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 Spatial Reasoning


Transformer-Based Spatial-Temporal Counterfactual Outcomes Estimation

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

The real world naturally has dimensions of time and space. Therefore, estimating the counterfactual outcomes with spatial-temporal attributes is a crucial problem. However, previous methods are based on classical statistical models, which still have limitations in performance and generalization. This paper proposes a novel framework for estimating counterfactual outcomes with spatial-temporal attributes using the Transformer, exhibiting stronger estimation ability. Under mild assumptions, the proposed estimator within this framework is consistent and asymptotically normal. To validate the effectiveness of our approach, we conduct simulation experiments and real data experiments. Simulation experiments show that our estimator has a stronger estimation capability than baseline methods. Real data experiments provide a valuable conclusion to the causal effect of conflicts on forest loss in Colombia. The source code is available at https://github.com/lihe-maxsize/DeppSTCI_Release_Version-master.


BeltCrack: the First Sequential-image Industrial Conveyor Belt Crack Detection Dataset and Its Baseline with Triple-domain Feature Learning

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Conveyor belts are important equipment in modern industry, widely applied in production and manufacturing. Their health is much critical to operational efficiency and safety. Cracks are a major threat to belt health. Currently, considering safety, how to intelligently detect belt cracks is catching an increasing attention. To implement the intelligent detection with machine learning, real crack samples are believed to be necessary. However, existing crack datasets primarily focus on pavement scenarios or synthetic data, no real-world industrial belt crack datasets at all. Cracks are a major threat to belt health. Furthermore, to validate usability and effectiveness, we propose a special baseline method with triple-domain ($i.e.$, time-space-frequency) feature hierarchical fusion learning for the two whole-new datasets. Experimental results demonstrate the availability and effectiveness of our dataset. Besides, they also show that our baseline is obviously superior to other similar detection methods. Our datasets and source codes are available at https://github.com/UESTC-nnLab/BeltCrack.


T-Rex: Task-Adaptive Spatial Representation Extraction for Robotic Manipulation with Vision-Language Models

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Building a general robotic manipulation system capable of performing a wide variety of tasks in real-world settings is a challenging task. Vision-Language Models (VLMs) have demonstrated remarkable potential in robotic manipulation tasks, primarily due to the extensive world knowledge they gain from large-scale datasets. In this process, Spatial Representations (such as points representing object positions or vectors representing object orientations) act as a bridge between VLMs and real-world scene, effectively grounding the reasoning abilities of VLMs and applying them to specific task scenarios. However, existing VLM-based robotic approaches often adopt a fixed spatial representation extraction scheme for various tasks, resulting in insufficient representational capability or excessive extraction time. In this work, we introduce T-Rex, a Task-Adaptive Framework for Spatial Representation Extraction, which dynamically selects the most appropriate spatial representation extraction scheme for each entity based on specific task requirements. Our key insight is that task complexity determines the types and granularity of spatial representations, and Stronger representational capabilities are typically associated with Higher overall system operation costs. Through comprehensive experiments in real-world robotic environments, we show that our approach delivers significant advantages in spatial understanding, efficiency, and stability without additional training.


A Global-Local Cross-Attention Network for Ultra-high Resolution Remote Sensing Image Semantic Segmentation

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

With the rapid development of ultra-high resolution (UHR) remote sensing technology, the demand for accurate and efficient semantic segmentation has increased significantly. However, existing methods face challenges in computational efficiency and multi-scale feature fusion. To address these issues, we propose GLCANet (Global-Local Cross-Attention Network), a lightweight segmentation framework designed for UHR remote sensing imagery.GLCANet employs a dual-stream architecture to efficiently fuse global semantics and local details while minimizing GPU usage. A self-attention mechanism enhances long-range dependencies, refines global features, and preserves local details for better semantic consistency. A masked cross-attention mechanism also adaptively fuses global-local features, selectively enhancing fine-grained details while exploiting global context to improve segmentation accuracy. Experimental results show that GLCANet outperforms state-of-the-art methods regarding accuracy and computational efficiency. The model effectively processes large, high-resolution images with a small memory footprint, providing a promising solution for real-world remote sensing applications.


Efficient Feedback Gate Network for Hyperspectral Image Super-Resolution

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Even without auxiliary images, single hyperspectral image super-resolution (SHSR) methods can be designed to improve the spatial resolution of hyperspectral images. However, failing to explore coherence thoroughly along bands and spatial-spectral information leads to the limited performance of the SHSR. In this study, we propose a novel group-based SHSR method termed the efficient feedback gate network, which uses various feedbacks and gate operations involving large kernel convolutions and spectral interactions. In particular, by providing different guidance for neighboring groups, we can learn rich band information and hierarchical hyperspectral spatial information using channel shuffling and dilatation convolution in shuffled and progressive dilated fusion module(SPDFM). Moreover, we develop a wide-bound perception gate block and a spectrum enhancement gate block to construct the spatial-spectral reinforcement gate module (SSRGM) and obtain highly representative spatial-spectral features efficiently. Additionally, we apply a three-dimensional SSRGM to enhance holistic information and coherence for hyperspectral data. The experimental results on three hyperspectral datasets demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed network over the state-of-the-art methods in terms of spectral fidelity and spatial content reconstruction.


AntiGrounding: Lifting Robotic Actions into VLM Representation Space for Decision Making

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Vision-Language Models (VLMs) encode knowledge and reasoning capabilities for robotic manipulation within high-dimensional representation spaces. However, current approaches often project them into compressed intermediate representations, discarding important task-specific information such as fine-grained spatial or semantic details. To address this, we propose AntiGrounding, a new framework that reverses the instruction grounding process. It lifts candidate actions directly into the VLM representation space, renders trajectories from multiple views, and uses structured visual question answering for instruction-based decision making. This enables zero-shot synthesis of optimal closed-loop robot trajectories for new tasks. We also propose an offline policy refinement module that leverages past experience to enhance long-term performance. Experiments in both simulation and real-world environments show that our method outperforms baselines across diverse robotic manipulation tasks.


Fine-Scale Soil Mapping in Alaska with Multimodal Machine Learning

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Fine-scale soil mapping in Alaska, traditionally relying on fieldwork and localized simulations, remains a critical yet underdeveloped task, despite the region's ecological importance and extensive permafrost coverage. As permafrost thaw accelerates due to climate change, it threatens infrastructure stability and key ecosystem services, such as soil carbon storage. High-resolution soil maps are essential for characterizing permafrost distribution, identifying vulnerable areas, and informing adaptation strategies. We present MISO, a vision-based machine learning (ML) model to produce statewide fine-scale soil maps for near-surface permafrost and soil taxonomy. The model integrates a geospatial foundation model for visual feature extraction, implicit neural representations for continuous spatial prediction, and contrastive learning for multimodal alignment and geo-location awareness. We compare MISO with Random Forest (RF), a traditional ML model that has been widely used in soil mapping applications. Spatial cross-validation and regional analysis across Permafrost Zones and Major Land Resource Areas (MLRAs) show that MISO generalizes better to remote, unseen locations and achieves higher recall than RF, which is critical for monitoring permafrost thaw and related environmental processes. These findings demonstrate the potential of advanced ML approaches for fine-scale soil mapping and provide practical guidance for future soil sampling and infrastructure planning in permafrost-affected landscapes. The project will be released at https://github.com/knowledge-computing/Peatland-permafrost.


Global Context-aware Representation Learning for Spatially Resolved Transcriptomics

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Spatially Resolved Transcriptomics (SRT) is a cutting-edge technique that captures the spatial context of cells within tissues, enabling the study of complex biological networks. Recent graph-based methods leverage both gene expression and spatial information to identify relevant spatial domains. However, these approaches fall short in obtaining meaningful spot representations, especially for spots near spatial domain boundaries, as they heavily emphasize adjacent spots that have minimal feature differences from an anchor node. To address this, we propose Spotscape, a novel framework that introduces the Similarity Telescope module to capture global relationships between multiple spots. Additionally, we propose a similarity scaling strategy to regulate the distances between intra- and inter-slice spots, facilitating effective multi-slice integration. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of Spotscape in various downstream tasks, including single-slice and multi-slice scenarios. Our code is available at the following link: https: //github.com/yunhak0/Spotscape.


MIRAGE: A Multi-modal Benchmark for Spatial Perception, Reasoning, and Intelligence

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Spatial perception and reasoning are core components of human cognition, encompassing object recognition, spatial relational understanding, and dynamic reasoning. Despite progress in computer vision, existing benchmarks reveal significant gaps in models' abilities to accurately recognize object attributes and reason about spatial relationships, both essential for dynamic reasoning. To address these limitations, we propose MIRAGE, a multi-modal benchmark designed to evaluate models' capabilities in Counting (object attribute recognition), Relation (spatial relational reasoning), and Counting with Relation. Through diverse and complex scenarios requiring fine-grained recognition and reasoning, MIRAGE highlights critical limitations in state-of-the-art models, underscoring the need for improved representations and reasoning frameworks. By targeting these foundational abilities, MIRAGE provides a pathway toward spatiotemporal reasoning in future research.


Multimodal Fused Learning for Solving the Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem in Robotic Task Planning

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Effective and efficient task planning is essential for mobile robots, especially in applications like warehouse retrieval and environmental monitoring. These tasks often involve selecting one location from each of several target clusters, forming a Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem (GTSP) that remains challenging to solve both accurately and efficiently. To address this, we propose a Multimodal Fused Learning (MMFL) framework that leverages both graph and image-based representations to capture complementary aspects of the problem, and learns a policy capable of generating high-quality task planning schemes in real time. Specifically, we first introduce a coordinate-based image builder that transforms GTSP instances into spatially informative representations. We then design an adaptive resolution scaling strategy to enhance adaptability across different problem scales, and develop a multimodal fusion module with dedicated bottlenecks that enables effective integration of geometric and spatial features. Extensive experiments show that our MMFL approach significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods across various GTSP instances while maintaining the computational efficiency required for real-time robotic applications. Physical robot tests further validate its practical effectiveness in real-world scenarios.