Machine learning is rapidly being used in database research to improve the effectiveness of numerous tasks included but not limited to query optimization, workload scheduling, physical design, etc. Currently, the research focus has been on replacing a single database component responsible for one task by its learning-based counterpart. However, query performance is not simply determined by the performance of a single component, but by the cooperation of multiple ones. As such, learning based database components need to collaborate during both training and execution in order to develop policies that meet end performance goals. Thus, the paper attempts to address the question "Is it possible to design a database consisting of various learned components that cooperatively work to improve end-to-end query latency?". To answer this question, we introduce MADB (Multi-Agent DB), a proof-of-concept system that incorporates a learned query scheduler and a learned query optimizer. MADB leverages a cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning approach that allows the two components to exchange the context of their decisions with each other and collaboratively work towards reducing the query latency. Preliminary results demonstrate that MADB can outperform the non-cooperative integration of learned components.

This paper proposes a novel approach that enables a robot to learn an objective function incrementally from human directional corrections. Existing methods learn from human magnitude corrections; since a human needs to carefully choose the magnitude of each correction, those methods can easily lead to over-corrections and learning inefficiency. The proposed method only requires human directional corrections -- corrections that only indicate the direction of an input change without indicating its magnitude. We only assume that each correction, regardless of its magnitude, points in a direction that improves the robot's current motion relative to an unknown objective function. The allowable corrections satisfying this assumption account for half of the input space, as opposed to the magnitude corrections which have to lie in a shrinking level set. For each directional correction, the proposed method updates the estimate of the objective function based on a cutting plane method, which has a geometric interpretation. We have established theoretical results to show the convergence of the learning process. The proposed method has been tested in numerical examples, a user study on two human-robot games, and a real-world quadrotor experiment. The results confirm the convergence of the proposed method and further show that the method is significantly more effective (higher success rate), efficient/effortless (less human corrections needed), and potentially more accessible (fewer early wasted trials) than the state-of-the-art robot learning frameworks.

Traditionally, traffic incident management (TIM) programs coordinate the deployment of emergency resources to immediate incident requests without accommodating the interdependencies on incident evolutions in the environment. However, ignoring inherent interdependencies on the evolution of incidents in the environment while making current deployment decisions is shortsighted, and the resulting naive deployment strategy can significantly worsen the overall incident delay impact on the network. The interdependencies on incident evolution in the environment, including those between incident occurrences, and those between resource availability in near-future requests and the anticipated duration of the immediate incident request, should be considered through a look-ahead model when making current-stage deployment decisions. This study develops a new proactive framework based on the distributed constraint optimization problem (DCOP) to address the above limitations, overcoming conventional TIM models that cannot accommodate the dependencies in the TIM problem. Furthermore, the optimization objective is formulated to incorporate Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The UAVs' role in TIM includes exploring uncertain traffic conditions, detecting unexpected events, and augmenting information from roadway traffic sensors. Robustness analysis of our model for multiple TIM scenarios shows satisfactory performance using local search exploration heuristics. Overall, our model reports a significant reduction in total incident delay compared to conventional TIM models. With UAV support, we demonstrate a further decrease in the overall incident delay through the shorter response time of emergency vehicles, and a reduction in uncertainties associated with the estimated incident delay impact.

This paper focuses on online kernel learning over a decentralized network. Each agent in the network receives continuous streaming data locally and works collaboratively to learn a nonlinear prediction function that is globally optimal in the reproducing kernel Hilbert space with respect to the total instantaneous costs of all agents. In order to circumvent the curse of dimensionality issue in traditional online kernel learning, we utilize random feature (RF) mapping to convert the non-parametric kernel learning problem into a fixed-length parametric one in the RF space. We then propose a novel learning framework named Online Decentralized Kernel learning via Linearized ADMM (ODKLA) to efficiently solve the online decentralized kernel learning problem. To further improve the communication efficiency, we add the quantization and censoring strategies in the communication stage and develop the Quantized and Communication-censored ODKLA (QC-ODKLA) algorithm. We theoretically prove that both ODKLA and QC-ODKLA can achieve the optimal sublinear regret $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{T})$ over $T$ time slots. Through numerical experiments, we evaluate the learning effectiveness, communication, and computation efficiencies of the proposed methods.

In pace with the electronic technology development and the production technology improvement, industrial robot Give Scope to the Advantage in social services and industrial production. However, due to long-term mechanical wear and structural deformation, the absolute positioning accuracy is low, which greatly hinders the development of manufacturing industry. Calibrating the kinematic parameters of the robot is an effective way to address it. However, the main measuring equipment such as laser trackers and coordinate measuring machines are expensive and need special personnel to operate. Additionally, in the measurement process, due to the influence of many environmental factors, measurement noises are generated, which will affect the calibration accuracy of the robot. Basing on these, we have done the following work: a) developing a robot calibration method based on plane constraint to simplify measurement steps; b) employing Square-root Culture Kalman Filter (SCKF) algorithm for reducing the influence of measurement noises; c) proposing a novel algorithm for identifying kinematic parameters based on SCKF algorithm and Levenberg Marquardt (LM) algorithm to achieve the high calibration accuracy; d) adopting the dial indicator as the measuring equipment for slashing costs. The enough experiments verify the effectiveness of the proposed calibration algorithm and experimental platform.

To facilitate the development of new models to bridge the gap between machine and human social intelligence, the recently proposed Baby Intuitions Benchmark (arXiv:2102.11938) provides a suite of tasks designed to evaluate commonsense reasoning about agents' goals and actions that even young infants exhibit. Here we present a principled Bayesian solution to this benchmark, based on a hierarchically Bayesian Theory of Mind (HBToM). By including hierarchical priors on agent goals and dispositions, inference over our HBToM model enables few-shot learning of the efficiency and preferences of an agent, which can then be used in commonsense plausibility judgements about subsequent agent behavior. This approach achieves near-perfect accuracy on most benchmark tasks, outperforming deep learning and imitation learning baselines while producing interpretable human-like inferences, demonstrating the advantages of structured Bayesian models of human social cognition.

Abstract--High-dimensional and incomplete (HDI) data holds tremendous interactive information in various industrial applications. A latent factor (LF) model is remarkably effective in extracting valuable information from HDI data with stochastic gradient decent (SGD) algorithm. However, an SGD-based LFA model suffers from slow convergence since it only considers the current learning error. To address this critical issue, this paper proposes a Nonlinear PID-enhanced Adaptive Latent Factor (NPALF) model with two-fold ideas: 1) rebuilding the learning error via considering the past learning errors following the principle of a nonlinear PID controller; b) implementing all parameters adaptation effectively following the principle of a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. Experience results on four representative HDI datasets indicate that compared with five state-of-the-art LFA models, the NPALF model achieves better convergence rate and prediction accuracy for missing data of an HDI data.

It poses technical difficulty to achieve stable tracking even for single mismatched nonlinear strict-feedback systems when intermittent state feedback is utilized. The underlying problem becomes even more complicated if such systems are networked with directed communication and state-triggering setting. In this work, we present a fully distributed neuroadaptive tracking control scheme for multiple agent systems in strict-feedback form using triggered state from the agent itself and the triggered states from the neighbor agents. To circumvent the non-differentiability of virtual controllers stemming from state-triggering, we first develop a distributed continuous control scheme under regular state feedback, upon which we construct the distributed event-triggered control scheme by replacing the states in the preceding scheme with the triggered ones. Several useful lemmas are introduced to allow the stability condition to be established with such replacement, ensuring that all the closed-loop signals are semi-globally uniformly ultimately bounded (SGUUB), with the output tracking error converging to a residual set around zero. Besides, with proper choices of the design parameters, the tracking performance in the mean square sense can be improved. Numerical simulation verifies the benefits and efficiency of the proposed method.

Recent neural generation systems have demonstrated the potential for procedurally generating game content, images, stories, and more. However, most neural generation algorithms are "uncontrolled" in the sense that the user has little say in creative decisions beyond the initial prompt specification. Co-creative, mixed-initiative systems require user-centric means of influencing the algorithm, especially when users are unlikely to have machine learning expertise. The key to co-creative systems is the ability to communicate ideas and intent from the user to the agent, as well as from the agent to the user. Key questions in co-creative AI include: How can users express their creative intentions? How can creative AI systems communicate their beliefs, explain their moves, or instruct users to act on their behalf? When should creative AI systems take initiative? The answer to such questions and more will enable us to develop better co-creative systems that make humans more capable of expressing their creative intents. We introduce CREATIVE-WAND, a customizable framework for investigating co-creative mixed-initiative generation. CREATIVE-WAND enables plug-and-play injection of generative models and human-agent communication channels into a chat-based interface. It provides a number of dimensions along which an AI generator and humans can communicate during the co-creative process. We illustrate the CREATIVE-WAND framework by using it to study one dimension of co-creative communication-global versus local creative intent specification by the user-in the context of storytelling.

Dynamical systems across many disciplines are modeled as interacting particles or agents, with interaction rules that depend on a very small number of variables (e.g. pairwise distances, pairwise differences of phases, etc...), functions of the state of pairs of agents. Yet, these interaction rules can generate self-organized dynamics, with complex emergent behaviors (clustering, flocking, swarming, etc.). We propose a learning technique that, given observations of states and velocities along trajectories of the agents, yields both the variables upon which the interaction kernel depends and the interaction kernel itself, in a nonparametric fashion. This yields an effective dimension reduction which avoids the curse of dimensionality from the high-dimensional observation data (states and velocities of all the agents). We demonstrate the learning capability of our method to a variety of first-order interacting systems.