We present a data-driven framework to automate the vectorization and machine interpretation of 2D engineering part drawings. In industrial settings, most manufacturing engineers still rely on manual reads to identify the topological and manufacturing requirements from drawings submitted by designers. The interpretation process is laborious and time-consuming, which severely inhibits the efficiency of part quotation and manufacturing tasks. While recent advances in image-based computer vision methods have demonstrated great potential in interpreting natural images through semantic segmentation approaches, the application of such methods in parsing engineering technical drawings into semantically accurate components remains a significant challenge. The severe pixel sparsity in engineering drawings also restricts the effective featurization of image-based data-driven methods. To overcome these challenges, we propose a deep learning based framework that predicts the semantic type of each vectorized component. Taking a raster image as input, we vectorize all components through thinning, stroke tracing, and cubic bezier fitting. Then a graph of such components is generated based on the connectivity between the components. Finally, a graph convolutional neural network is trained on this graph data to identify the semantic type of each component. We test our framework in the context of semantic segmentation of text, dimension and, contour components in engineering drawings. Results show that our method yields the best performance compared to recent image, and graph-based segmentation methods.

实时动态环境感知对于拥挤空间的自动机器人至关重要。尽管流行的基于体素的映射方法可以有效地用任意复杂的形状代表3D障碍，但它们几乎无法区分静态和动态障碍，从而导致避免障碍物的性能有限。尽管在自动驾驶中存在大量基于学习的动态障碍检测算法，但四轮驱动器的有限计算资源无法使用这些方法实现实时性能。为了解决这些问题，我们为使用RGB-D摄像机提出了一个实时动态障碍物跟踪和映射系统，以避免四肢障碍物。拟议的系统首先利用带有占用体素图的深度图像来生成潜在的动态障碍区域作为建议。通过障碍区域建议，Kalman滤波器和我们的连续性过滤器将应用于跟踪每个动态障碍物。最后，使用追踪动态障碍的状态基于马尔可夫链提出了环境感知的轨迹预测方法。我们使用定制的四轮驱动器和导航计划者实施了建议的系统。仿真和物理实验表明，我们的方法可以成功地跟踪和代表动态环境中的障碍，并安全地避免障碍。

导航动态环境要求机器人生成无碰撞的轨迹，并积极避免移动障碍。大多数以前的作品都基于一个单个地图表示形式（例如几何，占用率或ESDF地图）设计路径计划算法。尽管他们在静态环境中表现出成功，但由于地图表示的限制，这些方法无法同时可靠地处理静态和动态障碍。为了解决该问题，本文提出了一种利用机器人在板载视觉的基于梯度的B-Spline轨迹优化算法。深度视觉使机器人能够基于体素图以几何形式跟踪和表示动态对象。拟议的优化首先采用基于圆的指南算法，以近似避免静态障碍的成本和梯度。然后，使用视觉检测的移动对象，我们的后水平距离场同时用于防止动态碰撞。最后，采用迭代重新指导策略来生成无碰撞轨迹。仿真和物理实验证明，我们的方法可以实时运行以安全地导航动态环境。

随着基于粉末的添加剂制造的快速开发，DepeDdering是去除覆盖3D打印零件的未使用粉末的过程，已成为进一步提高其生产力的主要瓶颈。传统的手动缩减非常耗时且昂贵，并且一些先前的自动化系统要么需要预处理或缺乏对不同3D打印零件的适应性。为了解决这些问题，我们引入了一个机器人系统，该机器人系统会自动从3D打印零件的表面上去除未加入的粉末。关键组件是一个视觉感知系统，该系统由一个姿势跟踪模块组成，该模块可实时跟踪6D姿势的粉末封闭零件，以及一个估计缩减完成百分比的进度估计模块。跟踪模块可以在高达60 fps的笔记本电脑CPU上有效运行。实验表明，我们的退化系统可以从各种3D打印零件的表面上除去未持续的粉末，而不会造成任何损坏。据我们所知，这是第一个基于视觉的机器人脱皮系统之一，可适应各种形状的部分而无需预多供款。

Mixup is a popular data augmentation technique for training deep neural networks where additional samples are generated by linearly interpolating pairs of inputs and their labels. This technique is known to improve the generalization performance in many learning paradigms and applications. In this work, we first analyze Mixup and show that it implicitly regularizes infinitely many directional derivatives of all orders. We then propose a new method to improve Mixup based on the novel insight. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we conduct experiments across various domains such as images, tabular data, speech, and graphs. Our results show that the proposed method improves Mixup across various datasets using a variety of architectures, for instance, exhibiting an improvement over Mixup by 0.8% in ImageNet top-1 accuracy.

The number of international benchmarking competitions is steadily increasing in various fields of machine learning (ML) research and practice. So far, however, little is known about the common practice as well as bottlenecks faced by the community in tackling the research questions posed. To shed light on the status quo of algorithm development in the specific field of biomedical imaging analysis, we designed an international survey that was issued to all participants of challenges conducted in conjunction with the IEEE ISBI 2021 and MICCAI 2021 conferences (80 competitions in total). The survey covered participants' expertise and working environments, their chosen strategies, as well as algorithm characteristics. A median of 72% challenge participants took part in the survey. According to our results, knowledge exchange was the primary incentive (70%) for participation, while the reception of prize money played only a minor role (16%). While a median of 80 working hours was spent on method development, a large portion of participants stated that they did not have enough time for method development (32%). 25% perceived the infrastructure to be a bottleneck. Overall, 94% of all solutions were deep learning-based. Of these, 84% were based on standard architectures. 43% of the respondents reported that the data samples (e.g., images) were too large to be processed at once. This was most commonly addressed by patch-based training (69%), downsampling (37%), and solving 3D analysis tasks as a series of 2D tasks. K-fold cross-validation on the training set was performed by only 37% of the participants and only 50% of the participants performed ensembling based on multiple identical models (61%) or heterogeneous models (39%). 48% of the respondents applied postprocessing steps.

In real-world time series recognition applications, it is possible to have data with varying length patterns. However, when using artificial neural networks (ANN), it is standard practice to use fixed-sized mini-batches. To do this, time series data with varying lengths are typically normalized so that all the patterns are the same length. Normally, this is done using zero padding or truncation without much consideration. We propose a novel method of normalizing the lengths of the time series in a dataset by exploiting the dynamic matching ability of Dynamic Time Warping (DTW). In this way, the time series lengths in a dataset can be set to a fixed size while maintaining features typical to the dataset. In the experiments, all 11 datasets with varying length time series from the 2018 UCR Time Series Archive are used. We evaluate the proposed method by comparing it with 18 other length normalization methods on a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), a Long-Short Term Memory network (LSTM), and a Bidirectional LSTM (BLSTM).

This study proposes novel control methods that lower impact force by preemptive movement and smoothly transition to conventional contact impedance control. These suggested techniques are for force control-based robots and position/velocity control-based robots, respectively. Strong impact forces have a negative influence on multiple robotic tasks. Recently, preemptive impact reduction techniques that expand conventional contact impedance control by using proximity sensors have been examined. However, a seamless transition from impact reduction to contact impedance control has not yet been accomplished. The proposed methods utilize a serial combined impedance control framework to solve this problem. The preemptive impact reduction feature can be added to the already implemented impedance controller because the parameter design is divided into impact reduction and contact impedance control. There is no undesirable contact force during the transition. Furthermore, even though the preemptive impact reduction employs a crude optical proximity sensor, the influence of reflectance is minimized using a virtual viscous force. Analyses and real-world experiments confirm these benefits.

The demand for resilient logistics networks has increased because of recent disasters. When we consider optimization problems, entropy regularization is a powerful tool for the diversification of a solution. In this study, we proposed a method for designing a resilient logistics network based on entropy regularization. Moreover, we proposed a method for analytical resilience criteria to reduce the ambiguity of resilience. First, we modeled the logistics network, including factories, distribution bases, and sales outlets in an efficient framework using entropy regularization. Next, we formulated a resilience criterion based on probabilistic cost and Kullback--Leibler divergence. Finally, our method was performed using a simple logistics network, and the resilience of the three logistics plans designed by entropy regularization was demonstrated.

Generative models, particularly GANs, have been utilized for image editing. Although GAN-based methods perform well on generating reasonable contents aligned with the user's intentions, they struggle to strictly preserve the contents outside the editing region. To address this issue, we use diffusion models instead of GANs and propose a novel image-editing method, based on pixel-wise guidance. Specifically, we first train pixel-classifiers with few annotated data and then estimate the semantic segmentation map of a target image. Users then manipulate the map to instruct how the image is to be edited. The diffusion model generates an edited image via guidance by pixel-wise classifiers, such that the resultant image aligns with the manipulated map. As the guidance is conducted pixel-wise, the proposed method can create reasonable contents in the editing region while preserving the contents outside this region. The experimental results validate the advantages of the proposed method both quantitatively and qualitatively.