深度加强学习是一种从头开始学习机器人控制政策的有效工具。然而，这些方法对于巨大的需要训练数据来说是臭名昭着的，这对于真正的机器人来说是昂贵的。高度流行的替代方案是从模拟中学习，允许生成数据更快，更安全和更便宜。由于所有模拟器仅仅是现实的模型，因此模拟和实际数据之间存在不可避免的差异，通常称为“现实差距”。为了弥合这种差距，许多方法从模拟器的分发中学习一个策略。在本文中，我们建议将钢筋从随机物理模拟与政策蒸馏相结合。我们的算法称为蒸馏域随机化（DOTOR），蒸馏出所谓的教师政策，这些教师策略是最初被抽样的域的专家，以稍后部署的学生政策。这样，DODOR学习直接从模拟转移到现实的控制器，即，不需要来自目标域的数据。我们将DIDOR与三个基线进行比较三个SIM-SIM-SIM，以及两个SIM-to-Real实验。我们的研究结果表明，用DODOR训练的政策的目标域表现是en Par或比基线更好。此外，我们的方法既不会增加所需的内存容量，也不会有时间来计算一个动作，这可能是成功部署学习控制器的故障点。

深度学习的兴起导致机器人研究中的范式转变，有利于需要大量数据的方法。在物理平台上生成这样的数据集是昂贵的。因此，最先进的方法在模拟中学习，其中数据生成快速以及廉价并随后将知识转移到真实机器人（SIM-to-Real）。尽管变得越来越真实，但所有模拟器都是基于模型的施工，因此不可避免地不完善。这提出了如何修改模拟器以促进学习机器人控制政策的问题，并克服模拟与现实之间的不匹配，通常称为“现实差距”。我们对机器人学的SIM-Teal研究提供了全面的审查，专注于名为“域随机化”的技术，这是一种从随机仿真学习的方法。

可变形的物体操纵（DOM）是机器人中的新兴研究问题。操纵可变形对象的能力赋予具有更高自主权的机器人，并承诺在工业，服务和医疗领域中的新应用。然而，与刚性物体操纵相比，可变形物体的操纵相当复杂，并且仍然是开放的研究问题。解决DOM挑战在机器人学的几乎各个方面，即硬件设计，传感，（变形）建模，规划和控制的挑战突破。在本文中，我们审查了最近的进步，并在考虑每个子场中的变形时突出主要挑战。我们论文的特殊焦点在于讨论这些挑战并提出未来的研究方向。

Dataset distillation has emerged as a prominent technique to improve data efficiency when training machine learning models. It encapsulates the knowledge from a large dataset into a smaller synthetic dataset. A model trained on this smaller distilled dataset can attain comparable performance to a model trained on the original training dataset. However, the existing dataset distillation techniques mainly aim at achieving the best trade-off between resource usage efficiency and model utility. The security risks stemming from them have not been explored. This study performs the first backdoor attack against the models trained on the data distilled by dataset distillation models in the image domain. Concretely, we inject triggers into the synthetic data during the distillation procedure rather than during the model training stage, where all previous attacks are performed. We propose two types of backdoor attacks, namely NAIVEATTACK and DOORPING. NAIVEATTACK simply adds triggers to the raw data at the initial distillation phase, while DOORPING iteratively updates the triggers during the entire distillation procedure. We conduct extensive evaluations on multiple datasets, architectures, and dataset distillation techniques. Empirical evaluation shows that NAIVEATTACK achieves decent attack success rate (ASR) scores in some cases, while DOORPING reaches higher ASR scores (close to 1.0) in all cases. Furthermore, we conduct a comprehensive ablation study to analyze the factors that may affect the attack performance. Finally, we evaluate multiple defense mechanisms against our backdoor attacks and show that our attacks can practically circumvent these defense mechanisms.

We present a dynamic path planning algorithm to navigate an amphibious rotor craft through a concave time-invariant obstacle field while attempting to minimize energy usage. We create a nonlinear quaternion state model that represents the rotor craft dynamics above and below the water. The 6 degree of freedom dynamics used within a layered architecture to generate motion paths for the vehicle to follow and the required control inputs. The rotor craft has a 3 dimensional map of its surroundings that is updated via limited range onboard sensor readings within the current medium (air or water). Path planning is done via PRM and D* Lite.

While the capabilities of autonomous systems have been steadily improving in recent years, these systems still struggle to rapidly explore previously unknown environments without the aid of GPS-assisted navigation. The DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge aimed to fast track the development of autonomous exploration systems by evaluating their performance in real-world underground search-and-rescue scenarios. Subterranean environments present a plethora of challenges for robotic systems, such as limited communications, complex topology, visually-degraded sensing, and harsh terrain. The presented solution enables long-term autonomy with minimal human supervision by combining a powerful and independent single-agent autonomy stack, with higher level mission management operating over a flexible mesh network. The autonomy suite deployed on quadruped and wheeled robots was fully independent, freeing the human supervision to loosely supervise the mission and make high-impact strategic decisions. We also discuss lessons learned from fielding our system at the SubT Final Event, relating to vehicle versatility, system adaptability, and re-configurable communications.

We present Muse, a text-to-image Transformer model that achieves state-of-the-art image generation performance while being significantly more efficient than diffusion or autoregressive models. Muse is trained on a masked modeling task in discrete token space: given the text embedding extracted from a pre-trained large language model (LLM), Muse is trained to predict randomly masked image tokens. Compared to pixel-space diffusion models, such as Imagen and DALL-E 2, Muse is significantly more efficient due to the use of discrete tokens and requiring fewer sampling iterations; compared to autoregressive models, such as Parti, Muse is more efficient due to the use of parallel decoding. The use of a pre-trained LLM enables fine-grained language understanding, translating to high-fidelity image generation and the understanding of visual concepts such as objects, their spatial relationships, pose, cardinality etc. Our 900M parameter model achieves a new SOTA on CC3M, with an FID score of 6.06. The Muse 3B parameter model achieves an FID of 7.88 on zero-shot COCO evaluation, along with a CLIP score of 0.32. Muse also directly enables a number of image editing applications without the need to fine-tune or invert the model: inpainting, outpainting, and mask-free editing. More results are available at https://muse-model.github.io

The visual dimension of cities has been a fundamental subject in urban studies, since the pioneering work of scholars such as Sitte, Lynch, Arnheim, and Jacobs. Several decades later, big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are revolutionizing how people move, sense, and interact with cities. This paper reviews the literature on the appearance and function of cities to illustrate how visual information has been used to understand them. A conceptual framework, Urban Visual Intelligence, is introduced to systematically elaborate on how new image data sources and AI techniques are reshaping the way researchers perceive and measure cities, enabling the study of the physical environment and its interactions with socioeconomic environments at various scales. The paper argues that these new approaches enable researchers to revisit the classic urban theories and themes, and potentially help cities create environments that are more in line with human behaviors and aspirations in the digital age.

Logic Mill is a scalable and openly accessible software system that identifies semantically similar documents within either one domain-specific corpus or multi-domain corpora. It uses advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to generate numerical representations of documents. Currently it leverages a large pre-trained language model to generate these document representations. The system focuses on scientific publications and patent documents and contains more than 200 million documents. It is easily accessible via a simple Application Programming Interface (API) or via a web interface. Moreover, it is continuously being updated and can be extended to text corpora from other domains. We see this system as a general-purpose tool for future research applications in the social sciences and other domains.

The release of ChatGPT, a language model capable of generating text that appears human-like and authentic, has gained significant attention beyond the research community. We expect that the convincing performance of ChatGPT incentivizes users to apply it to a variety of downstream tasks, including prompting the model to simplify their own medical reports. To investigate this phenomenon, we conducted an exploratory case study. In a questionnaire, we asked 15 radiologists to assess the quality of radiology reports simplified by ChatGPT. Most radiologists agreed that the simplified reports were factually correct, complete, and not potentially harmful to the patient. Nevertheless, instances of incorrect statements, missed key medical findings, and potentially harmful passages were reported. While further studies are needed, the initial insights of this study indicate a great potential in using large language models like ChatGPT to improve patient-centered care in radiology and other medical domains.