30,290 research outputs found
Collaborative search on the plane without communication
We generalize the classical cow-path problem [7, 14, 38, 39] into a question
that is relevant for collective foraging in animal groups. Specifically, we
consider a setting in which k identical (probabilistic) agents, initially
placed at some central location, collectively search for a treasure in the
two-dimensional plane. The treasure is placed at a target location by an
adversary and the goal is to find it as fast as possible as a function of both
k and D, where D is the distance between the central location and the target.
This is biologically motivated by cooperative, central place foraging such as
performed by ants around their nest. In this type of search there is a strong
preference to locate nearby food sources before those that are further away.
Our focus is on trying to find what can be achieved if communication is limited
or altogether absent. Indeed, to avoid overlaps agents must be highly dispersed
making communication difficult. Furthermore, if agents do not commence the
search in synchrony then even initial communication is problematic. This holds,
in particular, with respect to the question of whether the agents can
communicate and conclude their total number, k. It turns out that the knowledge
of k by the individual agents is crucial for performance. Indeed, it is a
straightforward observation that the time required for finding the treasure is
(D + D 2 /k), and we show in this paper that this bound can be matched
if the agents have knowledge of k up to some constant approximation. We present
an almost tight bound for the competitive penalty that must be paid, in the
running time, if agents have no information about k. Specifically, on the
negative side, we show that in such a case, there is no algorithm whose
competitiveness is O(log k). On the other hand, we show that for every constant
\epsilon \textgreater{} 0, there exists a rather simple uniform search
algorithm which is -competitive. In addition, we give
a lower bound for the setting in which agents are given some estimation of k.
As a special case, this lower bound implies that for any constant \epsilon
\textgreater{} 0, if each agent is given a (one-sided)
-approximation to k, then the competitiveness is (log k).
Informally, our results imply that the agents can potentially perform well
without any knowledge of their total number k, however, to further improve,
they must be given a relatively good approximation of k. Finally, we propose a
uniform algorithm that is both efficient and extremely simple suggesting its
relevance for actual biological scenarios
Lower Bounds for Shoreline Searching With 2 or More Robots
Searching for a line on the plane with unit speed robots is a classic
online problem that dates back to the 50's, and for which competitive ratio
upper bounds are known for every . In this work we improve the best
lower bound known for robots from 1.5993 to 3. Moreover we prove that the
competitive ratio is at least for robots, and at least
for robots. Our lower bounds match the best upper
bounds known for , hence resolving these cases. To the best of our
knowledge, these are the first lower bounds proven for the cases of
this several decades old problem.Comment: This is an updated version of the paper with the same title which
will appear in the proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on
Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2019) Neuchatel, Switzerland, July
17-19, 201
Weakly Supervised Object Localization with Multi-fold Multiple Instance Learning
Object category localization is a challenging problem in computer vision.
Standard supervised training requires bounding box annotations of object
instances. This time-consuming annotation process is sidestepped in weakly
supervised learning. In this case, the supervised information is restricted to
binary labels that indicate the absence/presence of object instances in the
image, without their locations. We follow a multiple-instance learning approach
that iteratively trains the detector and infers the object locations in the
positive training images. Our main contribution is a multi-fold multiple
instance learning procedure, which prevents training from prematurely locking
onto erroneous object locations. This procedure is particularly important when
using high-dimensional representations, such as Fisher vectors and
convolutional neural network features. We also propose a window refinement
method, which improves the localization accuracy by incorporating an objectness
prior. We present a detailed experimental evaluation using the PASCAL VOC 2007
dataset, which verifies the effectiveness of our approach.Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine
Intelligence (TPAMI
Semantic Part Segmentation using Compositional Model combining Shape and Appearance
In this paper, we study the problem of semantic part segmentation for
animals. This is more challenging than standard object detection, object
segmentation and pose estimation tasks because semantic parts of animals often
have similar appearance and highly varying shapes. To tackle these challenges,
we build a mixture of compositional models to represent the object boundary and
the boundaries of semantic parts. And we incorporate edge, appearance, and
semantic part cues into the compositional model. Given part-level segmentation
annotation, we develop a novel algorithm to learn a mixture of compositional
models under various poses and viewpoints for certain animal classes.
Furthermore, a linear complexity algorithm is offered for efficient inference
of the compositional model using dynamic programming. We evaluate our method
for horse and cow using a newly annotated dataset on Pascal VOC 2010 which has
pixelwise part labels. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of
our method
Quantum Particles as Conceptual Entities: A Possible Explanatory Framework for Quantum Theory
We put forward a possible new interpretation and explanatory framework for
quantum theory. The basic hypothesis underlying this new framework is that
quantum particles are conceptual entities. More concretely, we propose that
quantum particles interact with ordinary matter, nuclei, atoms, molecules,
macroscopic material entities, measuring apparatuses, ..., in a similar way to
how human concepts interact with memory structures, human minds or artificial
memories. We analyze the most characteristic aspects of quantum theory, i.e.
entanglement and non-locality, interference and superposition, identity and
individuality in the light of this new interpretation, and we put forward a
specific explanation and understanding of these aspects. The basic hypothesis
of our framework gives rise in a natural way to a Heisenberg uncertainty
principle which introduces an understanding of the general situation of 'the
one and the many' in quantum physics. A specific view on macro and micro
different from the common one follows from the basic hypothesis and leads to an
analysis of Schrodinger's Cat paradox and the measurement problem different
from the existing ones. We reflect about the influence of this new quantum
interpretation and explanatory framework on the global nature and evolutionary
aspects of the world and human worldviews, and point out potential explanations
for specific situations, such as the generation problem in particle physics,
the confinement of quarks and the existence of dark matter.Comment: 45 pages, 10 figure
Compositional Falsification of Cyber-Physical Systems with Machine Learning Components
Cyber-physical systems (CPS), such as automotive systems, are starting to
include sophisticated machine learning (ML) components. Their correctness,
therefore, depends on properties of the inner ML modules. While learning
algorithms aim to generalize from examples, they are only as good as the
examples provided, and recent efforts have shown that they can produce
inconsistent output under small adversarial perturbations. This raises the
question: can the output from learning components can lead to a failure of the
entire CPS? In this work, we address this question by formulating it as a
problem of falsifying signal temporal logic (STL) specifications for CPS with
ML components. We propose a compositional falsification framework where a
temporal logic falsifier and a machine learning analyzer cooperate with the aim
of finding falsifying executions of the considered model. The efficacy of the
proposed technique is shown on an automatic emergency braking system model with
a perception component based on deep neural networks
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