arXiv subjects

Guoyu Lu

Publications and source records attributed to Guoyu Lu.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

What Counts as Evidence? Epistemic Cue Utilization in Large Language Models

Which information actually shapes a language model's judgment when sources disagree? We study epistemic cue utilization through a controlled benchmark of 500 scenarios and five complementary tracks separating cue identification, cue influence, and competition between source, temporal, and presentation cues. Across 13 LLMs, nearly identical recognition of relative source reliability can accompany effects ranging from negligible to complete choice reversal when source histories are exchanged. The resulting profiles distinguish models that rely on source history from those more responsive to evidence lineage, event time, or presentation order. We then intervene on three Qwen checkpoints using matched sham material, fact restatement, structured evidence records, and an additional weighting principle. Restatement increases reliability sensitivity in the two 27B models, and adding the principle increases it by a further 39.2 and 47.2 percentage points relative to the ledger. The 9B model instead changes its sensitivity to evidence lineage without a comparable reliability response. Verified-state accuracy remains 100\% throughout these interventions. Together, the benchmark and interventions show that identifying an epistemic cue and allowing it to influence judgment are distinct, experimentally measurable aspects of model behavior.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2026

CellSplat4D: PSF-Aware 4D Gaussian Splatting for Sparse Robotic Live-Cell Imaging

A robotic microscope watching living cells cannot afford to look as often as it would like. Every volume it acquires costs photons the specimen does not get back, and time owed to other wells. What such a platform exists to produce is a record of individual cells through time: which cell is which from one volume to the next, and which cell divided into which two. Sampling sparsely breaks that record exactly where it matters, and the fault lies in the acquisition schedule rather than in the analysis software. We fill the gaps by reconstructing them, fitting a 4D Gaussian model to whatever volumes the hardware could afford. The model is a cloud of light-emitting blobs, each carrying a position, a shape and a lifetime. Being continuous in time, it renders any missing volume on demand, decoupling how often the robot analyses from how often it can afford to look. The microscope's point-spread function is measured from the data rather than inherited from acquisition metadata or left to the optimizer, because metadata inflates it and the optimizer cannot recover it at all: a wider blur around a smaller blob fits the images equally well. Each blob's lifetime is stored in frames rather than as a fraction of the recording, so that it denotes a fixed duration on any sequence. Unmeasured timesteps are supervised at coarse scale by a 3D U-Net that predicts the intermediate volume directly and estimates no motion field, since a dividing cell becomes two and no motion describes that. On two Cell Tracking Challenge sequences, a C. elegans embryo and a Chinese Hamster Ovarian (CHO), with fidelity scored per cell nucleus, our reconstruction holds the highest nucleus fidelity at every distance from an acquired frame, has the flattest decay across the gap, and best recovers focal planes it was never shown with graceful degradation across the gap.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2026

Seeing, Saying, but Not Using: From Reportable Spatial Facts to Usable States in Multimodal Large Language Models

A multimodal large language model that correctly reports a spatial fact does not necessarily use that fact in subsequent reasoning. To study this distinction, we introduce \textsc{SpaceConflict}, a benchmark of 23{,}196 inputs for the construction and use of spatial state. Under a unified Supported/Contradictory/Unknown judgment interface, it covers local fact binding (L1), relational composition (L2), cross-observation consistency (L3), and state judgment under transformation (L4). Posing a direct-state query, a full-transformation query, and an explicit-initial-state query on the same world reveals an availability--utilization gap: models recover the initial state from visual evidence yet fail when that state must drive a transformation. For Qwen3.5-9B, 50 of 100 sequences with a correctly recovered initial state fail the full transformation, and supplying the state explicitly repairs all 50; the gap narrows with scale but does not close. We therefore propose Operational State Supervision (OSS), which supervises task-relevant spatial states and their transformation trajectories and aligns shared facts across contexts. OSS improves paired accuracy on matched judgments most on L3 and L4, the levels that depend on organizing and using state. Evaluating multimodal spatial reasoning thus requires asking not only whether a model can see and state a spatial fact, but whether that fact becomes a usable state in subsequent computation.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2026

EngIntervene: Benchmarking Multimodal Engineering State Understanding and Design Intervention Reasoning

Multimodal engineering benchmarks largely evaluate static understanding, such as recognizing components, interpreting diagrams, or answering technical questions. This leaves a missing middle between engineering perception and full design generation: whether a model can use an understood system state to reason about relations, constraints, and the consequences of design changes. We introduce \textsc{EngIntervene}, a benchmark for this capability. It contains 3,229 questions across seven engineering domains and organizes evaluation into four levels: state grounding (T1), relational and mechanistic reasoning (T2), constraint-aware diagnosis (T3), and intervention reasoning (T4), which asks whether a proposed modification achieves its target while preserving required constraints. The tasks instantiate a unified engineering state representation spanning objects, relations, constraints, and design objectives, and T2--T4 are scored against structured reference answers with atomic criteria. Across open- and closed-weight multimodal models, stronger grounding does not reliably translate into better diagnosis or intervention, and the best open-weight model trails the best closed model by 14.7 percentage points on the T2--T4 average. Removing or shuffling visual evidence consistently degrades performance, while benchmark-specific supervised fine-tuning improves T1 but not T2--T4. T4 further exposes a large gap between satisfying individual revision criteria and producing a fully valid intervention. Engineering reasoning thus requires not only recovering the current state, but also reliably using it to reason about constraints and post-intervention consequences. Code and benchmark artifacts are available at https://github.com/changcv2021/EngIntervene

cs.CV↗

arXiv2026

Evaluation of OpenAI o1: Opportunities and Challenges of AGI

This comprehensive study evaluates the performance of OpenAI's o1-preview large language model across a diverse array of complex reasoning tasks, spanning multiple domains, including computer science, mathematics, natural sciences, medicine, linguistics, and social sciences. Through rigorous testing, o1-preview demonstrated remarkable capabilities, often achieving human-level or superior performance in areas ranging from coding challenges to scientific reasoning and from language processing to creative problem-solving. Key findings include: -83.3% success rate in solving complex competitive programming problems, surpassing many human experts. -Superior ability in generating coherent and accurate radiology reports, outperforming other evaluated models. -100% accuracy in high school-level mathematical reasoning tasks, providing detailed step-by-step solutions. -Advanced natural language inference capabilities across general and specialized domains like medicine. -Impressive performance in chip design tasks, outperforming specialized models in areas such as EDA script generation and bug analysis. -Remarkable proficiency in anthropology and geology, demonstrating deep understanding and reasoning in these specialized fields. -Strong capabilities in quantitative investing. O1 has comprehensive financial knowledge and statistical modeling skills. -Effective performance in social media analysis, including sentiment analysis and emotion recognition. The model excelled particularly in tasks requiring intricate reasoning and knowledge integration across various fields. While some limitations were observed, including occasional errors on simpler problems and challenges with certain highly specialized concepts, the overall results indicate significant progress towards artificial general intelligence.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2026

FlyCNS: Connectome-Grounded Information Organization for Communication-Constrained Embodied Control

Robotic bodies are inherently distributed in sensing and actuation, yet learning-based control still commonly relies on centralized information processing. This work studies the problem of information organization in communication-constrained embodied control: which computations should remain local, and which information is worth transmitting for whole-body coordination. We propose FlyCNS, an embodied information-organization framework inspired by the Drosophila brain--nerve-cord connectome. FlyCNS preserves local sensorimotor computation within each limb and enables selective long-range communication through separate ascending and descending routing pathways. From a real connectome, FlyCNS extracts the directional structural complexity of these two pathway types and uses it as a weak prior over communication allocation, while message content, transmission timing, and locomotion policies remain task-adaptive and are learned through reinforcement learning. In Unitree Go1 simulation, FlyCNS exhibits more graceful performance degradation as the communication budget is tightened. Under the most restrictive setting, it uses only about 21--22\% of the communication of the full-communication reference, while still maintaining a tracking score of approximately 0.882 under both command protocols, with a gap of no more than 6.1\% from the full-communication reference. These results indicate that real neural connectomes can inform not only the structural design of control networks, but also provide transferable inductive biases for information organization across embodiments, guiding robots in balancing local computation and long-range coordination under limited communication resources.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2026

When Do Learned Priors Help Visual Inertial Estimation? A Controlled Study of Prior Integration, Calibration, Initialization, and Backend Consistency

Learned components are increasingly integrated into geometric visual--inertial estimators to provide motion, depth, bias, uncertainty, or confidence cues. Yet it remains unclear whether gains arise from useful learned priors or from changes in the backend, calibration, initialization, temporal association, or evaluation gauge. We present a controlled framework for learning-augmented visual--inertial estimation that separates fusion gain from the incremental value of a learned prior and evaluates four evidence layers: local motion consistency, global trajectory accuracy, physical-state correctness, and numerical consistency. We instantiate the framework with a MonoViT-based monocular motion prior added as a local relative-motion factor to an unchanged VINS backend. We compare Original VINS and learned-prior VINS under matched sensor streams, timestamps, initialization, frontend/backend settings, and camera--IMU extrinsics, while probing calibration, initialization, state coupling, scale, bundle adjustment, and loop closure. On KITTI, with fixed reference extrinsics, translation APE RMSE is 31.4 m for Original VINS and 31.8 m with the learned prior. Across four recordings, the prior changes mean APE by only -0.2%, while a five-times-higher weight worsens it by 8.2%. Online extrinsic updates increase mean APE by 45.7% and 52.1%, respectively, while mean RPE changes by less than 2%. These results show that fusion performance alone cannot establish the value of learned priors. Reliable evaluation requires same-backend controls and joint analysis of prior compatibility, calibration, initialization, global drift, physical-state error, and backend consistency.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2026

Semantic Privacy Protection with Utility Preservation for 3D Point Clouds

Point cloud data face serious semantic privacy risks during acquisition, transmission, and cross-institutional sharing. Existing methods mostly rely on geometric perturbation or destructive encryption, which can reduce the recognizability of the original class but often impair downstream usability. This paper proposes a class-transfer-based semantic encryption framework for point clouds, aiming to conceal original class information while preserving task utility and supporting authorized recovery. Specifically, we construct a unified latent space with a shared-backbone Normalizing Flow, and combine LoRA and FiLM to achieve parameter-efficient class-conditional adaptation. We further introduce diffusion-guided flow alignment to regularize the latent distribution, construct an energy-based category transition graph, and obtain an optimal class-transfer table through global matching. Then, a latent-space Neural ODE continuously evolves source-class latents into target-class latents, which are decoded into target-class point clouds through the inverse flow. We adopt attacker-oriented metrics, including New-Class Recognition Rate (NCRR), Original-Class Leakage Rate (OCLR), and Original Label Recovery Rate (OLRR), to evaluate privacy and utility. Experiments on classification and segmentation benchmarks show that the proposed method achieves controllable semantic transformation, effectively reduces original-class semantic leakage, preserves downstream learnability in the protected domain, and supports reliable authorized reconstruction.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2026

Multimodal Plant Root Phenotyping with Integration of 3D Skeleton Extraction and Language Analysis

Plant root phenotyping is fundamental to understanding below-ground structures, optimizing crop management, and improving agricultural sustainability. This paper presents a multimodal robotic AI framework that integrates 3D skeleton extraction with language-guided reasoning for interpretable and data-efficient root analysis. We develop an unsupervised skeleton extraction network based on Weighted Laplacian Contraction (W-LBC) to generate high-fidelity structural representations from dense point clouds captured by robotic 3D sensing platforms. Quantitative morphological descriptors, including root count, length, branching angle, and density, are computed from the reconstructed skeleton graph to capture geometric and topological characteristics. Building on these features, we introduce an Evidence-First language modeling framework that fine-tunes GPT as an interactive analytical chatbot using automatically generated instruction--response pairs. Each training sample provides measurable evidence before natural-language reasoning, enabling the model to ground interpretation in quantitative morphology. Through supervised fine-tuning, GPT associates numerical structure with semantic meaning, producing biologically consistent explanations of growth patterns and adaptive traits. Experiments show that the structure-guided framework achieves robust, interpretable reasoning across 12 plant species with diverse root architectures. By integrating unsupervised 3D geometric perception with large-scale language understanding, our approach bridges quantitative analysis and semantic interpretation, establishing a unified paradigm for explainable robotic plant root phenotyping.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2026

Foundation-Assisted Active Learning for Object Detection Annotation

The annotation cost for remote sensing object detection is high, while existing active learning methods still face several challenges in object detection scenarios, including the coupling of localization and classification uncertainty, severe localization noise in the cold-start stage, and pseudo-diversity caused by high-recall candidate proposals. To address these issues, we propose a foundation-model-collaborative active learning and semi-automatic annotation framework for efficient construction of remote sensing object detection datasets. We build a dual-source mechanism consisting of a reference localization source (SA-source) based on UPN+SAM2 and a detector prediction source (OD-source), and further propose a Foundation-model-enhanced Dual-Source Uncertainty estimation to improve sample selection quality in the cold-start stage by jointly modeling localization consistency and classification confidence. Furthermore, we propose Object-Centric Diversity Sampling, which constructs object-level representations using DINOv2 features and SAM2 masks to improve sample coverage while suppressing pseudo-diversity. To address geometric noise in the semi-automatic annotation stage, we design Dual-Source Box Switching, which replaces noisy detector boxes with matched refined boxes from the SA-source, thereby reducing the manual burden of box refinement. Experiments on DIOR, HRSC2016, DOTAv2, and FAIR1M show that our method achieves superior or comparable results under most annotation budgets, with notably stronger cold-start sample efficiency in the low-budget regime.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2026

Fractal Autoregressive Depth Estimation with Continuous Token Diffusion

Monocular depth estimation can benefit from autoregressive (AR) generation, but direct AR modeling is hindered by the modality gap between RGB and depth, inefficient pixel-wise generation, and instability in continuous depth prediction. We propose a Fractal Visual Autoregressive Diffusion framework that reformulates depth estimation as a coarse-to-fine, next-scale autoregressive generation process. A VCFR module fuses multi-scale image features with current depth predictions to improve cross-modal conditioning, while a conditional denoising diffusion loss models depth distributions directly in continuous space and mitigates errors caused by discrete quantization. To improve computational efficiency, we organize the scale-wise generators into a fractal recursive architecture, reusing a base visual AR unit in a self-similar hierarchy. We further introduce an uncertainty-aware robust consensus aggregation scheme for multi-sample inference to improve fusion stability and provide a practical pixel-wise reliability estimate. Experiments on standard benchmarks demonstrate strong performance and validate the effectiveness of the proposed design.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2026

Automated Genomic Interpretation via Concept Bottleneck Models for Medical Robotics

We propose an automated genomic interpretation module that transforms raw DNA sequences into actionable, interpretable decisions suitable for integration into medical automation and robotic systems. Our framework combines Chaos Game Representation (CGR) with a Concept Bottleneck Model (CBM), enforcing predictions to flow through biologically meaningful concepts such as GC content, CpG density, and k mer motifs. To enhance reliability, we incorporate concept fidelity supervision, prior consistency alignment, KL distribution matching, and uncertainty calibration. Beyond accurate classification of HIV subtypes across both in-house and LANL datasets, our module delivers interpretable evidence that can be directly validated against biological priors. A cost aware recommendation layer further translates predictive outputs into decision policies that balance accuracy, calibration, and clinical utility, reducing unnecessary retests and improving efficiency. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed system achieves state of the art classification performance, superior concept prediction fidelity, and more favorable cost benefit trade-offs compared to existing baselines. By bridging the gap between interpretable genomic modeling and automated decision-making, this work establishes a reliable foundation for robotic and clinical automation in genomic medicine.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2026

Adaptive Event Stream Slicing for Open-Vocabulary Event-Based Object Detection via Vision-Language Knowledge Distillation

Event cameras offer advantages in object detection tasks due to high-speed response, low latency, and robustness to motion blur. However, event cameras lack texture and color information, making open-vocabulary detection particularly challenging. Current event-based detection methods are typically trained on predefined categories, limiting their ability to generalize to novel objects, where encountering previously unseen objects is common. Vision-language models (VLMs) have enabled open-vocabulary object detection in RGB images. However, the modality gap between images and event streams makes it ineffective to directly transfer CLIP to event data, as CLIP was not designed for event streams. To bridge this gap, we propose an event-image knowledge distillation framework that leverages CLIP's semantic understanding to achieve open-vocabulary object detection on event data. Instead of training CLIP directly on event streams, we use image frames as inputs to a teacher model, guiding the event-based student model to learn CLIP's rich visual representations. Through spatial attention-based distillation, the student network learns meaningful visual features directly from raw event inputs while inheriting CLIP's broad visual knowledge. Furthermore, to prevent information loss due to event data segmentation, we design a hybrid spiking neural network (SNN) and convolutional neural network (CNN) framework. Unlike fixed-group event segmentation methods, which often discard crucial temporal information, our SNN adaptively determines the optimal event segmentation moments, ensuring that key temporal features are extracted. The extracted event features are then processed by CNNs for object detection.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

Graph Integrated Multimodal Concept Bottleneck Model

With growing demand for interpretability in deep learning, especially in high stakes domains, Concept Bottleneck Models (CBMs) address this by inserting human understandable concepts into the prediction pipeline, but they are generally single modal and ignore structured concept relationships. To overcome these limitations, we present MoE-SGT, a reasoning driven framework that augments CBMs with a structure injecting Graph Transformer and a Mixture of Experts (MoE) module. We construct answer-concept and answer-question graphs for multimodal inputs to explicitly model the structured relationships among concepts. Subsequently, we integrate Graph Transformer to capture multi level dependencies, addressing the limitations of traditional Concept Bottleneck Models in modeling concept interactions. However, it still encounters bottlenecks in adapting to complex concept patterns. Therefore, we replace the feed forward layers with a Mixture of Experts (MoE) module, enabling the model to have greater capacity in learning diverse concept relationships while dynamically allocating reasoning tasks to different sub experts, thereby significantly enhancing the model's adaptability to complex concept reasoning. MoE-SGT achieves higher accuracy than other concept bottleneck networks on multiple datasets by modeling structured relationships among concepts and utilizing a dynamic expert selection mechanism.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

3D Plant Root Skeleton Detection and Extraction

Plant roots typically exhibit a highly complex and dense architecture, incorporating numerous slender lateral roots and branches, which significantly hinders the precise capture and modeling of the entire root system. Additionally, roots often lack sufficient texture and color information, making it difficult to identify and track root traits using visual methods. Previous research on roots has been largely confined to 2D studies; however, exploring the 3D architecture of roots is crucial in botany. Since roots grow in real 3D space, 3D phenotypic information is more critical for studying genetic traits and their impact on root development. We have introduced a 3D root skeleton extraction method that efficiently derives the 3D architecture of plant roots from a few images. This method includes the detection and matching of lateral roots, triangulation to extract the skeletal structure of lateral roots, and the integration of lateral and primary roots. We developed a highly complex root dataset and tested our method on it. The extracted 3D root skeletons showed considerable similarity to the ground truth, validating the effectiveness of the model. This method can play a significant role in automated breeding robots. Through precise 3D root structure analysis, breeding robots can better identify plant phenotypic traits, especially root structure and growth patterns, helping practitioners select seeds with superior root systems. This automated approach not only improves breeding efficiency but also reduces manual intervention, making the breeding process more intelligent and efficient, thus advancing modern agriculture.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

2024 NSF CSSI-Cybertraining-SCIPE PI Meeting August 12 to 13, 2024, Charlotte, NC

The second annual NSF, OAC CSSI, CyberTraining and related programs PI meeting was held August 12 to 13 in Charlotte, NC, with participation from PIs or representatives of all major awards. Keynotes, panels, breakouts, and poster sessions allowed PIs to engage with each other, NSF staff, and invited experts. The 286 attendees represented 292 awards across CSSI, CyberTraining, OAC Core, CIP, SCIPE CDSE, and related programs, and presented over 250 posters. This report documents the meetings structure, findings, and recommendations, offering a snapshot of current community perspectives on cyberinfrastructure. A key takeaway is a vibrant, engaged community advancing science through CI. AI-driven research modalities complement established HPC and data centric tools. Workforce development efforts align well with the CSSI community.

cs.ET↗

arXiv2025

Depth Estimation Based on 3D Gaussian Splatting Siamese Defocus

Depth estimation is a fundamental task in 3D geometry. While stereo depth estimation can be achieved through triangulation methods, it is not as straightforward for monocular methods, which require the integration of global and local information. The Depth from Defocus (DFD) method utilizes camera lens models and parameters to recover depth information from blurred images and has been proven to perform well. However, these methods rely on All-In-Focus (AIF) images for depth estimation, which is nearly impossible to obtain in real-world applications. To address this issue, we propose a self-supervised framework based on 3D Gaussian splatting and Siamese networks. By learning the blur levels at different focal distances of the same scene in the focal stack, the framework predicts the defocus map and Circle of Confusion (CoC) from a single defocused image, using the defocus map as input to DepthNet for monocular depth estimation. The 3D Gaussian splatting model renders defocused images using the predicted CoC, and the differences between these and the real defocused images provide additional supervision signals for the Siamese Defocus self-supervised network. This framework has been validated on both artificially synthesized and real blurred datasets. Subsequent quantitative and visualization experiments demonstrate that our proposed framework is highly effective as a DFD method.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

Keypoint Detection and Description for Raw Bayer Images

Keypoint detection and local feature description are fundamental tasks in robotic perception, critical for applications such as SLAM, robot localization, feature matching, pose estimation, and 3D mapping. While existing methods predominantly operate on RGB images, we propose a novel network that directly processes raw images, bypassing the need for the Image Signal Processor (ISP). This approach significantly reduces hardware requirements and memory consumption, which is crucial for robotic vision systems. Our method introduces two custom-designed convolutional kernels capable of performing convolutions directly on raw images, preserving inter-channel information without converting to RGB. Experimental results show that our network outperforms existing algorithms on raw images, achieving higher accuracy and stability under large rotations and scale variations. This work represents the first attempt to develop a keypoint detection and feature description network specifically for raw images, offering a more efficient solution for resource-constrained environments.

cs.CV↗