DiffuseBot: Breeding Soft Robots With Physics-Augmented Generative Diffusion Models

Nature evolves creatures with a high complexity of morphological and behavioral intelligence, meanwhile computational methods lag in approaching that diversity and efficacy. Co-optimization of artificial creatures' morphology and control in silico shows promise for applications in physical soft robotics and virtual character creation; such approaches, however, require developing new learning algorithms that can reason about function atop pure structure. In this paper, we present DiffuseBot, a physics-augmented diffusion model that generates soft robot morphologies capable of excelling in a wide spectrum of tasks. DiffuseBot bridges the gap between virtually generated content and physical utility by (i) augmenting the diffusion process with a physical dynamical simulation which provides a certificate of performance, and (ii) introducing a co-design procedure that jointly optimizes physical design and control by leveraging information about physical sensitivities from differentiable simulation. We showcase a range of simulated and fabricated robots along with their capabilities. Check our website at https://diffusebot.github.io/

BIRP: Bitcoin Information Retrieval Prediction Model Based on Multimodal Pattern Matching

Financial time series have historically been assumed to be a martingale process under the Random Walk hypothesis. Instead of making investment decisions using the raw prices alone, various multimodal pattern matching algorithms have been developed to help detect subtly hidden repeatable patterns within the financial market. Many of the chart-based pattern matching tools only retrieve similar past chart (PC) patterns given the current chart (CC) pattern, and leaves the entire interpretive and predictive analysis, thus ultimately the final investment decision, to the investors. In this paper, we propose an approach of ranking similar PC movements given the CC information and show that exploiting this as additional features improves the directional prediction capacity of our model. We apply our ranking and directional prediction modeling methodologies on Bitcoin due to its highly volatile prices that make it challenging to predict its future movements.