作为一种成功的自我监督学习方法，对比学习旨在学习输入样本扭曲之间共享的不变信息。尽管对比度学习在抽样策略和架构设计方面取得了持续的进步，但仍然存在两个持续的缺陷：任务 - 核定信息的干扰和样本效率低下，这与琐碎的恒定解决方案的反复存在有关。从维度分析的角度来看，我们发现尺寸的冗余和尺寸混杂因素是现象背后的内在问题，并提供了实验证据来支持我们的观点。我们进一步提出了一种简单而有效的方法metamask，这是元学习学到的维度面膜的缩写，以学习反对维度冗余和混杂因素的表示形式。 MetAmask采用冗余技术来解决尺寸的冗余问题，并创新地引入了尺寸掩模，以减少包含混杂因子的特定维度的梯度效应，该效果通过采用元学习范式进行培训，以改善掩盖掩盖性能的目标典型的自我监督任务的表示。与典型的对比方法相比，我们提供了坚实的理论分析以证明元掩体可以获得下游分类的更严格的风险范围。从经验上讲，我们的方法在各种基准上实现了最先进的性能。

Deep learning-based methods have achieved significant performance for image defogging. However, existing methods are mainly developed for land scenes and perform poorly when dealing with overwater foggy images, since overwater scenes typically contain large expanses of sky and water. In this work, we propose a Prior map Guided CycleGAN (PG-CycleGAN) for defogging of images with overwater scenes. To promote the recovery of the objects on water in the image, two loss functions are exploited for the network where a prior map is designed to invert the dark channel and the min-max normalization is used to suppress the sky and emphasize objects. However, due to the unpaired training set, the network may learn an under-constrained domain mapping from foggy to fog-free image, leading to artifacts and loss of details. Thus, we propose an intuitive Upscaling Inception Module (UIM) and a Long-range Residual Coarse-to-fine framework (LRC) to mitigate this issue. Extensive experiments on qualitative and quantitative comparisons demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art supervised, semi-supervised, and unsupervised defogging approaches.

We consider the inverse acoustic obstacle problem for sound-soft star-shaped obstacles in two dimensions wherein the boundary of the obstacle is determined from measurements of the scattered field at a collection of receivers outside the object. One of the standard approaches for solving this problem is to reformulate it as an optimization problem: finding the boundary of the domain that minimizes the $L^2$ distance between computed values of the scattered field and the given measurement data. The optimization problem is computationally challenging since the local set of convexity shrinks with increasing frequency and results in an increasing number of local minima in the vicinity of the true solution. In many practical experimental settings, low frequency measurements are unavailable due to limitations of the experimental setup or the sensors used for measurement. Thus, obtaining a good initial guess for the optimization problem plays a vital role in this environment. We present a neural network warm-start approach for solving the inverse scattering problem, where an initial guess for the optimization problem is obtained using a trained neural network. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method with several numerical examples. For high frequency problems, this approach outperforms traditional iterative methods such as Gauss-Newton initialized without any prior (i.e., initialized using a unit circle), or initialized using the solution of a direct method such as the linear sampling method. The algorithm remains robust to noise in the scattered field measurements and also converges to the true solution for limited aperture data. However, the number of training samples required to train the neural network scales exponentially in frequency and the complexity of the obstacles considered. We conclude with a discussion of this phenomenon and potential directions for future research.

Maximum Inner Product Search (MIPS) is a popular problem in the machine learning literature due to its applicability in a wide array of applications, such as recommender systems. In high-dimensional settings, however, MIPS queries can become computationally expensive as most existing solutions do not scale well with data dimensionality. In this work, we present a state-of-the-art algorithm for the MIPS problem in high dimensions, dubbed BanditMIPS. BanditMIPS is a randomized algorithm that borrows techniques from multi-armed bandits to reduce the MIPS problem to a best-arm identification problem. BanditMIPS reduces the complexity of state-of-the-art algorithms from $O(\sqrt{d})$ to $O(\text{log}d)$, where $d$ is the dimension of the problem data vectors. On high-dimensional real-world datasets, BanditMIPS runs approximately 12 times faster than existing approaches and returns the same solution. BanditMIPS requires no preprocessing of the data and includes a hyperparameter that practitioners may use to trade off accuracy and runtime. We also propose a variant of our algorithm, named BanditMIPS-$\alpha$, which employs non-uniform sampling across the data dimensions to provide further speedups.

Random forests are some of the most widely used machine learning models today, especially in domains that necessitate interpretability. We present an algorithm that accelerates the training of random forests and other popular tree-based learning methods. At the core of our algorithm is a novel node-splitting subroutine, dubbed MABSplit, used to efficiently find split points when constructing decision trees. Our algorithm borrows techniques from the multi-armed bandit literature to judiciously determine how to allocate samples and computational power across candidate split points. We provide theoretical guarantees that MABSplit improves the sample complexity of each node split from linear to logarithmic in the number of data points. In some settings, MABSplit leads to 100x faster training (an 99% reduction in training time) without any decrease in generalization performance. We demonstrate similar speedups when MABSplit is used across a variety of forest-based variants, such as Extremely Random Forests and Random Patches. We also show our algorithm can be used in both classification and regression tasks. Finally, we show that MABSplit outperforms existing methods in generalization performance and feature importance calculations under a fixed computational budget. All of our experimental results are reproducible via a one-line script at https://github.com/ThrunGroup/FastForest.

Patch-based models, e.g., Vision Transformers (ViTs) and Mixers, have shown impressive results on various visual recognition tasks, alternating classic convolutional networks. While the initial patch-based models (ViTs) treated all patches equally, recent studies reveal that incorporating inductive bias like spatiality benefits the representations. However, most prior works solely focused on the location of patches, overlooking the scene structure of images. Thus, we aim to further guide the interaction of patches using the object information. Specifically, we propose OAMixer (object-aware mixing layer), which calibrates the patch mixing layers of patch-based models based on the object labels. Here, we obtain the object labels in unsupervised or weakly-supervised manners, i.e., no additional human-annotating cost is necessary. Using the object labels, OAMixer computes a reweighting mask with a learnable scale parameter that intensifies the interaction of patches containing similar objects and applies the mask to the patch mixing layers. By learning an object-centric representation, we demonstrate that OAMixer improves the classification accuracy and background robustness of various patch-based models, including ViTs, MLP-Mixers, and ConvMixers. Moreover, we show that OAMixer enhances various downstream tasks, including large-scale classification, self-supervised learning, and multi-object recognition, verifying the generic applicability of OAMixer

Trying to capture the sample-label relationship, conditional generative models often end up inheriting the spurious correlation in the training dataset, giving label-conditional distributions that are severely imbalanced in another latent attribute. To mitigate such undesirable correlations engraved into generative models, which we call spurious causality, we propose a general two-step strategy. (a) Fairness Intervention (FI): Emphasize the minority samples that are hard to be generated due to the spurious correlation in the training dataset. (b) Corrective Sampling (CS): Filter the generated samples explicitly to follow the desired label-conditional latent attribute distribution. We design the fairness intervention for various degrees of supervision on the spurious attribute, including unsupervised, weakly-supervised, and semi-supervised scenarios. Our experimental results show that the proposed FICS can successfully resolve the spurious correlation in generated samples on various datasets.

Animals run robustly in diverse terrain. This locomotion robustness is puzzling because axon conduction velocity is limited to a few ten meters per second. If reflex loops deliver sensory information with significant delays, one would expect a destabilizing effect on sensorimotor control. Hence, an alternative explanation describes a hierarchical structure of low-level adaptive mechanics and high-level sensorimotor control to help mitigate the effects of transmission delays. Motivated by the concept of an adaptive mechanism triggering an immediate response, we developed a tunable physical damper system. Our mechanism combines a tendon with adjustable slackness connected to a physical damper. The slack damper allows adjustment of damping force, onset timing, effective stroke, and energy dissipation. We characterize the slack damper mechanism mounted to a legged robot controlled in open-loop mode. The robot hops vertically and planar over varying terrains and perturbations. During forward hopping, slack-based damping improves faster perturbation recovery (up to 170%) at higher energetic cost (27%). The tunable slack mechanism auto-engages the damper during perturbations, leading to a perturbation-trigger damping, improving robustness at minimum energetic cost. With the results from the slack damper mechanism, we propose a new functional interpretation of animals' redundant muscle tendons as tunable dampers.

Collaborative autonomous multi-agent systems covering a specified area have many potential applications, such as UAV search and rescue, forest fire fighting, and real-time high-resolution monitoring. Traditional approaches for such coverage problems involve designing a model-based control policy based on sensor data. However, designing model-based controllers is challenging, and the state-of-the-art classical control policy still exhibits a large degree of suboptimality. In this paper, we present a reinforcement learning (RL) approach for the multi-agent coverage problem involving agents with second-order dynamics. Our approach is based on the Multi-Agent Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithm (MAPPO). To improve the stability of the learning-based policy and efficiency of exploration, we utilize an imitation loss based on the state-of-the-art classical control policy. Our trained policy significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art. Our proposed network architecture includes incorporation of self attention, which allows a single-shot domain transfer of the trained policy to a large variety of domain shapes and number of agents. We demonstrate our proposed method in a variety of simulated experiments.

Transcranial temporal interference stimulation (tTIS) has been reported to be effective in stimulating deep brain structures in experimental studies. However, a computational framework for optimizing the tTIS strategy and simulating the impact of tTIS on the brain is still lacking, as previous methods rely on predefined parameters and hardly adapt to additional constraints. Here, we propose a general framework, namely multi-objective optimization via evolutionary algorithm (MOVEA), to solve the nonconvex optimization problem for various stimulation techniques, including tTIS and transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS). By optimizing the electrode montage in a two-stage structure, MOVEA can be compatible with additional constraints (e.g., the number of electrodes, additional avoidance regions), and MOVEA can accelerate to obtain the Pareto fronts. These Pareto fronts consist of a set of optimal solutions under different requirements, suggesting a trade-off relationship between conflicting objectives, such as intensity and focality. Based on MOVEA, we make comprehensive comparisons between tACS and tTIS in terms of intensity, focality and maneuverability for targets of different depths. Our results show that although the tTIS can only obtain a relatively low maximum achievable electric field strength, for example, the maximum intensity of motor area under tTIS is 0.42V /m, while 0.51V /m under tACS, it helps improve the focality by reducing 60% activated volume outside the target. We further perform ANOVA on the stimulation results of eight subjects with tACS and tTIS. Despite the individual differences in head models, our results suggest that tACS has a greater intensity and tTIS has a higher focality. These findings provide guidance on the choice between tACS and tTIS and indicate a great potential in tTIS-based personalized neuromodulation. Code will be released soon.