The research community has increasing interest in autonomous driving research, despite the resource intensity of obtaining representative real world data. Existing selfdriving datasets are limited in the scale and variation of the environments they capture, even though generalization within and between operating regions is crucial to the overall viability of the technology. In an effort to help align the research community's contributions with real-world selfdriving problems, we introduce a new large-scale, high quality, diverse dataset. Our new dataset consists of 1150 scenes that each span 20 seconds, consisting of well synchronized and calibrated high quality LiDAR and camera data captured across a range of urban and suburban geographies. It is 15x more diverse than the largest cam-era+LiDAR dataset available based on our proposed geographical coverage metric. We exhaustively annotated this data with 2D (camera image) and 3D (LiDAR) bounding boxes, with consistent identifiers across frames. Finally, we provide strong baselines for 2D as well as 3D detection and tracking tasks. We further study the effects of dataset size and generalization across geographies on 3D detection methods. Find data, code and more up-to-date information at http://www.waymo.com/open.

Sequential testing, always-valid $p$-values, and confidence sequences promise flexible statistical inference and on-the-fly decision making. However, unlike fixed-$n$ inference based on asymptotic normality, existing sequential tests either make parametric assumptions and end up under-covering/over-rejecting when these fail or use non-parametric but conservative concentration inequalities and end up over-covering/under-rejecting. To circumvent these issues, we sidestep exact at-least-$\alpha$ coverage and focus on asymptotically exact coverage and asymptotic optimality. That is, we seek sequential tests whose probability of ever rejecting a true hypothesis asymptotically approaches $\alpha$ and whose expected time to reject a false hypothesis approaches a lower bound on all tests with asymptotic coverage at least $\alpha$, both under an appropriate asymptotic regime. We permit observations to be both non-parametric and dependent and focus on testing whether the observations form a martingale difference sequence. We propose the universal sequential probability ratio test (uSPRT), a slight modification to the normal-mixture sequential probability ratio test, where we add a burn-in period and adjust thresholds accordingly. We show that even in this very general setting, the uSPRT is asymptotically optimal under mild generic conditions. We apply the results to stabilized estimating equations to test means, treatment effects, etc. Our results also provide corresponding guarantees for the implied confidence sequences. Numerical simulations verify our guarantees and the benefits of the uSPRT over alternatives.

In intensively managed forests in Europe, where forests are divided into stands of small size and may show heterogeneity within stands, a high spatial resolution (10 - 20 meters) is arguably needed to capture the differences in canopy height. In this work, we developed a deep learning model based on multi-stream remote sensing measurements to create a high-resolution canopy height map over the "Landes de Gascogne" forest in France, a large maritime pine plantation of 13,000 km$^2$ with flat terrain and intensive management. This area is characterized by even-aged and mono-specific stands, of a typical length of a few hundred meters, harvested every 35 to 50 years. Our deep learning U-Net model uses multi-band images from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 with composite time averages as input to predict tree height derived from GEDI waveforms. The evaluation is performed with external validation data from forest inventory plots and a stereo 3D reconstruction model based on Skysat imagery available at specific locations. We trained seven different U-net models based on a combination of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 bands to evaluate the importance of each instrument in the dominant height retrieval. The model outputs allow us to generate a 10 m resolution canopy height map of the whole "Landes de Gascogne" forest area for 2020 with a mean absolute error of 2.02 m on the Test dataset. The best predictions were obtained using all available satellite layers from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 but using only one satellite source also provided good predictions. For all validation datasets in coniferous forests, our model showed better metrics than previous canopy height models available in the same region.

研究随机噪声的特性以优化复杂的非凸函数一直是机器学习领域的活跃研究领域。先前的工作表明，随机梯度下降的噪声通过克服景观中的不良障碍来改善优化。此外，注射人造高斯噪音已成为快速逃脱鞍点的流行想法。确实，在没有可靠的梯度信息的情况下，噪声用于探索景观，但目前尚不清楚哪种类型的噪声在探索能力方面是最佳的。为了在我们的知识上缩小这一差距，我们基于布朗尼运动的一般类型的连续时间非马克维亚过程，该过程允许该过程的相关性增加。这将基于布朗运动（例如Ornstein-Uhlenbeck过程）进行概括。我们演示了如何离散此类过程，从而导致新算法FPGD。该方法是已知算法PGD和抗PGD的概括。我们在理论上和经验上都研究了FPGD的特性，表明它具有勘探能力，在某些情况下，它比PGD和抗PGD有利。这些结果为利用噪声用于训练机器学习模型的新颖方式开辟了领域。

数据不平衡是机器学习文献中的一个常见问题，它可能对模型的性能产生关键影响。存在各种解决方案（例如专注于重新采样或数据生成的解决方案），但是它们对深度学习中使用的基于梯度优化器的收敛性的影响尚不清楚。我们在这里阐明了数据不平衡对学习的显着负面影响，这表明，在使用基于梯度的优化器训练时，少数族裔和多数族裔的学习曲线遵循亚最佳轨迹。原因不仅是梯度信号忽略了少数群体，而且少数群体会受到更大的方向性噪声的影响，这使他们的学习减少了与不平衡比率相关的数量。为了解决这个问题，我们提出了一种新的算法解决方案，为此我们提供了对其收敛行为的详细分析。我们在理论上和经验上都表明，这种新算法表现出更好的行为，每个类别的学习曲线更稳定，并且具有更好的概括性能。

联合学习使不同的各方能够在服务器的编排下协作建立全球模型，同时将培训数据保留在客户的设备上。但是，当客户具有异质数据时，性能会受到影响。为了解决这个问题，我们假设尽管数据异质性，但有些客户的数据分布可以集群。在以前的方法中，为了群集客户端，服务器要求客户端同时发送参数。但是，在有大量参与者可能有限的参与者的情况下，这可能是有问题的。为了防止这种瓶颈，我们提出了FLIC（使用增量聚类的联合学习），其中服务器利用客户在联合培训期间发送的客户发送的更新，而不是要求他们同时发送参数。因此，除了经典的联合学习所需的内容外，服务器与客户之间没有任何其他沟通。我们从经验上证明了各种非IID案例，我们的方法成功地按照相同的数据分布将客户分组分组。我们还通过研究其能力在联邦学习过程的早期阶段对客户进行分配的能力来确定FLIC的局限性。我们进一步将对模型的攻击作为数据异质性的一种形式，并从经验上表明，即使恶意客户的比例高于50 \％，FLIC也是针对中毒攻击的强大防御。

变形金刚在几个领域取得了巨大的成功，从自然语言处理到计算机视觉。然而，最近已经证明，堆叠自发注意层（变压器的独特架构成分）可能会导致在初始化时代币表示的等级崩溃。是否以及如何影响训练的等级崩溃的问题仍然没有得到答复，其调查对于对该架构的更全面理解是必要的。在这项工作中，我们对这种现象的原因和影响有了新的启示。首先，我们表明，代币表示的等级崩溃会导致查询和钥匙的梯度在初始化时消失，从而阻碍了培训。此外，我们提供了对等级崩溃的起源的详尽描述，并讨论了如何通过对残留分支的适当深度依赖性缩放来预防它。最后，我们的分析揭示了特定的体系结构超参数对查询和值的梯度有所不同，从而导致不成比例的梯度规范。这暗示了一种解释，用于广泛使用自适应方法进行变压器的优化。

梯度下降上升（GDA），最简单的单环路算法用于非凸起最小化优化，广泛用于实际应用，例如生成的对抗网络（GANS）和对抗性训练。尽管其理想的简单性，最近的工作表明了理论上的GDA的较差收敛率，即使在一侧对象的强凹面也是如此。本文为两个替代的单环算法建立了新的收敛结果 - 交替GDA和平滑GDA - 在温和的假设下，目标对一个变量的polyak-lojasiewicz（pl）条件满足Polyak-lojasiewicz（pl）条件。我们证明，找到一个$ \ epsilon $ -stationary点，（i）交替的GDA及其随机变体（没有迷你批量），分别需要$ o（\ kappa ^ {2} \ epsilon ^ { - 2}）$和$ o（\ kappa ^ {4} \ epsilon ^ {-4}）$迭代，而（ii）平滑gda及其随机变体（没有迷你批次）分别需要$ o（\ kappa \ epsilon ^ { - 2}） $和$ o（\ kappa ^ {2} \ epsilon ^ { - 4}）$迭代。后者大大改善了Vanilla GDA，并在类似的环境下给出了单环算法之间的最佳已知复杂性结果。我们进一步展示了这些算法在训练GAN和强大的非线性回归中的经验效率。