Belief Revision
MVCL-DAF++: Enhancing Multimodal Intent Recognition via Prototype-Aware Contrastive Alignment and Coarse-to-Fine Dynamic Attention Fusion
Huang, Haofeng, Han, Yifei, Zhang, Long, Li, Bin, He, Yangfan
ABSTRACT Multimodal intent recognition (MMIR) suffers from weak semantic grounding and poor robustness under noisy or rare-class conditions. We propose MVCL-DAF++, which extends MVCL-DAF with two key modules: (1) Prototype-aware contrastive alignment, aligning instances to class-level prototypes to enhance semantic consistency; and (2) Coarse-to-fine attention fusion, integrating global modality summaries with token-level features for hierarchical cross-modal interaction. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of prototype-guided learning and coarse-to-fine fusion for robust multimodal understanding. Index T erms-- Multimodal intent recognition, Prototype-aware contrastive alignment, Coarse-to-fine dynamic attention fusion 1. INTRODUCTION Multimodal intent recognition (MMIR) [1] aims to infer user intentions by integrating heterogeneous signals such as spoken language, facial expressions, and vocal intonations. With the rapid adoption of human-centered AI systems [2], robust and generalizable multimodal understanding has become a cornerstone for building intelligent conversational agents [3, 4].
On the Variational Costs of Changing Our Minds
Hyland, David, Albarracin, Mahault
The human mind is capable of extraordinary achievements, yet it often appears to work against itself. It actively defends its cherished beliefs even in the face of contradictory evidence, conveniently interprets information to conform to desired narratives, and selectively searches for or avoids information to suit its various purposes. Despite these behaviours deviating from common normative standards for belief updating, we argue that such 'biases' are not inherently cognitive flaws, but rather an adaptive response to the significant pragmatic and cognitive costs associated with revising one's beliefs. This paper introduces a formal framework that aims to model the influence of these costs on our belief updating mechanisms. We treat belief updating as a motivated variational decision, where agents weigh the perceived 'utility' of a belief against the informational cost required to adopt a new belief state, quantified by the Kullback-Leibler divergence from the prior to the variational posterior. We perform computational experiments to demonstrate that simple instantiations of this resource-rational model can be used to qualitatively emulate commonplace human behaviours, including confirmation bias and attitude polarisation. In doing so, we suggest that this framework makes steps toward a more holistic account of the motivated Bayesian mechanics of belief change and provides practical insights for predicting, compensating for, and correcting deviations from desired belief updating processes.
Tactile-Based Human Intent Recognition for Robot Assistive Navigation
Peng, Shaoting, Crowder, Dakarai, Yuan, Wenzhen, Driggs-Campbell, Katherine
Abstract-- Robot assistive navigation (RAN) is critical for enhancing the mobility and independence of the growing population of mobility-impaired individuals. However, existing systems often rely on interfaces that fail to replicate the intuitive and efficient physical communication observed between a person and a human caregiver, limiting their effectiveness. In this paper, we introduce T ac-Nav, a RAN system that leverages a cylindrical tactile skin mounted on a Stretch 3 mobile manipulator to provide a more natural and efficient interface for human navigational intent recognition. T o robustly classify the tactile data, we developed the Cylindrical Kernel Support V ector Machine (CK-SVM), an algorithm that explicitly models the sensor's cylindrical geometry and is consequently robust to the natural rotational shifts present in a user's grasp. Comprehensive experiments were conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of our classification algorithm and the overall system. Results show that CK-SVM achieved superior classification accuracy on both simulated (97.1%) and real-world (90.8%) datasets compared to four baseline models. Furthermore, a pilot study confirmed that users more preferred the T ac-Nav tactile interface over conventional joystick and voice-based controls. I. INTRODUCTION Robot assistive navigation (RAN) - the task of a robot providing physical support while people moving from one place to another - is of critical importance for people with mobility impairments [1]. In the U.S., 12.2% of adults live with a mobility disability, and the aging population suggests an increasing need for navigation assistance [2], [3].
Universal Learning of Stochastic Dynamics for Exact Belief Propagation using Bernstein Normalizing Flows
Amorese, Peter, Lahijanian, Morteza
Predicting the distribution of future states in a stochastic system, known as belief propagation, is fundamental to reasoning under uncertainty. However, nonlinear dynamics often make analytical belief propagation intractable, requiring approximate methods. When the system model is unknown and must be learned from data, a key question arises: can we learn a model that (i) universally approximates general nonlinear stochastic dynamics, and (ii) supports analytical belief propagation? This paper establishes the theoretical foundations for a class of models that satisfy both properties. The proposed approach combines the expressiveness of normalizing flows for density estimation with the analytical tractability of Bernstein polynomials. Empirical results show the efficacy of our learned model over state-of-the-art data-driven methods for belief propagation, especially for highly non-linear systems with non-additive, non-Gaussian noise.
DyKen-Hyena: Dynamic Kernel Generation via Cross-Modal Attention for Multimodal Intent Recognition
Wang, Yifei, Wang, Wenbin, Luo, Yong
Though Multimodal Intent Recognition (MIR) proves effective by utilizing rich information from multiple sources (e.g., language, video, and audio), the potential for intent-irrelevant and conflicting information across modalities may hinder performance from being further improved. Most current models attempt to fuse modalities by applying mechanisms like multi-head attention to unimodal feature sequences and then adding the result back to the original representation. This process risks corrupting the primary linguistic features with noisy or irrelevant non-verbal signals, as it often fails to capture the fine-grained, token-level influence where non-verbal cues should modulate, not just augment, textual meaning. To address this, we introduce DyKen-Hyena, which reframes the problem from feature fusion to processing modulation. Our model translates audio-visual cues into dynamic, per-token convolutional kernels that directly modulate textual feature extraction. This fine-grained approach achieves state-of-the-art results on the MIntRec and MIntRec2.0 benchmarks. Notably, it yields a +10.46% F1-score improvement in out-of-scope detection, validating that our method creates a fundamentally more robust intent representation.
Hierarchical Bracketing Encodings Work for Dependency Graphs
Ezquerro, Ana, Gรณmez-Rodrรญguez, Carlos, Vilares, David
We revisit hierarchical bracketing encodings from a practical perspective in the context of dependency graph parsing. The approach encodes graphs as sequences, enabling linear-time parsing with $n$ tagging actions, and still representing reentrancies, cycles, and empty nodes. Compared to existing graph linearizations, this representation substantially reduces the label space while preserving structural information. We evaluate it on a multilingual and multi-formalism benchmark, showing competitive results and consistent improvements over other methods in exact match accuracy.
Enhancing Low-Altitude Airspace Security: MLLM-Enabled UAV Intent Recognition
Lei, Guangyu, Liang, Tianhao, Ping, Yuqi, Chen, Xinglin, Zhou, Longyu, Wu, Junwei, Zhang, Xiyuan, Ding, Huahao, Zhang, Xingjian, Yuan, Weijie, Zhang, Tingting, Zhang, Qinyu
The rapid development of the low-altitude economy emphasizes the critical need for effective perception and intent recognition of non-cooperative unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The advanced generative reasoning capabilities of multimodal large language models (MLLMs) present a promising approach in such tasks. In this paper, we focus on the combination of UAV intent recognition and the MLLMs. Specifically, we first present an MLLM-enabled UAV intent recognition architecture, where the multimodal perception system is utilized to obtain real-time payload and motion information of UAVs, generating structured input information, and MLLM outputs intent recognition results by incorporating environmental information, prior knowledge, and tactical preferences. Subsequently, we review the related work and demonstrate their progress within the proposed architecture. Then, a use case for low-altitude confrontation is conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of our architecture and offer valuable insights for practical system design. Finally, the future challenges are discussed, followed by corresponding strategic recommendations for further applications.
Axiomatics of Restricted Choices by Linear Orders of Sets with Minimum as Fallback
Sauerwald, Kai, Skiba, Kenneth, Fermรฉ, Eduardo, Meyer, Thomas
We study how linear orders can be employed to realise choice functions for which the set of potential choices is restricted, i.e., the possible choice is not possible among the full powerset of all alternatives. In such restricted settings, constructing a choice function via a relation on the alternatives is not always possible. However, we show that one can always construct a choice function via a linear order on sets of alternatives, even when a fallback value is encoded as the minimal element in the linear order. The axiomatics of such choice functions are presented for the general case and the case of union-closed input restrictions. Restricted choice structures have applications in knowledge representation and reasoning, and here we discuss their applications for theory change and abstract argumentation.
Probabilistically stable revision and comparative probability: a representation theorem and applications
The stability rule for belief, advocated by Leitgeb [Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 164, 2013], is a rule for rational acceptance that captures categorical belief in terms of $\textit{probabilistically stable propositions}$: propositions to which the agent assigns resiliently high credence. The stability rule generates a class of $\textit{probabilistically stable belief revision}$ operators, which capture the dynamics of belief that result from an agent updating their credences through Bayesian conditioning while complying with the stability rule for their all-or-nothing beliefs. In this paper, we prove a representation theorem that yields a complete characterisation of such probabilistically stable revision operators and provides a `qualitative' selection function semantics for the (non-monotonic) logic of probabilistically stable belief revision. Drawing on the theory of comparative probability orders, this result gives necessary and sufficient conditions for a selection function to be representable as a strongest-stable-set operator on a finite probability space. The resulting logic of probabilistically stable belief revision exhibits strong monotonicity properties while failing the AGM belief revision postulates and satisfying only very weak forms of case reasoning. In showing the main theorem, we prove two results of independent interest to the theory of comparative probability: the first provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the joint representation of a pair of (respectively, strict and non-strict) comparative probability orders. The second result provides a method for axiomatising the logic of ratio comparisons of the form ``event $A$ is at least $k$ times more likely than event $B$''. In addition to these measurement-theoretic applications, we point out two applications of our main result to the theory of simple voting games and to revealed preference theory.
Virtual Group Knowledge and Group Belief in Topological Evidence Models (Extended Version)
Baltag, Alexandru, Gattinger, Malvin, Gomes, Djanira
We study notions of (virtual) group knowledge and group belief within multi-agent evidence models, obtained by extending the topological semantics of evidence-based belief and fallible knowledge from individuals to groups. We completely axiomatize and show the decidability of the logic of ("hard" and "soft") group evidence, and do the same for an especially interesting fragment of it: the logic of group knowledge and group belief. We also extend these languages with dynamic evidence-sharing operators, and completely axiomatize the corresponding logics, showing that they are co-expressive with their static bases.