3D点云可以灵活地表示连续表面，可用于各种应用；但是，缺乏结构信息使点云识别具有挑战性。最近的边缘感知方法主要使用边缘信息作为描述局部结构以促进学习的额外功能。尽管这些方法表明，将边缘纳入网络设计是有益的，但它们通常缺乏解释性，使用户想知道边缘如何有所帮助。为了阐明这一问题，在这项研究中，我们提出了以可解释方式处理边缘的扩散单元（DU），同时提供了不错的改进。我们的方法可以通过三种方式解释。首先，我们从理论上表明，DU学会了执行任务呈纤维边缘的增强和抑制作用。其次，我们通过实验观察并验证边缘增强和抑制行为。第三，我们从经验上证明，这种行为有助于提高绩效。在具有挑战性的基准上进行的广泛实验验证了DU在可解释性和绩效增长方面的优势。具体而言，我们的方法使用S3DIS使用Shapenet零件和场景分割来实现对象零件分割的最新性能。我们的源代码将在https://github.com/martianxiu/diffusionunit上发布。

由于缺乏连接性信息，对局部表面几何形状进行建模在3D点云的理解中具有挑战性。大多数先前的作品使用各种卷积操作模拟本地几何形状。我们观察到，卷积可以等效地分解为局部和全球成分的加权组合。通过这种观察，我们明确地将这两个组件解散了，以便可以增强局部的组件并促进局部表面几何形状的学习。具体而言，我们提出了Laplacian单元（LU），这是一个简单而有效的建筑单元，可以增强局部几何学的学习。广泛的实验表明，配备有LU的网络在典型的云理解任务上实现了竞争性或卓越的性能。此外，通过建立平均曲率流之间的连接，基于曲率的LU进行了进一步研究，以解释LU的自适应平滑和锐化效果。代码将可用。

由于缺乏连接性信息，即边缘，学习点云是具有挑战性的。尽管现有的边缘感知方法可以通过建模边缘来改善性能，但边缘如何促进改进尚不清楚。在这项研究中，我们提出了一种自动学习以增强/抑制边缘的方法，同时保持其工作机制清晰。首先，我们从理论上弄清楚边缘增强/抑制作用是如何工作的。其次，我们通过实验验证边缘增强/抑制行为。第三，我们从经验上表明这种行为可以提高性能。通常，我们观察到所提出的方法在点云分类和细分任务中实现了竞争性能。

The 3D-aware image synthesis focuses on conserving spatial consistency besides generating high-resolution images with fine details. Recently, Neural Radiance Field (NeRF) has been introduced for synthesizing novel views with low computational cost and superior performance. While several works investigate a generative NeRF and show remarkable achievement, they cannot handle conditional and continuous feature manipulation in the generation procedure. In this work, we introduce a novel model, called Class-Continuous Conditional Generative NeRF ($\text{C}^{3}$G-NeRF), which can synthesize conditionally manipulated photorealistic 3D-consistent images by projecting conditional features to the generator and the discriminator. The proposed $\text{C}^{3}$G-NeRF is evaluated with three image datasets, AFHQ, CelebA, and Cars. As a result, our model shows strong 3D-consistency with fine details and smooth interpolation in conditional feature manipulation. For instance, $\text{C}^{3}$G-NeRF exhibits a Fr\'echet Inception Distance (FID) of 7.64 in 3D-aware face image synthesis with a $\text{128}^{2}$ resolution. Additionally, we provide FIDs of generated 3D-aware images of each class of the datasets as it is possible to synthesize class-conditional images with $\text{C}^{3}$G-NeRF.

In both terrestrial and marine ecology, physical tagging is a frequently used method to study population dynamics and behavior. However, such tagging techniques are increasingly being replaced by individual re-identification using image analysis. This paper introduces a contrastive learning-based model for identifying individuals. The model uses the first parts of the Inception v3 network, supported by a projection head, and we use contrastive learning to find similar or dissimilar image pairs from a collection of uniform photographs. We apply this technique for corkwing wrasse, Symphodus melops, an ecologically and commercially important fish species. Photos are taken during repeated catches of the same individuals from a wild population, where the intervals between individual sightings might range from a few days to several years. Our model achieves a one-shot accuracy of 0.35, a 5-shot accuracy of 0.56, and a 100-shot accuracy of 0.88, on our dataset.

Feature selection helps reduce data acquisition costs in ML, but the standard approach is to train models with static feature subsets. Here, we consider the dynamic feature selection (DFS) problem where a model sequentially queries features based on the presently available information. DFS is often addressed with reinforcement learning (RL), but we explore a simpler approach of greedily selecting features based on their conditional mutual information. This method is theoretically appealing but requires oracle access to the data distribution, so we develop a learning approach based on amortized optimization. The proposed method is shown to recover the greedy policy when trained to optimality and outperforms numerous existing feature selection methods in our experiments, thus validating it as a simple but powerful approach for this problem.

The purpose of this work was to tackle practical issues which arise when using a tendon-driven robotic manipulator with a long, passive, flexible proximal section in medical applications. A separable robot which overcomes difficulties in actuation and sterilization is introduced, in which the body containing the electronics is reusable and the remainder is disposable. A control input which resolves the redundancy in the kinematics and a physical interpretation of this redundancy are provided. The effect of a static change in the proximal section angle on bending angle error was explored under four testing conditions for a sinusoidal input. Bending angle error increased for increasing proximal section angle for all testing conditions with an average error reduction of 41.48% for retension, 4.28% for hysteresis, and 52.35% for re-tension + hysteresis compensation relative to the baseline case. Two major sources of error in tracking the bending angle were identified: time delay from hysteresis and DC offset from the proximal section angle. Examination of these error sources revealed that the simple hysteresis compensation was most effective for removing time delay and re-tension compensation for removing DC offset, which was the primary source of increasing error. The re-tension compensation was also tested for dynamic changes in the proximal section and reduced error in the final configuration of the tip by 89.14% relative to the baseline case.

According to the rapid development of drone technologies, drones are widely used in many applications including military domains. In this paper, a novel situation-aware DRL- based autonomous nonlinear drone mobility control algorithm in cyber-physical loitering munition applications. On the battlefield, the design of DRL-based autonomous control algorithm is not straightforward because real-world data gathering is generally not available. Therefore, the approach in this paper is that cyber-physical virtual environment is constructed with Unity environment. Based on the virtual cyber-physical battlefield scenarios, a DRL-based automated nonlinear drone mobility control algorithm can be designed, evaluated, and visualized. Moreover, many obstacles exist which is harmful for linear trajectory control in real-world battlefield scenarios. Thus, our proposed autonomous nonlinear drone mobility control algorithm utilizes situation-aware components those are implemented with a Raycast function in Unity virtual scenarios. Based on the gathered situation-aware information, the drone can autonomously and nonlinearly adjust its trajectory during flight. Therefore, this approach is obviously beneficial for avoiding obstacles in obstacle-deployed battlefields. Our visualization-based performance evaluation shows that the proposed algorithm is superior from the other linear mobility control algorithms.

In robotics and computer vision communities, extensive studies have been widely conducted regarding surveillance tasks, including human detection, tracking, and motion recognition with a camera. Additionally, deep learning algorithms are widely utilized in the aforementioned tasks as in other computer vision tasks. Existing public datasets are insufficient to develop learning-based methods that handle various surveillance for outdoor and extreme situations such as harsh weather and low illuminance conditions. Therefore, we introduce a new large-scale outdoor surveillance dataset named eXtremely large-scale Multi-modAl Sensor dataset (X-MAS) containing more than 500,000 image pairs and the first-person view data annotated by well-trained annotators. Moreover, a single pair contains multi-modal data (e.g. an IR image, an RGB image, a thermal image, a depth image, and a LiDAR scan). This is the first large-scale first-person view outdoor multi-modal dataset focusing on surveillance tasks to the best of our knowledge. We present an overview of the proposed dataset with statistics and present methods of exploiting our dataset with deep learning-based algorithms. The latest information on the dataset and our study are available at https://github.com/lge-robot-navi, and the dataset will be available for download through a server.

Springs are efficient in storing and returning elastic potential energy but are unable to hold the energy they store in the absence of an external load. Lockable springs use clutches to hold elastic potential energy in the absence of an external load but have not yet been widely adopted in applications, partly because clutches introduce design complexity, reduce energy efficiency, and typically do not afford high-fidelity control over the energy stored by the spring. Here, we present the design of a novel lockable compression spring that uses a small capstan clutch to passively lock a mechanical spring. The capstan clutch can lock up to 1000 N force at any arbitrary deflection, unlock the spring in less than 10 ms with a control force less than 1 % of the maximal spring force, and provide an 80 % energy storage and return efficiency (comparable to a highly efficient electric motor operated at constant nominal speed). By retaining the form factor of a regular spring while providing high-fidelity locking capability even under large spring forces, the proposed design could facilitate the development of energy-efficient spring-based actuators and robots.