Efficient ANN-Guided Distillation: Aligning Rate-based Features of Spiking Neural Networks through Hybrid Block-wise Replacement

Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) have garnered considerable attention as a potential alternative to Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). Recent studies have highlighted SNNs' potential on large-scale datasets. For SNN training, two main approaches exist: direct training and ANN-to-SNN (ANN2SNN) conversion. To fully leverage existing ANN models in guiding SNN learning, either direct ANN-to-SNN conversion or ANN-SNN distillation training can be employed. In this paper, we propose an ANN-SNN distillation framework from the ANN-to-SNN perspective, designed with a block-wise replacement strategy for ANN-guided learning. By generating intermediate hybrid models that progressively align SNN feature spaces to those of ANN through rate-based features, our framework naturally incorporates rate-based backpropagation as a training method. Our approach achieves results comparable to or better than state-of-the-art SNN distillation methods, showing both training and learning efficiency.

DRoPE: Directional Rotary Position Embedding for Efficient Agent Interaction Modeling

Accurate and efficient modeling of agent interactions is essential for trajectory generation, the core of autonomous driving systems. Existing methods, scene-centric, agent-centric, and query-centric frameworks, each present distinct advantages and drawbacks, creating an impossible triangle among accuracy, computational time, and memory efficiency. To break this limitation, we propose Directional Rotary Position Embedding (DRoPE), a novel adaptation of Rotary Position Embedding (RoPE), originally developed in natural language processing. Unlike traditional relative position embedding (RPE), which introduces significant space complexity, RoPE efficiently encodes relative positions without explicitly increasing complexity but faces inherent limitations in handling angular information due to periodicity. DRoPE overcomes this limitation by introducing a uniform identity scalar into RoPE's 2D rotary transformation, aligning rotation angles with realistic agent headings to naturally encode relative angular information. We theoretically analyze DRoPE's correctness and efficiency, demonstrating its capability to simultaneously optimize trajectory generation accuracy, time complexity, and space complexity. Empirical evaluations compared with various state-of-the-art trajectory generation models, confirm DRoPE's good performance and significantly reduced space complexity, indicating both theoretical soundness and practical effectiveness. The video documentation is available at https://drope-traj.github.io/.

Time-EAPCR-T: A Universal Deep Learning Approach for Anomaly Detection in Industrial Equipment

With the advancement of Industry 4.0, intelligent manufacturing extensively employs sensors for real-time multidimensional data collection, playing a crucial role in equipment monitoring, process optimisation, and efficiency enhancement. Industrial data exhibit characteristics such as multi-source heterogeneity, nonlinearity, strong coupling, and temporal interactions, while also being affected by noise interference. These complexities make it challenging for traditional anomaly detection methods to extract key features, impacting detection accuracy and stability. Traditional machine learning approaches often struggle with such complex data due to limitations in processing capacity and generalisation ability, making them inadequate for practical applications. While deep learning feature extraction modules have demonstrated remarkable performance in image and text processing, they remain ineffective when applied to multi-source heterogeneous industrial data lacking explicit correlations. Moreover, existing multi-source heterogeneous data processing techniques still rely on dimensionality reduction and feature selection, which can lead to information loss and difficulty in capturing high-order interactions. To address these challenges, this study applies the EAPCR and Time-EAPCR models proposed in previous research and introduces a new model, Time-EAPCR-T, where Transformer replaces the LSTM module in the time-series processing component of Time-EAPCR. This modification effectively addresses multi-source data heterogeneity, facilitates efficient multi-source feature fusion, and enhances the temporal feature extraction capabilities of multi-source industrial data.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms existing approaches across four industrial datasets, highlighting its broad application potential.

Proxy-Tuning: Tailoring Multimodal Autoregressive Models for Subject-Driven Image Generation

Multimodal autoregressive (AR) models, based on next-token prediction and transformer architecture, have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in various multimodal tasks including text-to-image (T2I) generation. Despite their strong performance in general T2I tasks, our research reveals that these models initially struggle with subject-driven image generation compared to dominant diffusion models. To address this limitation, we introduce Proxy-Tuning, leveraging diffusion models to enhance AR models' capabilities in subject-specific image generation. Our method reveals a striking weak-to-strong phenomenon: fine-tuned AR models consistently outperform their diffusion model supervisors in both subject fidelity and prompt adherence. We analyze this performance shift and identify scenarios where AR models excel, particularly in multi-subject compositions and contextual understanding. This work not only demonstrates impressive results in subject-driven AR image generation, but also unveils the potential of weak-to-strong generalization in the image generation domain, contributing to a deeper understanding of different architectures' strengths and limitations.

GroundingSuite: Measuring Complex Multi-Granular Pixel Grounding

Pixel grounding, encompassing tasks such as Referring Expression Segmentation (RES), has garnered considerable attention due to its immense potential for bridging the gap between vision and language modalities. However, advancements in this domain are currently constrained by limitations inherent in existing datasets, including limited object categories, insufficient textual diversity, and a scarcity of high-quality annotations. To mitigate these limitations, we introduce GroundingSuite, which comprises: (1) an automated data annotation framework leveraging multiple Vision-Language Model (VLM) agents; (2) a large-scale training dataset encompassing 9.56 million diverse referring expressions and their corresponding segmentations; and (3) a meticulously curated evaluation benchmark consisting of 3,800 images. The GroundingSuite training dataset facilitates substantial performance improvements, enabling models trained on it to achieve state-of-the-art results. Specifically, a cIoU of 68.9 on gRefCOCO and a gIoU of 55.3 on RefCOCOm. Moreover, the GroundingSuite annotation framework demonstrates superior efficiency compared to the current leading data annotation method, i.e., $4.5 \times$ faster than the GLaMM.

Time-EAPCR: A Deep Learning-Based Novel Approach for Anomaly Detection Applied to the Environmental Field

As human activities intensify, environmental systems such as aquatic ecosystems and water treatment systems face increasingly complex pressures, impacting ecological balance, public health, and sustainable development, making intelligent anomaly monitoring essential. However, traditional monitoring methods suffer from delayed responses, insufficient data processing capabilities, and weak generalisation, making them unsuitable for complex environmental monitoring needs.In recent years, machine learning has been widely applied to anomaly detection, but the multi-dimensional features and spatiotemporal dynamics of environmental ecological data, especially the long-term dependencies and strong variability in the time dimension, limit the effectiveness of traditional methods.Deep learning, with its ability to automatically learn features, captures complex nonlinear relationships, improving detection performance. However, its application in environmental monitoring is still in its early stages and requires further exploration.This paper introduces a new deep learning method, Time-EAPCR (Time-Embedding-Attention-Permutated CNN-Residual), and applies it to environmental science. The method uncovers feature correlations, captures temporal evolution patterns, and enables precise anomaly detection in environmental systems.We validated Time-EAPCR's high accuracy and robustness across four publicly available environmental datasets. Experimental results show that the method efficiently handles multi-source data, improves detection accuracy, and excels across various scenarios with strong adaptability and generalisation. Additionally, a real-world river monitoring dataset confirmed the feasibility of its deployment, providing reliable technical support for environmental monitoring.

VQLTI: Long-Term Tropical Cyclone Intensity Forecasting with Physical Constraints

Tropical cyclone (TC) intensity forecasting is crucial for early disaster warning and emergency decision-making. Numerous researchers have explored deep-learning methods to address computational and post-processing issues in operational forecasting. Regrettably, they exhibit subpar long-term forecasting capabilities. We use two strategies to enhance long-term forecasting. (1) By enhancing the matching between TC intensity and spatial information, we can improve long-term forecasting performance. (2) Incorporating physical knowledge and physical constraints can help mitigate the accumulation of forecasting errors. To achieve the above strategies, we propose the VQLTI framework. VQLTI transfers the TC intensity information to a discrete latent space while retaining the spatial information differences, using large-scale spatial meteorological data as conditions. Furthermore, we leverage the forecast from the weather prediction model FengWu to provide additional physical knowledge for VQLTI. Additionally, we calculate the potential intensity (PI) to impose physical constraints on the latent variables. In the global long-term TC intensity forecasting, VQLTI achieves state-of-the-art results for the 24h to 120h, with the MSW (Maximum Sustained Wind) forecast error reduced by 35.65%-42.51% compared to ECMWF-IFS.

Efficient Distillation of Deep Spiking Neural Networks for Full-Range Timestep Deployment

Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are emerging as a brain-inspired alternative to traditional Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), prized for their potential energy efficiency on neuromorphic hardware. Despite this, SNNs often suffer from accuracy degradation compared to ANNs and face deployment challenges due to fixed inference timesteps, which require retraining for adjustments, limiting operational flexibility. To address these issues, our work considers the spatio-temporal property inherent in SNNs, and proposes a novel distillation framework for deep SNNs that optimizes performance across full-range timesteps without specific retraining, enhancing both efficacy and deployment adaptability. We provide both theoretical analysis and empirical validations to illustrate that training guarantees the convergence of all implicit models across full-range timesteps. Experimental results on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, CIFAR10-DVS, and ImageNet demonstrate state-of-the-art performance among distillation-based SNNs training methods.

Reliable Imputed-Sample Assisted Vertical Federated Learning

Vertical Federated Learning (VFL) is a well-known FL variant that enables multiple parties to collaboratively train a model without sharing their raw data. Existing VFL approaches focus on overlapping samples among different parties, while their performance is constrained by the limited number of these samples, leaving numerous non-overlapping samples unexplored. Some previous work has explored techniques for imputing missing values in samples, but often without adequate attention to the quality of the imputed samples. To address this issue, we propose a Reliable Imputed-Sample Assisted (RISA) VFL framework to effectively exploit non-overlapping samples by selecting reliable imputed samples for training VFL models. Specifically, after imputing non-overlapping samples, we introduce evidence theory to estimate the uncertainty of imputed samples, and only samples with low uncertainty are selected. In this way, high-quality non-overlapping samples are utilized to improve VFL model. Experiments on two widely used datasets demonstrate the significant performance gains achieved by the RISA, especially with the limited overlapping samples, e.g., a 48% accuracy gain on CIFAR-10 with only 1% overlapping samples.

An Efficient Adaptive Compression Method for Human Perception and Machine Vision Tasks

While most existing neural image compression (NIC) and neural video compression (NVC) methodologies have achieved remarkable success, their optimization is primarily focused on human visual perception. However, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence, many images and videos will be used for various machine vision tasks. Consequently, such existing compression methodologies cannot achieve competitive performance in machine vision. In this work, we introduce an efficient adaptive compression (EAC) method tailored for both human perception and multiple machine vision tasks. Our method involves two key modules: 1), an adaptive compression mechanism, that adaptively selects several subsets from latent features to balance the optimizations for multiple machine vision tasks (e.g., segmentation, and detection) and human vision. 2), a task-specific adapter, that uses the parameter-efficient delta-tuning strategy to stimulate the comprehensive downstream analytical networks for specific machine vision tasks. By using the above two modules, we can optimize the bit-rate costs and improve machine vision performance. In general, our proposed EAC can seamlessly integrate with existing NIC (i.e., Ball\'e2018, and Cheng2020) and NVC (i.e., DVC, and FVC) methods. Extensive evaluation on various benchmark datasets (i.e., VOC2007, ILSVRC2012, VOC2012, COCO, UCF101, and DAVIS) shows that our method enhances performance for multiple machine vision tasks while maintaining the quality of human vision.