Robots have been brought to work close to humans in many scenarios. For coexistence and collaboration, robots should be safe and pleasant for humans to interact with. To this end, the robots could be both physically soft with multimodal sensing/perception, so that the robots could have better awareness of the surrounding environment, as well as to respond properly to humans' action/intention. This paper introduces a novel soft robotic link, named ProTac, that possesses multiple sensing modes: tactile and proximity sensing, based on computer vision and a functional material. These modalities come from a layered structure of a soft transparent silicon skin, a polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) film, and reflective markers. Here, the PDLC film can switch actively between the opaque and the transparent state, from which the tactile sensing and proximity sensing can be obtained by using cameras solely built inside the ProTac link. In this paper, inference algorithms for tactile proximity perception are introduced. Evaluation results of two sensing modalities demonstrated that, with a simple activation strategy, ProTac link could effectively perceive useful information from both approaching and in-contact obstacles. The proposed sensing device is expected to bring in ultimate solutions for design of robots with softness, whole-body and multimodal sensing, and safety control strategies.

基于硬件的加速度是促进许多计算密集型数学操作的广泛尝试。本文提出了一个基于FPGA的体系结构来加速卷积操作 - 在许多卷积神经网络模型中出现的复杂且昂贵的计算步骤。我们将设计定为标准卷积操作，打算以边缘-AI解决方案启动产品。该项目的目的是产生一个可以一次处理卷积层的FPGA IP核心。系统开发人员可以使用Verilog HDL作为体系结构的主要设计语言来部署IP核心。实验结果表明，我们在简单的边缘计算FPGA板上合成的单个计算核心可以提供0.224 GOPS。当董事会充分利用时，可以实现4.48 GOP。

自动驾驶汽车（AV）必须在动态环境中安全有效地操作。为此，配备联合雷达通信（JRC）功能的AVS可以通过使用雷达检测和数据通信功能来增强驾驶安全性。但是，在不确定性和周围环境的动态下，通过两种不同功能优化AV系统的性能非常具有挑战性。在这项工作中，我们首先提出一个基于马尔可夫决策过程（MDP）的智能优化框架，以帮助AV在周围环境的动态和不确定性下选择JRC操作功能时做出最佳决策。然后，我们开发了一种有效的学习算法，利用了深度强化学习技术的最新进展，以找到AV的最佳政策，而无需任何有关周围环境的先前信息。此外，为了使我们提出的框架更加可扩展，我们开发了一种转移学习（TL）机制，该机制使AV能够利用有价值的体验来加速培训过程，以加速培训过程。广泛的模拟表明，与其他常规的深钢筋学习方法相比，提议的可转移深钢筋学习框架可将AV的障碍检测概率降低到67％。

Algorithms that involve both forecasting and optimization are at the core of solutions to many difficult real-world problems, such as in supply chains (inventory optimization), traffic, and in the transition towards carbon-free energy generation in battery/load/production scheduling in sustainable energy systems. Typically, in these scenarios we want to solve an optimization problem that depends on unknown future values, which therefore need to be forecast. As both forecasting and optimization are difficult problems in their own right, relatively few research has been done in this area. This paper presents the findings of the ``IEEE-CIS Technical Challenge on Predict+Optimize for Renewable Energy Scheduling," held in 2021. We present a comparison and evaluation of the seven highest-ranked solutions in the competition, to provide researchers with a benchmark problem and to establish the state of the art for this benchmark, with the aim to foster and facilitate research in this area. The competition used data from the Monash Microgrid, as well as weather data and energy market data. It then focused on two main challenges: forecasting renewable energy production and demand, and obtaining an optimal schedule for the activities (lectures) and on-site batteries that lead to the lowest cost of energy. The most accurate forecasts were obtained by gradient-boosted tree and random forest models, and optimization was mostly performed using mixed integer linear and quadratic programming. The winning method predicted different scenarios and optimized over all scenarios jointly using a sample average approximation method.

This paper aims to improve the Warping Planer Object Detection Network (WPOD-Net) using feature engineering to increase accuracy. What problems are solved using the Warping Object Detection Network using feature engineering? More specifically, we think that it makes sense to add knowledge about edges in the image to enhance the information for determining the license plate contour of the original WPOD-Net model. The Sobel filter has been selected experimentally and acts as a Convolutional Neural Network layer, the edge information is combined with the old information of the original network to create the final embedding vector. The proposed model was compared with the original model on a set of data that we collected for evaluation. The results are evaluated through the Quadrilateral Intersection over Union value and demonstrate that the model has a significant improvement in performance.

The introduction of high-quality image generation models, particularly the StyleGAN family, provides a powerful tool to synthesize and manipulate images. However, existing models are built upon high-quality (HQ) data as desired outputs, making them unfit for in-the-wild low-quality (LQ) images, which are common inputs for manipulation. In this work, we bridge this gap by proposing a novel GAN structure that allows for generating images with controllable quality. The network can synthesize various image degradation and restore the sharp image via a quality control code. Our proposed QC-StyleGAN can directly edit LQ images without altering their quality by applying GAN inversion and manipulation techniques. It also provides for free an image restoration solution that can handle various degradations, including noise, blur, compression artifacts, and their mixtures. Finally, we demonstrate numerous other applications such as image degradation synthesis, transfer, and interpolation.

语义分割是开发医学图像诊断系统的重要任务。但是，构建注释的医疗数据集很昂贵。因此，在这种情况下，半监督方法很重要。在半监督学习中，标签的质量在模型性能中起着至关重要的作用。在这项工作中，我们提出了一种新的伪标签策略，可提高用于培训学生网络的伪标签的质量。我们遵循多阶段的半监督训练方法，该方法在标记的数据集上训练教师模型，然后使用训练有素的老师将伪标签渲染用于学生培训。通过这样做，伪标签将被更新，并且随着培训的进度更加精确。上一个和我们的方法之间的关键区别在于，我们在学生培训过程中更新教师模型。因此，在学生培训过程中，提高了伪标签的质量。我们还提出了一种简单但有效的策略，以使用动量模型来提高伪标签的质量 - 训练过程中原始模型的慢复制版本。通过应用动量模型与学生培训期间的重新渲染伪标签相结合，我们在五个数据集中平均达到了84.1％的骰子分数（即Kvarsir，CVC-ClinicdB，Etis-laribpolypdb，cvc-colondb，cvc-colondb，cvc-colondb和cvc-300）和CVC-300）只有20％的数据集用作标记数据。我们的结果超过了3％的共同实践，甚至在某些数据集中取得了完全监督的结果。我们的源代码和预培训模型可在https://github.com/sun-asterisk-research/online学习SSL上找到

在现实世界应用中，联合学习（FL）遇到了两个挑战：（1）可伸缩性，尤其是应用于大型物联网网络时； （2）如何使用异质数据对环境进行健全。意识到第一个问题，我们旨在设计一个名为Full-Stack FL（F2L）的新型FL框架。更具体地说，F2L使用层次结构架构，使扩展FL网络可以访问而无需重建整个网络系统。此外，利用层次网络设计的优势，我们在全球服务器上提出了一种新的标签驱动知识蒸馏（LKD）技术来解决第二个问题。与当前的知识蒸馏技术相反，LKD能够训练学生模型，该模型由所有教师模型的良好知识组成。因此，我们提出的算法可以有效地提取区域数据分布（即区域汇总模型）的知识，以减少客户在使用非独立分布数据的FL系统下操作时客户模型之间的差异。广泛的实验结果表明：（i）我们的F2L方法可以显着提高所有全球蒸馏的总体FL效率，并且（ii）F2L随着全球蒸馏阶段的发生而迅速达到收敛性，而不是在每个通信周期中提高。

可解释的机器学习旨在了解复杂的黑盒系统的推理过程，这些系统因缺乏解释性而臭名昭著。一种不断增长的解释方法是通过反事实解释，这超出了为什么系统做出一定决定，以进一步提供有关用户可以采取哪些方法来改变结果的建议。反事实示例必须能够应对黑框分类器的原始预测，同时还满足实用应用程序的各种约束。这些限制存在于一个和另一个之间的权衡处，对现有作品提出了根本的挑战。为此，我们提出了一个基于随机学习的框架，可以有效地平衡反事实权衡。该框架由具有互补角色的一代和特征选择模块组成：前者的目标是建模有效的反事实的分布，而后者则以允许可区分训练和摊销优化的方式执行其他约束。我们证明了我们方法在产生可行和合理的反事实中的有效性，这些反事实比现有方法更多样化，尤其是比具有相同能力的对应物更有效的方式。

尽管在过去的几年中取得了重大进展，但歧义仍然是面部表情识别（FER）的关键挑战。它可能导致嘈杂和不一致的注释，这阻碍了现实世界中深度学习模型的性能。在本文中，我们提出了一种新的不确定性标签分布学习方法，以提高深层模型的鲁棒性，以防止不确定性和歧义。我们利用价值空间中的邻里信息来适应培训训练样本的情绪分布。我们还考虑提供的标签将其纳入标签分布时的不确定性。我们的方法可以轻松地集成到深层网络中，以获得更多的培训监督并提高识别准确性。在各种嘈杂和模棱两可的环境下，在几个数据集上进行了密集的实验表明，我们的方法取得了竞争成果，并且超出了最新的最新方法。我们的代码和模型可在https://github.com/minhnhatvt/label-distribution-learning-fer-tf上找到。