Overview
A Some Concepts in Linear Algebra In the interest of self-containedness, we provide a brief review of some concepts from linear algebra
Addition and scalar multiplication are defined in the obvious way by pa,b q ` ฮป pc,d q: " p a ` ฮปc,b ` ฮปd q for a,c P H, b,d P p H and ฮป P C . 'size' by what is called the operator norm, denoted by } } We may then write f " In this case we write R pz, q " p z q It is a standard exercise to show that this is independent of the choice of orthonormal basis. To streamline the argumentation let us first introduce some notation: 18 Notation C.2. Lemma A.1), we find a To investigate the example of Figure 3, we label the vertices of the respective graphs as depicted in Figure 6. Such operators are positive and hence | | " (similarly for r). " 0. Next we note }Jf } " J and determine ฤ J It remains to establish (9).
Inside Knowledge: Graph-based Path Generation with Explainable Data Augmentation and Curriculum Learning for Visual Indoor Navigation
Airinei, Daniel, Burceanu, Elena, Leordeanu, Marius
Indoor navigation is a difficult task, as it generally comes with poor GPS access, forcing solutions to rely on other sources of information. While significant progress continues to be made in this area, deployment to production applications is still lacking, given the complexity and additional requirements of current solutions. Here, we introduce an efficient, real-time and easily deployable deep learning approach, based on visual input only, that can predict the direction towards a target from images captured by a mobile device. Our technical approach, based on a novel graph-based path generation method, combined with explainable data augmentation and curriculum learning, includes contributions that make the process of data collection, annotation and training, as automatic as possible, efficient and robust. On the practical side, we introduce a novel large-scale dataset, with video footage inside a relatively large shopping mall, in which each frame is annotated with the correct next direction towards different specific target destinations. Different from current methods, ours relies solely on vision, avoiding the need of special sensors, additional markers placed along the path, knowledge of the scene map or internet access. W e also created an easy to use application for Android, which we plan to make publicly available.
Model Interpretability and Rationale Extraction by Input Mask Optimization
Concurrent to the rapid progress in the development of neural-network based models in areas like natural language processing and computer vision, the need for creating explanations for the predictions of these black-box models has risen steadily. We propose a new method to generate extractive explanations for predictions made by neural networks, that is based on masking parts of the input which the model does not consider to be indicative of the respective class. The masking is done using gradient-based optimization combined with a new regularization scheme that enforces sufficiency, comprehensiveness and compactness of the generated explanation, three properties that are known to be desirable from the related field of rationale extraction in natural language processing. In this way, we bridge the gap between model interpretability and rationale extraction, thereby proving that the latter of which can be performed without training a specialized model, only on the basis of a trained classifier. We further apply the same method to image inputs and obtain high quality explanations for image classifications, which indicates that the conditions proposed for rationale extraction in natural language processing are more broadly applicable to different input types.
Retrieval-augmented reasoning with lean language models
Chan, Ryan Sze-Yin, Nanni, Federico, Lazauskas, Tomas, Wood, Rosie, Yong, Penelope, Tarassenko, Lionel, Girolami, Mark, Geddes, James, Duncan, Andrew
This technical report details a novel approach to combining reasoning and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) within a single, lean language model architecture. While existing RAG systems typically rely on large-scale models and external APIs, our work addresses the increasing demand for performant and privacy-preserving solutions deployable in resource-constrained or secure environments. Building on recent developments in test-time scaling and small-scale reasoning models, we develop a retrieval augmented conversational agent capable of interpreting complex, domain-specific queries using a lightweight backbone model. Our system integrates a dense retriever with fine-tuned Qwen2.5-Instruct models, using synthetic query generation and reasoning traces derived from frontier models (e.g., DeepSeek-R1) over a curated corpus, in this case, the NHS A-to-Z condition pages. We explore the impact of summarisation-based document compression, synthetic data design, and reasoning-aware fine-tuning on model performance. Evaluation against both non-reasoning and general-purpose lean models demonstrates that our domain-specific fine-tuning approach yields substantial gains in answer accuracy and consistency, approaching frontier-level performance while remaining feasible for local deployment. All implementation details and code are publicly released to support reproducibility and adaptation across domains.
SGSimEval: A Comprehensive Multifaceted and Similarity-Enhanced Benchmark for Automatic Survey Generation Systems
Guo, Beichen, Wen, Zhiyuan, Yang, Yu, Gao, Peng, Yang, Ruosong, Shen, Jiaxing
The growing interest in automatic survey generation (ASG), a task that traditionally required considerable time and effort, has been spurred by recent advances in large language models (LLMs). With advancements in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and the rising popularity of multi-agent systems (MASs), synthesizing academic surveys using LLMs has become a viable approach, thereby elevating the need for robust evaluation methods in this domain. However, existing evaluation methods suffer from several limitations, including biased metrics, a lack of human preference, and an over-reliance on LLMs-as-judges. To address these challenges, we propose SGSimEval, a comprehensive benchmark for Survey Generation with Similarity-Enhanced Evaluation that evaluates automatic survey generation systems by integrating assessments of the outline, content, and references, and also combines LLM-based scoring with quantitative metrics to provide a multifaceted evaluation framework. In SGSimEval, we also introduce human preference metrics that emphasize both inherent quality and similarity to humans. Extensive experiments reveal that current ASG systems demonstrate human-comparable superiority in outline generation, while showing significant room for improvement in content and reference generation, and our evaluation metrics maintain strong consistency with human assessments.
Tactile Robotics: An Outlook
Luo, Shan, Lepora, Nathan F., Yuan, Wenzhen, Althoefer, Kaspar, Cheng, Gordon, Dahiya, Ravinder
Robotics research has long sought to give robots the ability to perceive the physical world through touch in an analogous manner to many biological systems. Developing such tactile capabilities is important for numerous emerging applications that require robots to co-exist and interact closely with humans. Consequently, there has been growing interest in tactile sensing, leading to the development of various technologies, including piezoresistive and piezoelectric sensors, capacitive sensors, magnetic sensors, and optical tactile sensors. These diverse approaches utilise different transduction methods and materials to equip robots with distributed sensing capabilities, enabling more effective physical interactions. These advances have been supported in recent years by simulation tools that generate large-scale tactile datasets to support sensor designs and algorithms to interpret and improve the utility of tactile data. The integration of tactile sensing with other modalities, such as vision, as well as with action strategies for active tactile perception highlights the growing scope of this field. To further the transformative progress in tactile robotics, a holistic approach is essential. In this outlook article, we examine several challenges associated with the current state of the art in tactile robotics and explore potential solutions to inspire innovations across multiple domains, including manufacturing, healthcare, recycling and agriculture.
Empowering Multimodal LLMs with External Tools: A Comprehensive Survey
An, Wenbin, Nie, Jiahao, Wu, Yaqiang, Tian, Feng, Lu, Shijian, Zheng, Qinghua
By integrating the perception capabilities of multimodal encoders with the generative power of Large Language Models (LLMs), Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), exemplified by GPT-4V, have achieved great success in various multimodal tasks, pointing toward a promising pathway to artificial general intelligence. Despite this progress, the limited quality of multimodal data, poor performance on many complex downstream tasks, and inadequate evaluation protocols continue to hinder the reliability and broader applicability of MLLMs across diverse domains. Inspired by the human ability to leverage external tools for enhanced reasoning and problem-solving, augmenting MLLMs with external tools (e.g., APIs, expert models, and knowledge bases) offers a promising strategy to overcome these challenges. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on leveraging external tools to enhance MLLM performance. Our discussion is structured along four key dimensions about external tools: (1) how they can facilitate the acquisition and annotation of high-quality multimodal data; (2) how they can assist in improving MLLM performance on challenging downstream tasks; (3) how they enable comprehensive and accurate evaluation of MLLMs; (4) the current limitations and future directions of tool-augmented MLLMs. Through this survey, we aim to underscore the transformative potential of external tools in advancing MLLM capabilities, offering a forward-looking perspective on their development and applications. The project page of this paper is publicly available athttps://github.com/Lackel/Awesome-Tools-for-MLLMs.