4,055 research outputs found
PyDEC: Software and Algorithms for Discretization of Exterior Calculus
This paper describes the algorithms, features and implementation of PyDEC, a
Python library for computations related to the discretization of exterior
calculus. PyDEC facilitates inquiry into both physical problems on manifolds as
well as purely topological problems on abstract complexes. We describe
efficient algorithms for constructing the operators and objects that arise in
discrete exterior calculus, lowest order finite element exterior calculus and
in related topological problems. Our algorithms are formulated in terms of
high-level matrix operations which extend to arbitrary dimension. As a result,
our implementations map well to the facilities of numerical libraries such as
NumPy and SciPy. The availability of such libraries makes Python suitable for
prototyping numerical methods. We demonstrate how PyDEC is used to solve
physical and topological problems through several concise examples.Comment: Revised as per referee reports. Added information on scalability,
removed redundant text, emphasized the role of matrix based algorithms,
shortened length of pape
Estimating Sensor Motion from Wide-Field Optical Flow on a Log-Dipolar Sensor
Log-polar image architectures, motivated by the structure of the human visual field, have long been investigated in computer vision for use in estimating motion parameters from an optical flow vector field. Practical problems with this approach have been: (i) dependence on assumed alignment of the visual and motion axes; (ii) sensitivity to occlusion form moving and stationary objects in the central visual field, where much of the numerical sensitivity is concentrated; and (iii) inaccuracy of the log-polar architecture (which is an approximation to the central 20°) for wide-field biological vision. In the present paper, we show that an algorithm based on generalization of the log-polar architecture; termed the log-dipolar sensor, provides a large improvement in performance relative to the usual log-polar sampling. Specifically, our algorithm: (i) is tolerant of large misalignmnet of the optical and motion axes; (ii) is insensitive to significant occlusion by objects of unknown motion; and (iii) represents a more correct analogy to the wide-field structure of human vision. Using the Helmholtz-Hodge decomposition to estimate the optical flow vector field on a log-dipolar sensor, we demonstrate these advantages, using synthetic optical flow maps as well as natural image sequences
Graph-based Semi-Supervised & Active Learning for Edge Flows
We present a graph-based semi-supervised learning (SSL) method for learning
edge flows defined on a graph. Specifically, given flow measurements on a
subset of edges, we want to predict the flows on the remaining edges. To this
end, we develop a computational framework that imposes certain constraints on
the overall flows, such as (approximate) flow conservation. These constraints
render our approach different from classical graph-based SSL for vertex labels,
which posits that tightly connected nodes share similar labels and leverages
the graph structure accordingly to extrapolate from a few vertex labels to the
unlabeled vertices. We derive bounds for our method's reconstruction error and
demonstrate its strong performance on synthetic and real-world flow networks
from transportation, physical infrastructure, and the Web. Furthermore, we
provide two active learning algorithms for selecting informative edges on which
to measure flow, which has applications for optimal sensor deployment. The
first strategy selects edges to minimize the reconstruction error bound and
works well on flows that are approximately divergence-free. The second approach
clusters the graph and selects bottleneck edges that cross cluster-boundaries,
which works well on flows with global trends
Open-ended Learning in Symmetric Zero-sum Games
Zero-sum games such as chess and poker are, abstractly, functions that
evaluate pairs of agents, for example labeling them `winner' and `loser'. If
the game is approximately transitive, then self-play generates sequences of
agents of increasing strength. However, nontransitive games, such as
rock-paper-scissors, can exhibit strategic cycles, and there is no longer a
clear objective -- we want agents to increase in strength, but against whom is
unclear. In this paper, we introduce a geometric framework for formulating
agent objectives in zero-sum games, in order to construct adaptive sequences of
objectives that yield open-ended learning. The framework allows us to reason
about population performance in nontransitive games, and enables the
development of a new algorithm (rectified Nash response, PSRO_rN) that uses
game-theoretic niching to construct diverse populations of effective agents,
producing a stronger set of agents than existing algorithms. We apply PSRO_rN
to two highly nontransitive resource allocation games and find that PSRO_rN
consistently outperforms the existing alternatives.Comment: ICML 2019, final versio
Flow Smoothing and Denoising: Graph Signal Processing in the Edge-Space
This paper focuses on devising graph signal processing tools for the
treatment of data defined on the edges of a graph. We first show that
conventional tools from graph signal processing may not be suitable for the
analysis of such signals. More specifically, we discuss how the underlying
notion of a `smooth signal' inherited from (the typically considered variants
of) the graph Laplacian are not suitable when dealing with edge signals that
encode a notion of flow. To overcome this limitation we introduce a class of
filters based on the Edge-Laplacian, a special case of the Hodge-Laplacian for
simplicial complexes of order one. We demonstrate how this Edge-Laplacian leads
to low-pass filters that enforce (approximate) flow-conservation in the
processed signals. Moreover, we show how these new filters can be combined with
more classical Laplacian-based processing methods on the line-graph. Finally,
we illustrate the developed tools by denoising synthetic traffic flows on the
London street network.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figur
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