自动驾驶的车辆和自动地面机器人需要一种可靠，准确的方法来分析周围环境的遍历以进行安全导航。本文提出并评估了一种基于机器学习的遍历性分析方法，该方法将基于SVM分类器的混合方法中的几何特征与基于外观的特征相结合。特别是，我们表明，整合一组新的几何和视觉特征并专注于重要的实施细节，可以显着提高性能和可靠性。已提出的方法已与最先进的深度学习方法进行了比较。在不同的复杂性方面，它的准确性为89.2％，表明其有效性和鲁棒性。该方法在CPU上完全运行，并在其他方法方面达到可比的结果，运行速度更快，并且需要更少的硬件资源。

本文介绍了基于仅使用合成数据训练的深卷积神经网络的人体部位分割的新框架。该方法实现了尖端的结果，而无需培训具有人体部位的真实注释数据的模型。我们的贡献包括数据生成管道，该管道利用游戏引擎来创建用于训练网络的合成数据，以及一种结合边缘响应映射和自适应直方图均衡的新型预处理模块，以指导网络来学习网络人体部位的形状确保对照明条件的变化的稳健性。为了选择最佳候选架构，我们对真正的人体四肢的手动注释图像进行详尽的测试。我们进一步将我们的方法与若干高端商业分割工具进行了对体零分割任务的几个。结果表明，我们的方法通过显着的余量优于其他模型。最后，我们展示了一个消融研究来验证我们的预处理模块。通过本文，我们释放了所提出的方法以及所获取的数据集的实现。

由于它可能对粮食安全，可持续性，资源利用效率，化学处理的降低以及人类努力和产量的优化，因此，自主机器人在农业中的应用正在越来越受欢迎。有了这一愿景，蓬勃发展的研究项目旨在开发一种适应性的机器人解决方案，用于精确耕作，该解决方案结合了小型自动无人驾驶飞机（UAV）（UAV）的空中调查能力以及由多功能无人驾驶的无人接地车（UGV）执行的针对性干预措施。本文概述了该项目中获得的科学和技术进步和结果。我们引入了多光谱感知算法以及空中和地面系统，用于监测农作物密度，杂草压力，作物氮营养状况，并准确地对杂草进行分类和定位。然后，我们介绍了针对我们在农业环境中机器人身份量身定制的导航和映射系统，以及用于协作映射的模块。我们最终介绍了我们在不同的现场条件和不同农作物中实施和测试的地面干预硬件，软件解决方案以及接口。我们描述了一个真正的用例，在该案例中，无人机与UGV合作以监视该领域并进行选择性喷涂而无需人工干预。

Computational units in artificial neural networks follow a simplified model of biological neurons. In the biological model, the output signal of a neuron runs down the axon, splits following the many branches at its end, and passes identically to all the downward neurons of the network. Each of the downward neurons will use their copy of this signal as one of many inputs dendrites, integrate them all and fire an output, if above some threshold. In the artificial neural network, this translates to the fact that the nonlinear filtering of the signal is performed in the upward neuron, meaning that in practice the same activation is shared between all the downward neurons that use that signal as their input. Dendrites thus play a passive role. We propose a slightly more complex model for the biological neuron, where dendrites play an active role: the activation in the output of the upward neuron becomes optional, and instead the signals going through each dendrite undergo independent nonlinear filterings, before the linear combination. We implement this new model into a ReLU computational unit and discuss its biological plausibility. We compare this new computational unit with the standard one and describe it from a geometrical point of view. We provide a Keras implementation of this unit into fully connected and convolutional layers and estimate their FLOPs and weights change. We then use these layers in ResNet architectures on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, Imagenette, and Imagewoof, obtaining performance improvements over standard ResNets up to 1.73%. Finally, we prove a universal representation theorem for continuous functions on compact sets and show that this new unit has more representational power than its standard counterpart.

The open-radio access network (O-RAN) embraces cloudification and network function virtualization for base-band function processing by dis-aggregated radio units (RUs), distributed units (DUs), and centralized units (CUs). These enable the cloud-RAN vision in full, where multiple mobile network operators (MNOs) can install their proprietary or open RUs, but lease on-demand computational resources for DU-CU functions from commonly available open-clouds via open x-haul interfaces. In this paper, we propose and compare the performances of min-max fairness and Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) auction-based x-haul and DU-CU resource allocation mechanisms to create a multi-tenant O-RAN ecosystem that is sustainable for small, medium, and large MNOs. The min-max fair approach minimizes the maximum OPEX of RUs through cost-sharing proportional to their demands, whereas the VCG auction-based approach minimizes the total OPEX for all resources utilized while extracting truthful demands from RUs. We consider time-wavelength division multiplexed (TWDM) passive optical network (PON)-based x-haul interfaces where PON virtualization technique is used to flexibly provide optical connections among RUs and edge-clouds at macro-cell RU locations as well as open-clouds at the central office locations. Moreover, we design efficient heuristics that yield significantly better economic efficiency and network resource utilization than conventional greedy resource allocation algorithms and reinforcement learning-based algorithms.

When testing conditions differ from those represented in training data, so-called out-of-distribution (OOD) inputs can mar the reliability of black-box learned components in the modern robot autonomy stack. Therefore, coping with OOD data is an important challenge on the path towards trustworthy learning-enabled open-world autonomy. In this paper, we aim to demystify the topic of OOD data and its associated challenges in the context of data-driven robotic systems, drawing connections to emerging paradigms in the ML community that study the effect of OOD data on learned models in isolation. We argue that as roboticists, we should reason about the overall system-level competence of a robot as it performs tasks in OOD conditions. We highlight key research questions around this system-level view of OOD problems to guide future research toward safe and reliable learning-enabled autonomy.

Autoencoders are a popular model in many branches of machine learning and lossy data compression. However, their fundamental limits, the performance of gradient methods and the features learnt during optimization remain poorly understood, even in the two-layer setting. In fact, earlier work has considered either linear autoencoders or specific training regimes (leading to vanishing or diverging compression rates). Our paper addresses this gap by focusing on non-linear two-layer autoencoders trained in the challenging proportional regime in which the input dimension scales linearly with the size of the representation. Our results characterize the minimizers of the population risk, and show that such minimizers are achieved by gradient methods; their structure is also unveiled, thus leading to a concise description of the features obtained via training. For the special case of a sign activation function, our analysis establishes the fundamental limits for the lossy compression of Gaussian sources via (shallow) autoencoders. Finally, while the results are proved for Gaussian data, numerical simulations on standard datasets display the universality of the theoretical predictions.

Profile extrusion is a continuous production process for manufacturing plastic profiles from molten polymer. Especially interesting is the design of the die, through which the melt is pressed to attain the desired shape. However, due to an inhomogeneous velocity distribution at the die exit or residual stresses inside the extrudate, the final shape of the manufactured part often deviates from the desired one. To avoid these deviations, the shape of the die can be computationally optimized, which has already been investigated in the literature using classical optimization approaches. A new approach in the field of shape optimization is the utilization of Reinforcement Learning (RL) as a learning-based optimization algorithm. RL is based on trial-and-error interactions of an agent with an environment. For each action, the agent is rewarded and informed about the subsequent state of the environment. While not necessarily superior to classical, e.g., gradient-based or evolutionary, optimization algorithms for one single problem, RL techniques are expected to perform especially well when similar optimization tasks are repeated since the agent learns a more general strategy for generating optimal shapes instead of concentrating on just one single problem. In this work, we investigate this approach by applying it to two 2D test cases. The flow-channel geometry can be modified by the RL agent using so-called Free-Form Deformation, a method where the computational mesh is embedded into a transformation spline, which is then manipulated based on the control-point positions. In particular, we investigate the impact of utilizing different agents on the training progress and the potential of wall time saving by utilizing multiple environments during training.

The recent emergence of new algorithms for permuting models into functionally equivalent regions of the solution space has shed some light on the complexity of error surfaces, and some promising properties like mode connectivity. However, finding the right permutation is challenging, and current optimization techniques are not differentiable, which makes it difficult to integrate into a gradient-based optimization, and often leads to sub-optimal solutions. In this paper, we propose a Sinkhorn re-basin network with the ability to obtain the transportation plan that better suits a given objective. Unlike the current state-of-art, our method is differentiable and, therefore, easy to adapt to any task within the deep learning domain. Furthermore, we show the advantage of our re-basin method by proposing a new cost function that allows performing incremental learning by exploiting the linear mode connectivity property. The benefit of our method is compared against similar approaches from the literature, under several conditions for both optimal transport finding and linear mode connectivity. The effectiveness of our continual learning method based on re-basin is also shown for several common benchmark datasets, providing experimental results that are competitive with state-of-art results from the literature.

Digital media have enabled the access to unprecedented literary knowledge. Authors, readers, and scholars are now able to discover and share an increasing amount of information about books and their authors. Notwithstanding, digital archives are still unbalanced: writers from non-Western countries are less represented, and such a condition leads to the perpetration of old forms of discrimination. In this paper, we present the Under-Represented Writers Knowledge Graph (URW-KG), a resource designed to explore and possibly amend this lack of representation by gathering and mapping information about works and authors from Wikidata and three other sources: Open Library, Goodreads, and Google Books. The experiments based on KG embeddings showed that the integrated information encoded in the graph allows scholars and users to be more easily exposed to non-Western literary works and authors with respect to Wikidata alone. This opens to the development of fairer and effective tools for author discovery and exploration.