VinT-6D: A Large-Scale Object-in-hand Dataset from Vision, Touch and Proprioception

This paper addresses the scarcity of large-scale datasets for accurate object-in-hand pose estimation, which is crucial for robotic in-hand manipulation within the ``Perception-Planning-Control" paradigm. Specifically, we introduce VinT-6D, the first extensive multi-modal dataset integrating vision, touch, and proprioception, to enhance robotic manipulation. VinT-6D comprises 2 million VinT-Sim and 0.1 million VinT-Real splits, collected via simulations in MuJoCo and Blender and a custom-designed real-world platform. This dataset is tailored for robotic hands, offering models with whole-hand tactile perception and high-quality, well-aligned data. To the best of our knowledge, the VinT-Real is the largest considering the collection difficulties in the real-world environment so that it can bridge the gap of simulation to real compared to the previous works. Built upon VinT-6D, we present a benchmark method that shows significant improvements in performance by fusing multi-modal information. The project is available at https://VinT-6D.github.io/.

Learning an Adaptive Fall Recovery Controller for Quadrupeds on Complex Terrains

Legged robots have shown promise in locomotion complex environments, but recovery from falls on challenging terrains remains a significant hurdle. This paper presents an Adaptive Fall Recovery (AFR) controller for quadrupedal robots on challenging terrains such as rocky, breams, steep slopes, and irregular stones. We leverage deep reinforcement learning to train the AFR, which can adapt to a wide range of terrain geometries and physical properties. Our method demonstrates improvements over existing approaches, showing promising results in recovery scenarios on challenging terrains. We trained our method in Isaac Gym using the Go1 and directly transferred it to several mainstream quadrupedal platforms, such as Spot and ANYmal. Additionally, we validated the controller's effectiveness in Gazebo. Our results indicate that the AFR controller generalizes well to complex terrains and outperforms baseline methods in terms of success rate and recovery speed.

DEIO: Deep Event Inertial Odometry

Event cameras are bio-inspired, motion-activated sensors that demonstrate impressive potential in handling challenging situations, such as motion blur and high-dynamic range. Despite their promise, existing event-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) approaches exhibit limited performance in real-world applications. On the other hand, state-of-the-art SLAM approaches that incorporate deep neural networks for better robustness and applicability. However, these is a lack of research in fusing learning-based event SLAM methods with IMU, which could be indispensable to push the event-based SLAM to large-scale, low-texture or complex scenarios. In this paper, we propose DEIO, the first monocular deep event-inertial odometry framework that combines learning-based method with traditional nonlinear graph-based optimization. Specifically, we tightly integrate a trainable event-based differentiable bundle adjustment (e-DBA) with the IMU pre-integration in a factor graph which employs keyframe-based sliding window optimization. Numerical Experiments in nine public challenge datasets show that our method can achieve superior performance compared with the image-based and event-based benchmarks. The source code is available at: https://github.com/arclab-hku/DEIO.

LVI-GS: Tightly-coupled LiDAR-Visual-Inertial SLAM using 3D Gaussian Splatting

3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has shown its ability in rapid rendering and high-fidelity mapping. In this paper, we introduce LVI-GS, a tightly-coupled LiDAR-Visual-Inertial mapping framework with 3DGS, which leverages the complementary characteristics of LiDAR and image sensors to capture both geometric structures and visual details of 3D scenes. To this end, the 3D Gaussians are initialized from colourized LiDAR points and optimized using differentiable rendering. In order to achieve high-fidelity mapping, we introduce a pyramid-based training approach to effectively learn multi-level features and incorporate depth loss derived from LiDAR measurements to improve geometric feature perception. Through well-designed strategies for Gaussian-Map expansion, keyframe selection, thread management, and custom CUDA acceleration, our framework achieves real-time photo-realistic mapping. Numerical experiments are performed to evaluate the superior performance of our method compared to state-of-the-art 3D reconstruction systems.

Draft on the Fly: Adaptive Self-Speculative Decoding using Cosine Similarity

We present a simple on the fly method for faster inference of large language models. Unlike other (self-)speculative decoding techniques, our method does not require fine-tuning or black-box optimization to generate a fixed draft model, relying instead on simple rules to generate varying draft models adapted to the input context. We show empirically that our light-weight algorithm is competitive with the current SOTA for self-speculative decoding, while being a truly plug-and-play method.

Heterogeneous LiDAR Dataset for Benchmarking Robust Localization in Diverse Degenerate Scenarios

The ability to estimate pose and generate maps using 3D LiDAR significantly enhances robotic system autonomy. However, existing open-source datasets lack representation of geometrically degenerate environments, limiting the development and benchmarking of robust LiDAR SLAM algorithms. To address this gap, we introduce GEODE, a comprehensive multi-LiDAR, multi-scenario dataset specifically designed to include real-world geometrically degenerate environments. GEODE comprises 64 trajectories spanning over 64 kilometers across seven diverse settings with varying degrees of degeneracy. The data was meticulously collected to promote the development of versatile algorithms by incorporating various LiDAR sensors, stereo cameras, IMUs, and diverse motion conditions. We evaluate state-of-the-art SLAM approaches using the GEODE dataset to highlight current limitations in LiDAR SLAM techniques. This extensive dataset will be publicly available at https://geode.github.io, supporting further advancements in LiDAR-based SLAM.

Open-FinLLMs: Open Multimodal Large Language Models for Financial Applications

Large language models (LLMs) have advanced financial applications, yet they often lack sufficient financial knowledge and struggle with tasks involving multi-modal inputs like tables and time series data. To address these limitations, we introduce \textit{Open-FinLLMs}, a series of Financial LLMs. We begin with FinLLaMA, pre-trained on a 52 billion token financial corpus, incorporating text, tables, and time-series data to embed comprehensive financial knowledge. FinLLaMA is then instruction fine-tuned with 573K financial instructions, resulting in FinLLaMA-instruct, which enhances task performance. Finally, we present FinLLaVA, a multimodal LLM trained with 1.43M image-text instructions to handle complex financial data types. Extensive evaluations demonstrate FinLLaMA's superior performance over LLaMA3-8B, LLaMA3.1-8B, and BloombergGPT in both zero-shot and few-shot settings across 19 and 4 datasets, respectively. FinLLaMA-instruct outperforms GPT-4 and other Financial LLMs on 15 datasets. FinLLaVA excels in understanding tables and charts across 4 multimodal tasks. Additionally, FinLLaMA achieves impressive Sharpe Ratios in trading simulations, highlighting its robust financial application capabilities. We will continually maintain and improve our models and benchmarks to support ongoing innovation in academia and industry.

SEGAN: semi-supervised learning approach for missing data imputation

In many practical real-world applications, data missing is a very common phenomenon, making the development of data-driven artificial intelligence theory and technology increasingly difficult. Data completion is an important method for missing data preprocessing. Most existing miss-ing data completion models directly use the known information in the missing data set but ignore the impact of the data label information contained in the data set on the missing data completion model. To this end, this paper proposes a missing data completion model SEGAN based on semi-supervised learning, which mainly includes three important modules: generator, discriminator and classifier. In the SEGAN model, the classifier enables the generator to make more full use of known data and its label information when predicting missing data values. In addition, the SE-GAN model introduces a missing hint matrix to allow the discriminator to more effectively distinguish between known data and data filled by the generator. This paper theoretically proves that the SEGAN model that introduces a classifier and a missing hint matrix can learn the real known data distribution characteristics when reaching Nash equilibrium. Finally, a large number of experiments were conducted in this article, and the experimental results show that com-pared with the current state-of-the-art multivariate data completion method, the performance of the SEGAN model is improved by more than 3%.

Improved Genetic Algorithm Based on Greedy and Simulated Annealing Ideas for Vascular Robot Ordering Strategy

This study presents a comprehensive approach for optimizing the acquisition, utilization, and maintenance of ABLVR vascular robots in healthcare settings. Medical robotics, particularly in vascular treatments, necessitates precise resource allocation and optimization due to the complex nature of robot and operator maintenance. Traditional heuristic methods, though intuitive, often fail to achieve global optimization. To address these challenges, this research introduces a novel strategy, combining mathematical modeling, a hybrid genetic algorithm, and ARIMA time series forecasting. Considering the dynamic healthcare environment, our approach includes a robust resource allocation model for robotic vessels and operators. We incorporate the unique requirements of the adaptive learning process for operators and the maintenance needs of robotic components. The hybrid genetic algorithm, integrating simulated annealing and greedy approaches, efficiently solves the optimization problem. Additionally, ARIMA time series forecasting predicts the demand for vascular robots, further enhancing the adaptability of our strategy. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our approach in terms of optimization, transparency, and convergence speed from other state-of-the-art methods.

Self-supervised Photographic Image Layout Representation Learning

In the domain of image layout representation learning, the critical process of translating image layouts into succinct vector forms is increasingly significant across diverse applications, such as image retrieval, manipulation, and generation. Most approaches in this area heavily rely on costly labeled datasets and notably lack in adapting their modeling and learning methods to the specific nuances of photographic image layouts. This shortfall makes the learning process for photographic image layouts suboptimal. In our research, we directly address these challenges. We innovate by defining basic layout primitives that encapsulate various levels of layout information and by mapping these, along with their interconnections, onto a heterogeneous graph structure. This graph is meticulously engineered to capture the intricate layout information within the pixel domain explicitly. Advancing further, we introduce novel pretext tasks coupled with customized loss functions, strategically designed for effective self-supervised learning of these layout graphs. Building on this foundation, we develop an autoencoder-based network architecture skilled in compressing these heterogeneous layout graphs into precise, dimensionally-reduced layout representations. Additionally, we introduce the LODB dataset, which features a broader range of layout categories and richer semantics, serving as a comprehensive benchmark for evaluating the effectiveness of layout representation learning methods. Our extensive experimentation on this dataset demonstrates the superior performance of our approach in the realm of photographic image layout representation learning.