Continual Learning (CL) involves adapting the prior Deep Neural Network (DNN) knowledge to new tasks, without forgetting the old ones. However, modern CL techniques focus on provisioning memory capabilities to existing DNN models rather than designing new ones that are able to adapt according to the task at hand. This paper presents the novel Feedback Continual Learning Vision Transformer (FCL-ViT) that uses a feedback mechanism to generate real-time dynamic attention features tailored to the current task. The FCL-ViT operates in two Phases. In phase 1, the generic image features are produced and determine where the Transformer should attend on the current image. In phase 2, task-specific image features are generated that leverage dynamic attention. To this end, Tunable self-Attention Blocks (TABs) and Task Specific Blocks (TSBs) are introduced that operate in both phases and are responsible for tuning the TABs attention, respectively. The FCL-ViT surpasses state-of-the-art performance on Continual Learning compared to benchmark methods, while retaining a small number of trainable DNN parameters.

A novel Learning-by-Education Node Community framework (LENC) for Collaborative Knowledge Distillation (CKD) is presented, which facilitates continual collective learning through effective knowledge exchanges among diverse deployed Deep Neural Network (DNN) peer nodes. These DNNs dynamically and autonomously adopt either the role of a student, seeking knowledge, or that of a teacher, imparting knowledge, fostering a collaborative learning environment. The proposed framework enables efficient knowledge transfer among participating DNN nodes as needed, while enhancing their learning capabilities and promoting their collaboration. LENC addresses the challenges of handling diverse training data distributions and the limitations of individual DNN node learning abilities. It ensures the exploitation of the best available teacher knowledge upon learning a new task and protects the DNN nodes from catastrophic forgetting. Additionally, it innovates by enabling collaborative multitask knowledge distillation, while addressing the problem of task-agnostic continual learning, as DNN nodes have no information on task boundaries. Experimental evaluation on a proof-of-concept implementation demonstrates the LENC framework's functionalities and benefits across multiple DNN learning and inference scenarios. The conducted experiments showcase its ability to gradually maximize the average test accuracy of the community of interacting DNN nodes in image classification problems, by appropriately leveraging the collective knowledge of all node peers. The LENC framework achieves state-of-the-art performance in on-line unlabelled CKD.

This paper presents a formation control approach for contactless gesture-based Human-Swarm Interaction (HSI) between a team of multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and a human worker. The approach is intended for monitoring the safety of human workers, especially those working at heights. In the proposed dynamic formation scheme, one UAV acts as the leader of the formation and is equipped with sensors for human worker detection and gesture recognition. The follower UAVs maintain a predetermined formation relative to the worker's position, thereby providing additional perspectives of the monitored scene. Hand gestures allow the human worker to specify movements and action commands for the UAV team and initiate other mission-related commands without the need for an additional communication channel or specific markers. Together with a novel unified human detection and tracking algorithm, human pose estimation approach and gesture detection pipeline, the proposed approach forms a first instance of an HSI system incorporating all these modules onboard real-world UAVs. Simulations and field experiments with three UAVs and a human worker in a mock-up scenario showcase the effectiveness and responsiveness of the proposed approach.

Despite the impressive performance achieved by data-fusion networks with duplex encoders for visual semantic segmentation, they become ineffective when spatial geometric data are not available. Implicitly infusing the spatial geometric prior knowledge acquired by a duplex-encoder teacher model into a single-encoder student model is a practical, albeit less explored research avenue. This paper delves into this topic and resorts to knowledge distillation approaches to address this problem. We introduce the Learning to Infuse "X" (LIX) framework, with novel contributions in both logit distillation and feature distillation aspects. We present a mathematical proof that underscores the limitation of using a single fixed weight in decoupled knowledge distillation and introduce a logit-wise dynamic weight controller as a solution to this issue. Furthermore, we develop an adaptively-recalibrated feature distillation algorithm, including two technical novelties: feature recalibration via kernel regression and in-depth feature consistency quantification via centered kernel alignment. Extensive experiments conducted with intermediate-fusion and late-fusion networks across various public datasets provide both quantitative and qualitative evaluations, demonstrating the superior performance of our LIX framework when compared to other state-of-the-art approaches.

Large-scale infrastructures are prone to deterioration due to age, environmental influences, and heavy usage. Ensuring their safety through regular inspections and maintenance is crucial to prevent incidents that can significantly affect public safety and the environment. This is especially pertinent in the context of electrical power networks, which, while essential for energy provision, can also be sources of forest fires. Intelligent drones have the potential to revolutionize inspection and maintenance, eliminating the risks for human operators, increasing productivity, reducing inspection time, and improving data collection quality. However, most of the current methods and technologies in aerial robotics have been trialed primarily in indoor testbeds or outdoor settings under strictly controlled conditions, always within the line of sight of human operators. Additionally, these methods and technologies have typically been evaluated in isolation, lacking comprehensive integration. This paper introduces the first autonomous system that combines various innovative aerial robots. This system is designed for extended-range inspections beyond the visual line of sight, features aerial manipulators for maintenance tasks, and includes support mechanisms for human operators working at elevated heights. The paper further discusses the successful validation of this system on numerous electrical power lines, with aerial robots executing flights over 10 kilometers away from their ground control stations.

Existing road pothole detection approaches can be classified as computer vision-based or machine learning-based. The former approaches typically employ 2-D image analysis/understanding or 3-D point cloud modeling and segmentation algorithms to detect road potholes from vision sensor data. The latter approaches generally address road pothole detection using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in an end-to-end manner. However, road potholes are not necessarily ubiquitous and it is challenging to prepare a large well-annotated dataset for CNN training. In this regard, while computer vision-based methods were the mainstream research trend in the past decade, machine learning-based methods were merely discussed. Recently, we published the first stereo vision-based road pothole detection dataset and a novel disparity transformation algorithm, whereby the damaged and undamaged road areas can be highly distinguished. However, there are no benchmarks currently available for state-of-the-art (SoTA) CNNs trained using either disparity images or transformed disparity images. Therefore, in this paper, we first discuss the SoTA CNNs designed for semantic segmentation and evaluate their performance for road pothole detection with extensive experiments. Additionally, inspired by graph neural network (GNN), we propose a novel CNN layer, referred to as graph attention layer (GAL), which can be easily deployed in any existing CNN to optimize image feature representations for semantic segmentation. Our experiments compare GAL-DeepLabv3+, our best-performing implementation, with nine SoTA CNNs on three modalities of training data: RGB images, disparity images, and transformed disparity images. The experimental results suggest that our proposed GAL-DeepLabv3+ achieves the best overall pothole detection accuracy on all training data modalities.

Abstract--Over the past decade, many research articles have been published in the area of autonomous driving. However, most of them focus only on a specific technological area, such as visual environment perception, vehicle control, etc. Furthermore, due to fast advances in the self-driving car technology, such articles become obsolete very fast. Junior [7] software architecture has Over the past decade, with a number of autonomous system five parts: sensor interface, perception, navigation (planning technology breakthroughs being witnessed in the world, the and control), drive-by-wire interface (user interface and vehicle race to commercialize Autonomous Cars (ACs) has become interface) and global services. Boss [8] uses a threelayer fiercer than ever [1].