Targetless Intrinsics and Extrinsic Calibration of Multiple LiDARs and Cameras with IMU using Continuous-Time Estimation

Accurate spatiotemporal calibration is a prerequisite for multisensor fusion. However, sensors are typically asynchronous, and there is no overlap between the fields of view of cameras and LiDARs, posing challenges for intrinsic and extrinsic parameter calibration. To address this, we propose a calibration pipeline based on continuous-time and bundle adjustment (BA) capable of simultaneous intrinsic and extrinsic calibration (6 DOF transformation and time offset). We do not require overlapping fields of view or any calibration board. Firstly, we establish data associations between cameras using Structure from Motion (SFM) and perform self-calibration of camera intrinsics. Then, we establish data associations between LiDARs through adaptive voxel map construction, optimizing for extrinsic calibration within the map. Finally, by matching features between the intensity projection of LiDAR maps and camera images, we conduct joint optimization for intrinsic and extrinsic parameters. This pipeline functions in texture-rich structured environments, allowing simultaneous calibration of any number of cameras and LiDARs without the need for intricate sensor synchronization triggers. Experimental results demonstrate our method's ability to fulfill co-visibility and motion constraints between sensors without accumulating errors.

A History-Guided Regional Partitioning Evolutionary Optimization for Solving the Flexible Job Shop Problem with Limited Multi-load Automated Guided Vehicles

In a flexible job shop environment, using Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) to transport jobs and process materials is an important way to promote the intelligence of the workshop. Compared with single-load AGVs, multi-load AGVs can improve AGV utilization, reduce path conflicts, etc. Therefore, this study proposes a history-guided regional partitioning algorithm (HRPEO) for the flexible job shop scheduling problem with limited multi-load AGVs (FJSPMA). First, the encoding and decoding rules are designed according to the characteristics of multi-load AGVs, and then the initialization rule based on the branch and bound method is used to generate the initial population. Second, to prevent the algorithm from falling into a local optimum, the algorithm adopts a regional partitioning strategy. This strategy divides the solution space into multiple regions and measures the potential of the regions. After that, cluster the regions into multiple clusters in each iteration, and selects individuals for evolutionary search based on the set of clusters. Third, a local search strategy is designed to improve the exploitation ability of the algorithm, which uses a greedy approach to optimize machines selection and transportation sequence according to the characteristics of FJSPMA. Finally, a large number of experiments are carried out on the benchmarks to test the performance of the algorithm. Compared with multiple advanced algorithms, the results show that the HRPEO has a better advantage in solving FJSPMA.

Adaptive Knowledge-based Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm for Hybrid Flow Shop Scheduling Problems with Multiple Parallel Batch Processing Stages

Parallel batch processing machines have extensive applications in the semiconductor manufacturing process. However, the problem models in previous studies regard parallel batch processing as a fixed processing stage in the machining process. This study generalizes the problem model, in which users can arbitrarily set certain stages as parallel batch processing stages according to their needs. A Hybrid Flow Shop Scheduling Problem with Parallel Batch Processing Machines (PBHFSP) is solved in this paper. Furthermore, an Adaptive Knowledge-based Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm (AMOEA/D) is designed to simultaneously optimize both makespan and Total Energy Consumption (TEC). Firstly, a hybrid initialization strategy with heuristic rules based on knowledge of PBHFSP is proposed to generate promising solutions. Secondly, the disjunctive graph model has been established based on the knowledge to find the critical-path of PBHFS. Then, a critical-path based neighborhood search is proposed to enhance the exploitation ability of AMOEA/D. Moreover, the search time is adaptively adjusted based on learning experience from Q-learning and Decay Law. Afterward, to enhance the exploration capability of the algorithm, AMOEA/D designs an improved population updating strategy with a weight vector updating strategy. These strategies rematch individuals with weight vectors, thereby maintaining the diversity of the population. Finally, the proposed algorithm is compared with state-of-the-art algorithms. The experimental results show that the AMOEA/D is superior to the comparison algorithms in solving the PBHFSP.

Simplified Self-homodyne Coherent System Based on Alamouti Coding and Digital Subcarrier Multiplexing

Coherent technology inherent with more availabledegrees of freedom is deemed a competitive solution for nextgeneration ultra-high-speed short-reach optical interconnects.However, the fatal barriers to implementing the conventiona.coherent system in short-reach optical interconnect are the costfootprint, and power consumption. Self-homodyne coherentsystem exhibits its potential to reduce the power consumption ofthe receiver-side digital signal processing (Rx-DSP) by deliveringthe local oscillator (LO) from the transmitter. However, anautomatic polarization controller (APC) is inevitable in the remoteLO link to avoid polarization fading, resulting in additional costsTo address the polarization fading issue, a simplified self.homodyne coherent system is proposed enabled by Alamouticoding in this paper. Benefiting from the Alamouti coding betweentwo polarizations, a polarization-insensitive receiver onlyincluding a 3dB coupler, a 90o Hybrid, and two balancedphotodiodes (BPDs)is sufficient for reception. Meanwhile, theAPC in the LO link is needless, simplifying the receiver structuresignificantly. Besides, the digital subcarrier multiplexing (DSCM)technique is also adopted to relax the computational complexity ofthe chromatic dispersion compensation (CDC), which is one of thedominant power consumption modules in Rx-DSP. Thetransmission performance of 50Gbaud 4-subcarrier 16/32OAM(4SC-16/320AM) DSCM signal based on the proposed simplifiedself-homodyne coherent system is investigated experimentallyThe results show that the bit-error-ratio(BER) performancedegradation caused by CD can be solved by increasing 4 taps inthe equalizer for 80km single mode fiber(SMF)transmissionwithout individual CDC, which operates in a low-complexitymanner.

Compressed domain vibration detection and classification for distributed acoustic sensing

Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) is a novel enabling technology that can turn existing fibre optic networks to distributed acoustic sensors. However, it faces the challenges of transmitting, storing, and processing massive streams of data which are orders of magnitude larger than that collected from point sensors. The gap between intensive data generated by DAS and modern computing system with limited reading/writing speed and storage capacity imposes restrictions on many applications. Compressive sensing (CS) is a revolutionary signal acquisition method that allows a signal to be acquired and reconstructed with significantly fewer samples than that required by Nyquist-Shannon theorem. Though the data size is greatly reduced in the sampling stage, the reconstruction of the compressed data is however time and computation consuming. To address this challenge, we propose to map the feature extractor from Nyquist-domain to compressed-domain and therefore vibration detection and classification can be directly implemented in compressed-domain. The measured results show that our framework can be used to reduce the transmitted data size by 70% while achieves 99.4% true positive rate (TPR) and 0.04% false positive rate (TPR) along 5 km sensing fibre and 95.05% classification accuracy on a 5-class classification task.

Continual Interactive Behavior Learning With Traffic Divergence Measurement: A Dynamic Gradient Scenario Memory Approach

Developing autonomous vehicles (AVs) helps improve the road safety and traffic efficiency of intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Accurately predicting the trajectories of traffic participants is essential to the decision-making and motion planning of AVs in interactive scenarios. Recently, learning-based trajectory predictors have shown state-of-the-art performance in highway or urban areas. However, most existing learning-based models trained with fixed datasets may perform poorly in continuously changing scenarios. Specifically, they may not perform well in learned scenarios after learning the new one. This phenomenon is called "catastrophic forgetting". Few studies investigate trajectory predictions in continuous scenarios, where catastrophic forgetting may happen. To handle this problem, first, a novel continual learning (CL) approach for vehicle trajectory prediction is proposed in this paper. Then, inspired by brain science, a dynamic memory mechanism is developed by utilizing the measurement of traffic divergence between scenarios, which balances the performance and training efficiency of the proposed CL approach. Finally, datasets collected from different locations are used to design continual training and testing methods in experiments. Experimental results show that the proposed approach achieves consistently high prediction accuracy in continuous scenarios without re-training, which mitigates catastrophic forgetting compared to non-CL approaches. The implementation of the proposed approach is publicly available at https://github.com/BIT-Jack/D-GSM

Leveraging Multi-stream Information Fusion for Trajectory Prediction in Low-illumination Scenarios: A Multi-channel Graph Convolutional Approach

Trajectory prediction is a fundamental problem and challenge for autonomous vehicles. Early works mainly focused on designing complicated architectures for deep-learning-based prediction models in normal-illumination environments, which fail in dealing with low-light conditions. This paper proposes a novel approach for trajectory prediction in low-illumination scenarios by leveraging multi-stream information fusion, which flexibly integrates image, optical flow, and object trajectory information. The image channel employs Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Long Short-term Memory (LSTM) networks to extract temporal information from the camera. The optical flow channel is applied to capture the pattern of relative motion between adjacent camera frames and modelled by Spatial-Temporal Graph Convolutional Network (ST-GCN). The trajectory channel is used to recognize high-level interactions between vehicles. Finally, information from all the three channels is effectively fused in the prediction module to generate future trajectories of surrounding vehicles in low-illumination conditions. The proposed multi-channel graph convolutional approach is validated on HEV-I and newly generated Dark-HEV-I, egocentric vision datasets that primarily focus on urban intersection scenarios. The results demonstrate that our method outperforms the baselines, in standard and low-illumination scenarios. Additionally, our approach is generic and applicable to scenarios with different types of perception data. The source code of the proposed approach is available at https://github.com/TommyGong08/MSIF}{https://github.com/TommyGong08/MSIF.

Adaptive Decision Making at the Intersection for Autonomous Vehicles Based on Skill Discovery

In urban environments, the complex and uncertain intersection scenarios are challenging for autonomous driving. To ensure safety, it is crucial to develop an adaptive decision making system that can handle the interaction with other vehicles. Manually designed model-based methods are reliable in common scenarios. But in uncertain environments, they are not reliable, so learning-based methods are proposed, especially reinforcement learning (RL) methods. However, current RL methods need retraining when the scenarios change. In other words, current RL methods cannot reuse accumulated knowledge. They forget learned knowledge when new scenarios are given. To solve this problem, we propose a hierarchical framework that can autonomously accumulate and reuse knowledge. The proposed method combines the idea of motion primitives (MPs) with hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL). It decomposes complex problems into multiple basic subtasks to reduce the difficulty. The proposed method and other baseline methods are tested in a challenging intersection scenario based on the CARLA simulator. The intersection scenario contains three different subtasks that can reflect the complexity and uncertainty of real traffic flow. After offline learning and testing, the proposed method is proved to have the best performance among all methods.

An Ensemble Learning Framework for Vehicle Trajectory Prediction in Interactive Scenarios

Precisely modeling interactions and accurately predicting trajectories of surrounding vehicles are essential to the decision-making and path-planning of intelligent vehicles. This paper proposes a novel framework based on ensemble learning to improve the performance of trajectory predictions in interactive scenarios. The framework is termed Interactive Ensemble Trajectory Predictor (IETP). IETP assembles interaction-aware trajectory predictors as base learners to build an ensemble learner. Firstly, each base learner in IETP observes historical trajectories of vehicles in the scene. Then each base learner handles interactions between vehicles to predict trajectories. Finally, an ensemble learner is built to predict trajectories by applying two ensemble strategies on the predictions from all base learners. Predictions generated by the ensemble learner are final outputs of IETP. In this study, three experiments using different data are conducted based on the NGSIM dataset. Experimental results show that IETP improves the predicting accuracy and decreases the variance of errors compared to base learners. In addition, IETP exceeds baseline models with 50% of the training data, indicating that IETP is data-efficient. Moreover, the implementation of IETP is publicly available at https://github.com/BIT-Jack/IETP.

Automatic Sparse Connectivity Learning for Neural Networks

Since sparse neural networks usually contain many zero weights, these unnecessary network connections can potentially be eliminated without degrading network performance. Therefore, well-designed sparse neural networks have the potential to significantly reduce FLOPs and computational resources. In this work, we propose a new automatic pruning method - Sparse Connectivity Learning (SCL). Specifically, a weight is re-parameterized as an element-wise multiplication of a trainable weight variable and a binary mask. Thus, network connectivity is fully described by the binary mask, which is modulated by a unit step function. We theoretically prove the fundamental principle of using a straight-through estimator (STE) for network pruning. This principle is that the proxy gradients of STE should be positive, ensuring that mask variables converge at their minima. After finding Leaky ReLU, Softplus, and Identity STEs can satisfy this principle, we propose to adopt Identity STE in SCL for discrete mask relaxation. We find that mask gradients of different features are very unbalanced, hence, we propose to normalize mask gradients of each feature to optimize mask variable training. In order to automatically train sparse masks, we include the total number of network connections as a regularization term in our objective function. As SCL does not require pruning criteria or hyper-parameters defined by designers for network layers, the network is explored in a larger hypothesis space to achieve optimized sparse connectivity for the best performance. SCL overcomes the limitations of existing automatic pruning methods. Experimental results demonstrate that SCL can automatically learn and select important network connections for various baseline network structures. Deep learning models trained by SCL outperform the SOTA human-designed and automatic pruning methods in sparsity, accuracy, and FLOPs reduction.