pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
TieBot: Learning to Knot a Tie from Visual Demonstration through a Real-to-Sim-to-Real Approach
Authors: Weikun Peng, Jun Lv, Yuwei Zeng, Haonan Chen, Siheng Zhao, Jichen Sun, Cewu Lu, Lin Shao
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00

The tie-knotting task is highly challenging due to the tie's high deformation and long-horizon manipulation actions. This work presents TieBot, a Real-to-Sim-to-Real learning from visual demonstration system for the robots to learn to knot a tie. We introduce the Hierarchical Feature Matching approach to estimate a sequence of tie's meshes from the demonstration video. With these estimated meshes used as subgoals, we first learn a teacher policy using privileged information. Then, we learn a student policy with point cloud observation by imitating teacher policy. Lastly, our pipeline applies learned policy to real-world execution. We demonstrate the effectiveness of TieBot in simulation and the real world. In the real-world experiment, a dual-arm robot successfully knots a tie, achieving 50% success rate among 10 trials. Videos can be found https://tiebots.github.io/.
Improving Retrieval-augmented Text-to-SQL with AST-based Ranking and Schema Pruning
Authors: Zhili Shen, Pavlos Vougiouklis, Chenxin Diao, Kaustubh Vyas, Yuanyi Ji, Jeff Z. Pan
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00
Tasks: In-Context Learning, Retrieval, Retrieval-augmented Generation, Semantic Parsing, Text to SQL, Text-To-SQL

We focus on Text-to-SQL semantic parsing from the perspective of retrieval-augmented generation. Motivated by challenges related to the size of commercial database schemata and the deployability of business intelligence solutions, we propose $\text{ASTReS}$ that dynamically retrieves input database information and uses abstract syntax trees to select few-shot examples for in-context learning. Furthermore, we investigate the extent to which an in-parallel semantic parser can be leveraged for generating approximated versions of the expected SQL queries, to support our retrieval. We take this approach to the extreme--we adapt a model consisting of less than $500$M parameters, to act as an extremely efficient approximator, enhancing it with the ability to process schemata in a parallelised manner. We apply $\text{ASTReS}$ to monolingual and cross-lingual benchmarks for semantic parsing, showing improvements over state-of-the-art baselines. Comprehensive experiments highlight the contribution of modules involved in this retrieval-augmented generation setting, revealing interesting directions for future work.
PPO-based Dynamic Control of Uncertain Floating Platforms in the Zero-G Environment
Authors: Mahya Ramezani, M. Amin Alandihallaj, Andreas M. Hein
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Model Predictive Control, Navigate

In the field of space exploration, floating platforms play a crucial role in scientific investigations and technological advancements. However, controlling these platforms in zero-gravity environments presents unique challenges, including uncertainties and disturbances. This paper introduces an innovative approach that combines Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) with Model Predictive Control (MPC) in the zero-gravity laboratory (Zero-G Lab) at the University of Luxembourg. This approach leverages PPO's reinforcement learning power and MPC's precision to navigate the complex control dynamics of floating platforms. Unlike traditional control methods, this PPO-MPC approach learns from MPC predictions, adapting to unmodeled dynamics and disturbances, resulting in a resilient control framework tailored to the zero-gravity environment. Simulations and experiments in the Zero-G Lab validate this approach, showcasing the adaptability of the PPO agent. This research opens new possibilities for controlling floating platforms in zero-gravity settings, promising advancements in space exploration.
Learning Disentangled Representation in Object-Centric Models for Visual Dynamics Prediction via Transformers
Authors: Sanket Gandhi, Atul, Samanyu Mahajan, Vishal Sharma, Rushil Gupta, Arnab Kumar Mondal, Parag Singla
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Attribute, Object

Recent work has shown that object-centric representations can greatly help improve the accuracy of learning dynamics while also bringing interpretability. In this work, we take this idea one step further, ask the following question: "can learning disentangled representation further improve the accuracy of visual dynamics prediction in object-centric models?" While there has been some attempt to learn such disentangled representations for the case of static images \citep{nsb}, to the best of our knowledge, ours is the first work which tries to do this in a general setting for video, without making any specific assumptions about the kind of attributes that an object might have. The key building block of our architecture is the notion of a {\em block}, where several blocks together constitute an object. Each block is represented as a linear combination of a given number of learnable concept vectors, which is iteratively refined during the learning process. The blocks in our model are discovered in an unsupervised manner, by attending over object masks, in a style similar to discovery of slots \citep{slot_attention}, for learning a dense object-centric representation. We employ self-attention via transformers over the discovered blocks to predict the next state resulting in discovery of visual dynamics. We perform a series of experiments on several benchmark 2-D, and 3-D datasets demonstrating that our architecture (1) can discover semantically meaningful blocks (2) help improve accuracy of dynamics prediction compared to SOTA object-centric models (3) perform significantly better in OOD setting where the specific attribute combinations are not seen earlier during training. Our experiments highlight the importance discovery of disentangled representation for visual dynamics prediction.
Combining AI Control Systems and Human Decision Support via Robustness and Criticality
Authors: Walt Woods, Alexander Grushin, Simon Khan, Alvaro Velasquez
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00

AI-enabled capabilities are reaching the requisite level of maturity to be deployed in the real world, yet do not always make correct or safe decisions. One way of addressing these concerns is to leverage AI control systems alongside and in support of human decisions, relying on the AI control system in safe situations while calling on a human co-decider for critical situations. We extend a methodology for adversarial explanations (AE) to state-of-the-art reinforcement learning frameworks, including MuZero. Multiple improvements to the base agent architecture are proposed. We demonstrate how this technology has two applications: for intelligent decision tools and to enhance training / learning frameworks. In a decision support context, adversarial explanations help a user make the correct decision by highlighting those contextual factors that would need to change for a different AI-recommended decision. As another benefit of adversarial explanations, we show that the learned AI control system demonstrates robustness against adversarial tampering. Additionally, we supplement AE by introducing strategically similar autoencoders (SSAs) to help users identify and understand all salient factors being considered by the AI system. In a training / learning framework, this technology can improve both the AI's decisions and explanations through human interaction. Finally, to identify when AI decisions would most benefit from human oversight, we tie this combined system to our prior art on statistically verified analyses of the criticality of decisions at any point in time.
MuDiT & MuSiT: Alignment with Colloquial Expression in Description-to-Song Generation
Authors: ZiHao Wang, Haoxuan Liu, Jiaxing Yu, Tao Zhang, Yan Liu, Kejun Zhang
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Descriptive, Rhythm

Amid the rising intersection of generative AI and human artistic processes, this study probes the critical yet less-explored terrain of alignment in human-centric automatic song composition. We propose a novel task of Colloquial Description-to-Song Generation, which focuses on aligning the generated content with colloquial human expressions. This task is aimed at bridging the gap between colloquial language understanding and auditory expression within an AI model, with the ultimate goal of creating songs that accurately satisfy human auditory expectations and structurally align with musical norms. Current datasets are limited due to their narrow descriptive scope, semantic gaps and inaccuracies. To overcome data scarcity in this domain, we present the Caichong Music Dataset (CaiMD). CaiMD is manually annotated by both professional musicians and amateurs, offering diverse perspectives and a comprehensive understanding of colloquial descriptions. Unlike existing datasets pre-set with expert annotations or auto-generated ones with inherent biases, CaiMD caters more sufficiently to our purpose of aligning AI-generated music with widespread user-desired results. Moreover, we propose an innovative single-stage framework called MuDiT/MuSiT for enabling effective human-machine alignment in song creation. This framework not only achieves cross-modal comprehension between colloquial language and auditory music perceptions but also ensures generated songs align with user-desired results. MuDiT/MuSiT employs one DiT/SiT model for end-to-end generation of musical components like melody, harmony, rhythm, vocals, and instrumentation. The approach ensures harmonious sonic cohesiveness amongst all generated musical components, facilitating better resonance with human auditory expectations.
Multiple-Resolution Tokenization for Time Series Forecasting with an Application to Pricing
Authors: Egon Peršak, Miguel F. Anjos, Sebastian Lautz, Aleksandar Kolev
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Time Series, Time Series Forecasting

We propose a transformer architecture for time series forecasting with a focus on time series tokenisation and apply it to a real-world prediction problem from the pricing domain. Our architecture aims to learn effective representations at many scales across all available data simultaneously. The model contains a number of novel modules: a differentiated form of time series patching which employs multiple resolutions, a multiple-resolution module for time-varying known variables, a mixer-based module for capturing cross-series information, and a novel output head with favourable scaling to account for the increased number of tokens. We present an application of this model to a real world prediction problem faced by the markdown team at a very large retailer. On the experiments conducted our model outperforms in-house models and the selected existing deep learning architectures.
A Formal Model for Artificial Intelligence Applications in Automation Systems
Authors: Marvin Schieseck, Philip Topalis, Lasse Reinpold, Felix Gehlhoff, Alexander Fay
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into automation systems has the potential to enhance efficiency and to address currently unsolved existing technical challenges. However, the industry-wide adoption of AI is hindered by the lack of standardized documentation for the complex compositions of automation systems, AI software, production hardware, and their interdependencies. This paper proposes a formal model using standards and ontologies to provide clear and structured documentation of AI applications in automation systems. The proposed information model for artificial intelligence in automation systems (AIAS) utilizes ontology design patterns to map and link various aspects of automation systems and AI software. Validated through a practical example, the model demonstrates its effectiveness in improving documentation practices and aiding the sustainable implementation of AI in industrial settings.
A multi-objective combinatorial optimisation framework for large scale hierarchical population synthesis
Authors: Imran Mahmood, Nicholas Bishop, Anisoara Calinescu, Michael Wooldridge, Ioannis Zachos
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00

In agent-based simulations, synthetic populations of agents are commonly used to represent the structure, behaviour, and interactions of individuals. However, generating a synthetic population that accurately reflects real population statistics is a challenging task, particularly when performed at scale. In this paper, we propose a multi objective combinatorial optimisation technique for large scale population synthesis. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by generating a synthetic population for selected regions and validating it on contingency tables from real population data. Our approach supports complex hierarchical structures between individuals and households, is scalable to large populations and achieves minimal contigency table reconstruction error. Hence, it provides a useful tool for policymakers and researchers for simulating the dynamics of complex populations.
Motion meets Attention: Video Motion Prompts
Authors: Qixiang Chen, Lei Wang, Piotr Koniusz, Tom Gedeon
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Action Recognition

Videos contain rich spatio-temporal information. Traditional methods for extracting motion, used in tasks such as action recognition, often rely on visual contents rather than precise motion features. This phenomenon is referred to as 'blind motion extraction' behavior, which proves inefficient in capturing motions of interest due to a lack of motion-guided cues. Recently, attention mechanisms have enhanced many computer vision tasks by effectively highlighting salient visual areas. Inspired by this, we propose a modified Sigmoid function with learnable slope and shift parameters as an attention mechanism to modulate motion signals from frame differencing maps. This approach generates a sequence of attention maps that enhance the processing of motion-related video content. To ensure temporal continuity and smoothness of the attention maps, we apply pair-wise temporal attention variation regularization to remove unwanted motions (e.g., noise) while preserving important ones. We then perform Hadamard product between each pair of attention maps and the original video frames to highlight the evolving motions of interest over time. These highlighted motions, termed video motion prompts, are subsequently used as inputs to the model instead of the original video frames. We formalize this process as a motion prompt layer and incorporate the regularization term into the loss function to learn better motion prompts. This layer serves as an adapter between the model and the video data, bridging the gap between traditional 'blind motion extraction' and the extraction of relevant motions of interest. We show that our lightweight, plug-and-play motion prompt layer seamlessly integrates into models like SlowFast, X3D, and TimeSformer, enhancing performance on benchmarks such as FineGym and MPII Cooking 2.
IMC 2024 Methods & Solutions Review
Authors: Shyam Gupta, Dhanisha Sharma, Songling Huang
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Image Reconstruction, Position

For the past three years, Kaggle has been hosting the Image Matching Challenge, which focuses on solving a 3D image reconstruction problem using a collection of 2D images. Each year, this competition fosters the development of innovative and effective methodologies by its participants. In this paper, we introduce an advanced ensemble technique that we developed, achieving a score of 0.153449 on the private leaderboard and securing the 160th position out of over 1,000 participants. Additionally, we conduct a comprehensive review of existing methods and techniques employed by top-performing teams in the competition. Our solution, alongside the insights gathered from other leading approaches, contributes to the ongoing advancement in the field of 3D image reconstruction. This research provides valuable knowledge for future participants and researchers aiming to excel in similar image matching and reconstruction challenges.
Let the Code LLM Edit Itself When You Edit the Code
Authors: Zhenyu He, Jun Zhang, Shengjie Luo, Jingjing Xu, Zhi Zhang, Di He
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00
Tasks: 8k, Code Generation, Language Modelling, Large Language Model

In this work, we investigate a typical scenario in code generation where a developer edits existing code in real time and requests a code assistant, e.g., a large language model, to re-predict the next token or next line on the fly. Naively, the LLM needs to re-encode the entire KV cache to provide an accurate prediction. However, this process is computationally expensive, especially when the sequence length is long. Simply encoding the edited subsequence and integrating it to the original KV cache meets the temporal confusion problem, leading to significantly worse performance. We address this efficiency and accuracy trade-off by introducing \underline{\textbf{Positional \textbf{I}ntegrity \textbf{E}ncoding} (PIE). Building upon the rotary positional encoding, PIE first removes the rotary matrices in the Key cache that introduce temporal confusion and then reapplies the correct rotary matrices. This process ensures that positional relationships between tokens are correct and requires only a single round of matrix multiplication. We validate the effectiveness of PIE through extensive experiments on the RepoBench-C-8k dataset, utilizing DeepSeek-Coder models with 1.3B, 6.7B, and 33B parameters. Our evaluation includes three real-world coding tasks: code insertion, code deletion, and multi-place code editing. Results demonstrate that PIE reduces computational overhead by over 85% compared to the standard full recomputation approach across all model sizes and tasks while well approximating the model performance.
Reinforcement Learning for Sequence Design Leveraging Protein Language Models
Authors: Jithendaraa Subramanian, Shivakanth Sujit, Niloy Irtisam, Umong Sain, Riashat Islam, Derek Nowrouzezahrai, Samira Ebrahimi Kahou
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Diversity, Drug Discovery, Protein Design, reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning

Protein sequence design, determined by amino acid sequences, are essential to protein engineering problems in drug discovery. Prior approaches have resorted to evolutionary strategies or Monte-Carlo methods for protein design, but often fail to exploit the structure of the combinatorial search space, to generalize to unseen sequences. In the context of discrete black box optimization over large search spaces, learning a mutation policy to generate novel sequences with reinforcement learning is appealing. Recent advances in protein language models (PLMs) trained on large corpora of protein sequences offer a potential solution to this problem by scoring proteins according to their biological plausibility (such as the TM-score). In this work, we propose to use PLMs as a reward function to generate new sequences. Yet the PLM can be computationally expensive to query due to its large size. To this end, we propose an alternative paradigm where optimization can be performed on scores from a smaller proxy model that is periodically finetuned, jointly while learning the mutation policy. We perform extensive experiments on various sequence lengths to benchmark RL-based approaches, and provide comprehensive evaluations along biological plausibility and diversity of the protein. Our experimental results include favorable evaluations of the proposed sequences, along with high diversity scores, demonstrating that RL is a strong candidate for biological sequence design. Finally, we provide a modular open source implementation can be easily integrated in most RL training loops, with support for replacing the reward model with other PLMs, to spur further research in this domain. The code for all experiments is provided in the supplementary material.
GMM-ResNext: Combining Generative and Discriminative Models for Speaker Verification
Authors: Hui Yan, Zhenchun Lei, Changhong Liu, Yong Zhou
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Learning, Speaker Verification

With the development of deep learning, many different network architectures have been explored in speaker verification. However, most network architectures rely on a single deep learning architecture, and hybrid networks combining different architectures have been little studied in ASV tasks. In this paper, we propose the GMM-ResNext model for speaker verification. Conventional GMM does not consider the score distribution of each frame feature over all Gaussian components and ignores the relationship between neighboring speech frames. So, we extract the log Gaussian probability features based on the raw acoustic features and use ResNext-based network as the backbone to extract the speaker embedding. GMM-ResNext combines Generative and Discriminative Models to improve the generalization ability of deep learning models and allows one to more easily specify meaningful priors on model parameters. A two-path GMM-ResNext model based on two gender-related GMMs has also been proposed. The Experimental results show that the proposed GMM-ResNext achieves relative improvements of 48.1\% and 11.3\% in EER compared with ResNet34 and ECAPA-TDNN on VoxCeleb1-O test set.
Speaker- and Text-Independent Estimation of Articulatory Movements and Phoneme Alignments from Speech
Authors: Tobias Weise, Philipp Klumpp, Kubilay Can Demir, Paula Andrea Pérez-Toro, Maria Schuster, Elmar Noeth, Bjoern Heismann, Andreas Maier, Seung Hee Yang
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00
Tasks: Motion Estimation, Multi-Task Learning

This paper introduces a novel combination of two tasks, previously treated separately: acoustic-to-articulatory speech inversion (AAI) and phoneme-to-articulatory (PTA) motion estimation. We refer to this joint task as acoustic phoneme-to-articulatory speech inversion (APTAI) and explore two different approaches, both working speaker- and text-independently during inference. We use a multi-task learning setup, with the end-to-end goal of taking raw speech as input and estimating the corresponding articulatory movements, phoneme sequence, and phoneme alignment. While both proposed approaches share these same requirements, they differ in their way of achieving phoneme-related predictions: one is based on frame classification, the other on a two-staged training procedure and forced alignment. We reach competitive performance of 0.73 mean correlation for the AAI task and achieve up to approximately 87% frame overlap compared to a state-of-the-art text-dependent phoneme force aligner.
MVGT: A Multi-view Graph Transformer Based on Spatial Relations for EEG Emotion Recognition
Authors: Yanjie Cui, Xiaohong Liu, Jing Liang, Yamin Fu
Date: 2024-07-03 00:00:00
Tasks: EEG, EEG Emotion Recognition, Emotion Recognition

Electroencephalography (EEG), a technique that records electrical activity from the scalp using electrodes, plays a vital role in affective computing. However, fully utilizing the multi-domain characteristics of EEG signals remains a significant challenge. Traditional single-perspective analyses often fail to capture the complex interplay of temporal, frequency, and spatial dimensions in EEG data. To address this, we introduce a multi-view graph transformer (MVGT) based on spatial relations that integrates information across three domains: temporal dynamics from continuous series, frequency features extracted from frequency bands, and inter-channel relationships captured through several spatial encodings. This comprehensive approach allows model to capture the nuanced properties inherent in EEG signals, enhancing its flexibility and representational power. Evaluation on publicly available datasets demonstrates that MVGT surpasses state-of-the-art methods in performance. The results highlight its ability to extract multi-domain information and effectively model inter-channel relationships, showcasing its potential for EEG-based emotion recognition tasks.