360SFUDA++: Towards Source-free UDA for Panoramic Segmentation by Learning Reliable Category Prototypes

In this paper, we address the challenging source-free unsupervised domain adaptation (SFUDA) for pinhole-to-panoramic semantic segmentation, given only a pinhole image pre-trained model (i.e., source) and unlabeled panoramic images (i.e., target). Tackling this problem is non-trivial due to three critical challenges: 1) semantic mismatches from the distinct Field-of-View (FoV) between domains, 2) style discrepancies inherent in the UDA problem, and 3) inevitable distortion of the panoramic images. To tackle these problems, we propose 360SFUDA++ that effectively extracts knowledge from the source pinhole model with only unlabeled panoramic images and transfers the reliable knowledge to the target panoramic domain. Specifically, we first utilize Tangent Projection (TP) as it has less distortion and meanwhile slits the equirectangular projection (ERP) to patches with fixed FoV projection (FFP) to mimic the pinhole images. Both projections are shown effective in extracting knowledge from the source model. However, as the distinct projections make it less possible to directly transfer knowledge between domains, we then propose Reliable Panoramic Prototype Adaptation Module (RP2AM) to transfer knowledge at both prediction and prototype levels. RP$^2$AM selects the confident knowledge and integrates panoramic prototypes for reliable knowledge adaptation. Moreover, we introduce Cross-projection Dual Attention Module (CDAM), which better aligns the spatial and channel characteristics across projections at the feature level between domains. Both knowledge extraction and transfer processes are synchronously updated to reach the best performance. Extensive experiments on the synthetic and real-world benchmarks, including outdoor and indoor scenarios, demonstrate that our 360SFUDA++ achieves significantly better performance than prior SFUDA methods.

Unsupervised Visible-Infrared ReID via Pseudo-label Correction and Modality-level Alignment

Unsupervised visible-infrared person re-identification (UVI-ReID) has recently gained great attention due to its potential for enhancing human detection in diverse environments without labeling. Previous methods utilize intra-modality clustering and cross-modality feature matching to achieve UVI-ReID. However, there exist two challenges: 1) noisy pseudo labels might be generated in the clustering process, and 2) the cross-modality feature alignment via matching the marginal distribution of visible and infrared modalities may misalign the different identities from two modalities. In this paper, we first conduct a theoretic analysis where an interpretable generalization upper bound is introduced. Based on the analysis, we then propose a novel unsupervised cross-modality person re-identification framework (PRAISE). Specifically, to address the first challenge, we propose a pseudo-label correction strategy that utilizes a Beta Mixture Model to predict the probability of mis-clustering based network's memory effect and rectifies the correspondence by adding a perceptual term to contrastive learning. Next, we introduce a modality-level alignment strategy that generates paired visible-infrared latent features and reduces the modality gap by aligning the labeling function of visible and infrared features to learn identity discriminative and modality-invariant features. Experimental results on two benchmark datasets demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance than the unsupervised visible-ReID methods.

Semantics, Distortion, and Style Matter: Towards Source-free UDA for Panoramic Segmentation

This paper addresses an interesting yet challenging problem -- source-free unsupervised domain adaptation (SFUDA) for pinhole-to-panoramic semantic segmentation -- given only a pinhole image-trained model (i.e., source) and unlabeled panoramic images (i.e., target). Tackling this problem is nontrivial due to the semantic mismatches, style discrepancies, and inevitable distortion of panoramic images. To this end, we propose a novel method that utilizes Tangent Projection (TP) as it has less distortion and meanwhile slits the equirectangular projection (ERP) with a fixed FoV to mimic the pinhole images. Both projections are shown effective in extracting knowledge from the source model. However, the distinct projection discrepancies between source and target domains impede the direct knowledge transfer; thus, we propose a panoramic prototype adaptation module (PPAM) to integrate panoramic prototypes from the extracted knowledge for adaptation. We then impose the loss constraints on both predictions and prototypes and propose a cross-dual attention module (CDAM) at the feature level to better align the spatial and channel characteristics across the domains and projections. Both knowledge extraction and transfer processes are synchronously updated to reach the best performance. Extensive experiments on the synthetic and real-world benchmarks, including outdoor and indoor scenarios, demonstrate that our method achieves significantly better performance than prior SFUDA methods for pinhole-to-panoramic adaptation.

ClassLIE: Structure- and Illumination-Adaptive Classification for Low-Light Image Enhancement

Low-light images often suffer from limited visibility and multiple types of degradation, rendering low-light image enhancement (LIE) a non-trivial task. Some endeavors have been recently made to enhance low-light images using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). However, they have low efficiency in learning the structural information and diverse illumination levels at the local regions of an image. Consequently, the enhanced results are affected by unexpected artifacts, such as unbalanced exposure, blur, and color bias. To this end, this paper proposes a novel framework, called ClassLIE, that combines the potential of CNNs and transformers. It classifies and adaptively learns the structural and illumination information from the low-light images in a holistic and regional manner, thus showing better enhancement performance. Our framework first employs a structure and illumination classification (SIC) module to learn the degradation information adaptively. In SIC, we decompose an input image into an illumination map and a reflectance map. A class prediction block is then designed to classify the degradation information by calculating the structure similarity scores on the reflectance map and mean square error on the illumination map. As such, each input image can be divided into patches with three enhancement difficulty levels. Then, a feature learning and fusion (FLF) module is proposed to adaptively learn the feature information with CNNs for different enhancement difficulty levels while learning the long-range dependencies for the patches in a holistic manner. Experiments on five benchmark datasets consistently show our ClassLIE achieves new state-of-the-art performance, with 25.74 PSNR and 0.92 SSIM on the LOL dataset.

BC4LLM: Trusted Artificial Intelligence When Blockchain Meets Large Language Models

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are reshaping society's production methods and productivity, and also changing the paradigm of scientific research. Among them, the AI language model represented by ChatGPT has made great progress. Such large language models (LLMs) serve people in the form of AI-generated content (AIGC) and are widely used in consulting, healthcare, and education. However, it is difficult to guarantee the authenticity and reliability of AIGC learning data. In addition, there are also hidden dangers of privacy disclosure in distributed AI training. Moreover, the content generated by LLMs is difficult to identify and trace, and it is difficult to cross-platform mutual recognition. The above information security issues in the coming era of AI powered by LLMs will be infinitely amplified and affect everyone's life. Therefore, we consider empowering LLMs using blockchain technology with superior security features to propose a vision for trusted AI. This paper mainly introduces the motivation and technical route of blockchain for LLM (BC4LLM), including reliable learning corpus, secure training process, and identifiable generated content. Meanwhile, this paper also reviews the potential applications and future challenges, especially in the frontier communication networks field, including network resource allocation, dynamic spectrum sharing, and semantic communication. Based on the above work combined and the prospect of blockchain and LLMs, it is expected to help the early realization of trusted AI and provide guidance for the academic community.

Generative Pre-trained Transformer: A Comprehensive Review on Enabling Technologies, Potential Applications, Emerging Challenges, and Future Directions

The Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) represents a notable breakthrough in the domain of natural language processing, which is propelling us toward the development of machines that can understand and communicate using language in a manner that closely resembles that of humans. GPT is based on the transformer architecture, a deep neural network designed for natural language processing tasks. Due to their impressive performance on natural language processing tasks and ability to effectively converse, GPT have gained significant popularity among researchers and industrial communities, making them one of the most widely used and effective models in natural language processing and related fields, which motivated to conduct this review. This review provides a detailed overview of the GPT, including its architecture, working process, training procedures, enabling technologies, and its impact on various applications. In this review, we also explored the potential challenges and limitations of a GPT. Furthermore, we discuss potential solutions and future directions. Overall, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of GPT, enabling technologies, their impact on various applications, emerging challenges, and potential solutions.

Auction Based Clustered Federated Learning in Mobile Edge Computing System

In recent years, mobile clients' computing ability and storage capacity have greatly improved, efficiently dealing with some applications locally. Federated learning is a promising distributed machine learning solution that uses local computing and local data to train the Artificial Intelligence (AI) model. Combining local computing and federated learning can train a powerful AI model under the premise of ensuring local data privacy while making full use of mobile clients' resources. However, the heterogeneity of local data, that is, Non-independent and identical distribution (Non-IID) and imbalance of local data size, may bring a bottleneck hindering the application of federated learning in mobile edge computing (MEC) system. Inspired by this, we propose a cluster-based clients selection method that can generate a federated virtual dataset that satisfies the global distribution to offset the impact of data heterogeneity and proved that the proposed scheme could converge to an approximate optimal solution. Based on the clustering method, we propose an auction-based clients selection scheme within each cluster that fully considers the system's energy heterogeneity and gives the Nash equilibrium solution of the proposed scheme for balance the energy consumption and improving the convergence rate. The simulation results show that our proposed selection methods and auction-based federated learning can achieve better performance with the Convolutional Neural Network model (CNN) under different data distributions.

DynaComm: Accelerating Distributed CNN Training between Edges and Clouds through Dynamic Communication Scheduling

To reduce uploading bandwidth and address privacy concerns, deep learning at the network edge has been an emerging topic. Typically, edge devices collaboratively train a shared model using real-time generated data through the Parameter Server framework. Although all the edge devices can share the computing workloads, the distributed training processes over edge networks are still time-consuming due to the parameters and gradients transmission procedures between parameter servers and edge devices. Focusing on accelerating distributed Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) training at the network edge, we present DynaComm, a novel scheduler that dynamically decomposes each transmission procedure into several segments to achieve optimal communications and computations overlapping during run-time. Through experiments, we verify that DynaComm manages to achieve optimal scheduling for all cases compared to competing strategies while the model accuracy remains untouched.

Leveraging AI and Intelligent Reflecting Surface for Energy-Efficient Communication in 6G IoT

The ever-increasing data traffic, various delay-sensitive services, and the massive deployment of energy-limited Internet of Things (IoT) devices have brought huge challenges to the current communication networks, motivating academia and industry to move to the sixth-generation (6G) network. With the powerful capability of data transmission and processing, 6G is considered as an enabler for IoT communication with low latency and energy cost. In this paper, we propose an artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) empowered energy-efficiency communication system for 6G IoT. First, we design a smart and efficient communication architecture including the IRS-aided data transmission and the AI-driven network resource management mechanisms. Second, an energy efficiency-maximizing model under given transmission latency for 6G IoT system is formulated, which jointly optimizes the settings of all communication participants, i.e. IoT transmission power, IRS-reflection phase shift, and BS detection matrix. Third, a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) empowered network resource control and allocation scheme is proposed to solve the formulated optimization model. Based on the network and channel status, the DRL-enabled scheme facilities the energy-efficiency and low-latency communication. Finally, experimental results verified the effectiveness of our proposed communication system for 6G IoT.

The Role of Edge Robotics As-a-Service in Monitoring COVID-19 Infection

Deep learning technology has been widely used in edge computing. However, pandemics like covid-19 require deep learning capabilities at mobile devices (detect respiratory rate using mobile robotics or conduct CT scan using a mobile scanner), which are severely constrained by the limited storage and computation resources at the device level. To solve this problem, we propose a three-tier architecture, including robot layers, edge layers, and cloud layers. We adopt this architecture to design a non-contact respiratory monitoring system to break down respiratory rate calculation tasks. Experimental results of respiratory rate monitoring show that the proposed approach in this paper significantly outperforms other approaches. It is supported by computation time costs with 2.26 ms per frame, 27.48 ms per frame, 0.78 seconds for convolution operation, similarity calculation, processing one-minute length respiratory signals, respectively. And the computation time costs of our three-tier architecture are less than that of edge+cloud architecture and cloud architecture. Moreover, we use our three-tire architecture for CT image diagnosis task decomposition. The evaluation of a CT image dataset of COVID-19 proves that our three-tire architecture is useful for resolving tasks on deep learning networks by edge equipment. There are broad application scenarios in smart hospitals in the future.