Liu, Qiming
iTRI-QA: a Toolset for Customized Question-Answer Dataset Generation Using Language Models for Enhanced Scientific Research
Liu, Qiming, Niu, Zhongzheng, Liu, Siting, Tian, Mao
The exponential growth of AI in science necessitates efficient and scalable solutions for retrieving and preserving research information. Here, we present a tool for the development of a customized question-answer (QA) dataset, called Interactive Trained Research Innovator (iTRI) - QA, tailored for the needs of researchers leveraging language models (LMs) to retrieve scientific knowledge in a QA format. Our approach integrates curated QA datasets with a specialized research paper dataset to enhance responses' contextual relevance and accuracy using fine-tuned LM. The framework comprises four key steps: (1) the generation of high-quality and human-generated QA examples, (2) the creation of a structured research paper database, (3) the fine-tuning of LMs using domain-specific QA examples, and (4) the generation of QA dataset that align with user queries and the curated database. This pipeline provides a dynamic and domain-specific QA system that augments the utility of LMs in academic research that will be applied for future research LM deployment. We demonstrate the feasibility and scalability of our tool for streamlining knowledge retrieval in scientific contexts, paving the way for its integration into broader multi-disciplinary applications.
Enhancing Exploratory Capability of Visual Navigation Using Uncertainty of Implicit Scene Representation
Wang, Yichen, Liu, Qiming, Liu, Zhe, Wang, Hesheng
In the context of visual navigation in unknown scenes, both "exploration" and "exploitation" are equally crucial. Robots must first establish environmental cognition through exploration and then utilize the cognitive information to accomplish target searches. However, most existing methods for image-goal navigation prioritize target search over the generation of exploratory behavior. To address this, we propose the Navigation with Uncertainty-driven Exploration (NUE) pipeline, which uses an implicit and compact scene representation, NeRF, as a cognitive structure. We estimate the uncertainty of NeRF and augment the exploratory ability by the uncertainty to in turn facilitate the construction of implicit representation. Simultaneously, we extract memory information from NeRF to enhance the robot's reasoning ability for determining the location of the target. Ultimately, we seamlessly combine the two generated abilities to produce navigational actions. Our pipeline is end-to-end, with the environmental cognitive structure being constructed online. Extensive experimental results on image-goal navigation demonstrate the capability of our pipeline to enhance exploratory behaviors, while also enabling a natural transition from the exploration to exploitation phase. This enables our model to outperform existing memory-based cognitive navigation structures in terms of navigation performance.