Generative Distribution Prediction: A Unified Approach to Multimodal Learning

Accurate prediction with multimodal data-encompassing tabular, textual, and visual inputs or outputs-is fundamental to advancing analytics in diverse application domains. Traditional approaches often struggle to integrate heterogeneous data types while maintaining high predictive accuracy. We introduce Generative Distribution Prediction (GDP), a novel framework that leverages multimodal synthetic data generation-such as conditional diffusion models-to enhance predictive performance across structured and unstructured modalities. GDP is model-agnostic, compatible with any high-fidelity generative model, and supports transfer learning for domain adaptation. We establish a rigorous theoretical foundation for GDP, providing statistical guarantees on its predictive accuracy when using diffusion models as the generative backbone. By estimating the data-generating distribution and adapting to various loss functions for risk minimization, GDP enables accurate point predictions across multimodal settings. We empirically validate GDP on four supervised learning tasks-tabular data prediction, question answering, image captioning, and adaptive quantile regression-demonstrating its versatility and effectiveness across diverse domains.

Speech Translation Refinement using Large Language Models

Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated their remarkable capabilities across various language tasks. Inspired by the success of text-to-text translation refinement, this paper investigates how LLMs can improve the performance of speech translation by introducing a joint refinement process. Through the joint refinement of speech translation (ST) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) transcription via LLMs, the performance of the ST model is significantly improved in both training-free in-context learning and parameter-efficient fine-tuning scenarios. Additionally, we explore the effect of document-level context on refinement under the context-aware fine-tuning scenario. Experimental results on the MuST-C and CoVoST 2 datasets, which include seven translation tasks, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach using several popular LLMs including GPT-3.5-turbo, LLaMA3-8B, and Mistral-12B. Further analysis further suggests that jointly refining both transcription and translation yields better performance compared to refining translation alone. Meanwhile, incorporating document-level context significantly enhances refinement performance. We release our code and datasets on GitHub.

SimLabel: Consistency-Guided OOD Detection with Pretrained Vision-Language Models

Detecting out-of-distribution (OOD) data is crucial in real-world machine learning applications, particularly in safety-critical domains. Existing methods often leverage language information from vision-language models (VLMs) to enhance OOD detection by improving confidence estimation through rich class-wise text information. However, when building OOD detection score upon on in-distribution (ID) text-image affinity, existing works either focus on each ID class or whole ID label sets, overlooking inherent ID classes' connection. We find that the semantic information across different ID classes is beneficial for effective OOD detection. We thus investigate the ability of image-text comprehension among different semantic-related ID labels in VLMs and propose a novel post-hoc strategy called SimLabel. SimLabel enhances the separability between ID and OOD samples by establishing a more robust image-class similarity metric that considers consistency over a set of similar class labels. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superior performance of SimLabel on various zero-shot OOD detection benchmarks. The proposed model is also extended to various VLM-backbones, demonstrating its good generalization ability. Our demonstration and implementation codes are available at: https://github.com/ShuZou-1/SimLabel.

Continuous-Time Digital Twin with Analogue Memristive Neural Ordinary Differential Equation Solver

Digital twins, the cornerstone of Industry 4.0, replicate real-world entities through computer models, revolutionising fields such as manufacturing management and industrial automation. Recent advances in machine learning provide data-driven methods for developing digital twins using discrete-time data and finite-depth models on digital computers. However, this approach fails to capture the underlying continuous dynamics and struggles with modelling complex system behaviour. Additionally, the architecture of digital computers, with separate storage and processing units, necessitates frequent data transfers and Analogue-Digital (A/D) conversion, thereby significantly increasing both time and energy costs. Here, we introduce a memristive neural ordinary differential equation (ODE) solver for digital twins, which is capable of capturing continuous-time dynamics and facilitates the modelling of complex systems using an infinite-depth model. By integrating storage and computation within analogue memristor arrays, we circumvent the von Neumann bottleneck, thus enhancing both speed and energy efficiency. We experimentally validate our approach by developing a digital twin of the HP memristor, which accurately extrapolates its nonlinear dynamics, achieving a 4.2-fold projected speedup and a 41.4-fold projected decrease in energy consumption compared to state-of-the-art digital hardware, while maintaining an acceptable error margin. Additionally, we demonstrate scalability through experimentally grounded simulations of Lorenz96 dynamics, exhibiting projected performance improvements of 12.6-fold in speed and 189.7-fold in energy efficiency relative to traditional digital approaches. By harnessing the capabilities of fully analogue computing, our breakthrough accelerates the development of digital twins, offering an efficient and rapid solution to meet the demands of Industry 4.0.

Enhancing Accuracy in Generative Models via Knowledge Transfer

This paper investigates the accuracy of generative models and the impact of knowledge transfer on their generation precision. Specifically, we examine a generative model for a target task, fine-tuned using a pre-trained model from a source task. Building on the "Shared Embedding" concept, which bridges the source and target tasks, we introduce a novel framework for transfer learning under distribution metrics such as the Kullback-Leibler divergence. This framework underscores the importance of leveraging inherent similarities between diverse tasks despite their distinct data distributions. Our theory suggests that the shared structures can augment the generation accuracy for a target task, reliant on the capability of a source model to identify shared structures and effective knowledge transfer from source to target learning. To demonstrate the practical utility of this framework, we explore the theoretical implications for two specific generative models: diffusion and normalizing flows. The results show enhanced performance in both models over their non-transfer counterparts, indicating advancements for diffusion models and providing fresh insights into normalizing flows in transfer and non-transfer settings. These results highlight the significant contribution of knowledge transfer in boosting the generation capabilities of these models.

OpenGraph: Open-Vocabulary Hierarchical 3D Graph Representation in Large-Scale Outdoor Environments

Environment representations endowed with sophisticated semantics are pivotal for facilitating seamless interaction between robots and humans, enabling them to effectively carry out various tasks. Open-vocabulary maps, powered by Visual-Language models (VLMs), possess inherent advantages, including zero-shot learning and support for open-set classes. However, existing open-vocabulary maps are primarily designed for small-scale environments, such as desktops or rooms, and are typically geared towards limited-area tasks involving robotic indoor navigation or in-place manipulation. They face challenges in direct generalization to outdoor environments characterized by numerous objects and complex tasks, owing to limitations in both understanding level and map structure. In this work, we propose OpenGraph, the first open-vocabulary hierarchical graph representation designed for large-scale outdoor environments. OpenGraph initially extracts instances and their captions from visual images, enhancing textual reasoning by encoding them. Subsequently, it achieves 3D incremental object-centric mapping with feature embedding by projecting images onto LiDAR point clouds. Finally, the environment is segmented based on lane graph connectivity to construct a hierarchical graph. Validation results from public dataset SemanticKITTI demonstrate that OpenGraph achieves the highest segmentation and query accuracy. The source code of OpenGraph is publicly available at https://github.com/BIT-DYN/OpenGraph.

Enhancing Multi-Hop Knowledge Graph Reasoning through Reward Shaping Techniques

In the realm of computational knowledge representation, Knowledge Graph Reasoning (KG-R) stands at the forefront of facilitating sophisticated inferential capabilities across multifarious domains. The quintessence of this research elucidates the employment of reinforcement learning (RL) strategies, notably the REINFORCE algorithm, to navigate the intricacies inherent in multi-hop KG-R. This investigation critically addresses the prevalent challenges introduced by the inherent incompleteness of Knowledge Graphs (KGs), which frequently results in erroneous inferential outcomes, manifesting as both false negatives and misleading positives. By partitioning the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) benchmark dataset into rich and sparse subsets, we investigate the efficacy of pre-trained BERT embeddings and Prompt Learning methodologies to refine the reward shaping process. This approach not only enhances the precision of multi-hop KG-R but also sets a new precedent for future research in the field, aiming to improve the robustness and accuracy of knowledge inference within complex KG frameworks. Our work contributes a novel perspective to the discourse on KG reasoning, offering a methodological advancement that aligns with the academic rigor and scholarly aspirations of the Natural journal, promising to invigorate further advancements in the realm of computational knowledge representation.

Integrated and Lightweight Design of Electro-hydraulic Ankle Prosthesis

For lower limb amputees, an active ankle joint prosthesis can provide basic mobility functions. This study focuses on an ankle joint prosthesis system based on the principle of electric-hydraulic actuation. By analyzing the characteristics of human gait cycles and the mechanics of ankle joint movement, a lightweight and integrated ankle joint prosthesis is designed, considering the requirements for normal ankle joint kinematics and dynamics. The components of the prosthesis are optimized through simulation and iterative improvements, while ensuring tight integration within minimal space. The design and simulation verification of the integrated lightweight prosthesis components are achieved. This research addresses the contradiction between the high output capability and the constraints on volume and weight in prosthetic devices.

ArGue: Attribute-Guided Prompt Tuning for Vision-Language Models

Although soft prompt tuning is effective in efficiently adapting Vision-Language (V&L) models for downstream tasks, it shows limitations in dealing with distribution shifts. We address this issue with Attribute-Guided Prompt Tuning (ArGue), making three key contributions. 1) In contrast to the conventional approach of directly appending soft prompts preceding class names, we align the model with primitive visual attributes generated by Large Language Models (LLMs). We posit that a model's ability to express high confidence in these attributes signifies its capacity to discern the correct class rationales. 2) We introduce attribute sampling to eliminate disadvantageous attributes, thus only semantically meaningful attributes are preserved. 3) We propose negative prompting, explicitly enumerating class-agnostic attributes to activate spurious correlations and encourage the model to generate highly orthogonal probability distributions in relation to these negative features. In experiments, our method significantly outperforms current state-of-the-art prompt tuning methods on both novel class prediction and out-of-distribution generalization tasks.

Quaternion MLP Neural Networks Based on the Maximum Correntropy Criterion

We propose a gradient ascent algorithm for quaternion multilayer perceptron (MLP) networks based on the cost function of the maximum correntropy criterion (MCC). In the algorithm, we use the split quaternion activation function based on the generalized Hamilton-real quaternion gradient. By introducing a new quaternion operator, we first rewrite the early quaternion single layer perceptron algorithm. Secondly, we propose a gradient descent algorithm for quaternion multilayer perceptron based on the cost function of the mean square error (MSE). Finally, the MSE algorithm is extended to the MCC algorithm. Simulations show the feasibility of the proposed method.