我们研究了复杂几何物体的机器人堆叠问题。我们提出了一个挑战和多样化的这些物体，这些物体被精心设计，以便要求超出简单的“拾取”解决方案之外的策略。我们的方法是加强学习（RL）方法与基于视觉的互动政策蒸馏和模拟到现实转移相结合。我们的学习政策可以有效地处理现实世界中的多个对象组合，并展示各种各样的堆叠技能。在一个大型的实验研究中，我们调查在模拟中学习这种基于视觉的基于视觉的代理的选择，以及对真实机器人的最佳转移产生了什么影响。然后，我们利用这些策略收集的数据并通过离线RL改善它们。我们工作的视频和博客文章作为补充材料提供。

Collecting well-annotated image datasets to train modern machine learning algorithms is prohibitively expensive for many tasks. An appealing alternative is to render synthetic data where ground-truth annotations are generated automatically. Unfortunately, models trained purely on rendered images often fail to generalize to real images. To address this shortcoming, prior work introduced unsupervised domain adaptation algorithms that attempt to map representations between the two domains or learn to extract features that are domain-invariant. In this work, we present a new approach that learns, in an unsupervised manner, a transformation in the pixel space from one domain to the other. Our generative adversarial network (GAN)-based model adapts source-domain images to appear as if drawn from the target domain. Our approach not only produces plausible samples, but also outperforms the state-of-the-art on a number of unsupervised domain adaptation scenarios by large margins. Finally, we demonstrate that the adaptation process generalizes to object classes unseen during training.

The cost of large scale data collection and annotation often makes the application of machine learning algorithms to new tasks or datasets prohibitively expensive. One approach circumventing this cost is training models on synthetic data where annotations are provided automatically. Despite their appeal, such models often fail to generalize from synthetic to real images, necessitating domain adaptation algorithms to manipulate these models before they can be successfully applied. Existing approaches focus either on mapping representations from one domain to the other, or on learning to extract features that are invariant to the domain from which they were extracted. However, by focusing only on creating a mapping or shared representation between the two domains, they ignore the individual characteristics of each domain. We suggest that explicitly modeling what is unique to each domain can improve a model's ability to extract domain-invariant features. Inspired by work on private-shared component analysis, we explicitly learn to extract image representations that are partitioned into two subspaces: one component which is private to each domain and one which is shared across domains. Our model is trained not only to perform the task we care about in the source domain, but also to use the partitioned representation to reconstruct the images from both domains. Our novel architecture results in a model that outperforms the state-of-the-art on a range of unsupervised domain adaptation scenarios and additionally produces visualizations of the private and shared representations enabling interpretation of the domain adaptation process.

Differentiable Architecture Search (DARTS) has attracted considerable attention as a gradient-based Neural Architecture Search (NAS) method. Since the introduction of DARTS, there has been little work done on adapting the action space based on state-of-art architecture design principles for CNNs. In this work, we aim to address this gap by incrementally augmenting the DARTS search space with micro-design changes inspired by ConvNeXt and studying the trade-off between accuracy, evaluation layer count, and computational cost. To this end, we introduce the Pseudo-Inverted Bottleneck conv block intending to reduce the computational footprint of the inverted bottleneck block proposed in ConvNeXt. Our proposed architecture is much less sensitive to evaluation layer count and outperforms a DARTS network with similar size significantly, at layer counts as small as 2. Furthermore, with less layers, not only does it achieve higher accuracy with lower GMACs and parameter count, GradCAM comparisons show that our network is able to better detect distinctive features of target objects compared to DARTS.

This paper deals with the problem of statistical and system heterogeneity in a cross-silo Federated Learning (FL) framework where there exist a limited number of Consumer Internet of Things (CIoT) devices in a smart building. We propose a novel Graph Signal Processing (GSP)-inspired aggregation rule based on graph filtering dubbed ``G-Fedfilt''. The proposed aggregator enables a structured flow of information based on the graph's topology. This behavior allows capturing the interconnection of CIoT devices and training domain-specific models. The embedded graph filter is equipped with a tunable parameter which enables a continuous trade-off between domain-agnostic and domain-specific FL. In the case of domain-agnostic, it forces G-Fedfilt to act similar to the conventional Federated Averaging (FedAvg) aggregation rule. The proposed G-Fedfilt also enables an intrinsic smooth clustering based on the graph connectivity without explicitly specified which further boosts the personalization of the models in the framework. In addition, the proposed scheme enjoys a communication-efficient time-scheduling to alleviate the system heterogeneity. This is accomplished by adaptively adjusting the amount of training data samples and sparsity of the models' gradients to reduce communication desynchronization and latency. Simulation results show that the proposed G-Fedfilt achieves up to $3.99\% $ better classification accuracy than the conventional FedAvg when concerning model personalization on the statistically heterogeneous local datasets, while it is capable of yielding up to $2.41\%$ higher accuracy than FedAvg in the case of testing the generalization of the models.

Mapping the seafloor with underwater imaging cameras is of significant importance for various applications including marine engineering, geology, geomorphology, archaeology and biology. For shallow waters, among the underwater imaging challenges, caustics i.e., the complex physical phenomena resulting from the projection of light rays being refracted by the wavy surface, is likely the most crucial one. Caustics is the main factor during underwater imaging campaigns that massively degrade image quality and affect severely any 2D mosaicking or 3D reconstruction of the seabed. In this work, we propose a novel method for correcting the radiometric effects of caustics on shallow underwater imagery. Contrary to the state-of-the-art, the developed method can handle seabed and riverbed of any anaglyph, correcting the images using real pixel information, thus, improving image matching and 3D reconstruction processes. In particular, the developed method employs deep learning architectures in order to classify image pixels to "non-caustics" and "caustics". Then, exploits the 3D geometry of the scene to achieve a pixel-wise correction, by transferring appropriate color values between the overlapping underwater images. Moreover, to fill the current gap, we have collected, annotated and structured a real-world caustic dataset, namely R-CAUSTIC, which is openly available. Overall, based on the experimental results and validation the developed methodology is quite promising in both detecting caustics and reconstructing their intensity.

360-degree panoramic videos have gained considerable attention in recent years due to the rapid development of head-mounted displays (HMDs) and panoramic cameras. One major problem in streaming panoramic videos is that panoramic videos are much larger in size compared to traditional ones. Moreover, the user devices are often in a wireless environment, with limited battery, computation power, and bandwidth. To reduce resource consumption, researchers have proposed ways to predict the users' viewports so that only part of the entire video needs to be transmitted from the server. However, the robustness of such prediction approaches has been overlooked in the literature: it is usually assumed that only a few models, pre-trained on past users' experiences, are applied for prediction to all users. We observe that those pre-trained models can perform poorly for some users because they might have drastically different behaviors from the majority, and the pre-trained models cannot capture the features in unseen videos. In this work, we propose a novel meta learning based viewport prediction paradigm to alleviate the worst prediction performance and ensure the robustness of viewport prediction. This paradigm uses two machine learning models, where the first model predicts the viewing direction, and the second model predicts the minimum video prefetch size that can include the actual viewport. We first train two meta models so that they are sensitive to new training data, and then quickly adapt them to users while they are watching the videos. Evaluation results reveal that the meta models can adapt quickly to each user, and can significantly increase the prediction accuracy, especially for the worst-performing predictions.

Background samples provide key contextual information for segmenting regions of interest (ROIs). However, they always cover a diverse set of structures, causing difficulties for the segmentation model to learn good decision boundaries with high sensitivity and precision. The issue concerns the highly heterogeneous nature of the background class, resulting in multi-modal distributions. Empirically, we find that neural networks trained with heterogeneous background struggle to map the corresponding contextual samples to compact clusters in feature space. As a result, the distribution over background logit activations may shift across the decision boundary, leading to systematic over-segmentation across different datasets and tasks. In this study, we propose context label learning (CoLab) to improve the context representations by decomposing the background class into several subclasses. Specifically, we train an auxiliary network as a task generator, along with the primary segmentation model, to automatically generate context labels that positively affect the ROI segmentation accuracy. Extensive experiments are conducted on several challenging segmentation tasks and datasets. The results demonstrate that CoLab can guide the segmentation model to map the logits of background samples away from the decision boundary, resulting in significantly improved segmentation accuracy. Code is available.

Reinforcement learning (RL) gained considerable attention by creating decision-making agents that maximize rewards received from fully observable environments. However, many real-world problems are partially or noisily observable by nature, where agents do not receive the true and complete state of the environment. Such problems are formulated as partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). Some studies applied RL to POMDPs by recalling previous decisions and observations or inferring the true state of the environment from received observations. Nevertheless, aggregating observations and decisions over time is impractical for environments with high-dimensional continuous state and action spaces. Moreover, so-called inference-based RL approaches require large number of samples to perform well since agents eschew uncertainty in the inferred state for the decision-making. Active inference is a framework that is naturally formulated in POMDPs and directs agents to select decisions by minimising expected free energy (EFE). This supplies reward-maximising (exploitative) behaviour in RL, with an information-seeking (exploratory) behaviour. Despite this exploratory behaviour of active inference, its usage is limited to discrete state and action spaces due to the computational difficulty of the EFE. We propose a unified principle for joint information-seeking and reward maximization that clarifies a theoretical connection between active inference and RL, unifies active inference and RL, and overcomes their aforementioned limitations. Our findings are supported by strong theoretical analysis. The proposed framework's superior exploration property is also validated by experimental results on partial observable tasks with high-dimensional continuous state and action spaces. Moreover, the results show that our model solves reward-free problems, making task reward design optional.

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) describes a process for inferring quantifiable metrics of structural condition, which can serve as input to support decisions on the operation and maintenance of infrastructure assets. Given the long lifespan of critical structures, this problem can be cast as a sequential decision making problem over prescribed horizons. Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) offer a formal framework to solve the underlying optimal planning task. However, two issues can undermine the POMDP solutions. Firstly, the need for a model that can adequately describe the evolution of the structural condition under deterioration or corrective actions and, secondly, the non-trivial task of recovery of the observation process parameters from available monitoring data. Despite these potential challenges, the adopted POMDP models do not typically account for uncertainty on model parameters, leading to solutions which can be unrealistically confident. In this work, we address both key issues. We present a framework to estimate POMDP transition and observation model parameters directly from available data, via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling of a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) conditioned on actions. The MCMC inference estimates distributions of the involved model parameters. We then form and solve the POMDP problem by exploiting the inferred distributions, to derive solutions that are robust to model uncertainty. We successfully apply our approach on maintenance planning for railway track assets on the basis of a "fractal value" indicator, which is computed from actual railway monitoring data.