods often face challenges with noise sensitivity and stability. This work introduces NExT-LF, a novel method that combines the well-known Natural Excitation Technique (NExT) with the Loewner Framework (LF). NExT enables the extraction of Impulse Response Functions (IRFs) from output-only vibration data, which are then converted into the frequency domain and used by LF to estimate modal parameters. The proposed method is validated through numerical and experimental case studies. In the numerical study of a 2D Euler-Bernoulli cantilever beam, NExT-LF provides results consistent with analytical solutions and those from standard methods, NExT with Eigensystem Realization Algorithm (NExT-ERA) and Stochastic Subspace Identification with Canonical Variate Analysis (SSI). Additionally, NExT-LF demonstrates superior noise robustness, reliably identifying stable modes across various noise levels where NExT-ERA fails. Experimental validation on the Sheraton Universal Hotel is the first OMA application to this structure, confirming NExT-LF as a robust and efficient method for output-only modal parameter identification.
Multi-Aircraft Scheduling Optimization in Urban Environments
Authors: Jin Zhang, Xiaoran Qin, Ming Zhang
Date: 2024-12-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Scheduling

With the increasing development of intelligent transportation systems and advancements in aviation technology, the concept of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) is gaining attention. This study aims to improve operational safety and service quality within Urban Air Mobility (UAM) through a trajectory-based operation (TBO). A multi-layer operational risk assessment model is introduced to capture the effects of aircraft failure scenarios on critical urban entities, including ground personnel, vehicles, and in-flight UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). Based on this, a single-aircraft track planning model is designed to balance operational risk and transportation cost under the performance constraints of eVTOL (electric Vertical Take-off and Landing) aircraft. A customized track planning algorithm with safety buffer zones is used to identify the most efficient flight paths. Additionally, a multi-aircraft scheduling optimization model is proposed to minimize delays and reduce mid-air collision risks. Experimental results show that the presented approach improves both efficiency and safety, providing practical solutions for UAM operations.
Disturbance-Adaptive Data-Driven Predictive Control: Trading Comfort Violations for Savings in Building Climate Control
Authors: Jicheng Shi, Christophe Salzmann, Colin N. Jones
Date: 2024-12-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Conformal Prediction, LEMMA, Model Predictive Control

Model Predictive Control (MPC) has demonstrated significant potential in improving energy efficiency in building climate control, outperforming traditional controllers commonly used in modern building management systems. Among MPC variants, data-driven predictive control (DPC) offers the advantage of modeling building dynamics directly from data, thereby substantially reducing commissioning efforts. However, inevitable model uncertainties and measurement noise can result in comfort violations, even with dedicated MPC setups. This work introduces a disturbance-adaptive DPC (DAD-DPC) framework designed to ensure asymptotic satisfaction of predefined violation bounds under sufficient conditions. The framework employs a fully data-driven pipeline based on Willems' Fundamental Lemma and conformal prediction for application in building climate control. The proposed DAD-DPC framework was validated using four building cases, leveraging a high-fidelity simulation platform, BOPTEST, and an actual building testbed, Polydome. For a 5% violation bound, the framework achieved energy consumption increases of 2.82%, 2.24%, 3.75%, and 5.09% while reducing comfort violations by 77.62%, 79.51%, 73.26%, and 39.76%, respectively, compared to other controller configurations. These results demonstrate the framework's ability to effectively balance energy consumption and comfort violations, offering a practical solution for building climate control applications.
Strategic Bidding in the Frequency-Containment Ancillary Services Market
Authors: Carlos Matamala, Goran Strbac
Date: 2024-12-12 00:00:00

The vast integration of non-synchronous renewable energy sources compromises power system stability, increasing vulnerability to frequency deviations due to the lack of inertia. Current efforts to decarbonise electricity grids while maintaining frequency security still rely on Ancillary Services (AS) provision, such as inertia and frequency response, from flexible synchronous generators, placing these type of units in an advantageous position in the AS market. However, in the ongoing transition to decarbonisation, not enough attention has been given to analysing market power in the frequency-containment AS market. This work presents a strategic bidding model designed to analyse market power in the coupled energy and frequency-containment AS market. Through a non-convex primal-dual bi-level formulation, we determine the interaction of a strategic market player with the rest of the market that behaves competitively. The case study is based on Great Britain in 2030, demonstrating the capacity of the strategic player to influence prices. While this impact is perceived in the energy market, it is particularly pronounced in the AS market.
Towards Wireless Native Big AI Model: The Mission and Approach Differ From Large Language Model
Authors: Zirui Chen, Zhaoyang Zhang, Chenyu Liu, Ziqing Xing
Date: 2024-12-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model, model

Research on leveraging big artificial intelligence model (BAIM) technology to drive the intelligent evolution of wireless networks is emerging. However, breakthroughs in generalization brought about by BAIM techniques mainly occur in natural language processing. There is a lack of a clear technical direction on how to efficiently apply BAIM techniques to wireless systems, which typically have many additional peculiarities. To this end, this paper reviews recent research on BAIM for wireless systems and assesses the current state of the field. It then analyzes and compares the differences between language intelligence and wireless intelligence on multiple levels, including scientific foundations, core usages, and technical details. It highlights the necessity and scientific significance of developing wireless native BAIM technologies, as well as specific issues that need to be considered for technical implementation. Finally, by synthesizing the evolutionary laws of language models with the particularities of wireless systems, this paper provides several instructive methodologies for developing wireless native BAIM.
Operator Learning for Robust Stabilization of Linear Markov-Jumping Hyperbolic PDEs
Authors: Yihuai Zhang, Jean Auriol, Huan Yu
Date: 2024-12-12 00:00:00
Tasks: Computational Efficiency, Operator learning

In this paper, we address the problem of robust stabilization for linear hyperbolic Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) with Markov-jumping parameter uncertainty. We consider a 2 x 2 heterogeneous hyperbolic PDE and propose a control law using operator learning and the backstepping method. Specifically, the backstepping kernels used to construct the control law are approximated with neural operators (NO) in order to improve computational efficiency. The key challenge lies in deriving the stability conditions with respect to the Markov-jumping parameter uncertainty and NO approximation errors. The mean-square exponential stability of the stochastic system is achieved through Lyapunov analysis, indicating that the system can be stabilized if the random parameters are sufficiently close to the nominal parameters on average, and NO approximation errors are small enough. The theoretical results are applied to freeway traffic control under stochastic upstream demands and then validated through numerical simulations.
Updated version "Robust Voltage Regulation of DC-DC Buck Converter With ZIP Load via An Energy Shaping Control Approach"
Authors: wei he, Yanqin Zhang, Yukai Shang, Mohammad Masoud Namazi, Wangping Zhou, Josep M. Guerrero
Date: 2024-12-12 00:00:00

ZIP loads (the parallel combination of constant impedance loads, constant current loads and constant power loads) exist widely in power system. In order to stabilize buck converter based DC distributed system with ZIP load, an adaptive energy shaping controller (AESC) is devised in this paper. Firstly, based on the assumption that lumped disturbances are known, a full information controller is designed in the framework of the port Hamiltonian system via energy shaping technique. Besides, using mathematical deductive method, an estimation of the domain of attraction is given to ensure the strict stability. Furthermore, to eliminate the influence of parameter perturbations on the system, a disturbance observer is proposed to reconstruct the lumped disturbances and then the estimated terms are introduced to above controller to form an AESC scheme. In addition, the stability analysis of the closed-loop system is given. Lastly, the simulation and experiment results are presented for assessing the designed controller.
Development dilemma of ride-sharing: Revenue or social welfare?
Authors: Wang Chen, Guan Huang, Jintao Ke
Date: 2024-12-11 00:00:00

This study investigates the development dilemma of ride-sharing services using real-world mobility datasets from nine cities and calibrated customers' price and detour elasticity. Through massive numerical experiments, this study reveals that while ride-sharing can benefit social welfare, it may also lead to a loss of revenue for transportation network companies (TNCs) or drivers compared with solo-hailing, which limits TNCs' motivation to develop ride-sharing services. Three key factors contributing to this revenue loss are identified: (1) the low successful sharing ratio for customers choosing ride-sharing in some cases, (2) the limited saved trip distance by pooling two customers, and (3) the potential revenue loss when pooling customers with significantly different trip fares. Furthermore, this study finds that the monetary benefits of carbon emission reductions from ride-sharing are not substantial enough to affect customers' choices between solo-hailing and ride-sharing. The findings provide a valuable reference for TNCs and governments. For TNCs, effective pricing strategies, such as dynamic pricing, should be designed to prevent revenue loss when introducing ride-sharing. Governments are suggested to subsidize ride-sharing services to solve the development dilemma and maintain or even increase social welfare benefits from ride-sharing, including reduced carbon emissions and improved vehicle occupancy rates.
Open-Loop and Model Predictive Control for Electric Vehicle Charging to Manage Excess Renewable Energy Supply in Texas
Authors: Kelsey M. Nelson, Maureen S. Golan, Matthew D. Bartos, Javad Mohammadi
Date: 2024-12-11 00:00:00
Tasks: Model Predictive Control

Modern power grids are evolving to become more interconnected, include more electric vehicles (EVs), and utilize more renewable energy sources (RES). Increased interconnectivity provides an opportunity to manage EVs and RES by using price signaling to shift EV loads towards periods of high RES output. This work uses ERCOT's 2035 RES installation plans and projections for Texas's EV fleet to examine and compare how both open-loop control and model predictive control (MPC) schemes can leverage time varying rates for EV charging to utilize excess RES supply that may otherwise be underutilized in a highly weather-dependent grid. The results show that while open-loop control increases RES usage, MPC increases RES usage even further by responding to RES outputs that differ from forecasts due to the inherent uncertainty of weather predictions. If MPC is used with time steps that are too frequent, however, difficulties arise; EV owners may find it too onerous to keep up with changing price structures, and frequent over-corrections to charging profiles can lead to a ``rebound peak" phenomenon. Therefore, control schemes should balance maximizing RES usage with ensuring customer participation.