Translating Images to Road Network:A Non-Autoregressive Sequence-to-Sequence Approach

The extraction of road network is essential for the generation of high-definition maps since it enables the precise localization of road landmarks and their interconnections. However, generating road network poses a significant challenge due to the conflicting underlying combination of Euclidean (e.g., road landmarks location) and non-Euclidean (e.g., road topological connectivity) structures. Existing methods struggle to merge the two types of data domains effectively, but few of them address it properly. Instead, our work establishes a unified representation of both types of data domain by projecting both Euclidean and non-Euclidean data into an integer series called RoadNet Sequence. Further than modeling an auto-regressive sequence-to-sequence Transformer model to understand RoadNet Sequence, we decouple the dependency of RoadNet Sequence into a mixture of auto-regressive and non-autoregressive dependency. Building on this, our proposed non-autoregressive sequence-to-sequence approach leverages non-autoregressive dependencies while fixing the gap towards auto-regressive dependencies, resulting in success on both efficiency and accuracy. Extensive experiments on nuScenes dataset demonstrate the superiority of RoadNet Sequence representation and the non-autoregressive approach compared to existing state-of-the-art alternatives. The code is open-source on https://github.com/fudan-zvg/RoadNetworkTRansformer.

Task-customized Masked AutoEncoder via Mixture of Cluster-conditional Experts

Masked Autoencoder~(MAE) is a prevailing self-supervised learning method that achieves promising results in model pre-training. However, when the various downstream tasks have data distributions different from the pre-training data, the semantically irrelevant pre-training information might result in negative transfer, impeding MAE's scalability. To address this issue, we propose a novel MAE-based pre-training paradigm, Mixture of Cluster-conditional Experts (MoCE), which can be trained once but provides customized pre-training models for diverse downstream tasks. Different from the mixture of experts (MoE), our MoCE trains each expert only with semantically relevant images by using cluster-conditional gates. Thus, each downstream task can be allocated to its customized model pre-trained with data most similar to the downstream data. Experiments on a collection of 11 downstream tasks show that MoCE outperforms the vanilla MAE by 2.45\% on average. It also obtains new state-of-the-art self-supervised learning results on detection and segmentation.

LaneGraph2Seq: Lane Topology Extraction with Language Model via Vertex-Edge Encoding and Connectivity Enhancement

Understanding road structures is crucial for autonomous driving. Intricate road structures are often depicted using lane graphs, which include centerline curves and connections forming a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). Accurate extraction of lane graphs relies on precisely estimating vertex and edge information within the DAG. Recent research highlights Transformer-based language models' impressive sequence prediction abilities, making them effective for learning graph representations when graph data are encoded as sequences. However, existing studies focus mainly on modeling vertices explicitly, leaving edge information simply embedded in the network. Consequently, these approaches fall short in the task of lane graph extraction. To address this, we introduce LaneGraph2Seq, a novel approach for lane graph extraction. It leverages a language model with vertex-edge encoding and connectivity enhancement. Our serialization strategy includes a vertex-centric depth-first traversal and a concise edge-based partition sequence. Additionally, we use classifier-free guidance combined with nucleus sampling to improve lane connectivity. We validate our method on prominent datasets, nuScenes and Argoverse 2, showcasing consistent and compelling results. Our LaneGraph2Seq approach demonstrates superior performance compared to state-of-the-art techniques in lane graph extraction.

Holistic Autonomous Driving Understanding by Bird's-Eye-View Injected Multi-Modal Large Models

The rise of multimodal large language models (MLLMs) has spurred interest in language-based driving tasks. However, existing research typically focuses on limited tasks and often omits key multi-view and temporal information which is crucial for robust autonomous driving. To bridge these gaps, we introduce NuInstruct, a novel dataset with 91K multi-view video-QA pairs across 17 subtasks, where each task demands holistic information (e.g., temporal, multi-view, and spatial), significantly elevating the challenge level. To obtain NuInstruct, we propose a novel SQL-based method to generate instruction-response pairs automatically, which is inspired by the driving logical progression of humans. We further present BEV-InMLLM, an end-to-end method for efficiently deriving instruction-aware Bird's-Eye-View (BEV) features, language-aligned for large language models. BEV-InMLLM integrates multi-view, spatial awareness, and temporal semantics to enhance MLLMs' capabilities on NuInstruct tasks. Moreover, our proposed BEV injection module is a plug-and-play method for existing MLLMs. Our experiments on NuInstruct demonstrate that BEV-InMLLM significantly outperforms existing MLLMs, e.g. around 9% improvement on various tasks. We plan to release our NuInstruct for future research development.

PanGu-Draw: Advancing Resource-Efficient Text-to-Image Synthesis with Time-Decoupled Training and Reusable Coop-Diffusion

Current large-scale diffusion models represent a giant leap forward in conditional image synthesis, capable of interpreting diverse cues like text, human poses, and edges. However, their reliance on substantial computational resources and extensive data collection remains a bottleneck. On the other hand, the integration of existing diffusion models, each specialized for different controls and operating in unique latent spaces, poses a challenge due to incompatible image resolutions and latent space embedding structures, hindering their joint use. Addressing these constraints, we present "PanGu-Draw", a novel latent diffusion model designed for resource-efficient text-to-image synthesis that adeptly accommodates multiple control signals. We first propose a resource-efficient Time-Decoupling Training Strategy, which splits the monolithic text-to-image model into structure and texture generators. Each generator is trained using a regimen that maximizes data utilization and computational efficiency, cutting data preparation by 48% and reducing training resources by 51%. Secondly, we introduce "Coop-Diffusion", an algorithm that enables the cooperative use of various pre-trained diffusion models with different latent spaces and predefined resolutions within a unified denoising process. This allows for multi-control image synthesis at arbitrary resolutions without the necessity for additional data or retraining. Empirical validations of Pangu-Draw show its exceptional prowess in text-to-image and multi-control image generation, suggesting a promising direction for future model training efficiencies and generation versatility. The largest 5B T2I PanGu-Draw model is released on the Ascend platform. Project page: $\href{https://pangu-draw.github.io}{this~https~URL}$

Rotational Augmented Noise2Inverse for Low-dose Computed Tomography Reconstruction

In this work, we present a novel self-supervised method for Low Dose Computed Tomography (LDCT) reconstruction. Reducing the radiation dose to patients during a CT scan is a crucial challenge since the quality of the reconstruction highly degrades because of low photons or limited measurements. Supervised deep learning methods have shown the ability to remove noise in images but require accurate ground truth which can be obtained only by performing additional high-radiation CT scans. Therefore, we propose a novel self-supervised framework for LDCT, in which ground truth is not required for training the convolutional neural network (CNN). Based on the Noise2Inverse (N2I) method, we enforce in the training loss the equivariant property of rotation transformation, which is induced by the CT imaging system, to improve the quality of the CT image in a lower dose. Numerical and experimental results show that the reconstruction accuracy of N2I with sparse views is degrading while the proposed rotational augmented Noise2Inverse (RAN2I) method keeps better image quality over a different range of sampling angles. Finally, the quantitative results demonstrate that RAN2I achieves higher image quality compared to N2I, and experimental results of RAN2I on real projection data show comparable performance to supervised learning.

Mixture of Cluster-conditional LoRA Experts for Vision-language Instruction Tuning

Instruction tuning of the Large Vision-language Models (LVLMs) has revolutionized the development of versatile models with zero-shot generalization across a wide range of downstream vision-language tasks. However, diversity of training tasks of different sources and formats would lead to inevitable task conflicts, where different tasks conflicts for the same set of model parameters, resulting in sub-optimal instruction-following abilities. To address that, we propose the Mixture of Cluster-conditional LoRA Experts (MoCLE), a novel Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture designed to activate the task-customized model parameters based on the instruction clusters. A separate universal expert is further incorporated to improve the generalization capabilities of MoCLE for novel instructions. Extensive experiments on 10 zero-shot tasks demonstrate the effectiveness of MoCLE.

G-LLaVA: Solving Geometric Problem with Multi-Modal Large Language Model

Large language models (LLMs) have shown remarkable proficiency in human-level reasoning and generation capabilities, which encourages extensive research on their application in mathematical problem solving. However, current work has been largely focused on text-based mathematical problems, with limited investigation in problems involving geometric information. Addressing this gap, we aim to enable LLMs to solve geometric problems by understanding image input. We first analyze the limitations of current Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) in this area: they struggle to accurately comprehending basic geometric elements and their relationships. To overcome these challenges, we take advantage of the unique characteristics of geometric problems (such as unique geometric logical form, and geometric scalability) and the capacity of the textual LLMs to build an enriched multimodal geometry dataset based on existing data. The augmented dataset, Geo170K, contains more than 170K geometric image-caption and question-answer pairs. Utilizing our constructed Geo170K dataset, we develop G-LLaVA, which demonstrates exceptional performance in solving geometric problems, significantly outperforming GPT-4-V on the MathVista benchmark with only 7B parameters.

DreamControl: Control-Based Text-to-3D Generation with 3D Self-Prior

3D generation has raised great attention in recent years. With the success of text-to-image diffusion models, the 2D-lifting technique becomes a promising route to controllable 3D generation. However, these methods tend to present inconsistent geometry, which is also known as the Janus problem. We observe that the problem is caused mainly by two aspects, i.e., viewpoint bias in 2D diffusion models and overfitting of the optimization objective. To address it, we propose a two-stage 2D-lifting framework, namely DreamControl, which optimizes coarse NeRF scenes as 3D self-prior and then generates fine-grained objects with control-based score distillation. Specifically, adaptive viewpoint sampling and boundary integrity metric are proposed to ensure the consistency of generated priors. The priors are then regarded as input conditions to maintain reasonable geometries, in which conditional LoRA and weighted score are further proposed to optimize detailed textures. DreamControl can generate high-quality 3D content in terms of both geometry consistency and texture fidelity. Moreover, our control-based optimization guidance is applicable to more downstream tasks, including user-guided generation and 3D animation. The project page is available at https://github.com/tyhuang0428/DreamControl.

Reason2Drive: Towards Interpretable and Chain-based Reasoning for Autonomous Driving

Large vision-language models (VLMs) have garnered increasing interest in autonomous driving areas, due to their advanced capabilities in complex reasoning tasks essential for highly autonomous vehicle behavior. Despite their potential, research in autonomous systems is hindered by the lack of datasets with annotated reasoning chains that explain the decision-making processes in driving. To bridge this gap, we present Reason2Drive, a benchmark dataset with over 600K video-text pairs, aimed at facilitating the study of interpretable reasoning in complex driving environments. We distinctly characterize the autonomous driving process as a sequential combination of perception, prediction, and reasoning steps, and the question-answer pairs are automatically collected from a diverse range of open-source outdoor driving datasets, including nuScenes, Waymo and ONCE. Moreover, we introduce a novel aggregated evaluation metric to assess chain-based reasoning performance in autonomous systems, addressing the semantic ambiguities of existing metrics such as BLEU and CIDEr. Based on the proposed benchmark, we conduct experiments to assess various existing VLMs, revealing insights into their reasoning capabilities. Additionally, we develop an efficient approach to empower VLMs to leverage object-level perceptual elements in both feature extraction and prediction, further enhancing their reasoning accuracy. The code and dataset will be released.