arXiv subjects

Lihua Xie

Publications and source records attributed to Lihua Xie.

At least 181 records · Page 10Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Continuous-Time and Event-Triggered Online Optimization for Linear Multi-Agent Systems

This paper studies the decentralized online convex optimization problem for heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems. Agents have access to their time-varying local cost functions related to their own outputs, and there are also time-varying coupling inequality constraints among them. The goal of each agent is to minimize the global cost function by selecting appropriate local actions only through communication between neighbors. We design a distributed controller based on the saddle-point method which achieves constant regret bound and sublinear fit bound. In addition, to reduce the communication overhead, we propose an event-triggered communication scheme and show that the constant regret bound and sublinear fit bound are still achieved in the case of discrete communications with no Zeno behavior. A numerical example is provided to verify the proposed algorithms.with no Zeno behavior. A numerical example is provided to verify the proposed algorithms.

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arXiv2022

Divide to Adapt: Mitigating Confirmation Bias for Domain Adaptation of Black-Box Predictors

Domain Adaptation of Black-box Predictors (DABP) aims to learn a model on an unlabeled target domain supervised by a black-box predictor trained on a source domain. It does not require access to both the source-domain data and the predictor parameters, thus addressing the data privacy and portability issues of standard domain adaptation. Existing DABP approaches mostly rely on model distillation from the black-box predictor, \emph{i.e.}, training the model with its noisy target-domain predictions, which however inevitably introduces the confirmation bias accumulated from the prediction noises. To mitigate such bias, we propose a new method, named BETA, to incorporate knowledge distillation and noisy label learning into one coherent framework. This is enabled by a new divide-to-adapt strategy. BETA divides the target domain into an easy-to-adapt subdomain with less noise and a hard-to-adapt subdomain. Then it deploys mutually-teaching twin networks to filter the predictor errors for each other and improve them progressively, from the easy to hard subdomains. As such, BETA effectively purifies the noisy labels and reduces error accumulation. We theoretically show that the target error of BETA is minimized by decreasing the noise ratio of the subdomains. Extensive experiments demonstrate BETA outperforms existing methods on all DABP benchmarks, and is even comparable with the standard domain adaptation methods that use the source-domain data.

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arXiv2022

Multi-modal Semantic SLAM for Complex Dynamic Environments

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) is one of the most essential techniques in many real-world robotic applications. The assumption of static environments is common in most SLAM algorithms, which however, is not the case for most applications. Recent work on semantic SLAM aims to understand the objects in an environment and distinguish dynamic information from a scene context by performing image-based segmentation. However, the segmentation results are often imperfect or incomplete, which can subsequently reduce the quality of mapping and the accuracy of localization. In this paper, we present a robust multi-modal semantic framework to solve the SLAM problem in complex and highly dynamic environments. We propose to learn a more powerful object feature representation and deploy the mechanism of looking and thinking twice to the backbone network, which leads to a better recognition result to our baseline instance segmentation model. Moreover, both geometric-only clustering and visual semantic information are combined to reduce the effect of segmentation error due to small-scale objects, occlusion and motion blur. Thorough experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The results show that our method can precisely identify dynamic objects under recognition imperfection and motion blur. Moreover, the proposed SLAM framework is able to efficiently build a static dense map at a processing rate of more than 10 Hz, which can be implemented in many practical applications. Both training data and the proposed method is open sourced at https://github.com/wh200720041/MMS_SLAM.

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arXiv2022

Computer Vision for Road Imaging and Pothole Detection: A State-of-the-Art Review of Systems and Algorithms

Computer vision algorithms have been prevalently utilized for 3-D road imaging and pothole detection for over two decades. Nonetheless, there is a lack of systematic survey articles on state-of-the-art (SoTA) computer vision techniques, especially deep learning models, developed to tackle these problems. This article first introduces the sensing systems employed for 2-D and 3-D road data acquisition, including camera(s), laser scanners, and Microsoft Kinect. Afterward, it thoroughly and comprehensively reviews the SoTA computer vision algorithms, including (1) classical 2-D image processing, (2) 3-D point cloud modeling and segmentation, and (3) machine/deep learning, developed for road pothole detection. This article also discusses the existing challenges and future development trends of computer vision-based road pothole detection approaches: classical 2-D image processing-based and 3-D point cloud modeling and segmentation-based approaches have already become history; and Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have demonstrated compelling road pothole detection results and are promising to break the bottleneck with the future advances in self/un-supervised learning for multi-modal semantic segmentation. We believe that this survey can serve as practical guidance for developing the next-generation road condition assessment systems.

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arXiv2022

Distributed stochastic projection-free solver for constrained optimization

This paper proposes a distributed stochastic projection-free algorithm for large-scale constrained finite-sum optimization whose constraint set is complicated such that the projection onto the constraint set can be expensive. The global cost function is allocated to multiple agents, each of which computes its local stochastic gradients and communicates with its neighbors to solve the global problem. Stochastic gradient methods enable low computational cost, while they are hard and slow to converge due to the variance caused by random sampling. To construct a convergent distributed stochastic projection-free algorithm, this paper incorporates a variance reduction technique and gradient tracking technique in the Frank-Wolfe update. We develop a sampling rule for the variance reduction technique to reduce the variance introduced by stochastic gradients. Complete and rigorous proofs show that the proposed distributed projection-free algorithm converges with a sublinear convergence rate and enjoys superior complexity guarantees for both convex and non-convex objective functions. By comparative simulations, we demonstrate the convergence and computational efficiency of the proposed algorithm.

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arXiv2022

NTU VIRAL: A Visual-Inertial-Ranging-Lidar Dataset, From an Aerial Vehicle Viewpoint

In recent years, autonomous robots have become ubiquitous in research and daily life. Among many factors, public datasets play an important role in the progress of this field, as they waive the tall order of initial investment in hardware and manpower. However, for research on autonomous aerial systems, there appears to be a relative lack of public datasets on par with those used for autonomous driving and ground robots. Thus, to fill in this gap, we conduct a data collection exercise on an aerial platform equipped with an extensive and unique set of sensors: two 3D lidars, two hardware-synchronized global-shutter cameras, multiple Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), and especially, multiple Ultra-wideband (UWB) ranging units. The comprehensive sensor suite resembles that of an autonomous driving car, but features distinct and challenging characteristics of aerial operations. We record multiple datasets in several challenging indoor and outdoor conditions. Calibration results and ground truth from a high-accuracy laser tracker are also included in each package. All resources can be accessed via our webpage https://ntu-aris.github.io/ntu_viral_dataset.

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arXiv2021

Coordinate-free Circumnavigation of a Moving Target via a PD-like Controller

This paper proposes a coordinate-free controller for a nonholonomic vehicle to circumnavigate a fully-actuated moving target by using range-only measurements. If the range rate is available, our Proportional Derivative (PD)-like controller has a simple structure as the standard PD controller, except the design of an additive constant bias and a saturation function in the error feedback. We show that if the target is stationary, the vehicle asymptotically encloses the target with a predefined radius at an exponential convergence rate, i.e., an exact circumnavigation pattern can be completed. For a moving target, the circumnavigation error converges to a small region whose size is shown proportional to the maneuverability of the target, e.g., the maximum linear speed and acceleration. Moreover, we design a second-order sliding mode (SOSM) filter to estimate the range rate and show that the SOSM filter can recover the range rate in a finite time. Finally, the effectiveness and advantages of our controller are validated via both numerical simulations and real experiments.

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arXiv2021

VIRAL SLAM: Tightly Coupled Camera-IMU-UWB-Lidar SLAM

In this paper, we propose a tightly-coupled, multi-modal simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) framework, integrating an extensive set of sensors: IMU, cameras, multiple lidars, and Ultra-wideband (UWB) range measurements, hence referred to as VIRAL (visual-inertial-ranging-lidar) SLAM. To achieve such a comprehensive sensor fusion system, one has to tackle several challenges such as data synchronization, multi-threading programming, bundle adjustment (BA), and conflicting coordinate frames between UWB and the onboard sensors, so as to ensure real-time localization and smooth updates in the state estimates. To this end, we propose a two stage approach. In the first stage, lidar, camera, and IMU data on a local sliding window are processed in a core odometry thread. From this local graph, new key frames are evaluated for admission to a global map. Visual feature-based loop closure is also performed to supplement the global factor graph with loop constraints. When the global factor graph satisfies a condition on spatial diversity, the BA process will be triggered to update the coordinate transform between UWB and onboard SLAM systems. The system then seamlessly transitions to the second stage where all sensors are tightly integrated in the odometry thread. The capability of our system is demonstrated via several experiments on high-fidelity graphical-physical simulation and public datasets.

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arXiv2021

Self-Supervised Video Representation Learning by Video Incoherence Detection

This paper introduces a novel self-supervised method that leverages incoherence detection for video representation learning. It roots from the observation that visual systems of human beings can easily identify video incoherence based on their comprehensive understanding of videos. Specifically, the training sample, denoted as the incoherent clip, is constructed by multiple sub-clips hierarchically sampled from the same raw video with various lengths of incoherence between each other. The network is trained to learn high-level representation by predicting the location and length of incoherence given the incoherent clip as input. Additionally, intra-video contrastive learning is introduced to maximize the mutual information between incoherent clips from the same raw video. We evaluate our proposed method through extensive experiments on action recognition and video retrieval utilizing various backbone networks. Experiments show that our proposed method achieves state-of-the-art performance across different backbone networks and different datasets compared with previous coherence-based methods.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2021

DIRECT: A Differential Dynamic Programming Based Framework for Trajectory Generation

This paper introduces a differential dynamic programming (DDP) based framework for polynomial trajectory generation for differentially flat systems. In particular, instead of using a linear equation with increasing size to represent multiple polynomial segments as in literature, we take a new perspective from state-space representation such that the linear equation reduces to a finite horizon control system with a fixed state dimension and the required continuity conditions for consecutive polynomials are automatically satisfied. Consequently, the constrained trajectory generation problem (both with and without time optimization) can be converted to a discrete-time finite-horizon optimal control problem with inequality constraints, which can be approached by a recently developed interior-point DDP (IPDDP) algorithm. Furthermore, for unconstrained trajectory generation with preallocated time, we show that this problem is indeed a linear-quadratic tracking (LQT) problem (DDP algorithm with exact one iteration). All these algorithms enjoy linear complexity with respect to the number of segments. Both numerical comparisons with state-of-the-art methods and physical experiments are presented to verify and validate the effectiveness of our theoretical findings. The implementation code will be open-sourced,

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arXiv2021

Design and Experimental Evaluation of a Hierarchical Controller for an Autonomous Ground Vehicle with Large Uncertainties

Autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs) are receiving increasing attention, and the motion planning and control problem for these vehicles has become a hot research topic. In real applications such as material handling, an AGV is subject to large uncertainties and its motion planning and control become challenging. In this paper, we investigate this problem by proposing a hierarchical control scheme, which is integrated by a model predictive control (MPC) based path planning and trajectory tracking control at the high level, and a reduced-order extended state observer (RESO) based dynamic control at the low level. The control at the high level consists of an MPC-based improved path planner, a velocity planner, and an MPC-based tracking controller. Both the path planning and trajectory tracking control problems are formulated under an MPC framework. The control at the low level employs the idea of active disturbance rejection control (ADRC). The uncertainties are estimated via a RESO and then compensated in the control in real-time. We show that, for the first-order uncertain AGV dynamic model, the RESO-based control only needs to know the control direction. Finally, simulations and experiments on an AGV with different payloads are conducted. The results illustrate that the proposed hierarchical control scheme achieves satisfactory motion planning and control performance with large uncertainties.

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arXiv2021

DOT and DOP: Linearly Convergent Algorithms for Finding Fixed Points of Multi-Agent Operators

This paper investigates the distributed fixed point finding problem for a global operator over a directed and unbalanced multi-agent network, where the global operator is quasinonexpansive and only partially accessible to each individual agent. Two cases are addressed, that is, the global operator is sum separable and block separable. For this first case, the global operator is the sum of local operators, which are assumed to be Lipschitz, and each local operator is privately known to each individual agent. To deal with this scenario, a distributed (or decentralized) algorithm, called Distributed quasi-averaged Operator Tracking algorithm (DOT), is proposed and rigorously analyzed, and it is shown that the algorithm can converge to a fixed point of the global operator at a linear rate under a linear regularity condition, which is strictly weaker than the strong convexity assumption on cost functions in existing convex optimization literature. For the second scenario, the global operator is composed of a group of local block operators which are Lipschitz and can be accessed only by each individual agent. In this setup, a distributed algorithm, called Distributed quasiaveraged Operator Playing algorithm (DOP), is developed and shown to be linearly convergent to a fixed point of the global operator under the linear regularity condition. The above studied problems provide a unified framework for many interesting problems. As examples, the proposed DOT and DOP are exploited to deal with distributed optimization and multi-player games under partial-decision information. Finally, numerical examples are presented to corroborate the theoretical results.

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arXiv2021

MILIOM: Tightly Coupled Multi-Input Lidar-Inertia Odometry and Mapping

In this letter we investigate a tightly coupled Lidar-Inertia Odometry and Mapping (LIOM) scheme, with the capability to incorporate multiple lidars with complementary field of view (FOV). In essence, we devise a time-synchronized scheme to combine extracted features from separate lidars into a single pointcloud, which is then used to construct a local map and compute the feature-map matching (FMM) coefficients. These coefficients, along with the IMU preinteration observations, are then used to construct a factor graph that will be optimized to produce an estimate of the sliding window trajectory. We also propose a key frame-based map management strategy to marginalize certain poses and pointclouds in the sliding window to grow a global map, which is used to assemble the local map in the later stage. The use of multiple lidars with complementary FOV and the global map ensures that our estimate has low drift and can sustain good localization in situations where single lidar use gives poor result, or even fails to work. Multi-thread computation implementations are also adopted to fractionally cut down the computation time and ensure real-time performance. We demonstrate the efficacy of our system via a series of experiments on public datasets collected from an aerial vehicle.

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arXiv2021

Computing Probabilistic Controlled Invariant Sets

This paper investigates stochastic invariance for control systems through probabilistic controlled invariant sets (PCISs). As a natural complement to robust controlled invariant sets~(RCISs), we propose finite- and infinite-horizon PCISs, and explore their relation to RICSs. We design iterative algorithms to compute the PCIS within a given set. For systems with discrete spaces, the computations of the finite- and infinite-horizon PCISs at each iteration are based on linear programming and mixed integer linear programming, respectively. The algorithms are computationally tractable and terminate in a finite number of steps. For systems with continuous spaces, we show how to discretize the spaces and prove the convergence of the approximation when computing the finite-horizon PCISs. In addition, it is shown that an infinite-horizon PCIS can be computed by the stochastic backward reachable set from the RCIS contained in it. These PCIS algorithms are applicable to practical control systems. Simulations are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results for motion planning.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2021

Online Abstract Dynamic Programming with Contractive Models

This paper addresses the abstract dynamic programming (DP) in the online scenario, where the abstract DP mapping is time-varying, instead of static. In this case, optimal costs and policies at different time instants are not the same in general, and the problem amounts to tracking time-varying optimal costs and policies, which is of interest to many practical problems. It is thus necessary to analyze the performance of classical value iteration (VI) and policy iteration (PI) algorithms in the online case. In doing so, this paper develops and provides the theoretical analysis for several online algorithms, including approximate online VI, online PI, approximate online PI, online optimistic PI, approximate online optimistic PI, and asynchronous online PI and VI algorithms. It is proved that the tracking error bounds for all algorithms critically depend upon the largest difference between any two consecutive abstract mappings. Meanwhile, examples are presented to illustrate the theoretical results.

math.OC↗

arXiv2021

F-LOAM: Fast LiDAR Odometry And Mapping

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) has wide robotic applications such as autonomous driving and unmanned aerial vehicles. Both computational efficiency and localization accuracy are of great importance towards a good SLAM system. Existing works on LiDAR based SLAM often formulate the problem as two modules: scan-to-scan match and scan-to-map refinement. Both modules are solved by iterative calculation which are computationally expensive. In this paper, we propose a general solution that aims to provide a computationally efficient and accurate framework for LiDAR based SLAM. Specifically, we adopt a non-iterative two-stage distortion compensation method to reduce the computational cost. For each scan input, the edge and planar features are extracted and matched to a local edge map and a local plane map separately, where the local smoothness is also considered for iterative pose optimization. Thorough experiments are performed to evaluate its performance in challenging scenarios, including localization for a warehouse Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) and a public dataset on autonomous driving. The proposed method achieves a competitive localization accuracy with a processing rate of more than 10 Hz in the public dataset evaluation, which provides a good trade-off between performance and computational cost for practical applications.

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arXiv2021

Regret and Cumulative Constraint Violation Analysis for Online Convex Optimization with Long Term Constraints

This paper considers online convex optimization with long term constraints, where constraints can be violated in intermediate rounds, but need to be satisfied in the long run. The cumulative constraint violation is used as the metric to measure constraint violations, which excludes the situation that strictly feasible constraints can compensate the effects of violated constraints. A novel algorithm is first proposed and it achieves an $\mathcal{O}(T^{\max\{c,1-c\}})$ bound for static regret and an $\mathcal{O}(T^{(1-c)/2})$ bound for cumulative constraint violation, where $c\in(0,1)$ is a user-defined trade-off parameter, and thus has improved performance compared with existing results. Both static regret and cumulative constraint violation bounds are reduced to $\mathcal{O}(\log(T))$ when the loss functions are strongly convex, which also improves existing results. %In order to bound the regret with respect to any comparator sequence, In order to achieve the optimal regret with respect to any comparator sequence, another algorithm is then proposed and it achieves the optimal $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{T(1+P_T)})$ regret and an $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{T})$ cumulative constraint violation, where $P_T$ is the path-length of the comparator sequence. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

Self-Point-Flow: Self-Supervised Scene Flow Estimation from Point Clouds with Optimal Transport and Random Walk

Due to the scarcity of annotated scene flow data, self-supervised scene flow learning in point clouds has attracted increasing attention. In the self-supervised manner, establishing correspondences between two point clouds to approximate scene flow is an effective approach. Previous methods often obtain correspondences by applying point-wise matching that only takes the distance on 3D point coordinates into account, introducing two critical issues: (1) it overlooks other discriminative measures, such as color and surface normal, which often bring fruitful clues for accurate matching; and (2) it often generates sub-par performance, as the matching is operated in an unconstrained situation, where multiple points can be ended up with the same corresponding point. To address the issues, we formulate this matching task as an optimal transport problem. The output optimal assignment matrix can be utilized to guide the generation of pseudo ground truth. In this optimal transport, we design the transport cost by considering multiple descriptors and encourage one-to-one matching by mass equality constraints. Also, constructing a graph on the points, a random walk module is introduced to encourage the local consistency of the pseudo labels. Comprehensive experiments on FlyingThings3D and KITTI show that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance among self-supervised learning methods. Our self-supervised method even performs on par with some supervised learning approaches, although we do not need any ground truth flow for training.

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