Bloodstain pattern analysis plays a crucial role in crime scene investigations by providing valuable information through the study of unique blood patterns. Conventional image analysis methods, like Thresholding and Contrast, impose stringent requirements on the image background and is labor-intensive in the context of droplet image segmentation. The Segment Anything Model (SAM), a recently proposed method for extensive image recognition, is yet to be adequately assessed for its accuracy and efficiency on bloodstain image segmentation. This paper explores the application of pre-trained SAM and fine-tuned SAM on bloodstain image segmentation with diverse image backgrounds. Experiment results indicate that both pre-trained and fine-tuned SAM perform the bloodstain image segmentation task with satisfactory accuracy and efficiency, while fine-tuned SAM achieves an overall 2.2\% accuracy improvement than pre-trained SAM and 4.70\% acceleration in terms of speed for image recognition. Analysis of factors that influence bloodstain recognition is carried out. This research demonstrates the potential application of SAM on bloodstain image segmentation, showcasing the effectiveness of Artificial Intelligence application in criminology research. We release all code and demos at \url{https://github.com/Zdong104/Bloodstain_Analysis_Ai_Tool}

Label distribution learning (LDL) trains a model to predict the relevance of a set of labels (called label distribution (LD)) to an instance. The previous LDL methods all assumed the LDs of the training instances are accurate. However, annotating highly accurate LDs for training instances is time-consuming and very expensive, and in reality the collected LD is usually inaccurate and disturbed by annotating errors. For the first time, this paper investigates the problem of inaccurate LDL, i.e., developing an LDL model with noisy LDs. We assume that the noisy LD matrix is a linear combination of an ideal LD matrix and a sparse noise matrix. Consequently, the problem of inaccurate LDL becomes an inverse problem, where the objective is to recover the ideal LD and noise matrices from the noisy LDs. We hypothesize that the ideal LD matrix is low-rank due to the correlation of labels and utilize the local geometric structure of instances captured by a graph to assist in recovering the ideal LD. This is based on the premise that similar instances are likely to share the same LD. The proposed model is finally formulated as a graph-regularized low-rank and sparse decomposition problem and numerically solved by the alternating direction method of multipliers. Furthermore, a specialized objective function is utilized to induce a LD predictive model in LDL, taking into account the recovered label distributions. Extensive experiments conducted on multiple datasets from various real-world tasks effectively demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach. \end{abstract}

The legged robots with variable stiffness actuators (VSAs) can achieve energy-efficient and versatile locomotion. However, equipping legged robots with VSAs in real-world application is usually restricted by (i) the redundant mechanical structure design, (ii) limited stiffness variation range and speed, and (iii) high energy consumption in stiffness modulation. In this paper, we present a novel Variable-Length Leaf-Spring Actuator (VLLSA) in legged robots that aims to address the aforementioned limitations. The design is based on leaf-spring mechanism and we improve the structural design to make the proposed VSA (i) compact and lightweight in mechanical structure, (ii) precise in theoretical modeling, and (iii) capable of modulating stiffness with wide range, fast speed, and low energy consumption. Hardware experiments validate that the legged robot equipped with the proposed VLLSA has compact structure, high dynamic performance and low energy consumption.

We address catastrophic forgetting issues in graph learning as incoming data transits from one to another graph distribution. Whereas prior studies primarily tackle one setting of graph continual learning such as incremental node classification, we focus on a universal approach wherein each data point in a task can be a node or a graph, and the task varies from node to graph classification. We propose a novel method that enables graph neural networks to excel in this universal setting. Our approach perseveres knowledge about past tasks through a rehearsal mechanism that maintains local and global structure consistency across the graphs. We benchmark our method against various continual learning baselines in real-world graph datasets and achieve significant improvement in average performance and forgetting across tasks.

Plant diseases are major causes of production losses and may have a significant impact on the agricultural sector. Detecting pests as early as possible can help increase crop yields and production efficiency. Several robotic monitoring systems have been developed allowing to collect data and provide a greater understanding of environmental processes. An agricultural robot can enable accurate timely detection of pests, by traversing the field autonomously and monitoring the entire cropped area within a field. However, in many cases it is impossible to sample all plants due to resource limitations. In this thesis, the development and evaluation of several sampling algorithms are presented to address the challenge of an agriculture-monitoring ground robot designed to locate insects in an agricultural field, where complete sampling of all the plants is infeasible. Two situations were investigated in simulation models that were specially developed as part of this thesis: where no a-priori information on the insects is available and where prior information on the insects distributions within the field is known. For the first situation, seven algorithms were tested, each utilizing an approach to sample the field without prior knowledge of it. For the second situation, we present the development and evaluation of a dynamic sampling algorithm which utilizes real-time information to prioritize sampling at suspected points, locate hot spots and adapt sampling plans accordingly. The algorithm's performance was compared to two existing algorithms using Tetranychidae insect data from previous research. Analyses revealed that the dynamic algorithm outperformed the others.

Time series forecasting is prevalent in various real-world applications. Despite the promising results of deep learning models in time series forecasting, especially the Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), the explanations of time series models, which are critical in high-stakes applications, have received little attention. In this paper, we propose a Decomposition-based Linear Explainable LSTM (DeLELSTM) to improve the interpretability of LSTM. Conventionally, the interpretability of RNNs only concentrates on the variable importance and time importance. We additionally distinguish between the instantaneous influence of new coming data and the long-term effects of historical data. Specifically, DeLELSTM consists of two components, i.e., standard LSTM and tensorized LSTM. The tensorized LSTM assigns each variable with a unique hidden state making up a matrix $\mathbf{h}_t$, and the standard LSTM models all the variables with a shared hidden state $\mathbf{H}_t$. By decomposing the $\mathbf{H}_t$ into the linear combination of past information $\mathbf{h}_{t-1}$ and the fresh information $\mathbf{h}_{t}-\mathbf{h}_{t-1}$, we can get the instantaneous influence and the long-term effect of each variable. In addition, the advantage of linear regression also makes the explanation transparent and clear. We demonstrate the effectiveness and interpretability of DeLELSTM on three empirical datasets. Extensive experiments show that the proposed method achieves competitive performance against the baseline methods and provides a reliable explanation relative to domain knowledge.

Memory is identified as a crucial human faculty that allows for the retention of visual and linguistic information within the hippocampus and neurons in the brain, which can subsequently be retrieved to address real-world challenges that arise through a lifetime of learning. The resolution of complex AI tasks through the application of acquired knowledge represents a stride toward the realization of artificial general intelligence. However, despite the prevalence of Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 \cite{brown2020language, leiter2023chatgpt, zaitsu2023distinguishing, OpenAI2023GPT4TR} , which have displayed remarkable capabilities in language comprehension, generation, interaction, and reasoning, they are inhibited by constraints on context length that preclude the processing of extensive, continually evolving knowledge bases. This paper proposes that LLMs could be augmented through the selective integration of knowledge from external repositories, and in doing so, introduces a novel methodology for External Reasoning, exemplified by ChatPDF. Central to this approach is the establishment of a tiered policy for \textbf{External Reasoning based on Multiple LLM Interchange Assistance} in \cref{fig:overall}, where the level of support rendered is modulated across entry, intermediate, and advanced tiers based on the complexity of the query, with adjustments made in response to human feedback. A comprehensive evaluation of this methodology is conducted using multiple LLMs and the results indicate state-of-the-art performance in \cref{comparison} , surpassing existing solutions including ChatPDF.com. Moreover, the paper emphasizes that this approach is more efficient compared to the direct processing of full text by LLMs. The source code is publicly available at: \url{https://github.com/AkideLiu/ANLP}.

Recent approaches have attempted to personalize dialogue systems by leveraging profile information into models. However, this knowledge is scarce and difficult to obtain, which makes the extraction/generation of profile information from dialogues a fundamental asset. To surpass this limitation, we introduce the Profile Generation Task (PGTask). We contribute with a new dataset for this problem, comprising profile sentences aligned with related utterances, extracted from a corpus of dialogues. Furthermore, using state-of-the-art methods, we provide a benchmark for profile generation on this novel dataset. Our experiments disclose the challenges of profile generation, and we hope that this introduces a new research direction.

News outlets including the New York Times, CNN, Reuters and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) have blocked a tool from OpenAI, limiting the company's ability to continue accessing their content. OpenAI is behind one of the best known artificial intelligence chatbots, ChatGPT. Its web crawler – known as GPTBot – may scan webpages to help improve its AI models. The Verge was first to report the New York Times had blocked GPTBot on its website. The Guardian subsequently found that other major news websites, including CNN, Reuters, the Chicago Tribune, the ABC and Australian Community Media (ACM) brands such as the Canberra Times and the Newcastle Herald, appear to have also disallowed the web crawler.

News outlets including the New York Times, CNN, Reuters and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) have blocked a tool from OpenAI, limiting the company's ability to continue accessing their content. OpenAI is behind one of the best known artificial intelligence chatbots, ChatGPT. Its web crawler – known as GPTBot – may scan webpages to help improve its AI models. The Verge was first to report the New York Times had blocked GPTBot on its website. The Guardian subsequently found that other major news websites, including CNN, Reuters, the Chicago Tribune, the ABC and Australian Community Media (ACM) brands such as the Canberra Times and the Newcastle Herald, appear to have also disallowed the web crawler.