We apply the vision transformer, a deep machine learning model build around the attention mechanism, on mel-spectrogram representations of raw audio recordings. When adding mel-based data augmentation techniques and sample-weighting, we achieve comparable performance on both (PRS and CCS challenge) tasks of ComParE21, outperforming most single model baselines. We further introduce overlapping vertical patching and evaluate the influence of parameter configurations. Index Terms: audio classification, attention, mel-spectrogram, unbalanced data-sets, computational paralinguistics

Common to all different kinds of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) is the intention to model relations between data points through time. When there is no immediate relationship between subsequent data points (like when the data points are generated at random, e.g.), we show that RNNs are still able to remember a few data points back into the sequence by memorizing them by heart using standard backpropagation. However, we also show that for classical RNNs, LSTM and GRU networks the distance of data points between recurrent calls that can be reproduced this way is highly limited (compared to even a loose connection between data points) and subject to various constraints imposed by the type and size of the RNN in question. This implies the existence of a hard limit (way below the information-theoretic one) for the distance between related data points within which RNNs are still able to recognize said relation.

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.

多代理系统（例如自动驾驶或工厂）作为服务的一些最相关的应用程序显示混合动机方案，代理商可能具有相互矛盾的目标。在这些环境中，代理可能会在独立学习下的合作方面学习不良的结果，例如过度贪婪的行为。在现实世界社会的动机中，在这项工作中，我们建议利用市场力量为代理商成为合作的激励措施。正如囚犯困境的迭代版本所证明的那样，拟议的市场配方可以改变游戏的动力，以始终如一地学习合作政策。此外，我们在空间和时间扩展的设置中评估了不同数量的代理的方法。我们从经验上发现，市场的存在可以通过其交易活动改善总体结果和代理人的回报。

在模仿学习的背景下，提供专家轨迹通常是昂贵且耗时的。因此，目标必须是创建算法，这些算法需要尽可能少的专家数据。在本文中，我们提出了一种算法，该算法模仿了专家的高级战略，而不仅仅是模仿行动水平的专家，我们假设这需要更少的专家数据并使培训更加稳定。作为先验，我们假设高级策略是达到未知的目标状态区域，我们假设这对于强化学习中许多领域是有效的先验。目标国家地区未知，但是由于专家已经证明了如何达到目标，因此代理商试图到达与专家类似的州。我们的算法以时间连贯性的思想为基础，训练神经网络，以预测两个状态是否相似，从某种意义上说，它们可能会随着时间的流逝而发生。在推论期间，代理将其当前状态与案例基础的专家状态进行比较以获得相似性。结果表明，我们的方法仍然可以在很少有专家数据的设置中学习一个近乎最佳的政策，这些算法试图模仿动作级别的专家，这一算法再也无法做到了。

基于模型的深度增强学习（RL）假设环境潜在的转换动态模型的可用性。该模型可用于预测代理可能的行动的未来影响。当没有使用这样的模型时，可以学习真实环境的近似值，例如，通过使用生成神经网络，有时也称为世界模型。由于大多数现实世界的环境本质上是随机的，并且过渡动态是多式联运的，重要的是使用能够反映这种多模式不确定性的建模技术。为了安全地部署在现实世界中的这种学习系统，特别是在工业背景下，考虑这些不确定性至关重要。在这项工作中，我们分析了现有的，并提出了基于RL基于世界模型的多模式不确定性的检测和定量的新度量。不确定未来状态的正确建模和检测为安全的方式奠定了处理关键情况的基础，这是在现实世界中部署RL系统的先决条件。

Deep learning approaches to anomaly detection have recently improved the state of the art in detection performance on complex datasets such as large collections of images or text. These results have sparked a renewed interest in the anomaly detection problem and led to the introduction of a great variety of new methods. With the emergence of numerous such methods, including approaches based on generative models, one-class classification, and reconstruction, there is a growing need to bring methods of this field into a systematic and unified perspective. In this review we aim to identify the common underlying principles as well as the assumptions that are often made implicitly by various methods. In particular, we draw connections between classic 'shallow' and novel deep approaches and show how this relation might cross-fertilize or extend both directions. We further provide an empirical assessment of major existing methods that is enriched by the use of recent explainability techniques, and present specific worked-through examples together with practical advice. Finally, we outline critical open challenges and identify specific paths for future research in anomaly detection.

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.

Explainable AI transforms opaque decision strategies of ML models into explanations that are interpretable by the user, for example, identifying the contribution of each input feature to the prediction at hand. Such explanations, however, entangle the potentially multiple factors that enter into the overall complex decision strategy. We propose to disentangle explanations by finding relevant subspaces in activation space that can be mapped to more abstract human-understandable concepts and enable a joint attribution on concepts and input features. To automatically extract the desired representation, we propose new subspace analysis formulations that extend the principle of PCA and subspace analysis to explanations. These novel analyses, which we call principal relevant component analysis (PRCA) and disentangled relevant subspace analysis (DRSA), optimize relevance of projected activations rather than the more traditional variance or kurtosis. This enables a much stronger focus on subspaces that are truly relevant for the prediction and the explanation, in particular, ignoring activations or concepts to which the prediction model is invariant. Our approach is general enough to work alongside common attribution techniques such as Shapley Value, Integrated Gradients, or LRP. Our proposed methods show to be practically useful and compare favorably to the state of the art as demonstrated on benchmarks and three use cases.

Kernel machines have sustained continuous progress in the field of quantum chemistry. In particular, they have proven to be successful in the low-data regime of force field reconstruction. This is because many physical invariances and symmetries can be incorporated into the kernel function to compensate for much larger datasets. So far, the scalability of this approach has however been hindered by its cubical runtime in the number of training points. While it is known, that iterative Krylov subspace solvers can overcome these burdens, they crucially rely on effective preconditioners, which are elusive in practice. Practical preconditioners need to be computationally efficient and numerically robust at the same time. Here, we consider the broad class of Nystr\"om-type methods to construct preconditioners based on successively more sophisticated low-rank approximations of the original kernel matrix, each of which provides a different set of computational trade-offs. All considered methods estimate the relevant subspace spanned by the kernel matrix columns using different strategies to identify a representative set of inducing points. Our comprehensive study covers the full spectrum of approaches, starting from naive random sampling to leverage score estimates and incomplete Cholesky factorizations, up to exact SVD decompositions.