In Reinforcement Learning (RL), training a policy from scratch with online experiences can be inefficient because of the difficulties in exploration. Recently, offline RL provides a promising solution by giving an initialized offline policy, which can be refined through online interactions. However, existing approaches primarily perform offline and online learning in the same task, without considering the task generalization problem in offline-to-online adaptation. In real-world applications, it is common that we only have an offline dataset from a specific task while aiming for fast online-adaptation for several tasks. To address this problem, our work builds upon the investigation of successor representations for task generalization in online RL and extends the framework to incorporate offline-to-online learning. We demonstrate that the conventional paradigm using successor features cannot effectively utilize offline data and improve the performance for the new task by online fine-tuning. To mitigate this, we introduce a novel methodology that leverages offline data to acquire an ensemble of successor representations and subsequently constructs ensemble Q functions. This approach enables robust representation learning from datasets with different coverage and facilitates fast adaption of Q functions towards new tasks during the online fine-tuning phase. Extensive empirical evaluations provide compelling evidence showcasing the superior performance of our method in generalizing to diverse or even unseen tasks.

This paper presents a novel multi-modal Multi-Object Tracking (MOT) algorithm for self-driving cars that combines camera and LiDAR data. Camera frames are processed with a state-of-the-art 3D object detector, whereas classical clustering techniques are used to process LiDAR observations. The proposed MOT algorithm comprises a three-step association process, an Extended Kalman filter for estimating the motion of each detected dynamic obstacle, and a track management phase. The EKF motion model requires the current measured relative position and orientation of the observed object and the longitudinal and angular velocities of the ego vehicle as inputs. Unlike most state-of-the-art multi-modal MOT approaches, the proposed algorithm does not rely on maps or knowledge of the ego global pose. Moreover, it uses a 3D detector exclusively for cameras and is agnostic to the type of LiDAR sensor used. The algorithm is validated both in simulation and with real-world data, with satisfactory results.

Recent developments in neural rendering techniques have greatly enhanced the rendering of photo-realistic 3D scenes across both academic and commercial fields. The latest method, known as 3D Gaussian Splatting (3D-GS), has set new benchmarks for rendering quality and speed. Nevertheless, the limitations of 3D-GS become pronounced in synthesizing new viewpoints, especially for views that greatly deviate from those seen during training. Additionally, issues such as dilation and aliasing arise when zooming in or out. These challenges can all be traced back to a single underlying issue: insufficient sampling. In our paper, we present a bootstrapping method that significantly addresses this problem. This approach employs a diffusion model to enhance the rendering of novel views using trained 3D-GS, thereby streamlining the training process. Our results indicate that bootstrapping effectively reduces artifacts, as well as clear enhancements on the evaluation metrics. Furthermore, we show that our method is versatile and can be easily integrated, allowing various 3D reconstruction projects to benefit from our approach.

IDF Special Operations veteran Aaron Cohen and executive director of The Lawfare Project Brooke Goldstein react to Israel's'limited' retaliatory strike on Iran on'Hannity.' The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), an exiled Iranian resistance group, provided a report to Fox News Digital presenting evidence of a top-secret unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) site in the Islamic Republic of Iran, north of Qom City in the Ganjine region. According to the report, members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are trained to use "all kinds of drones" at the base, including the Mohajer series, manufactured by Qods Aviation Industry. Employees of Qods Aviation Industry also reportedly use the site to train small groups of Iranian proxy operatives of Hezbollah, as well as members of Iranian proxy groups from Syria, Yemen and Iraq, to use the Mohajer-4 drone platform. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), based on information from the MEK, told Fox News Digital that the site is a proving ground for Mohajer-4, Mohajer-6, and Mohajer-10 drones.

This paper presents an approach to teleoperate a manipulator using a mobile phone as a leader device. Using its IMU and camera, the phone estimates its Cartesian pose which is then used to to control the Cartesian pose of the robot's tool. The user receives visual feedback in the form of multi-view video - a point cloud rendered in a virtual reality environment. This enables the user to observe the scene from any position. To increase immersion, the robot's estimate of external forces is relayed using the phone's haptic actuator. Leader and follower are connected through wireless networks such as 5G or Wi-Fi. The paper describes the setup and analyzes its performance.

Conventional synchronous federated learning (SFL) frameworks suffer from performance degradation in heterogeneous systems due to imbalanced local data size and diverse computing power on the client side. To address this problem, asynchronous FL (AFL) and semi-asynchronous FL have been proposed to recover the performance loss by allowing asynchronous aggregation. However, asynchronous aggregation incurs a new problem of inconsistency between local updates and global updates. Motivated by the issues of conventional SFL and AFL, we first propose a time-driven SFL (T-SFL) framework for heterogeneous systems. The core idea of T-SFL is that the server aggregates the models from different clients, each with varying numbers of iterations, at regular time intervals. To evaluate the learning performance of T-SFL, we provide an upper bound on the global loss function. Further, we optimize the aggregation weights to minimize the developed upper bound. Then, we develop a discriminative model selection (DMS) algorithm that removes local models from clients whose number of iterations falls below a predetermined threshold. In particular, this algorithm ensures that each client's aggregation weight accurately reflects its true contribution to the global model update, thereby improving the efficiency and robustness of the system. To validate the effectiveness of T-SFL with the DMS algorithm, we conduct extensive experiments using several popular datasets including MNIST, Cifar-10, Fashion-MNIST, and SVHN. The experimental results demonstrate that T-SFL with the DMS algorithm can reduce the latency of conventional SFL by 50\%, while achieving an average 3\% improvement in learning accuracy over state-of-the-art AFL algorithms.

Nowadays, companies are racing towards Linked Open Data (LOD) to improve their added value, but they are ignoring their SPARQL query logs. If well curated, these logs can present an asset for decision makers. A naive and straightforward use of these logs is too risky because their provenance and quality are highly questionable. Users of these logs in a trusted way have to be assisted by providing them with in-depth knowledge of the whole LOD environment and tools to curate these logs. In this paper, we propose an interactive and intuitive trust based tool that can be used to curate these LOD logs before exploiting them. This tool is proposed to support our approach proposed in our previous work Lanasri et al. [2020].

While nationality is a pivotal demographic element that enhances the performance of language models, it has received far less scrutiny regarding inherent biases. This study investigates nationality bias in ChatGPT (GPT-3.5), a large language model (LLM) designed for text generation. The research covers 195 countries, 4 temperature settings, and 3 distinct prompt types, generating 4,680 discourses about nationality descriptions in Chinese and English. Automated metrics were used to analyze the nationality bias, and expert annotators alongside ChatGPT itself evaluated the perceived bias. The results show that ChatGPT's generated discourses are predominantly positive, especially compared to its predecessor, GPT-2. However, when prompted with negative inclinations, it occasionally produces negative content. Despite ChatGPT considering its generated text as neutral, it shows consistent self-awareness about nationality bias when subjected to the same pair-wise comparison annotation framework used by human annotators. In conclusion, while ChatGPT's generated texts seem friendly and positive, they reflect the inherent nationality biases in the real world. This bias may vary across different language versions of ChatGPT, indicating diverse cultural perspectives. The study highlights the subtle and pervasive nature of biases within LLMs, emphasizing the need for further scrutiny.

Machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) have introduced a new paradigm for atomic simulations. Recent advancements have seen the emergence of universal MLIPs (uMLIPs) that are pre-trained on diverse materials datasets, providing opportunities for both ready-to-use universal force fields and robust foundations for downstream machine learning refinements. However, their performance in extrapolating to out-of-distribution complex atomic environments remains unclear. In this study, we highlight a consistent potential energy surface (PES) softening effect in three uMLIPs: M3GNet, CHGNet, and MACE-MP-0, which is characterized by energy and force under-prediction in a series of atomic-modeling benchmarks including surfaces, defects, solid-solution energetics, phonon vibration modes, ion migration barriers, and general high-energy states. We find that the PES softening behavior originates from a systematic underprediction error of the PES curvature, which derives from the biased sampling of near-equilibrium atomic arrangements in uMLIP pre-training datasets. We demonstrate that the PES softening issue can be effectively rectified by fine-tuning with a single additional data point. Our findings suggest that a considerable fraction of uMLIP errors are highly systematic, and can therefore be efficiently corrected. This result rationalizes the data-efficient fine-tuning performance boost commonly observed with foundational MLIPs. We argue for the importance of a comprehensive materials dataset with improved PES sampling for next-generation foundational MLIPs.

Chip design is about to be revolutionized by the integration of large language, multimodal, and circuit models (collectively LxMs). While exploring this exciting frontier with tremendous potential, the community must also carefully consider the related security risks and the need for building trust into using LxMs for chip design. First, we review the recent surge of using LxMs for chip design in general. We cover state-of-the-art works for the automation of hardware description language code generation and for scripting and guidance of essential but cumbersome tasks for electronic design automation tools, e.g., design-space exploration, tuning, or designer training. Second, we raise and provide initial answers to novel research questions on critical issues for security and trustworthiness of LxM-powered chip design from both the attack and defense perspectives.