Tortho-Gaussian: Splatting True Digital Orthophoto Maps

True Digital Orthophoto Maps (TDOMs) are essential products for digital twins and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Traditionally, TDOM generation involves a complex set of traditional photogrammetric process, which may deteriorate due to various challenges, including inaccurate Digital Surface Model (DSM), degenerated occlusion detections, and visual artifacts in weak texture regions and reflective surfaces, etc. To address these challenges, we introduce TOrtho-Gaussian, a novel method inspired by 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) that generates TDOMs through orthogonal splatting of optimized anisotropic Gaussian kernel. More specifically, we first simplify the orthophoto generation by orthographically splatting the Gaussian kernels onto 2D image planes, formulating a geometrically elegant solution that avoids the need for explicit DSM and occlusion detection. Second, to produce TDOM of large-scale area, a divide-and-conquer strategy is adopted to optimize memory usage and time efficiency of training and rendering for 3DGS. Lastly, we design a fully anisotropic Gaussian kernel that adapts to the varying characteristics of different regions, particularly improving the rendering quality of reflective surfaces and slender structures. Extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate that our method outperforms existing commercial software in several aspects, including the accuracy of building boundaries, the visual quality of low-texture regions and building facades. These results underscore the potential of our approach for large-scale urban scene reconstruction, offering a robust alternative for enhancing TDOM quality and scalability.

Micro-Structures Graph-Based Point Cloud Registration for Balancing Efficiency and Accuracy

Point Cloud Registration (PCR) is a fundamental and significant issue in photogrammetry and remote sensing, aiming to seek the optimal rigid transformation between sets of points. Achieving efficient and precise PCR poses a considerable challenge. We propose a novel micro-structures graph-based global point cloud registration method. The overall method is comprised of two stages. 1) Coarse registration (CR): We develop a graph incorporating micro-structures, employing an efficient graph-based hierarchical strategy to remove outliers for obtaining the maximal consensus set. We propose a robust GNC-Welsch estimator for optimization derived from a robust estimator to the outlier process in the Lie algebra space, achieving fast and robust alignment. 2) Fine registration (FR): To refine local alignment further, we use the octree approach to adaptive search plane features in the micro-structures. By minimizing the distance from the point-to-plane, we can obtain a more precise local alignment, and the process will also be addressed effectively by being treated as a planar adjustment algorithm combined with Anderson accelerated optimization (PA-AA). After extensive experiments on real data, our proposed method performs well on the 3DMatch and ETH datasets compared to the most advanced methods, achieving higher accuracy metrics and reducing the time cost by at least one-third.

BFA-YOLO: Balanced multiscale object detection network for multi-view building facade attachments detection

Detection of building facade attachments such as doors, windows, balconies, air conditioner units, billboards, and glass curtain walls plays a pivotal role in numerous applications. Building facade attachments detection aids in vbuilding information modeling (BIM) construction and meeting Level of Detail 3 (LOD3) standards. Yet, it faces challenges like uneven object distribution, small object detection difficulty, and background interference. To counter these, we propose BFA-YOLO, a model for detecting facade attachments in multi-view images. BFA-YOLO incorporates three novel innovations: the Feature Balanced Spindle Module (FBSM) for addressing uneven distribution, the Target Dynamic Alignment Task Detection Head (TDATH) aimed at improving small object detection, and the Position Memory Enhanced Self-Attention Mechanism (PMESA) to combat background interference, with each component specifically designed to solve its corresponding challenge. Detection efficacy of deep network models deeply depends on the dataset's characteristics. Existing open source datasets related to building facades are limited by their single perspective, small image pool, and incomplete category coverage. We propose a novel method for building facade attachments detection dataset construction and construct the BFA-3D dataset for facade attachments detection. The BFA-3D dataset features multi-view, accurate labels, diverse categories, and detailed classification. BFA-YOLO surpasses YOLOv8 by 1.8% and 2.9% in mAP@0.5 on the multi-view BFA-3D and street-view Facade-WHU datasets, respectively. These results underscore BFA-YOLO's superior performance in detecting facade attachments.

Contextual Bandit with Herding Effects: Algorithms and Recommendation Applications

Contextual bandits serve as a fundamental algorithmic framework for optimizing recommendation decisions online. Though extensive attention has been paid to tailoring contextual bandits for recommendation applications, the "herding effects" in user feedback have been ignored. These herding effects bias user feedback toward historical ratings, breaking down the assumption of unbiased feedback inherent in contextual bandits. This paper develops a novel variant of the contextual bandit that is tailored to address the feedback bias caused by the herding effects. A user feedback model is formulated to capture this feedback bias. We design the TS-Conf (Thompson Sampling under Conformity) algorithm, which employs posterior sampling to balance the exploration and exploitation tradeoff. We prove an upper bound for the regret of the algorithm, revealing the impact of herding effects on learning speed. Extensive experiments on datasets demonstrate that TS-Conf outperforms four benchmark algorithms. Analysis reveals that TS-Conf effectively mitigates the negative impact of herding effects, resulting in faster learning and improved recommendation accuracy.

Multi-agent Multi-armed Bandits with Stochastic Sharable Arm Capacities

Motivated by distributed selection problems, we formulate a new variant of multi-player multi-armed bandit (MAB) model, which captures stochastic arrival of requests to each arm, as well as the policy of allocating requests to players. The challenge is how to design a distributed learning algorithm such that players select arms according to the optimal arm pulling profile (an arm pulling profile prescribes the number of players at each arm) without communicating to each other. We first design a greedy algorithm, which locates one of the optimal arm pulling profiles with a polynomial computational complexity. We also design an iterative distributed algorithm for players to commit to an optimal arm pulling profile with a constant number of rounds in expectation. We apply the explore then commit (ETC) framework to address the online setting when model parameters are unknown. We design an exploration strategy for players to estimate the optimal arm pulling profile. Since such estimates can be different across different players, it is challenging for players to commit. We then design an iterative distributed algorithm, which guarantees that players can arrive at a consensus on the optimal arm pulling profile in only M rounds. We conduct experiments to validate our algorithm.

Analytical and Empirical Study of Herding Effects in Recommendation Systems

Online rating systems are often used in numerous web or mobile applications, e.g., Amazon and TripAdvisor, to assess the ground-truth quality of products. Due to herding effects, the aggregation of historical ratings (or historical collective opinion) can significantly influence subsequent ratings, leading to misleading and erroneous assessments. We study how to manage product ratings via rating aggregation rules and shortlisted representative reviews, for the purpose of correcting the assessment error. We first develop a mathematical model to characterize important factors of herding effects in product ratings. We then identify sufficient conditions (via the stochastic approximation theory), under which the historical collective opinion converges to the ground-truth collective opinion of the whole user population. These conditions identify a class of rating aggregation rules and review selection mechanisms that can reveal the ground-truth product quality. We also quantify the speed of convergence (via the martingale theory), which reflects the efficiency of rating aggregation rules and review selection mechanisms. We prove that the herding effects slow down the speed of convergence while an accurate review selection mechanism can speed it up. We also study the speed of convergence numerically and reveal trade-offs in selecting rating aggregation rules and review selection mechanisms. To show the utility of our framework, we design a maximum likelihood algorithm to infer model parameters from ratings, and conduct experiments on rating datasets from Amazon and TripAdvisor. We show that proper recency aware rating aggregation rules can improve the speed of convergence in Amazon and TripAdvisor by 41% and 62% respectively.

Foundations and Frontiers of Graph Learning Theory

Recent advancements in graph learning have revolutionized the way to understand and analyze data with complex structures. Notably, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), i.e. neural network architectures designed for learning graph representations, have become a popular paradigm. With these models being usually characterized by intuition-driven design or highly intricate components, placing them within the theoretical analysis framework to distill the core concepts, helps understand the key principles that drive the functionality better and guide further development. Given this surge in interest, this article provides a comprehensive summary of the theoretical foundations and breakthroughs concerning the approximation and learning behaviors intrinsic to prevalent graph learning models. Encompassing discussions on fundamental aspects such as expressiveness power, generalization, optimization, and unique phenomena such as over-smoothing and over-squashing, this piece delves into the theoretical foundations and frontier driving the evolution of graph learning. In addition, this article also presents several challenges and further initiates discussions on possible solutions.

Federated Contextual Cascading Bandits with Asynchronous Communication and Heterogeneous Users

We study the problem of federated contextual combinatorial cascading bandits, where $|\mathcal{U}|$ agents collaborate under the coordination of a central server to provide tailored recommendations to the $|\mathcal{U}|$ corresponding users. Existing works consider either a synchronous framework, necessitating full agent participation and global synchronization, or assume user homogeneity with identical behaviors. We overcome these limitations by considering (1) federated agents operating in an asynchronous communication paradigm, where no mandatory synchronization is required and all agents communicate independently with the server, (2) heterogeneous user behaviors, where users can be stratified into $J \le |\mathcal{U}|$ latent user clusters, each exhibiting distinct preferences. For this setting, we propose a UCB-type algorithm with delicate communication protocols. Through theoretical analysis, we give sub-linear regret bounds on par with those achieved in the synchronous framework, while incurring only logarithmic communication costs. Empirical evaluation on synthetic and real-world datasets validates our algorithm's superior performance in terms of regrets and communication costs.

Understanding and Patching Compositional Reasoning in LLMs

LLMs have marked a revolutonary shift, yet they falter when faced with compositional reasoning tasks. Our research embarks on a quest to uncover the root causes of compositional reasoning failures of LLMs, uncovering that most of them stem from the improperly generated or leveraged implicit reasoning results. Inspired by our empirical findings, we resort to Logit Lens and an intervention experiment to dissect the inner hidden states of LLMs. This deep dive reveals that implicit reasoning results indeed surface within middle layers and play a causative role in shaping the final explicit reasoning results. Our exploration further locates multi-head self-attention (MHSA) modules within these layers, which emerge as the linchpins in accurate generation and leveraing of implicit reasoning results. Grounded on the above findings, we develop CREME, a lightweight method to patch errors in compositional reasoning via editing the located MHSA modules. Our empirical evidence stands testament to CREME's effectiveness, paving the way for autonomously and continuously enhancing compositional reasoning capabilities in language models.

Invariant Representation Learning via Decoupling Style and Spurious Features

This paper considers the out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization problem under the setting that both style distribution shift and spurious features exist and domain labels are missing. This setting frequently arises in real-world applications and is underlooked because previous approaches mainly handle either of these two factors. The critical challenge is decoupling style and spurious features in the absence of domain labels. To address this challenge, we first propose a structural causal model (SCM) for the image generation process, which captures both style distribution shift and spurious features. The proposed SCM enables us to design a new framework called IRSS, which can gradually separate style distribution and spurious features from images by introducing adversarial neural networks and multi-environment optimization, thus achieving OOD generalization. Moreover, it does not require additional supervision (e.g., domain labels) other than the images and their corresponding labels. Experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate that IRSS outperforms traditional OOD methods and solves the problem of Invariant risk minimization (IRM) degradation, enabling the extraction of invariant features under distribution shift.