Indoor localization in GPS-denied environments is crucial for applications like emergency response and assistive navigation. Vision-based methods such as PALMS enable infrastructure-free localization using only a floor plan and a stationary scan, but are limited by the short range of smartphone LiDAR and ambiguity in indoor layouts. We propose PALMS$+$, a modular, image-based system that addresses these challenges by reconstructing scale-aligned 3D point clouds from posed RGB images using a foundation monocular depth estimation model (Depth Pro), followed by geometric layout matching via convolution with the floor plan. PALMS$+$ outputs a posterior over the location and orientation, usable for direct or sequential localization. Evaluated on the Structured3D and a custom campus dataset consisting of 80 observations across four large campus buildings, PALMS$+$ outperforms PALMS and F3Loc in stationary localization accuracy -- without requiring any training. Furthermore, when integrated with a particle filter for sequential localization on 33 real-world trajectories, PALMS$+$ achieved lower localization errors compared to other methods, demonstrating robustness for camera-free tracking and its potential for infrastructure-free applications. Code and data are available at https://github.com/Head-inthe-Cloud/PALMS-Plane-based-Accessible-Indoor-Localization-Using-Mobile-Smartphones

We study a system with finitely many groups of multi-action bandit processes, each of which is a Markov decision process (MDP) with finite state and action spaces and potentially different transition matrices when taking different actions. The bandit processes of the same group share the same state and action spaces and, given the same action that is taken, the same transition matrix. All the bandit processes across various groups are subject to multiple weakly coupled constraints over their state and action variables. Unlike the past studies that focused on the offline case, we consider the online case without assuming full knowledge of transition matrices and reward functions a priori and propose an effective scheme that enables simultaneous learning and control. We prove the convergence of the relevant processes in both the timeline and the number of the bandit processes, referred to as the convergence in the time and the magnitude dimensions. Moreover, we prove that the relevant processes converge exponentially fast in the magnitude dimension, leading to exponentially diminishing performance deviation between the proposed online algorithms and offline optimality. Jing Fu is with Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, School of Engineering, STEM College, RMIT University, Australia (e-mail: jing.fu@rmit.edu.au). Bill Moran is with Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the University of Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia (e-mail:wmoran@unimelb.edu.au).

In this paper the authors essentially propose to train a MLP to generate proposal samples which are used to estimate the partition function Z of an undirected model. Instead of using straight importance sampling to estimate Z (which would be an unbiased estimator for Z), they propose a bound that overestimates Z 2 *in expectation*. While the authors highlight around line 70 that this only works when q is sufficiently close to p, I think it should be made even clearer that almost any estimate with a finite number of samples will *underestimate* Z 2 when q is not sufficiently close. I agree with the authors that this is probably not an issue at the beginning of training -- but I imagine it becomes an issue as p becomes multimodal/peaky towards convergence, when q cannot follow that distribution anymore. Which begs the question: Why would we train an undirected model p, when the training and evaluation method breaks down around the point when the jointly trained and properly normalized proposal distribution q cannot follow it anymore?

The integration of pretrained language models (PLMs) like BERT and GPT has revolutionized NLP, particularly for English, but it has also created linguistic imbalances. This paper strategically identifies the need for linguistic equity by examining several knowledge editing techniques in multilingual contexts. We evaluate the performance of models such as Mistral, TowerInstruct, OpenHathi, Tamil-Llama, and Kan-Llama across languages including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Hindi, Tamil, and Kannada. Our research identifies significant discrepancies in normal and merged models concerning cross-lingual consistency. We employ strategies like 'each language for itself' (ELFI) and 'each language for others' (ELFO) to stress-test these models. Our findings demonstrate the potential for LLMs to overcome linguistic barriers, laying the groundwork for future research in achieving linguistic inclusivity in AI technologies.

A central tenet of probabilistic programming is that a model is specified exactly once in a canonical representation which is usable by inference algorithms. We describe JointDistributions, a family of declarative representations of directed graphical models in TensorFlow Probability.

Reinforcement learning for embodied agents is a challenging problem. The accumulated reward to be optimized is often a very rugged function, and gradient methods are impaired by many local optimizers. We demonstrate, in an experimental setting, that incorporating an intrinsic reward can smoothen the optimization landscape while preserving the global optimizers of interest. We show that policy gradient optimization for locomotion in a complex morphology is significantly improved when supplementing the extrinsic reward by an intrinsic reward defined in terms of the mutual information of time consecutive sensor readings.

Generalized plans, such as plans with loops, are widely used in AI. Among other things, they are straightforward to execute, they allow action repetition, and they solve multiple problem instances. However, the correctness of such plans is non-trivial to define, making it difficult to provide a clear specification of what we should be looking for. Proposals in the literature, such as strong planning, are universally adopted by the community, but were initially formulated for finite state systems. There is yet to emerge a study on the sensitivity of such correctness notions to the structural assumptions of the underlying plan framework. In this paper, we are interested in the applicability and correctness of generalized plans in domains that are possibly unbounded, and/or stochastic, and/or continuous. To that end, we introduce a generic controller framework to capture different types of planning domains. Using this framework, we then study a number of termination and goal satisfaction criteria from first principles, relate them to existing proposals, and show plans that meet these criteria in the different types of domains.