Collaborative Enhancement Network for Low-quality Multi-spectral Vehicle Re-identification

The performance of multi-spectral vehicle Re-identification (ReID) is significantly degraded when some important discriminative cues in visible, near infrared and thermal infrared spectra are lost. Existing methods generate or enhance missing details in low-quality spectra data using the high-quality one, generally called the primary spectrum, but how to justify the primary spectrum is a challenging problem. In addition, when the quality of the primary spectrum is low, the enhancement effect would be greatly degraded, thus limiting the performance of multi-spectral vehicle ReID. To address these problems, we propose the Collaborative Enhancement Network (CoEN), which generates a high-quality proxy from all spectra data and leverages it to supervise the selection of primary spectrum and enhance all spectra features in a collaborative manner, for robust multi-spectral vehicle ReID. First, to integrate the rich cues from all spectra data, we design the Proxy Generator (PG) to progressively aggregate multi-spectral features. Second, we design the Dynamic Quality Sort Module (DQSM), which sorts all spectra data by measuring their correlations with the proxy, to accurately select the primary spectra with the highest correlation. Finally, we design the Collaborative Enhancement Module (CEM) to effectively compensate for missing contents of all spectra by collaborating the primary spectra and the proxy, thereby mitigating the impact of low-quality primary spectra. Extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets are conducted to validate the efficacy of the proposed approach against other multi-spectral vehicle ReID methods. The codes will be released at https://github.com/yongqisun/CoEN.

Reliable Multi-Modal Object Re-Identification via Modality-Aware Graph Reasoning

Multi-modal data provides abundant and diverse object information, crucial for effective modal interactions in Re-Identification (ReID) tasks. However, existing approaches often overlook the quality variations in local features and fail to fully leverage the complementary information across modalities, particularly in the case of low-quality features. In this paper, we propose to address this issue by leveraging a novel graph reasoning model, termed the Modality-aware Graph Reasoning Network (MGRNet). Specifically, we first construct modality-aware graphs to enhance the extraction of fine-grained local details by effectively capturing and modeling the relationships between patches. Subsequently, the selective graph nodes swap operation is employed to alleviate the adverse effects of low-quality local features by considering both local and global information, enhancing the representation of discriminative information. Finally, the swapped modality-aware graphs are fed into the local-aware graph reasoning module, which propagates multi-modal information to yield a reliable feature representation. Another advantage of the proposed graph reasoning approach is its ability to reconstruct missing modal information by exploiting inherent structural relationships, thereby minimizing disparities between different modalities. Experimental results on four benchmarks (RGBNT201, Market1501-MM, RGBNT100, MSVR310) indicate that the proposed method achieves state-of-the-art performance in multi-modal object ReID. The code for our method will be available upon acceptance.

QuestBench: Can LLMs ask the right question to acquire information in reasoning tasks?

Recently, a large amount of work has focused on improving large language models' (LLMs') performance on reasoning benchmarks such as math and logic. However, past work has largely assumed that tasks are well-defined. In the real world, queries to LLMs are often underspecified, only solvable through acquiring missing information. We formalize this as a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) with missing variable assignments. Using a special case of this formalism where only one necessary variable assignment is missing, we can rigorously evaluate an LLM's ability to identify the minimal necessary question to ask and quantify axes of difficulty levels for each problem. We present QuestBench, a set of underspecified reasoning tasks solvable by asking at most one question, which includes: (1) Logic-Q: Logical reasoning tasks with one missing proposition, (2) Planning-Q: PDDL planning problems with initial states that are partially-observed, (3) GSM-Q: Human-annotated grade school math problems with one missing variable assignment, and (4) GSME-Q: a version of GSM-Q where word problems are translated into equations by human annotators. The LLM is tasked with selecting the correct clarification question(s) from a list of options. While state-of-the-art models excel at GSM-Q and GSME-Q, their accuracy is only 40-50% on Logic-Q and Planning-Q. Analysis demonstrates that the ability to solve well-specified reasoning problems may not be sufficient for success on our benchmark: models have difficulty identifying the right question to ask, even when they can solve the fully specified version of the problem. Furthermore, in the Planning-Q domain, LLMs tend not to hedge, even when explicitly presented with the option to predict ``not sure.'' This highlights the need for deeper investigation into models' information acquisition capabilities.

Towards Universal Learning-based Model for Cardiac Image Reconstruction: Summary of the CMRxRecon2024 Challenge

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) offers diverse imaging contrasts for assessment of cardiac function and tissue characterization. However, acquiring each single CMR modality is often time-consuming, and comprehensive clinical protocols require multiple modalities with various sampling patterns, further extending the overall acquisition time and increasing susceptibility to motion artifacts. Existing deep learning-based reconstruction methods are often designed for specific acquisition parameters, which limits their ability to generalize across a variety of scan scenarios. As part of the CMRxRecon Series, the CMRxRecon2024 challenge provides diverse datasets encompassing multi-modality multi-view imaging with various sampling patterns, and a platform for the international community to develop and benchmark reconstruction solutions in two well-crafted tasks. Task 1 is a modality-universal setting, evaluating the out-of-distribution generalization of the reconstructed model, while Task 2 follows sampling-universal setting assessing the one-for-all adaptability of the universal model. Main contributions include providing the first and largest publicly available multi-modality, multi-view cardiac k-space dataset; developing a benchmarking platform that simulates clinical acceleration protocols, with a shared code library and tutorial for various k-t undersampling patterns and data processing; giving technical insights of enhanced data consistency based on physic-informed networks and adaptive prompt-learning embedding to be versatile to different clinical settings; additional finding on evaluation metrics to address the limitations of conventional ground-truth references in universal reconstruction tasks.

Enhancing Autonomous Driving Safety with Collision Scenario Integration

Autonomous vehicle safety is crucial for the successful deployment of self-driving cars. However, most existing planning methods rely heavily on imitation learning, which limits their ability to leverage collision data effectively. Moreover, collecting collision or near-collision data is inherently challenging, as it involves risks and raises ethical and practical concerns. In this paper, we propose SafeFusion, a training framework to learn from collision data. Instead of over-relying on imitation learning, SafeFusion integrates safety-oriented metrics during training to enable collision avoidance learning. In addition, to address the scarcity of collision data, we propose CollisionGen, a scalable data generation pipeline to generate diverse, high-quality scenarios using natural language prompts, generative models, and rule-based filtering. Experimental results show that our approach improves planning performance in collision-prone scenarios by 56\% over previous state-of-the-art planners while maintaining effectiveness in regular driving situations. Our work provides a scalable and effective solution for advancing the safety of autonomous driving systems.

ASAP: Aligning Simulation and Real-World Physics for Learning Agile Humanoid Whole-Body Skills

Humanoid robots hold the potential for unparalleled versatility in performing human-like, whole-body skills. However, achieving agile and coordinated whole-body motions remains a significant challenge due to the dynamics mismatch between simulation and the real world. Existing approaches, such as system identification (SysID) and domain randomization (DR) methods, often rely on labor-intensive parameter tuning or result in overly conservative policies that sacrifice agility. In this paper, we present ASAP (Aligning Simulation and Real-World Physics), a two-stage framework designed to tackle the dynamics mismatch and enable agile humanoid whole-body skills. In the first stage, we pre-train motion tracking policies in simulation using retargeted human motion data. In the second stage, we deploy the policies in the real world and collect real-world data to train a delta (residual) action model that compensates for the dynamics mismatch. Then, ASAP fine-tunes pre-trained policies with the delta action model integrated into the simulator to align effectively with real-world dynamics. We evaluate ASAP across three transfer scenarios: IsaacGym to IsaacSim, IsaacGym to Genesis, and IsaacGym to the real-world Unitree G1 humanoid robot. Our approach significantly improves agility and whole-body coordination across various dynamic motions, reducing tracking error compared to SysID, DR, and delta dynamics learning baselines. ASAP enables highly agile motions that were previously difficult to achieve, demonstrating the potential of delta action learning in bridging simulation and real-world dynamics. These results suggest a promising sim-to-real direction for developing more expressive and agile humanoids.

DynamicLip: Shape-Independent Continuous Authentication via Lip Articulator Dynamics

Biometrics authentication has become increasingly popular due to its security and convenience; however, traditional biometrics are becoming less desirable in scenarios such as new mobile devices, Virtual Reality, and Smart Vehicles. For example, while face authentication is widely used, it suffers from significant privacy concerns. The collection of complete facial data makes it less desirable for privacy-sensitive applications. Lip authentication, on the other hand, has emerged as a promising biometrics method. However, existing lip-based authentication methods heavily depend on static lip shape when the mouth is closed, which can be less robust due to lip shape dynamic motion and can barely work when the user is speaking. In this paper, we revisit the nature of lip biometrics and extract shape-independent features from the lips. We study the dynamic characteristics of lip biometrics based on articulator motion. Building on the knowledge, we propose a system for shape-independent continuous authentication via lip articulator dynamics. This system enables robust, shape-independent and continuous authentication, making it particularly suitable for scenarios with high security and privacy requirements. We conducted comprehensive experiments in different environments and attack scenarios and collected a dataset of 50 subjects. The results indicate that our system achieves an overall accuracy of 99.06% and demonstrates robustness under advanced mimic attacks and AI deepfake attacks, making it a viable solution for continuous biometric authentication in various applications.

Proactive Agents for Multi-Turn Text-to-Image Generation Under Uncertainty

User prompts for generative AI models are often underspecified, leading to sub-optimal responses. This problem is particularly evident in text-to-image (T2I) generation, where users commonly struggle to articulate their precise intent. This disconnect between the user's vision and the model's interpretation often forces users to painstakingly and repeatedly refine their prompts. To address this, we propose a design for proactive T2I agents equipped with an interface to (1) actively ask clarification questions when uncertain, and (2) present their understanding of user intent as an understandable belief graph that a user can edit. We build simple prototypes for such agents and verify their effectiveness through both human studies and automated evaluation. We observed that at least 90% of human subjects found these agents and their belief graphs helpful for their T2I workflow. Moreover, we develop a scalable automated evaluation approach using two agents, one with a ground truth image and the other tries to ask as few questions as possible to align with the ground truth. On DesignBench, a benchmark we created for artists and designers, the COCO dataset (Lin et al., 2014), and ImageInWords (Garg et al., 2024), we observed that these T2I agents were able to ask informative questions and elicit crucial information to achieve successful alignment with at least 2 times higher VQAScore (Lin et al., 2024) than the standard single-turn T2I generation. Demo: https://github.com/google-deepmind/proactive_t2i_agents.

LAA-Net: A Physical-prior-knowledge Based Network for Robust Nighttime Depth Estimation

Existing self-supervised monocular depth estimation (MDE) models attempt to improve nighttime performance by using GANs to transfer nighttime images into their daytime versions. However, this can introduce inconsistencies due to the complexities of real-world daytime lighting variations, which may finally lead to inaccurate estimation results. To address this issue, we leverage physical-prior-knowledge about light wavelength and light attenuation during nighttime. Specifically, our model, Light-Attenuation-Aware Network (LAA-Net), incorporates physical insights from Rayleigh scattering theory for robust nighttime depth estimation: LAA-Net is trained based on red channel values because red light preserves more information under nighttime scenarios due to its longer wavelength. Additionally, based on Beer-Lambert law, we introduce Red Channel Attenuation (RCA) loss to guide LAA-Net's training. Experiments on the RobotCar-Night, nuScenes-Night, RobotCar-Day, and KITTI datasets demonstrate that our model outperforms SOTA models.

Federated Continual Learning for Edge-AI: A Comprehensive Survey

Edge-AI, the convergence of edge computing and artificial intelligence (AI), has become a promising paradigm that enables the deployment of advanced AI models at the network edge, close to users. In Edge-AI, federated continual learning (FCL) has emerged as an imperative framework, which fuses knowledge from different clients while preserving data privacy and retaining knowledge from previous tasks as it learns new ones. By so doing, FCL aims to ensure stable and reliable performance of learning models in dynamic and distributed environments. In this survey, we thoroughly review the state-of-the-art research and present the first comprehensive survey of FCL for Edge-AI. We categorize FCL methods based on three task characteristics: federated class continual learning, federated domain continual learning, and federated task continual learning. For each category, an in-depth investigation and review of the representative methods are provided, covering background, challenges, problem formalisation, solutions, and limitations. Besides, existing real-world applications empowered by FCL are reviewed, indicating the current progress and potential of FCL in diverse application domains. Furthermore, we discuss and highlight several prospective research directions of FCL such as algorithm-hardware co-design for FCL and FCL with foundation models, which could provide insights into the future development and practical deployment of FCL in the era of Edge-AI.