Enabling reaching capabilities in highly redundant continuum robot arms is an active area of research. Existing solutions comprise of task-space controllers, whose proper functioning is still limited to laboratory environments. In contrast, this work proposes a novel plant-inspired behaviour-based controller that exploits information obtained from proximity sensing embedded near the end-effector to move towards a desired spatial target. The controller is tested on a 9-DoF modular cable-driven continuum arm for reaching multiple setpoints in space. The results are promising for the deployability of these systems into unstructured environments.
Probabilistic forecasts are essential for various downstream applications such as business development, traffic planning, and electrical grid balancing. Many of these probabilistic forecasts are performed on time series data that contain calendar-driven periodicities. However, existing probabilistic forecasting methods do not explicitly take these periodicities into account. Therefore, in the present paper, we introduce a deep learning-based method that considers these calendar-driven periodicities explicitly. The present paper, thus, has a twofold contribution: First, we apply statistical methods that use calendar-driven prior knowledge to create rolling statistics and combine them with neural networks to provide better probabilistic forecasts. Second, we benchmark ProbPNN with state-of-the-art benchmarks by comparing the achieved normalised continuous ranked probability score (nCRPS) and normalised Pinball Loss (nPL) on two data sets containing in total more than 1000 time series. The results of the benchmarks show that using statistical forecasting components improves the probabilistic forecast performance and that ProbPNN outperforms other deep learning forecasting methods whilst requiring less computation costs.
Sketch-guided image editing aims to achieve local fine-tuning of the image based on the sketch information provided by the user, while maintaining the original status of the unedited areas. Due to the high cost of acquiring human sketches, previous works mostly relied on edge maps as a substitute for sketches, but sketches possess more rich structural information. In this paper, we propose a sketch generation scheme that can preserve the main contours of an image and closely adhere to the actual sketch style drawn by the user. Simultaneously, current image editing methods often face challenges such as image distortion, training cost, and loss of fine details in the sketch. To address these limitations, We propose a conditional diffusion model (SketchFFusion) based on the sketch structure vector. We evaluate the generative performance of our model and demonstrate that it outperforms existing methods.
We present an analysis of the loss of population-level test coverage induced by different down-sampling strategies when combined with lexicase selection. We study recorded populations from the first generation of genetic programming runs, as well as entirely synthetic populations. Our findings verify the hypothesis that informed down-sampling better maintains population-level test coverage when compared to random down-sampling. Additionally, we show that both forms of down-sampling cause greater test coverage loss than standard lexicase selection with no down-sampling. However, given more information about the population, we found that informed down-sampling can further reduce its test coverage loss. We also recommend wider adoption of the static population analyses we present in this work.
In recent years, there has been significant progress in 2D generative face models fueled by applications such as animation, synthetic data generation, and digital avatars. However, due to the absence of 3D information, these 2D models often struggle to accurately disentangle facial attributes like pose, expression, and illumination, limiting their editing capabilities. To address this limitation, this paper proposes a 3D controllable generative face model to produce high-quality albedo and precise 3D shape leveraging existing 2D generative models. By combining 2D face generative models with semantic face manipulation, this method enables editing of detailed 3D rendered faces. The proposed framework utilizes an alternating descent optimization approach over shape and albedo. Differentiable rendering is used to train high-quality shapes and albedo without 3D supervision. Moreover, this approach outperforms the state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods in the well-known NoW benchmark for shape reconstruction. It also outperforms the SOTA reconstruction models in recovering rendered faces' identities across novel poses by an average of 10%. Additionally, the paper demonstrates direct control of expressions in 3D faces by exploiting latent space leading to text-based editing of 3D faces.
Federated Learning (FL) is a machine learning approach that enables the creation of shared models for powerful applications while allowing data to remain on devices. This approach provides benefits such as improved data privacy, security, and reduced latency. However, in some systems, direct communication between clients and servers may not be possible, such as remote areas without proper communication infrastructure. To overcome this challenge, a new framework called FedEx (Federated Learning via Model Express Delivery) is proposed. This framework employs mobile transporters, such as UAVs, to establish indirect communication channels between the server and clients. These transporters act as intermediaries and allow for model information exchange. The use of indirect communication presents new challenges for convergence analysis and optimization, as the delay introduced by the transporters' movement creates issues for both global model dissemination and local model collection. To address this, two algorithms, FedEx-Sync and FedEx-Async, are proposed for synchronized and asynchronized learning at the transporter level. Additionally, a bi-level optimization algorithm is proposed to solve the joint client assignment and route planning problem. Experimental validation using two public datasets in a simulated network demonstrates consistent results with the theory, proving the efficacy of FedEx.
Within today's large-scale systems, one anomaly can impact millions of users. Detecting such events in real-time is essential to maintain the quality of services. It allows the monitoring team to prevent or diminish the impact of a failure. Logs are a core part of software development and maintenance, by recording detailed information at runtime. Such log data are universally available in nearly all computer systems. They enable developers as well as system maintainers to monitor and dissect anomalous events. For Cloud computing companies and large online platforms in general, growth is linked to the scaling potential. Automatizing the anomaly detection process is a promising way to ensure the scalability of monitoring capacities regarding the increasing volume of logs generated by modern systems. In this paper, we will introduce MoniLog, a distributed approach to detect real-time anomalies within large-scale environments. It aims to detect sequential and quantitative anomalies within a multi-source log stream. MoniLog is designed to structure a log stream and perform the monitoring of anomalous sequences. Its output classifier learns from the administrator's actions to label and evaluate the criticality level of anomalies.
Recently, InPars introduced a method to efficiently use large language models (LLMs) in information retrieval tasks: via few-shot examples, an LLM is induced to generate relevant queries for documents. These synthetic query-document pairs can then be used to train a retriever. However, InPars and, more recently, Promptagator, rely on proprietary LLMs such as GPT-3 and FLAN to generate such datasets. In this work we introduce InPars-v2, a dataset generator that uses open-source LLMs and existing powerful rerankers to select synthetic query-document pairs for training. A simple BM25 retrieval pipeline followed by a monoT5 reranker finetuned on InPars-v2 data achieves new state-of-the-art results on the BEIR benchmark. To allow researchers to further improve our method, we open source the code, synthetic data, and finetuned models: https://github.com/zetaalphavector/inPars/tree/master/tpu
Large language models (LLMs) have significantly transformed the landscape of artificial intelligence by demonstrating their ability in generating human-like text across diverse topics. However, despite their impressive capabilities, LLMs lack recent information and often employ imprecise language, which can be detrimental in domains where accuracy is crucial, such as climate change. In this study, we make use of recent ideas to harness the potential of LLMs by viewing them as agents that access multiple sources, including databases containing recent and precise information about organizations, institutions, and companies. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method through a prototype agent that retrieves emission data from ClimateWatch (https://www.climatewatchdata.org/) and leverages general Google search. By integrating these resources with LLMs, our approach overcomes the limitations associated with imprecise language and delivers more reliable and accurate information in the critical domain of climate change. This work paves the way for future advancements in LLMs and their application in domains where precision is of paramount importance.
While current multi-frame restoration methods combine information from multiple input images using 2D alignment techniques, recent advances in novel view synthesis are paving the way for a new paradigm relying on volumetric scene representations. In this work, we introduce the first 3D-based multi-frame denoising method that significantly outperforms its 2D-based counterparts with lower computational requirements. Our method extends the multiplane image (MPI) framework for novel view synthesis by introducing a learnable encoder-renderer pair manipulating multiplane representations in feature space. The encoder fuses information across views and operates in a depth-wise manner while the renderer fuses information across depths and operates in a view-wise manner. The two modules are trained end-to-end and learn to separate depths in an unsupervised way, giving rise to Multiplane Feature (MPF) representations. Experiments on the Spaces and Real Forward-Facing datasets as well as on raw burst data validate our approach for view synthesis, multi-frame denoising, and view synthesis under noisy conditions.