Launch Power Optimization for Dynamic Elastic Optical Networks over C+L Bands

We propose an algorithm for calculating the optimum launch power over the entire C+L bands by maximizing the cumulative link GSNR of a channel plan built upon multiple modulation formats, with application to dynamic EONs. Exact last-fit spectrum assignment proves to outperform exact first-fit in terms of average GSNR at arrival time.

SHAIL: Safety-Aware Hierarchical Adversarial Imitation Learning for Autonomous Driving in Urban Environments

Designing a safe and human-like decision-making system for an autonomous vehicle is a challenging task. Generative imitation learning is one possible approach for automating policy-building by leveraging both real-world and simulated decisions. Previous work that applies generative imitation learning to autonomous driving policies focuses on learning a low-level controller for simple settings. However, to scale to complex settings, many autonomous driving systems combine fixed, safe, optimization-based low-level controllers with high-level decision-making logic that selects the appropriate task and associated controller. In this paper, we attempt to bridge this gap in complexity by employing Safety-Aware Hierarchical Adversarial Imitation Learning (SHAIL), a method for learning a high-level policy that selects from a set of low-level controller instances in a way that imitates low-level driving data on-policy. We introduce an urban roundabout simulator that controls non-ego vehicles using real data from the Interaction dataset. We then show empirically that our approach can produce better behavior than previous approaches in driver imitation which have difficulty scaling to complex environments. Our implementation is available at https://github.com/sisl/InteractionImitation.

Minimizing Safety Interference for Safe and Comfortable Automated Driving with Distributional Reinforcement Learning

Despite recent advances in reinforcement learning (RL), its application in safety critical domains like autonomous vehicles is still challenging. Although punishing RL agents for risky situations can help to learn safe policies, it may also lead to highly conservative behavior. In this paper, we propose a distributional RL framework in order to learn adaptive policies that can tune their level of conservativity at run-time based on the desired comfort and utility. Using a proactive safety verification approach, the proposed framework can guarantee that actions generated from RL are fail-safe according to the worst-case assumptions. Concurrently, the policy is encouraged to minimize safety interference and generate more comfortable behavior. We trained and evaluated the proposed approach and baseline policies using a high level simulator with a variety of randomized scenarios including several corner cases which rarely happen in reality but are very crucial. In light of our experiments, the behavior of policies learned using distributional RL can be adaptive at run-time and robust to the environment uncertainty. Quantitatively, the learned distributional RL agent drives in average 8 seconds faster than the normal DQN policy and requires 83\% less safety interference compared to the rule-based policy with slightly increasing the average crossing time. We also study sensitivity of the learned policy in environments with higher perception noise and show that our algorithm learns policies that can still drive reliable when the perception noise is two times higher than the training configuration for automated merging and crossing at occluded intersections.

Towards an Interoperable Ecosystem of AI and LT Platforms: A Roadmap for the Implementation of Different Levels of Interoperability

With regard to the wider area of AI/LT platform interoperability, we concentrate on two core aspects: (1) cross-platform search and discovery of resources and services; (2) composition of cross-platform service workflows. We devise five different levels (of increasing complexity) of platform interoperability that we suggest to implement in a wider federation of AI/LT platforms. We illustrate the approach using the five emerging AI/LT platforms AI4EU, ELG, Lynx, QURATOR and SPEAKER.