Bridge to Real Environment with Hardware-in-the-loop for Wireless Artificial Intelligence Paradigms

Nowadays, many machine learning (ML) solutions to improve the wireless standard IEEE802.11p for Vehicular Adhoc Network (VANET) are commonly evaluated in the simulated world. At the same time, this approach could be cost-effective compared to real-world testing due to the high cost of vehicles. There is a risk of unexpected outcomes when these solutions are implemented in the real world, potentially leading to wasted resources. To mitigate this challenge, the hardware-in-the-loop is the way to move forward as it enables the opportunity to test in the real world and simulated worlds together. Therefore, we have developed what we believe is the pioneering hardware-in-the-loop for testing artificial intelligence, multiple services, and HD map data (LiDAR), in both simulated and real-world settings.

Multi-agent Assessment with QoS Enhancement for HD Map Updates in a Vehicular Network

Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms have been used to address the challenging problems in the offloading process of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). More recently, they have been utilized to improve the dissemination of high-definition (HD) Maps. Nevertheless, implementing solutions such as deep Q-learning (DQN) and Actor-critic at the autonomous vehicle (AV) may lead to an increase in the computational load, causing a heavy burden on the computational devices and higher costs. Moreover, their implementation might raise compatibility issues between technologies due to the required modifications to the standards. Therefore, in this paper, we assess the scalability of an application utilizing a Q-learning single-agent solution in a distributed multi-agent environment. This application improves the network performance by taking advantage of a smaller state, and action space whilst using a multi-agent approach. The proposed solution is extensively evaluated with different test cases involving reward function considering individual or overall network performance, number of agents, and centralized and distributed learning comparison. The experimental results demonstrate that the time latencies of our proposed solution conducted in voice, video, HD Map, and best-effort cases have significant improvements, with 40.4%, 36%, 43%, and 12% respectively, compared to the performances with the single-agent approach.

Coverage-aware and Reinforcement Learning Using Multi-agent Approach for HD Map QoS in a Realistic Environment

One effective way to optimize the offloading process is by minimizing the transmission time. This is particularly true in a Vehicular Adhoc Network (VANET) where vehicles frequently download and upload High-definition (HD) map data which requires constant updates. This implies that latency and throughput requirements must be guaranteed by the wireless system. To achieve this, adjustable contention windows (CW) allocation strategies in the standard IEEE802.11p have been explored by numerous researchers. Nevertheless, their implementations demand alterations to the existing standard which is not always desirable. To address this issue, we proposed a Q-Learning algorithm that operates at the application layer. Moreover, it could be deployed in any wireless network thereby mitigating the compatibility issues. The solution has demonstrated a better network performance with relatively fewer optimization requirements as compared to the Deep Q Network (DQN) and Actor-Critic algorithms. The same is observed while evaluating the model in a multi-agent setup showing higher performance compared to the single-agent setup.

DiffuX2CT: Diffusion Learning to Reconstruct CT Images from Biplanar X-Rays

Computed tomography (CT) is widely utilized in clinical settings because it delivers detailed 3D images of the human body. However, performing CT scans is not always feasible due to radiation exposure and limitations in certain surgical environments. As an alternative, reconstructing CT images from ultra-sparse X-rays offers a valuable solution and has gained significant interest in scientific research and medical applications. However, it presents great challenges as it is inherently an ill-posed problem, often compromised by artifacts resulting from overlapping structures in X-ray images. In this paper, we propose DiffuX2CT, which models CT reconstruction from orthogonal biplanar X-rays as a conditional diffusion process. DiffuX2CT is established with a 3D global coherence denoising model with a new, implicit conditioning mechanism. We realize the conditioning mechanism by a newly designed tri-plane decoupling generator and an implicit neural decoder. By doing so, DiffuX2CT achieves structure-controllable reconstruction, which enables 3D structural information to be recovered from 2D X-rays, therefore producing faithful textures in CT images. As an extra contribution, we collect a real-world lumbar CT dataset, called LumbarV, as a new benchmark to verify the clinical significance and performance of CT reconstruction from X-rays. Extensive experiments on this dataset and three more publicly available datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposal.

Learning Positional Attention for Sequential Recommendation

Self-attention-based networks have achieved remarkable performance in sequential recommendation tasks. A crucial component of these models is positional encoding. In this study, we delve into the learned positional embedding, demonstrating that it often captures the distance between tokens. Building on this insight, we introduce novel attention models that directly learn positional relations. Extensive experiments reveal that our proposed models, \textbf{PARec} and \textbf{FPARec} outperform previous self-attention-based approaches.Our code is available at the link for anonymous review: https://anonymous.4open.science/ r/FPARec-2C55/

Heterogeneous Graph-based Framework with Disentangled Representations Learning for Multi-target Cross Domain Recommendation

CDR (Cross-Domain Recommendation), i.e., leveraging information from multiple domains, is a critical solution to data sparsity problem in recommendation system. The majority of previous research either focused on single-target CDR (STCDR) by utilizing data from the source domains to improve the model's performance on the target domain, or applied dual-target CDR (DTCDR) by integrating data from the source and target domains. In addition, multi-target CDR (MTCDR) is a generalization of DTCDR, which is able to capture the link among different domains. In this paper we present HGDR (Heterogeneous Graph-based Framework with Disentangled Representations Learning), an end-to-end heterogeneous network architecture where graph convolutional layers are applied to model relations among different domains, meanwhile utilizes the idea of disentangling representation for domain-shared and domain-specifc information. First, a shared heterogeneous graph is generated by gathering users and items from several domains without any further side information. Second, we use HGDR to compute disentangled representations for users and items in all domains.Experiments on real-world datasets and online A/B tests prove that our proposed model can transmit information among domains effectively and reach the SOTA performance.

DecomCAM: Advancing Beyond Saliency Maps through Decomposition and Integration

Interpreting complex deep networks, notably pre-trained vision-language models (VLMs), is a formidable challenge. Current Class Activation Map (CAM) methods highlight regions revealing the model's decision-making basis but lack clear saliency maps and detailed interpretability. To bridge this gap, we propose DecomCAM, a novel decomposition-and-integration method that distills shared patterns from channel activation maps. Utilizing singular value decomposition, DecomCAM decomposes class-discriminative activation maps into orthogonal sub-saliency maps (OSSMs), which are then integrated together based on their contribution to the target concept. Extensive experiments on six benchmarks reveal that DecomCAM not only excels in locating accuracy but also achieves an optimizing balance between interpretability and computational efficiency. Further analysis unveils that OSSMs correlate with discernible object components, facilitating a granular understanding of the model's reasoning. This positions DecomCAM as a potential tool for fine-grained interpretation of advanced deep learning models. The code is avaible at https://github.com/CapricornGuang/DecomCAM.

Fusion-Mamba for Cross-modality Object Detection

Cross-modality fusing complementary information from different modalities effectively improves object detection performance, making it more useful and robust for a wider range of applications. Existing fusion strategies combine different types of images or merge different backbone features through elaborated neural network modules. However, these methods neglect that modality disparities affect cross-modality fusion performance, as different modalities with different camera focal lengths, placements, and angles are hardly fused. In this paper, we investigate cross-modality fusion by associating cross-modal features in a hidden state space based on an improved Mamba with a gating mechanism. We design a Fusion-Mamba block (FMB) to map cross-modal features into a hidden state space for interaction, thereby reducing disparities between cross-modal features and enhancing the representation consistency of fused features. FMB contains two modules: the State Space Channel Swapping (SSCS) module facilitates shallow feature fusion, and the Dual State Space Fusion (DSSF) enables deep fusion in a hidden state space. Through extensive experiments on public datasets, our proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on $m$AP with 5.9% on $M^3FD$ and 4.9% on FLIR-Aligned datasets, demonstrating superior object detection performance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to explore the potential of Mamba for cross-modal fusion and establish a new baseline for cross-modality object detection.

G4G:A Generic Framework for High Fidelity Talking Face Generation with Fine-grained Intra-modal Alignment

Despite numerous completed studies, achieving high fidelity talking face generation with highly synchronized lip movements corresponding to arbitrary audio remains a significant challenge in the field. The shortcomings of published studies continue to confuse many researchers. This paper introduces G4G, a generic framework for high fidelity talking face generation with fine-grained intra-modal alignment. G4G can reenact the high fidelity of original video while producing highly synchronized lip movements regardless of given audio tones or volumes. The key to G4G's success is the use of a diagonal matrix to enhance the ordinary alignment of audio-image intra-modal features, which significantly increases the comparative learning between positive and negative samples. Additionally, a multi-scaled supervision module is introduced to comprehensively reenact the perceptional fidelity of original video across the facial region while emphasizing the synchronization of lip movements and the input audio. A fusion network is then used to further fuse the facial region and the rest. Our experimental results demonstrate significant achievements in reenactment of original video quality as well as highly synchronized talking lips. G4G is an outperforming generic framework that can produce talking videos competitively closer to ground truth level than current state-of-the-art methods.

Enhancing Psychological Counseling with Large Language Model: A Multifaceted Decision-Support System for Non-Professionals

In the contemporary landscape of social media, an alarming number of users express negative emotions, some of which manifest as strong suicidal intentions. This situation underscores a profound need for trained psychological counselors who can enact effective mental interventions. However, the development of these professionals is often an imperative but time-consuming task. Consequently, the mobilization of non-professionals or volunteers in this capacity emerges as a pressing concern. Leveraging the capabilities of artificial intelligence, and in particular, the recent advances in large language models, offers a viable solution to this challenge. This paper introduces a novel model constructed on the foundation of large language models to fully assist non-professionals in providing psychological interventions on online user discourses. This framework makes it plausible to harness the power of non-professional counselors in a meaningful way. A comprehensive study was conducted involving ten professional psychological counselors of varying expertise, evaluating the system across five critical dimensions. The findings affirm that our system is capable of analyzing patients' issues with relative accuracy and proffering professional-level strategies recommendations, thereby enhancing support for non-professionals. This research serves as a compelling validation of the application of large language models in the field of psychology and lays the groundwork for a new paradigm of community-based mental health support.