arXiv subjects

Jianwei Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Jianwei Liu.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

High-Fidelity and Location-Robust Respiratory Waveform Monitoring with Single-Antenna WiFi

In recent years, WiFi sensing has been recognized as a promising technology to bring respiratory monitoring into everyday homes, thanks to its contactless nature and ubiquitous availability. However, existing WiFi-based respiratory monitoring systems still fall short of deployment-oriented performance: they suffer from restrained hardware scalability, limited accuracy, and are highly sensitive to user location. To overcome these limitations and push WiFi sensing towards clinically meaningful precision, we propose RespirFi, a novel system that robustly delivers high-fidelity respiratory waveforms with WiFi Channel State Information (CSI), thereby enabling accurate estimation of key physiological biomarkers. At the core of RespirFi is a theoretical human reflection model, through which we perform an in-depth characterization of how CSI variations are shaped by both subcarrier frequency and spatial user location. Guided by these insights, we develop a location-robust waveform construction method that adaptively selects high quality subcarriers and aligns their waveform trends, ensuring accurate waveform recovery. Furthermore, we propose a breathing phase identification method that leverages inter-subcarrier CSI differences to reliably distinguish inhalation from exhalation. We implement RespirFi over commodity WiFi devices, and extensive experiments demonstrate that it outperforms state-of-the-art approaches across a wide range of clinically relevant respiratory metrics.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2025

A Framework for Deploying Learning-based Quadruped Loco-Manipulation

Quadruped mobile manipulators offer strong potential for agile loco-manipulation but remain difficult to control and transfer reliably from simulation to reality. Reinforcement learning (RL) shows promise for whole-body control, yet most frameworks are proprietary and hard to reproduce on real hardware. We present an open pipeline for training, benchmarking, and deploying RL-based controllers on the Unitree B1 quadruped with a Z1 arm. The framework unifies sim-to-sim and sim-to-real transfer through ROS, re-implementing a policy trained in Isaac Gym, extending it to MuJoCo via a hardware abstraction layer, and deploying the same controller on physical hardware. Sim-to-sim experiments expose discrepancies between Isaac Gym and MuJoCo contact models that influence policy behavior, while real-world teleoperated object-picking trials show that coordinated whole-body control extends reach and improves manipulation over floating-base baselines. The pipeline provides a transparent, reproducible foundation for developing and analyzing RL-based loco-manipulation controllers and will be released open source to support future research.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Meta-SimGNN: Adaptive and Robust WiFi Localization Across Dynamic Configurations and Diverse Scenarios

To promote the practicality of deep learning-based localization, existing studies aim to address the issue of scenario dependence through meta-learning. However, these studies primarily focus on variations in environmental layouts while overlooking the impact of changes in device configurations, such as bandwidth, the number of access points (APs), and the number of antennas used. Unlike environmental changes, variations in device configurations affect the dimensionality of channel state information (CSI), thereby compromising neural network usability. To address this issue, we propose Meta-SimGNN, a novel WiFi localization system that integrates graph neural networks with meta-learning to improve localization generalization and robustness. First, we introduce a fine-grained CSI graph construction scheme, where each AP is treated as a graph node, allowing for adaptability to changes in the number of APs. To structure the features of each node, we propose an amplitude-phase fusion method and a feature extraction method. The former utilizes both amplitude and phase to construct CSI images, enhancing data reliability, while the latter extracts dimension-consistent features to address variations in bandwidth and the number of antennas. Second, a similarity-guided meta-learning strategy is developed to enhance adaptability in diverse scenarios. The initial model parameters for the fine-tuning stage are determined by comparing the similarity between the new scenario and historical scenarios, facilitating rapid adaptation of the model to the new localization scenario. Extensive experimental results over commodity WiFi devices in different scenarios show that Meta-SimGNN outperforms the baseline methods in terms of localization generalization and accuracy.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Unreal Robotics Lab: A High-Fidelity Robotics Simulator with Advanced Physics and Rendering

High-fidelity simulation is essential for robotics research, enabling safe and efficient testing of perception, control, and navigation algorithms. However, achieving both photorealistic rendering and accurate physics modeling remains a challenge. This paper presents a novel simulation framework, the Unreal Robotics Lab (URL), that integrates the advanced rendering capabilities of the Unreal Engine with MuJoCo's high-precision physics simulation. Our approach enables realistic robotic perception while maintaining accurate physical interactions, facilitating benchmarking and dataset generation for vision-based robotics applications. The system supports complex environmental effects, such as smoke, fire, and water dynamics, which are critical to evaluating robotic performance under adverse conditions. We benchmark visual navigation and SLAM methods within our framework, demonstrating its utility for testing real-world robustness in controlled yet diverse scenarios. By bridging the gap between physics accuracy and photorealistic rendering, our framework provides a powerful tool for advancing robotics research and sim-to-real transfer. Our open-source framework is available at https://unrealroboticslab.github.io/.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Exploring Adversarial Obstacle Attacks in Search-based Path Planning for Autonomous Mobile Robots

Path planning algorithms, such as the search-based A*, are a critical component of autonomous mobile robotics, enabling robots to navigate from a starting point to a destination efficiently and safely. We investigated the resilience of the A* algorithm in the face of potential adversarial interventions known as obstacle attacks. The adversary's goal is to delay the robot's timely arrival at its destination by introducing obstacles along its original path. We developed malicious software to execute the attacks and conducted experiments to assess their impact, both in simulation using TurtleBot in Gazebo and in real-world deployment with the Unitree Go1 robot. In simulation, the attacks resulted in an average delay of 36\%, with the most significant delays occurring in scenarios where the robot was forced to take substantially longer alternative paths. In real-world experiments, the delays were even more pronounced, with all attacks successfully rerouting the robot and causing measurable disruptions. These results highlight that the algorithm's robustness is not solely an attribute of its design but is significantly influenced by the operational environment. For example, in constrained environments like tunnels, the delays were maximized due to the limited availability of alternative routes.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

FedConv: A Learning-on-Model Paradigm for Heterogeneous Federated Clients

Federated Learning (FL) facilitates collaborative training of a shared global model without exposing clients' private data. In practical FL systems, clients (e.g., edge servers, smartphones, and wearables) typically have disparate system resources. Conventional FL, however, adopts a one-size-fits-all solution, where a homogeneous large global model is transmitted to and trained on each client, resulting in an overwhelming workload for less capable clients and starvation for other clients. To address this issue, we propose FedConv, a client-friendly FL framework, which minimizes the computation and memory burden on resource-constrained clients by providing heterogeneous customized sub-models. FedConv features a novel learning-on-model paradigm that learns the parameters of the heterogeneous sub-models via convolutional compression. Unlike traditional compression methods, the compressed models in FedConv can be directly trained on clients without decompression. To aggregate the heterogeneous sub-models, we propose transposed convolutional dilation to convert them back to large models with a unified size while retaining personalized information from clients. The compression and dilation processes, transparent to clients, are optimized on the server leveraging a small public dataset. Extensive experiments on six datasets demonstrate that FedConv outperforms state-of-the-art FL systems in terms of model accuracy (by more than 35% on average), computation and communication overhead (with 33% and 25% reduction, respectively).

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Observation of non-Hermitian topological disclination states and charge fractionalization

There has been significant interest in exploring topological disclination states, which effectively probe the band topology of the host material beyond the conventional bulk-edge correspondence. While most studies in this area have primarily focused on Hermitian systems, recent theoretical work predicts that non-Hermiticity can drive topological phase transitions and host topological disclination states associated with fractional charge. However, no experimental observations have been reported to date. Here, we report the first experimental observation of topological disclination states in electric circuits, induced solely by gain and loss. Through admittance matrix measurements and eigenstate analysis, we confirm their emergence and compute the corresponding fractional charge. Moreover, the disclination mode profile and localization effect can be directly visualized via monochromatic field excitation. Additionally, we demonstrate the emergence of degenerate zero-energy topological disclination states, devoid of fractional charge, in distinct non-Hermitian geometries. Our findings open the possibility of non-Hermiticity-induced fractional charges in two-dimensional non-Hermitian lattices, which may pave the way for advancements in active topological photonic devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Topological temporal boundary states in a non-Hermitian spatial crystal

Periodic modulation of the material index in time opens momentum gaps. Such systems are regarded as the temporal analogue of common spatial crystals, wherein the bandgaps open in the frequency space. Recent studies have also led to the theoretical prediction of topological temporal boundary states (TTBSs) in such momentum gaps. In this work, we report the discovery and experimental realization of a new type of TTBS, appearing in a non-Hermitian spatial crystal with spatially periodic loss and gain, wherein the emergence of Bloch momentum gap is associated with a parity-time broken phase, instead of relying on periodic temporal modulation. By inducing a sudden flip of signs of the loss and gain profile, a mode emerges in the middle of the Bloch momentum gap and peaks at the flipping instant, which is regarded as a temporal boundary. Remarkably, we found that the temporal flip induces a topological transition in time, and the said mode is a TTBS that is a temporal analogue of the Jackiw-Rebbi state. The TTBS is experimentally observed in a 1D active mechanical lattice, and it can generically emerge in a wide range of non-Hermitian systems. By linking non-Hermitian physics with spatiotemporal topological systems, our results not only deepen the understanding of temporal topological phases but also open new grounds for controlling transient waves by topological means.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2024

ChatHTTPFuzz: Large Language Model-Assisted IoT HTTP Fuzzing

Internet of Things (IoT) devices offer convenience through web interfaces, web VPNs, and other web-based services, all relying on the HTTP protocol. However, these externally exposed HTTP services resent significant security risks. Although fuzzing has shown some effectiveness in identifying vulnerabilities in IoT HTTP services, most state-of-the-art tools still rely on random mutation trategies, leading to difficulties in accurately understanding the HTTP protocol's structure and generating many invalid test cases. Furthermore, These fuzzers rely on a limited set of initial seeds for testing. While this approach initiates testing, the limited number and diversity of seeds hinder comprehensive coverage of complex scenarios in IoT HTTP services. In this paper, we investigate and find that large language models (LLMs) excel in parsing HTTP protocol data and analyzing code logic. Based on these findings, we propose a novel LLM-guided IoT HTTP fuzzing method, ChatHTTPFuzz, which automatically parses protocol fields and analyzes service code logic to generate protocol-compliant test cases. Specifically, we use LLMs to label fields in HTTP protocol data, creating seed templates. Second, The LLM analyzes service code to guide the generation of additional packets aligned with the code logic, enriching the seed templates and their field values. Finally, we design an enhanced Thompson sampling algorithm based on the exploration balance factor and mutation potential factor to schedule seed templates. We evaluate ChatHTTPFuzz on 14 different real-world IoT devices. It finds more vulnerabilities than SNIPUZZ, BOOFUZZ, and MUTINY. ChatHTTPFuzz has discovered 103 vulnerabilities, of which 68 are unique, and 23 have been assigned CVEs.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2024

Kronos: A Secure and Generic Sharding Blockchain Consensus with Optimized Overhead

Sharding enhances blockchain scalability by dividing the network into shards, each managing specific unspent transaction outputs or accounts. As an introduced new transaction type, cross-shard transactions pose a critical challenge to the security and efficiency of sharding blockchains. Currently, there is a lack of a generic sharding consensus pattern that achieves both security and low overhead. In this paper, we present Kronos, a secure sharding blockchain consensus achieving optimized overhead. In particular, we propose a new secure sharding consensus pattern, based on a buffer managed jointly by shard members. Valid transactions are transferred to the payee via the buffer, while invalid ones are rejected through happy or unhappy paths. Kronos is proved to achieve security with atomicity under malicious clients with optimal intra-shard overhead $kB$ ($k$ for involved shard number and $B$ for a Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) cost). Besides, we propose secure cross-shard certification methods based on batch certification and reliable cross-shard transfer. The former combines hybrid trees or vector commitments, while the latter integrates erasure coding. Handling $b$ transactions, Kronos is proved to achieve reliability with low cross-shard overhead $O(n b λ)$ ($n$ for shard size and $λ$ for the security parameter). Notably, Kronos imposes no restrictions on BFT and does not rely on time assumptions, offering optional constructions in various modules. We implement Kronos using two prominent BFT protocols: asynchronous Speeding Dumbo and partial synchronous Hotstuff. Extensive experiments demonstrate Kronos scales the consensus nodes to thousands, achieving a substantial throughput of 320 ktx/sec with 2.0 sec latency. Compared with the past solutions, Kronos outperforms, achieving up to a 12* improvement in throughput and a 50% reduction in latency.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2024

DiPPeR: Diffusion-based 2D Path Planner applied on Legged Robots

In this work, we present DiPPeR, a novel and fast 2D path planning framework for quadrupedal locomotion, leveraging diffusion-driven techniques. Our contributions include a scalable dataset generator for map images and corresponding trajectories, an image-conditioned diffusion planner for mobile robots, and a training/inference pipeline employing CNNs. We validate our approach in several mazes, as well as in real-world deployment scenarios on Boston Dynamic's Spot and Unitree's Go1 robots. DiPPeR performs on average 23 times faster for trajectory generation against both search based and data driven path planning algorithms with an average of 87% consistency in producing feasible paths of various length in maps of variable size, and obstacle structure. Website: https://rpl-cs-ucl.github.io/DiPPeR

cs.RO↗

arXiv2024

DiPPeST: Diffusion-based Path Planner for Synthesizing Trajectories Applied on Quadruped Robots

We present DiPPeST, a novel image and goal conditioned diffusion-based trajectory generator for quadrupedal robot path planning. DiPPeST is a zero-shot adaptation of our previously introduced diffusion-based 2D global trajectory generator (DiPPeR). The introduced system incorporates a novel strategy for local real-time path refinements, that is reactive to camera input, without requiring any further training, image processing, or environment interpretation techniques. DiPPeST achieves 92% success rate in obstacle avoidance for nominal environments and an average of 88% success rate when tested in environments that are up to 3.5 times more complex in pixel variation than DiPPeR. A visual-servoing framework is developed to allow for real-world execution, tested on the quadruped robot, achieving 80% success rate in different environments and showcasing improved behavior than complex state-of-the-art local planners, in narrow environments.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2023

FPHammer: A Device Identification Framework based on DRAM Fingerprinting

The device fingerprinting technique extracts fingerprints based on the hardware characteristics of the device to identify the device. The primary goal of device fingerprinting is to accurately and uniquely identify a device, which requires the generated device fingerprints to have good stability to achieve long-term tracking of the target device. However, the fingerprints generated by some existing fingerprinting technologies are not stable enough or change frequently, making it impossible to track the target device for a long time. In this paper, we present FPHammer, a novel DRAM-based fingerprinting technique. The device fingerprint generated by our technique has high stability and can be used to track the device for a long time. We leverage the Rowhammer technique to repeatedly and quickly access a row in DRAM to get bit flips in its adjacent row. We then construct a physical fingerprint of the device based on the locations of the collected bit flips. The evaluation results of the uniqueness and reliability of the physical fingerprint show that it can be used to distinguish devices with the same hardware and software configuration. The experimental results on device identification demonstrate that the physical fingerprints engendered by our innovative technique are inherently linked to the entirety of the device rather than just the DRAM module. Even if the device modifies software-level parameters such as MAC address and IP address or even reinstalls the operating system, we can accurately identify the target device. This demonstrates that FPHammer can generate stable fingerprints that are not affected by software layer parameters.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

ViT-A: Legged Robot Path Planning using Vision Transformer A

Legged robots, particularly quadrupeds, offer promising navigation capabilities, especially in scenarios requiring traversal over diverse terrains and obstacle avoidance. This paper addresses the challenge of enabling legged robots to navigate complex environments effectively through the integration of data-driven path-planning methods. We propose an approach that utilizes differentiable planners, allowing the learning of end-to-end global plans via a neural network for commanding quadruped robots. The approach leverages 2D maps and obstacle specifications as inputs to generate a global path. To enhance the functionality of the developed neural network-based path planner, we use Vision Transformers (ViT) for map pre-processing, to enable the effective handling of larger maps. Experimental evaluations on two real robotic quadrupeds (Boston Dynamics Spot and Unitree Go1) demonstrate the effectiveness and versatility of the proposed approach in generating reliable path plans.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2022

New classes of permutation polynomials with coefficients 1 over finite fields

Permutation polynomials with coefficients 1 over finite fields attract researchers' interests due to their simple algebraic form. In this paper, we first construct four classes of fractional permutation polynomials over the cyclic subgroup of $ \mathbb{F}_{2^{2m}} $. From these permutation polynomials, three new classes of permutation polynomials with coefficients 1 over $ \mathbb{F}_{2^{2m}} $ are constructed, and three more general new classes of permutation polynomials with coefficients 1 over $ \mathbb{F}_{2^{2m}} $ are constructed using a new method we presented recently. Some known permutation polynomials are the special cases of our new permutation polynomials. Furthermore, we prove that, in all new permutation polynomials, there exists a permutation polynomial which is EA-inequivalent to known permutation polynomials for all even positive integer $ m $. This proof shows that EA-inequivalent permutation polynomials over $ \mathbb{F}_{q} $ can be constructed from EA-equivalent permutation polynomials over the cyclic subgroup of $ \mathbb{F}_{q} $. From this proof, it is obvious that, in all new permutation polynomials, there exists a permutation polynomial of which algebraic degree is the maximum algebraic degree of permutation polynomials over $ \mathbb{F}_{2^{2m}} $.

math.NT↗

arXiv2022

MACSA: A Multimodal Aspect-Category Sentiment Analysis Dataset with Multimodal Fine-grained Aligned Annotations

Multimodal fine-grained sentiment analysis has recently attracted increasing attention due to its broad applications. However, the existing multimodal fine-grained sentiment datasets most focus on annotating the fine-grained elements in text but ignore those in images, which leads to the fine-grained elements in visual content not receiving the full attention they deserve. In this paper, we propose a new dataset, the Multimodal Aspect-Category Sentiment Analysis (MACSA) dataset, which contains more than 21K text-image pairs. The dataset provides fine-grained annotations for both textual and visual content and firstly uses the aspect category as the pivot to align the fine-grained elements between the two modalities. Based on our dataset, we propose the Multimodal ACSA task and a multimodal graph-based aligned model (MGAM), which adopts a fine-grained cross-modal fusion method. Experimental results show that our method can facilitate the baseline comparison for future research on this corpus. We will make the dataset and code publicly available.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2022

A New Method of Construction of Permutation Trinomials with Coefficients 1

Permutation polynomials over finite fields are an interesting and constantly active research subject of study for many years. They have important applications in areas of mathematics and engineering. In recent years, permutation binomials and permutation trinomials attract people's interests due to their simple algebraic forms. In this paper, by reversely using Tu's method for the characterization of permutation polynomials with exponents of Niho type, we propose a new method to construct permutation trinomials with coefficients 1. Moreover, we give the explicit compositional inverses of a class of permutation trinomials for a special case.

math.NT↗

arXiv2021

HAWK: Rapid Android Malware Detection through Heterogeneous Graph Attention Networks

Android is undergoing unprecedented malicious threats daily, but the existing methods for malware detection often fail to cope with evolving camouflage in malware. To address this issue, we present HAWK, a new malware detection framework for evolutionary Android applications. We model Android entities and behavioural relationships as a heterogeneous information network (HIN), exploiting its rich semantic metastructures for specifying implicit higher-order relationships. An incremental learning model is created to handle the applications that manifest dynamically, without the need for re-constructing the whole HIN and the subsequent embedding model. The model can pinpoint rapidly the proximity between a new application and existing in-sample applications and aggregate their numerical embeddings under various semantics. Our experiments examine more than 80,860 malicious and 100,375 benign applications developed over a period of seven years, showing that HAWK achieves the highest detection accuracy against baselines and takes only 3.5ms on average to detect an out-of-sample application, with the accelerated training time of 50x faster than the existing approach.

cs.CR↗