Accurate monitoring of pest population dynamics is crucial for informed decision-making in precision agriculture. Currently, mainstream image-based pest counting methods primarily rely on image processing combined with machine learning or deep learning for pest counting. However, these methods have limitations and struggle to handle situations involving pest occlusion. To address this issue, this paper proposed a robotic stirring method with trajectory optimization and adaptive speed control for accurate pest counting in water traps. First, we developed an automated stirring system for pest counting in yellow water traps based on a robotic arm. Stirring alters the distribution of pests in the yellow water trap, making some of the occluded individuals visible for detection and counting. Then, we investigated the impact of different stirring trajectories on pest counting performance and selected the optimal trajectory for pest counting. Specifically, we designed six representative stirring trajectories, including circle, square, triangle, spiral, four small circles, and random lines, for the robotic arm to stir. And by comparing the overall average counting error and counting confidence of different stirring trajectories across various pest density scenarios, we determined the optimal trajectory. Finally, we proposed a counting confidence-driven closed-loop control system to achieve adaptive-speed stirring. It uses changes in pest counting confidence between consecutive frames as feedback to adjust the stirring speed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study dedicated to investigating the effects of different stirring trajectories on object counting in the dynamic liquid environment and to implement adaptive-speed stirring for this type of task. Experimental results show ...

Scene graphs enhance 3D mapping capabilities in robotics by understanding the relationships between different spatial elements, such as rooms and objects. Recent research extends scene graphs to hierarchical layers, adding and leveraging constraints across these levels. This approach is tightly integrated with pose-graph optimization, improving both localization and mapping accuracy simultaneously. However, when segmenting spatial characteristics, consistently recognizing rooms becomes challenging due to variations in viewpoints and limited field of view (FOV) of sensors. For example, existing real-time approaches often over-segment large rooms into smaller, non-functional spaces that are not useful for localization and mapping due to the time-dependent method. Conversely, their voxel-based room segmentation method often under-segment in complex cases like not fully enclosed 3D space that are non-traversable for ground robots or humans, leading to false constraints in pose-graph optimization. We propose a traversability-aware room segmentation method that considers the interaction between robots and surroundings, with consistent feasibility of traversability information. This enhances both the semantic coherence and computational efficiency of pose-graph optimization. Improved performance is demonstrated through the re-detection frequency of the same rooms in a dataset involving repeated traversals of the same space along the same path, as well as the optimization time consumption.

Large language models (LLMs) are now being used with increasing frequency as chat bots, tasked with the summarizing information or generating text and code in accordance with user instructions. The rapid increase in reasoning capabilities and inference speed of LLMs has revealed their remarkable potential for applications extending beyond the domain of chat bots to general machine learning tasks. This work is conducted out of the curiosity about such potential. In this work, we propose a framework Mockingbird to adapt LLMs to general machine learning tasks and evaluate its performance and scalability on several general machine learning tasks. The core concept of this framework is instructing LLMs to role-play functions and reflect on its mistakes to improve itself. Our evaluation and analysis result shows that LLM-driven machine learning methods, such as Mockingbird, can achieve acceptable results on common machine learning tasks; however, solely reflecting on its own currently cannot outperform the effect of domain-specific documents and feedback from human experts.

This study proposes the Cognitive Pairwise Comparison Classification Model Selection (CPC-CMS) framework for document-level sentiment analysis. The CPC, based on expert knowledge judgment, is used to calculate the weights of evaluation criteria, including accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, specificity, Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC), Cohen's Kappa (Kappa), and efficiency. Naive Bayes, Linear Support Vector Classification (LSVC), Random Forest, Logistic Regression, Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), and A Lite Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (ALBERT) are chosen as classification baseline models. A weighted decision matrix consisting of classification evaluation scores with respect to criteria weights, is formed to select the best classification model for a classification problem. Three open datasets of social media are used to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed CPC-CMS. Based on our simulation, for evaluation results excluding the time factor, ALBERT is the best for the three datasets; if time consumption is included, no single model always performs better than the other models. The CPC-CMS can be applied to the other classification applications in different areas.

As machine learning inferences increasingly move to edge devices, adapting to diverse computational capabilities, hardware, and memory constraints becomes more critical. Instead of relying on a pre-trained model fixed for all future inference queries across diverse edge devices, we argue that planning an inference pattern with a request-specific model tailored to the device's computational capacity, accuracy requirements, and time constraints is more cost-efficient and robust to diverse scenarios. To this end, we propose an accuracy-aware and workload-balanced inference system that integrates joint model quantization and inference partitioning. In this approach, the server dynamically responds to inference queries by sending a quantized model and adaptively sharing the inference workload with the device. Meanwhile, the device's computational power, channel capacity, and accuracy requirements are considered when deciding. Furthermore, we introduce a new optimization framework for the inference system, incorporating joint model quantization and partitioning. Our approach optimizes layer-wise quantization bit width and partition points to minimize time consumption and cost while accounting for varying accuracy requirements of tasks through an accuracy degradation metric in our optimization model. To our knowledge, this work represents the first exploration of optimizing quantization layer-wise bit-width in the inference serving system, by introducing theoretical measurement of accuracy degradation. Simulation results demonstrate a substantial reduction in overall time and power consumption, with computation payloads decreasing by over 80% and accuracy degradation kept below 1%.

Pruning is a widely used method for compressing Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), where less relevant parameters are removed from a DNN model to reduce its size. However, removing parameters reduces model accuracy, so pruning is typically combined with fine-tuning, and sometimes other operations such as rewinding weights, to recover accuracy. A common approach is to repeatedly prune and then fine-tune, with increasing amounts of model parameters being removed in each step. While straightforward to implement, pruning pipelines that follow this approach are computationally expensive due to the need for repeated fine-tuning. In this paper we propose ICE-Pruning, an iterative pruning pipeline for DNNs that significantly decreases the time required for pruning by reducing the overall cost of fine-tuning, while maintaining a similar accuracy to existing pruning pipelines. ICE-Pruning is based on three main components: i) an automatic mechanism to determine after which pruning steps fine-tuning should be performed; ii) a freezing strategy for faster fine-tuning in each pruning step; and iii) a custom pruning-aware learning rate scheduler to further improve the accuracy of each pruning step and reduce the overall time consumption. We also propose an efficient auto-tuning stage for the hyperparameters (e.g., freezing percentage) introduced by the three components. We evaluate ICE-Pruning on several DNN models and datasets, showing that it can accelerate pruning by up to 9.61x. Code is available at https://github.com/gicLAB/ICE-Pruning

Time series anomaly detection (TSAD) has been a research hotspot in both academia and industry in recent years. Deep learning methods have become the mainstream research direction due to their excellent performance. However, new viewpoints have emerged in recent TSAD research. Deep learning is not required for TSAD due to limitations such as slow deep learning speed. The Broad Learning System (BLS) is a shallow network framework that benefits from its ease of optimization and speed. It has been shown to outperform machine learning approaches while remaining competitive with deep learning. Based on the current situation of TSAD, we propose the Contrastive Patch-based Broad Learning System (CPatchBLS). This is a new exploration of patching technique and BLS, providing a new perspective for TSAD. We construct Dual-PatchBLS as a base through patching and Simple Kernel Perturbation (SKP) and utilize contrastive learning to capture the differences between normal and abnormal data under different representations. To compensate for the temporal semantic loss caused by various patching, we propose CPatchBLS with model level integration, which takes advantage of BLS's fast feature to build model-level integration and improve model detection. Using five real-world series anomaly detection datasets, we confirmed the method's efficacy, outperforming previous deep learning and machine learning methods while retaining a high level of computing efficiency.

Continuum manipulators have gained significant attention as a promising alternative to rigid manipulators, offering notable advantages in terms of flexibility and adaptability within intricate workspace. However, the broader application of high degree-of-freedom (DoF) continuum manipulators in intricate environments with multiple obstacles necessitates the development of an efficient inverse kinematics (IK) solver specifically tailored for such scenarios. Existing IK methods face challenges in terms of computational cost and solution guarantees for high DoF continuum manipulators, particularly within intricate workspace that obstacle avoidance is needed. To address these challenges, we have developed a novel IK solver for continuum manipulators that incorporates obstacle avoidance and other constraints like length, orientation, etc., in intricate environments, drawing inspiration from optimization-based path planning methods. Through simulations, our proposed method showcases superior flexibility, efficiency with increasing DoF, and robust performance within highly unstructured workspace, achieved with acceptable latency.

The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP)-based real-time communications (RTC) applications, exemplified by video conferencing, have experienced an unparalleled surge in popularity and development in recent years. In pursuit of optimizing their performance, the prediction of Quality of Service (QoS) metrics emerges as a pivotal endeavor, bolstering network monitoring and proactive solutions. However, contemporary approaches are confined to individual RTP flows and metrics, falling short in relationship capture and computational efficiency. To this end, we propose Packet-to-Prediction (P2P), a novel deep learning (DL) framework that hinges on raw packets to simultaneously process concurrent RTP flows and perform end-to-end prediction of multiple QoS metrics. Specifically, we implement a streamlined architecture, namely length-free Transformer with cross and neighbourhood attention, capable of handling an unlimited number of RTP flows, and employ a multi-task learning paradigm to forecast four key metrics in a single shot. Our work is based on extensive traffic collected during real video calls, and conclusively, P2P excels comparative models in both prediction performance and temporal efficiency.