arXiv subjects

Jing Cao

Publications and source records attributed to Jing Cao.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A Dual Physics-Informed Kolmogorov-Arnold Neural Network Framework for Continuum Topology Optimization

In continuum topology optimization (TO), two essential procedures are involved: structural analysis through the solution of partial differential equations (PDEs) and the subsequent update of design variables. Both procedures can be addressed by training neural networks using the corresponding physical information. Accordingly, Physics-Informed Neural Network (PINN)-based algorithms have been developed for TO. However, PINN-based methods suffer from several notable limitations, including high computational cost, spectral bias, and limited adaptability in solving PDEs.To overcome these challenges, this study proposes a novel algorithm that incorporates two Higher-Order ReLU-based Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (HRKANs). Specifically, a displacement-informed HRKAN (d-HRKAN) is designed to predict PDE solutions, while a sensitivity-informed HRKAN (s-HRKAN) is developed to perform sensitivity analysis for updating design variables. For convenience, the proposed approach is referred to as the Dual Physics-Informed Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks-based Topology Optimization (DPIKAN-TO) method. By leveraging learnable activation functions, the proposed neural networks can accurately approximate the responses of complex structural systems. Moreover, compared with conventional PINN-based methods, DPIKAN-TO demonstrates significantly improved computational efficiency and reduced computational cost. Numerical examples show that DPIKAN-TO can successfully identify optimal material layouts for linear structures, compliant mechanisms, and fluid-solid coupled systems. Furthermore, owing to the use of learnable activation functions, the proposed framework can be readily extended to structural optimization problems governed by new types of PDEs.

cs.CE↗

arXiv2026

A Deterministic Agentic Workflow for HS Tariff Classification: Multi-Dimensional Rule Reasoning with Interpretable Decisions

Harmonized System (HS) tariff classification is a high-stakes, expert-level task in which a free-form product description must be mapped to a specific six- or eight-digit code under the General Interpretive Rules (GIR), section notes, chapter notes, and Explanatory Notes. The difficulty lies not in knowledge volume but in *multi-dimensional rule reasoning*: a correct classification must satisfy competing priority rules along several axes simultaneously, including material, form, function, essential character, the part-versus-whole boundary, and specific listing versus residual headings. End-to-end prompting of large language models fails characteristically by resolving one axis while ignoring the priority constraints on the others. We present a *deterministic agentic workflow* in contrast to self-planning agents: the control flow is fixed, language model calls are confined to narrow stages, and reflection and verification are retained as local mechanisms. This design yields interpretability by construction--each decision is decomposed into stage-wise structured outputs with verbatim citation of the chapter or section notes that bear on it. The architecture combines offline knowledge-engineering of the Chinese HS tariff with an online six-stage pipeline. Evaluated on HSCodeComp at the six-digit level, the workflow reaches 75.0% top-1 and 91.5% top-3 at four digits, and 64.2% top-1 and 78.3% top-3 at six digits with Qwen3.6-plus; an open-weight Qwen3.6-27B-FP8 backbone in non-thinking mode achieves 84.2% four-digit and 77.4% six-digit top-1 agreement with the frontier model. A two-stage manual audit of 226 six-digit disagreements suggests that a non-trivial fraction of HSCodeComp ground-truth labels may deviate from HS general rules; full adjudication records are released in the appendix as preliminary findings for community review.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2026

TiPToP: A Modular Open-Vocabulary Robot Manipulation System That Plans

We present TiPToP, a modular manipulation system that integrates pretrained foundation models with a GPU-accelerated Task and Motion Planner to solve tasks directly from RGB images and natural language. TiPToP composes perception, planning, and execution modules and requires no robot training data. It can be deployed on a standard DROID setup in under an hour and adapted to new embodiments with minimal effort. We evaluate TiPToP against $\pi_{0.5}\text{-DROID}$, a state-of-the-art VLA fine-tuned on 350 hours of demonstrations, across two real-world DROID setups (one operated by an external team) and simulation, where TiPToP attains a higher average success rate and faster average completion time. We also evaluate on the MolmoSpaces benchmark, where TiPToP ranks first overall on pick and pick-and-place tasks among methods not trained on in-distribution data. We further show that TiPToP's modularity enables us to trace failures to specific components, revealing where to target improvements. We release TiPToP open-source to serve as a reproducible baseline and to enable further research on modular manipulation systems. Project website and code: https://tiptop-robot.github.io

cs.RO↗

arXiv2026

Follow the Signs: Using Textual Cues and LLMs to Guide Efficient Robot Navigation

Autonomous navigation in unfamiliar environments often relies on geometric mapping and planning strategies that overlook rich semantic cues such as signs, room numbers, and textual labels. We propose a novel semantic navigation framework that leverages large language models (LLMs) to infer patterns from partial observations and predict regions where the goal is most likely located. Our method combines local perceptual inputs with frontier-based exploration and periodic LLM queries, which extract symbolic patterns (e.g., room numbering schemes and building layout structures) and update a confidence grid used to guide exploration. This enables robots to move efficiently toward goal locations labeled with textual identifiers (e.g., "room 8") even before direct observation. We demonstrate that this approach enables more efficient navigation in sparse, partially observable grid environments by exploiting symbolic patterns. Experiments across environments modeled after real floor plans show that our approach consistently achieves near-optimal paths and outperforms baselines by over 25% in Success weighted by Path Length.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Learning Depth from Past Selves: Self-Evolution Contrast for Robust Depth Estimation

Self-supervised depth estimation has gained significant attention in autonomous driving and robotics. However, existing methods exhibit substantial performance degradation under adverse weather conditions such as rain and fog, where reduced visibility critically impairs depth prediction. To address this issue, we propose a novel self-evolution contrastive learning framework called SEC-Depth for self-supervised robust depth estimation tasks. Our approach leverages intermediate parameters generated during training to construct temporally evolving latency models. Using these, we design a self-evolution contrastive scheme to mitigate performance loss under challenging conditions. Concretely, we first design a dynamic update strategy of latency models for the depth estimation task to capture optimization states across training stages. To effectively leverage latency models, we introduce a self-evolution contrastive Loss (SECL) that treats outputs from historical latency models as negative samples. This mechanism adaptively adjusts learning objectives while implicitly sensing weather degradation severity, reducing the needs for manual intervention. Experiments show that our method integrates seamlessly into diverse baseline models and significantly enhances robustness in zero-shot evaluations.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

Mixture-of-Schedulers: An Adaptive Scheduling Agent as a Learned Router for Expert Policies

Modern operating system schedulers employ a single, static policy, which struggles to deliver optimal performance across the diverse and dynamic workloads of contemporary systems. This "one-policy-fits-all" approach leads to significant compromises in fairness, throughput, and latency, particularly with the rise of heterogeneous hardware and varied application architectures. This paper proposes a new paradigm: dynamically selecting the optimal policy from a portfolio of specialized schedulers rather than designing a single, monolithic one. We present the Adaptive Scheduling Agent (ASA), a lightweight framework that intelligently matches workloads to the most suitable "expert" scheduling policy at runtime. ASA's core is a novel, low-overhead offline/online approach. First, an offline process trains a universal, hardware-agnostic machine learning model to recognize abstract workload patterns from system behaviors. Second, at runtime, ASA continually processes the model's predictions using a time-weighted probability voting algorithm to identify the workload, then makes a scheduling decision by consulting a pre-configured, machine-specific mapping table to switch to the optimal scheduler via Linux's sched_ext framework. This decoupled architecture allows ASA to adapt to new hardware platforms rapidly without expensive retraining of the core recognition model. Our evaluation, based on a novel benchmark focused on user-experience metrics, demonstrates that ASA consistently outperforms the default Linux scheduler (EEVDF), achieving superior results in 86.4% of test scenarios. Furthermore, ASA's selections are near-optimal, ranking among the top three schedulers in 78.6% of all scenarios. This validates our approach as a practical path toward more intelligent, adaptive, and responsive operating system schedulers.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2025

NTIRE 2025 Challenge on HR Depth from Images of Specular and Transparent Surfaces

This paper reports on the NTIRE 2025 challenge on HR Depth From images of Specular and Transparent surfaces, held in conjunction with the New Trends in Image Restoration and Enhancement (NTIRE) workshop at CVPR 2025. This challenge aims to advance the research on depth estimation, specifically to address two of the main open issues in the field: high-resolution and non-Lambertian surfaces. The challenge proposes two tracks on stereo and single-image depth estimation, attracting about 177 registered participants. In the final testing stage, 4 and 4 participating teams submitted their models and fact sheets for the two tracks.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

Always Clear Depth: Robust Monocular Depth Estimation under Adverse Weather

Monocular depth estimation is critical for applications such as autonomous driving and scene reconstruction. While existing methods perform well under normal scenarios, their performance declines in adverse weather, due to challenging domain shifts and difficulties in extracting scene information. To address this issue, we present a robust monocular depth estimation method called \textbf{ACDepth} from the perspective of high-quality training data generation and domain adaptation. Specifically, we introduce a one-step diffusion model for generating samples that simulate adverse weather conditions, constructing a multi-tuple degradation dataset during training. To ensure the quality of the generated degradation samples, we employ LoRA adapters to fine-tune the generation weights of diffusion model. Additionally, we integrate circular consistency loss and adversarial training to guarantee the fidelity and naturalness of the scene contents. Furthermore, we elaborate on a multi-granularity knowledge distillation strategy (MKD) that encourages the student network to absorb knowledge from both the teacher model and pretrained Depth Anything V2. This strategy guides the student model in learning degradation-agnostic scene information from various degradation inputs. In particular, we introduce an ordinal guidance distillation mechanism (OGD) that encourages the network to focus on uncertain regions through differential ranking, leading to a more precise depth estimation. Experimental results demonstrate that our ACDepth surpasses md4all-DD by 2.50\% for night scene and 2.61\% for rainy scene on the nuScenes dataset in terms of the absRel metric.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

Stochastic Gradient Descent for Constrained Optimization based on Adaptive Relaxed Barrier Functions

This paper presents a novel stochastic gradient descent algorithm for constrained optimization. The proposed algorithm randomly samples constraints and components of the finite sum objective function and relies on a relaxed logarithmic barrier function that is appropriately adapted in each optimization iteration. For a strongly convex objective function and affine inequality constraints, step-size rules and barrier adaptation rules are established that guarantee asymptotic convergence with probability one. The theoretical results in the paper are complemented by numerical studies which highlight potential advantages of the proposed algorithm for optimization problems with a large number of constraints.

math.OC↗

arXiv2025

PANDA -- Paired Anti-hate Narratives Dataset from Asia: Using an LLM-as-a-Judge to Create the First Chinese Counterspeech Dataset

Despite the global prevalence of Modern Standard Chinese language, counterspeech (CS) resources for Chinese remain virtually nonexistent. To address this gap in East Asian counterspeech research we introduce the a corpus of Modern Standard Mandarin counterspeech that focuses on combating hate speech in Mainland China. This paper proposes a novel approach of generating CS by using an LLM-as-a-Judge, simulated annealing, LLMs zero-shot CN generation and a round-robin algorithm. This is followed by manual verification for quality and contextual relevance. This paper details the methodology for creating effective counterspeech in Chinese and other non-Eurocentric languages, including unique cultural patterns of which groups are maligned and linguistic patterns in what kinds of discourse markers are programmatically marked as hate speech (HS). Analysis of the generated corpora, we provide strong evidence for the lack of open-source, properly labeled Chinese hate speech data and the limitations of using an LLM-as-Judge to score possible answers in Chinese. Moreover, the present corpus serves as the first East Asian language based CS corpus and provides an essential resource for future research on counterspeech generation and evaluation.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2024

Enhancing Empathic Accuracy: Penalized Functional Alignment Method to Correct Temporal Misalignment in Real-time Emotional Perception

Empathic accuracy (EA) is the ability to accurately understand another person\textquotesingle s thoughts and feelings, which is crucial for social and psychological interactions. Traditionally, EA is assessed by comparing a perceiver\textquotesingle s moment-to-moment ratings of a target\textquotesingle s emotional state with the target\textquotesingle s own self-reported ratings at corresponding time points. However, misalignments between these two sequences are common due to the complexity of emotional interpretation and individual differences in behavioral responses. Conventional methods often ignore or oversimplify these misalignments, for instance, by assuming a fixed time lag, which can introduce bias into EA estimates. To address this, we propose a novel alignment approach that captures a wide range of misalignment patterns. Our method leverages the square-root velocity framework to decompose emotional rating trajectories into amplitude and phase components. To ensure realistic alignment, we introduce a regularization constraint that limits temporal shifts to ranges consistent with human perceptual capabilities. This alignment is efficiently implemented using a constrained dynamic programming algorithm. We validate our method through simulations and real-world applications involving video and music datasets, demonstrating its superior performance over traditional techniques.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2024

Trust the PRoC3S: Solving Long-Horizon Robotics Problems with LLMs and Constraint Satisfaction

Recent developments in pretrained large language models (LLMs) applied to robotics have demonstrated their capacity for sequencing a set of discrete skills to achieve open-ended goals in simple robotic tasks. In this paper, we examine the topic of LLM planning for a set of continuously parameterized skills whose execution must avoid violations of a set of kinematic, geometric, and physical constraints. We prompt the LLM to output code for a function with open parameters, which, together with environmental constraints, can be viewed as a Continuous Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CCSP). This CCSP can be solved through sampling or optimization to find a skill sequence and continuous parameter settings that achieve the goal while avoiding constraint violations. Additionally, we consider cases where the LLM proposes unsatisfiable CCSPs, such as those that are kinematically infeasible, dynamically unstable, or lead to collisions, and re-prompt the LLM to form a new CCSP accordingly. Experiments across three different simulated 3D domains demonstrate that our proposed strategy, PRoC3S, is capable of solving a wide range of complex manipulation tasks with realistic constraints on continuous parameters much more efficiently and effectively than existing baselines.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2024

MMToM-QA: Multimodal Theory of Mind Question Answering

Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to understand people's mental states, is an essential ingredient for developing machines with human-level social intelligence. Recent machine learning models, particularly large language models, seem to show some aspects of ToM understanding. However, existing ToM benchmarks use unimodal datasets - either video or text. Human ToM, on the other hand, is more than video or text understanding. People can flexibly reason about another person's mind based on conceptual representations (e.g., goals, beliefs, plans) extracted from any available data. To address this, we introduce a multimodal Theory of Mind question answering (MMToM-QA) benchmark. MMToM-QA comprehensively evaluates machine ToM both on multimodal data and on different kinds of unimodal data about a person's activity in a household environment. To engineer multimodal ToM capacity, we propose a novel method, BIP-ALM (Bayesian Inverse Planning Accelerated by Language Models). BIP-ALM extracts unified representations from multimodal data and utilizes language models for scalable Bayesian inverse planning. We conducted a systematic comparison of human performance, BIP-ALM, and state-of-the-art models, including GPT-4. The experiments demonstrate that large language models and large multimodal models still lack robust ToM capacity. BIP-ALM, on the other hand, shows promising results, by leveraging the power of both model-based mental inference and language models.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2023

Reply to: Mobility overestimation in MoS$_2$ transistors due to invasive voltage probes

In this reply, we include new experimental results and verify that the observed non-linearity in rippled-MoS$_2$ (leading to mobility kink) is an intrinsic property of a disordered system, rather than contact effects (invasive probes) or other device issues. Noting that Peng Wu's hypothesis is based on a highly ordered ideal system, transfer curves are expected to be linear, and the carrier density is assumed be constant. Wu's model is therefore oversimplified for disordered systems and neglects carrier-density dependent scattering physics. Thus, it is fundamentally incompatible with our rippled-MoS$_2$, and leads to the wrong conclusion.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2023

A novel class of fractional adams method for solving uncertain fractional differential equation

Uncertain fractional differential equation (UFDE) is a kind of differential equation about uncertain process. As an significant mathematical tool to describe the evolution process of dynamic system, UFDE is better than the ordinary differential equation with integer derivatives because of its hereditability and memorability characteristics. However, in most instances, the precise analytical solutions of UFDE is difficult to obtain due to the complex form of the UFDE itself. Up to now, there is not plenty of researches about the numerical method of UFDE, as for the existing numerical algorithms, their accuracy is also not high. In this research, derive from the interval weighting method, a class of fractional adams method is innovatively proposed to solve UFDE. Meanwhile, such fractional adams method extends the traditional predictor-corrector method to higher order cases. The stability and truncation error limit of the improved algorithm are analyzed and deduced. As the application, several numerical simulations (including $α$-path, extreme value and the first hitting time of the UFDE) are provided to manifest the higher accuracy and efficiency of the proposed numerical method.

math.NA↗

arXiv2021

HADFL: Heterogeneity-aware Decentralized Federated Learning Framework

Federated learning (FL) supports training models on geographically distributed devices. However, traditional FL systems adopt a centralized synchronous strategy, putting high communication pressure and model generalization challenge. Existing optimizations on FL either fail to speedup training on heterogeneous devices or suffer from poor communication efficiency. In this paper, we propose HADFL, a framework that supports decentralized asynchronous training on heterogeneous devices. The devices train model locally with heterogeneity-aware local steps using local data. In each aggregation cycle, they are selected based on probability to perform model synchronization and aggregation. Compared with the traditional FL system, HADFL can relieve the central server's communication pressure, efficiently utilize heterogeneous computing power, and can achieve a maximum speedup of 3.15x than decentralized-FedAvg and 4.68x than Pytorch distributed training scheme, respectively, with almost no loss of convergence accuracy.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2020

Normal epithelial and triple-negative breast cancer cells show the same invasion potential in rigid spatial confinement

The extra-cellular microenvironment has a fundamental role in tumor growth and progression, strongly affecting the migration strategies adopted by single cancer cells during metastatic invasion. In this study, we use a novel microfluidic device to investigate the ability of mesenchymal and epithelial breast tumor cells to fluidize and migrate through narrowing microstructures upon chemoattractant stimulation. We compare the migration behavior of two mesenchymal breast cancer cell lines and one epithelial cell line, and find that the epithelial cells are able to migrate through the narrowest microconstrictions as the more invasive mesenchymal cells. In addition, we demonstrate that migration of epithelial cells through a highly compressive environment can occur in absence of a chemoattractive stimulus, thus evidencing that they are just as prone to react to mechanical cues as invasive cells.

physics.bio-ph↗

arXiv2019

MIDI-Sandwich2: RNN-based Hierarchical Multi-modal Fusion Generation VAE networks for multi-track symbolic music generation

Currently, almost all the multi-track music generation models use the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to build the generative model, while the Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) based models can not be applied in this task. In view of the above problem, this paper proposes a RNN-based Hierarchical Multi-modal Fusion Generation Variational Autoencoder (VAE) network, MIDI-Sandwich2, for multi-track symbolic music generation. Inspired by VQ-VAE2, MIDI-Sandwich2 expands the dimension of the original hierarchical model by using multiple independent Binary Variational Autoencoder (BVAE) models without sharing weights to process the information of each track. Then, with multi-modal fusion technology, the upper layer named Multi-modal Fusion Generation VAE (MFG-VAE) combines the latent space vectors generated by the respective tracks, and uses the decoder to perform the ascending dimension reconstruction to simulate the inverse operation of multi-modal fusion, multi-modal generation, so as to realize the RNN-based multi-track symbolic music generation. For the multi-track format pianoroll, we also improve the output binarization method of MuseGAN, which solves the problem that the refinement step of the original scheme is difficult to differentiate and the gradient is hard to descent, making the generated song more expressive. The model is validated on the Lakh Pianoroll Dataset (LPD) multi-track dataset. Compared to the MuseGAN, MIDI-Sandwich2 can not only generate harmonious multi-track music, the generation quality is also close to the state of the art level. At the same time, by using the VAE to restore songs, the semi-generated songs reproduced by the MIDI-Sandwich2 are more beautiful than the pure autogeneration music generated by MuseGAN. Both the code and the audition audio samples are open source on https://github.com/LiangHsia/MIDI-S2.

cs.LG↗