AttentionDrop: A Novel Regularization Method for Transformer Models

Transformer-based architectures achieve state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of tasks in natural language processing, computer vision, and speech. However, their immense capacity often leads to overfitting, especially when training data is limited or noisy. We propose AttentionDrop, a unified family of stochastic regularization techniques that operate directly on the self-attention distributions. We introduces three variants: 1. Hard Attention Masking: randomly zeroes out top-k attention logits per query to encourage diverse context utilization. 2. Blurred Attention Smoothing: applies a dynamic Gaussian convolution over attention logits to diffuse overly peaked distributions. 3. Consistency-Regularized AttentionDrop: enforces output stability under multiple independent AttentionDrop perturbations via a KL-based consistency loss.

AI-based Wearable Vision Assistance System for the Visually Impaired: Integrating Real-Time Object Recognition and Contextual Understanding Using Large Vision-Language Models

Visual impairment affects the ability of people to live a life like normal people. Such people face challenges in performing activities of daily living, such as reading, writing, traveling and participating in social gatherings. Many traditional approaches are available to help visually impaired people; however, these are limited in obtaining contextually rich environmental information necessary for independent living. In order to overcome this limitation, this paper introduces a novel wearable vision assistance system that has a hat-mounted camera connected to a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (8GB RAM) with artificial intelligence (AI) technology to deliver real-time feedback to a user through a sound beep mechanism. The key features of this system include a user-friendly procedure for the recognition of new people or objects through a one-click process that allows users to add data on new individuals and objects for later detection, enhancing the accuracy of the recognition over time. The system provides detailed descriptions of objects in the user's environment using a large vision language model (LVLM). In addition, it incorporates a distance sensor that activates a beeping sound using a buzzer as soon as the user is about to collide with an object, helping to ensure safety while navigating their environment. A comprehensive evaluation is carried out to evaluate the proposed AI-based solution against traditional support techniques. Comparative analysis shows that the proposed solution with its innovative combination of hardware and AI (including LVLMs with IoT), is a significant advancement in assistive technology that aims to solve the major issues faced by the community of visually impaired people