Multi-robot autonomous exploration in an unknown environment is an important application in robotics.Traditional exploration methods only use information around frontier points or viewpoints, ignoring spatial information of unknown areas. Moreover, finding the exact optimal solution for multi-robot task allocation is NP-hard, resulting in significant computational time consumption. To address these issues, we present a hierarchical multi-robot exploration framework using a new modeling method called RegionGraph. The proposed approach makes two main contributions: 1) A new modeling method for unexplored areas that preserves their spatial information across the entire space in a weighted graph called RegionGraph. 2) A hierarchical multi-robot exploration framework that decomposes the global exploration task into smaller subtasks, reducing the frequency of global planning and enabling asynchronous exploration. The proposed method is validated through both simulation and real-world experiments, demonstrating a 20% improvement in efficiency compared to existing methods.

Precise identification of quantum states under noise constraints is essential for quantum information processing. In this study, we generalize the classical best arm identification problem to quantum domains, designing methods for identifying the purest one within $K$ unknown $n$-qubit quantum states using $N$ samples. %, with direct applications in quantum computation and quantum communication. We propose two distinct algorithms: (1) an algorithm employing incoherent measurements, achieving error $\exp\left(- \Omega\left(\frac{N H_1}{\log(K) 2^n }\right) \right)$, and (2) an algorithm utilizing coherent measurements, achieving error $\exp\left(- \Omega\left(\frac{N H_2}{\log(K) }\right) \right)$, highlighting the power of quantum memory. Furthermore, we establish a lower bound by proving that all strategies with fixed two-outcome incoherent POVM must suffer error probability exceeding $ \exp\left( - O\left(\frac{NH_1}{2^n}\right)\right)$. This framework provides concrete design principles for overcoming sampling bottlenecks in quantum technologies.

Federated learning (FL) enables collaborative model training while preserving data privacy, but its decentralized nature exposes it to client-side data poisoning attacks (DPAs) and model poisoning attacks (MPAs) that degrade global model performance. While numerous proposed defenses claim substantial effectiveness, their evaluation is typically done in isolation with limited attack strategies, raising concerns about their validity. Additionally, existing studies overlook the mutual effectiveness of defenses against both DPAs and MPAs, causing fragmentation in this field. This paper aims to provide a unified benchmark and analysis of defenses against DPAs and MPAs, clarifying the distinction between these two similar but slightly distinct domains. We present a systematic taxonomy of poisoning attacks and defense strategies, outlining their design, strengths, and limitations. Then, a unified comparative evaluation across FL algorithms and data heterogeneity is conducted to validate their individual and mutual effectiveness and derive key insights for design principles and future research. Along with the analysis, we frame our work to a unified benchmark, FLPoison, with high modularity and scalability to evaluate 15 representative poisoning attacks and 17 defense strategies, facilitating future research in this domain. Code is available at https://github.com/vio1etus/FLPoison.

Physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) is widely needed in many fields, such as industrial manipulation, home services, and medical rehabilitation, and puts higher demands on the safety of robots. Due to the uncertainty of the working environment, the pHRI may receive unexpected impact interference, which affects the safety and smoothness of the task execution. The commonly used linear admittance control (L-AC) can cope well with high-frequency small-amplitude noise, but for medium-frequency high-intensity impact, the effect is not as good. Inspired by the solid-liquid phase change nature of shear-thickening fluid, we propose a Shear-thickening Fluid Control (SFC) that can achieve both an easy human-robot collaboration and resistance to impact interference. The SFC's stability, passivity, and phase trajectory are analyzed in detail, the frequency and time domain properties are quantified, and parameter constraints in discrete control and coupled stability conditions are provided. We conducted simulations to compare the frequency and time domain characteristics of L-AC, nonlinear admittance controller (N-AC), and SFC, and validated their dynamic properties. In real-world experiments, we compared the performance of L-AC, N-AC, and SFC in both fixed and mobile manipulators. L-AC exhibits weak resistance to impact. N-AC can resist moderate impacts but not high-intensity ones, and may exhibit self-excited oscillations. In contrast, SFC demonstrated superior impact resistance and maintained stable collaboration, enhancing comfort in cooperative water delivery tasks. Additionally, a case study was conducted in a factory setting, further affirming the SFC's capability in facilitating human-robot collaborative manipulation and underscoring its potential in industrial applications.

Transfer learning aims to transfer knowledge or information from a source domain to a relevant target domain. In this paper, we understand transfer learning from the perspectives of knowledge transferability and trustworthiness. This involves two research questions: How is knowledge transferability quantitatively measured and enhanced across domains? Can we trust the transferred knowledge in the transfer learning process? To answer these questions, this paper provides a comprehensive review of trustworthy transfer learning from various aspects, including problem definitions, theoretical analysis, empirical algorithms, and real-world applications. Specifically, we summarize recent theories and algorithms for understanding knowledge transferability under (within-domain) IID and non-IID assumptions. In addition to knowledge transferability, we review the impact of trustworthiness on transfer learning, e.g., whether the transferred knowledge is adversarially robust or algorithmically fair, how to transfer the knowledge under privacy-preserving constraints, etc. Beyond discussing the current advancements, we highlight the open questions and future directions for understanding transfer learning in a reliable and trustworthy manner.

In recent years, advanced U-like networks have demonstrated remarkable performance in medical image segmentation tasks. However, their drawbacks, including excessive parameters, high computational complexity, and slow inference speed, pose challenges for practical implementation in scenarios with limited computational resources. Existing lightweight U-like networks have alleviated some of these problems, but they often have pre-designed structures and consist of inseparable modules, limiting their application scenarios. In this paper, we propose three plug-and-play decoders by employing different discretization methods of the neural memory Ordinary Differential Equations (nmODEs). These decoders integrate features at various levels of abstraction by processing information from skip connections and performing numerical operations on upward path. Through experiments on the PH2, ISIC2017, and ISIC2018 datasets, we embed these decoders into different U-like networks, demonstrating their effectiveness in significantly reducing the number of parameters and FLOPs while maintaining performance. In summary, the proposed discretized nmODEs decoders are capable of reducing the number of parameters by about 20% ~ 50% and FLOPs by up to 74%, while possessing the potential to adapt to all U-like networks. Our code is available at https://github.com/nayutayuki/Lightweight-nmODE-Decoders-For-U-like-networks.

Legged robots possess inherent advantages in traversing complex 3D terrains. However, previous work on low-cost quadruped robots with egocentric vision systems has been limited by a narrow front-facing view and exteroceptive noise, restricting omnidirectional mobility in such environments. While building a voxel map through a hierarchical structure can refine exteroception processing, it introduces significant computational overhead, noise, and delays. In this paper, we present MOVE, a one-stage end-to-end learning framework capable of multi-skill omnidirectional legged locomotion with limited view in 3D environments, just like what a real animal can do. When movement aligns with the robot's line of sight, exteroceptive perception enhances locomotion, enabling extreme climbing and leaping. When vision is obstructed or the direction of movement lies outside the robot's field of view, the robot relies on proprioception for tasks like crawling and climbing stairs. We integrate all these skills into a single neural network by introducing a pseudo-siamese network structure combining supervised and contrastive learning which helps the robot infer its surroundings beyond its field of view. Experiments in both simulations and real-world scenarios demonstrate the robustness of our method, broadening the operational environments for robotics with egocentric vision.

Traversing risky terrains with sparse footholds presents significant challenges for legged robots, requiring precise foot placement in safe areas. Current learning-based methods often rely on implicit feature representations without supervising physically significant estimation targets. This limits the policy's ability to fully understand complex terrain structures, which is critical for generating accurate actions. In this paper, we utilize end-to-end reinforcement learning to traverse risky terrains with high sparsity and randomness. Our approach integrates proprioception with single-view depth images to reconstruct robot's local terrain, enabling a more comprehensive representation of terrain information. Meanwhile, by incorporating implicit and explicit estimations of the robot's state and its surroundings, we improve policy's environmental understanding, leading to more precise actions. We deploy the proposed framework on a low-cost quadrupedal robot, achieving agile and adaptive locomotion across various challenging terrains and demonstrating outstanding performance in real-world scenarios. Video at: http://youtu.be/ReQAR4D6tuc.

Federated neuromorphic learning (FedNL) leverages event-driven spiking neural networks and federated learning frameworks to effectively execute intelligent analysis tasks over amounts of distributed low-power devices but also perform vulnerability to poisoning attacks. The threat of backdoor attacks on traditional deep neural networks typically comes from time-invariant data. However, in FedNL, unknown threats may be hidden in time-varying spike signals. In this paper, we start to explore a novel vulnerability of FedNL-based systems with the concept of time division multiplexing, termed Spikewhisper, which allows attackers to evade detection as much as possible, as multiple malicious clients can imperceptibly poison with different triggers at different timeslices. In particular, the stealthiness of Spikewhisper is derived from the time-domain divisibility of global triggers, in which each malicious client pastes only one local trigger to a certain timeslice in the neuromorphic sample, and also the polarity and motion of each local trigger can be configured by attackers. Extensive experiments based on two different neuromorphic datasets demonstrate that the attack success rate of Spikewispher is higher than the temporally centralized attacks. Besides, it is validated that the effect of Spikewispher is sensitive to the trigger duration.

We focus on the task of unknown object rearrangement, where a robot is supposed to re-configure the objects into a desired goal configuration specified by an RGB-D image. Recent works explore unknown object rearrangement systems by incorporating learning-based perception modules. However, they are sensitive to perception error, and pay less attention to task-level performance. In this paper, we aim to develop an effective system for unknown object rearrangement amidst perception noise. We theoretically reveal the noisy perception impacts grasp and place in a decoupled way, and show such a decoupled structure is non-trivial to improve task optimality. We propose GSP, a dual-loop system with the decoupled structure as prior. For the inner loop, we learn an active seeing policy for self-confident object matching to improve the perception of place. For the outer loop, we learn a grasp policy aware of object matching and grasp capability guided by task-level rewards. We leverage the foundation model CLIP for object matching, policy learning and self-termination. A series of experiments indicate that GSP can conduct unknown object rearrangement with higher completion rate and less steps.