arXiv subjects

Ling Shi

Publications and source records attributed to Ling Shi.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

Improved Extended Kalman Filter-Based Disturbance Observers for Exoskeletons

The nominal performance of mechanical systems is often degraded by unknown disturbances. A two-degree-of-freedom control structure can decouple nominal performance from disturbance rejection. However, perfect disturbance rejection is unattainable when the disturbance dynamic is unknown. In this work, we reveal an inherent trade-off in disturbance estimation subject to tracking speed and tracking uncertainty. Then, we propose two novel methods to enhance disturbance estimation: an interacting multiple model extended Kalman filter-based disturbance observer and a multi-kernel correntropy extended Kalman filter-based disturbance observer. Experiments on an exoskeleton verify that the proposed two methods improve the tracking accuracy $36.3\%$ and $16.2\%$ in hip joint error, and $46.3\%$ and $24.4\%$ in knee joint error, respectively, compared to the extended Kalman filter-based disturbance observer, in a time-varying interaction force scenario, demonstrating the superiority of the proposed method.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Bandwidth-Constrained Sensor Scheduling: A Trade-off between Fairness and Efficiency

We address fair sensor scheduling over bandwidth-constrained communication channels. While existing literature on fair scheduling overlooks overall system efficiency, we introduce a novel $q$-fairness framework to balance efficiency and fairness by adjusting the parameter $q$. Specifically, for two communication scenarios, we: (i) derive the optimal schedule under limited communication rates, and (ii) propose two suboptimal algorithms under limited simultaneous sensor transmissions and analyze their performance gaps relative to the optimal strategy. Simulations demonstrate that our algorithms effectively balance efficiency and fairness in both cases.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2025

Efficient Detection of Toxic Prompts in Large Language Models

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Gemini have significantly advanced natural language processing, enabling various applications such as chatbots and automated content generation. However, these models can be exploited by malicious individuals who craft toxic prompts to elicit harmful or unethical responses. These individuals often employ jailbreaking techniques to bypass safety mechanisms, highlighting the need for robust toxic prompt detection methods. Existing detection techniques, both blackbox and whitebox, face challenges related to the diversity of toxic prompts, scalability, and computational efficiency. In response, we propose ToxicDetector, a lightweight greybox method designed to efficiently detect toxic prompts in LLMs. ToxicDetector leverages LLMs to create toxic concept prompts, uses embedding vectors to form feature vectors, and employs a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) classifier for prompt classification. Our evaluation on various versions of the LLama models, Gemma-2, and multiple datasets demonstrates that ToxicDetector achieves a high accuracy of 96.39\% and a low false positive rate of 2.00\%, outperforming state-of-the-art methods. Additionally, ToxicDetector's processing time of 0.0780 seconds per prompt makes it highly suitable for real-time applications. ToxicDetector achieves high accuracy, efficiency, and scalability, making it a practical method for toxic prompt detection in LLMs.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2025

Enhancing Semantic Understanding in Pointer Analysis using Large Language Models

Pointer analysis has been studied for over four decades. However, existing frameworks continue to suffer from the propagation of incorrect facts. A major limitation stems from their insufficient semantic understanding of code, resulting in overly conservative treatment of user-defined functions. Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) present new opportunities to bridge this gap. In this paper, we propose LMPA (LLM-enhanced Pointer Analysis), a vision that integrates LLMs into pointer analysis to enhance both precision and scalability. LMPA identifies user-defined functions that resemble system APIs and models them accordingly, thereby mitigating erroneous cross-calling-context propagation. Furthermore, it enhances summary-based analysis by inferring initial points-to sets and introducing a novel summary strategy augmented with natural language. Finally, we discuss the key challenges involved in realizing this vision.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Secure State Estimation of Cyber-Physical Systems via Gaussian Bernoulli Mixture Model

The implementation of cyber-physical systems in real-world applications is challenged by safety requirements in the presence of sensor threats. Most cyber-physical systems, especially multi-sensor systems, struggle to detect sensor attacks when the attack model is unknown. In this paper, we tackle this issue by proposing a Gaussian-Bernoulli Secure (GBS) estimator, which transforms the detection problem into an optimal estimation problem concerning the system state and observation indicators. It encompasses two theoretical sub-problems: sequential state estimation with partial observations and estimation updates with disordered new observations. Within the framework of Kalman filter, we derive closed-form solutions for these two problems. However, due to their computational inefficiency, we propose the iterative approach employing proximal gradient descent to update the estimation in less time. Finally, we conduct experiments from three perspectives: computational efficiency, detection performance, and estimation error. Our GBS estimator demonstrates significant improvements over other methods.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2025

Consistent and Optimal Solution to Camera Motion Estimation

Given 2D point correspondences between an image pair, inferring the camera motion is a fundamental issue in the computer vision community. The existing works generally set out from the epipolar constraint and estimate the essential matrix, which is not optimal in the maximum likelihood (ML) sense. In this paper, we dive into the original measurement model with respect to the rotation matrix and normalized translation vector and formulate the ML problem. We then propose a two-step algorithm to solve it: In the first step, we estimate the variance of measurement noises and devise a consistent estimator based on bias elimination; In the second step, we execute a one-step Gauss-Newton iteration on manifold to refine the consistent estimate. We prove that the proposed estimate owns the same asymptotic statistical properties as the ML estimate: The first is consistency, i.e., the estimate converges to the ground truth as the point number increases; The second is asymptotic efficiency, i.e., the mean squared error of the estimate converges to the theoretical lower bound -- Cramer-Rao bound. In addition, we show that our algorithm has linear time complexity. These appealing characteristics endow our estimator with a great advantage in the case of dense point correspondences. Experiments on both synthetic data and real images demonstrate that when the point number reaches the order of hundreds, our estimator outperforms the state-of-the-art ones in terms of estimation accuracy and CPU time.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

Interior-Point-based H2 Controller Synthesis for Compartmental Systems

This paper addresses the problem of the optimal $H_2$ controller design for compartmental systems. In other words, we aim to enhance system robustness while maintaining the law of mass conservation. We perform a novel problem transformation and establish that the original problem is equivalent to an new optimization problem with a closed polyhedron constraint. Existing works have developed various first-order methods to tackle inequality constraints. However, the performance of the first-order method is limited in terms of convergence speed and precision, restricting its potential in practical applications. Therefore, developing a novel algorithm with fast speed and high precision is critical. In this paper, we reformulate the problem using log-barrier functions and introduce two separate approaches to address the problem: the first-order interior point method (FIPM) and the second-order interior point method (SIPM). We show they converge to a stationary point of the new problem. In addition, we propose an initialization method to guarantee the interior property of initial values. Finally, we compare FIPM and SIPM through a room temperature control example and show their pros and cons.

math.OC↗

arXiv2025

Seeing It Before It Happens: In-Generation NSFW Detection for Diffusion-Based Text-to-Image Models

Diffusion-based text-to-image (T2I) models enable high-quality image generation but also pose significant risks of misuse, particularly in producing not-safe-for-work (NSFW) content. While prior detection methods have focused on filtering prompts before generation or moderating images afterward, the in-generation phase of diffusion models remains largely unexplored for NSFW detection. In this paper, we introduce In-Generation Detection (IGD), a simple yet effective approach that leverages the predicted noise during the diffusion process as an internal signal to identify NSFW content. This approach is motivated by preliminary findings suggesting that the predicted noise may capture semantic cues that differentiate NSFW from benign prompts, even when the prompts are adversarially crafted. Experiments conducted on seven NSFW categories show that IGD achieves an average detection accuracy of 91.32% over naive and adversarial NSFW prompts, outperforming seven baseline methods.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2025

NeuSemSlice: Towards Effective DNN Model Maintenance via Neuron-level Semantic Slicing

Deep Neural networks (DNNs), extensively applied across diverse disciplines, are characterized by their integrated and monolithic architectures, setting them apart from conventional software systems. This architectural difference introduces particular challenges to maintenance tasks, such as model restructure (e.g., model compression), re-adaptation (e.g., fitting new samples), and incremental development (e.g., continual knowledge accumulation). Prior research addresses these challenges by identifying task-critical neuron layers, and dividing neural networks into semantically-similar sequential modules. However, such layer-level approaches fail to precisely identify and manipulate neuron-level semantic components, restricting their applicability to finer-grained model maintenance tasks. In this work, we implement NeuSemSlice, a novel framework that introduces the semantic slicing technique to effectively identify critical neuron-level semantic components in DNN models for semantic-aware model maintenance tasks. Specifically, semantic slicing identifies, categorizes and merges critical neurons across different categories and layers according to their semantic similarity, enabling their flexibility and effectiveness in the subsequent tasks. For semantic-aware model maintenance tasks, we provide a series of novel strategies based on semantic slicing to enhance NeuSemSlice. They include semantic components (i.e., critical neurons) preservation for model restructure, critical neuron tuning for model re-adaptation, and non-critical neuron training for model incremental development. A thorough evaluation has demonstrated that NeuSemSlice significantly outperforms baselines in all three tasks.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

A Fast Method for Planning All Optimal Homotopic Configurations for Tethered Robots and Its Extended Applications

Tethered robots play a pivotal role in specialized environments such as disaster response and underground exploration, where their stable power supply and reliable communication offer unparalleled advantages. However, their motion planning is severely constrained by tether length limitations and entanglement risks, posing significant challenges to achieving optimal path planning. To address these challenges, this study introduces CDT-TCS (Convex Dissection Topology-based Tethered Configuration Search), a novel algorithm that leverages CDT Encoding as a homotopy invariant to represent topological states of paths. By integrating algebraic topology with geometric optimization, CDT-TCS efficiently computes the complete set of optimal feasible configurations for tethered robots at all positions in 2D environments through a single computation. Building on this foundation, we further propose three application-specific algorithms: i) CDT-TPP for optimal tethered path planning, ii) CDT-TMV for multi-goal visiting with tether constraints, iii) CDT-UTPP for distance-optimal path planning of untethered robots. All theoretical results and propositions underlying these algorithms are rigorously proven and thoroughly discussed in this paper. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed algorithms significantly outperform state-of-the-art methods in their respective problem domains. Furthermore, real-world experiments on robotic platforms validate the practicality and engineering value of the proposed framework.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Circumventing Safety Alignment in Large Language Models Through Embedding Space Toxicity Attenuation

Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable success across domains such as healthcare, education, and cybersecurity. However, this openness also introduces significant security risks, particularly through embedding space poisoning, which is a subtle attack vector where adversaries manipulate the internal semantic representations of input data to bypass safety alignment mechanisms. While previous research has investigated universal perturbation methods, the dynamics of LLM safety alignment at the embedding level remain insufficiently understood. Consequently, more targeted and accurate adversarial perturbation techniques, which pose significant threats, have not been adequately studied. In this work, we propose ETTA (Embedding Transformation Toxicity Attenuation), a novel framework that identifies and attenuates toxicity-sensitive dimensions in embedding space via linear transformations. ETTA bypasses model refusal behaviors while preserving linguistic coherence, without requiring model fine-tuning or access to training data. Evaluated on five representative open-source LLMs using the AdvBench benchmark, ETTA achieves a high average attack success rate of 88.61%, outperforming the best baseline by 11.34%, and generalizes to safety-enhanced models (e.g., 77.39% ASR on instruction-tuned defenses). These results highlight a critical vulnerability in current alignment strategies and underscore the need for embedding-aware defenses.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2025

Differentially Private Dual Gradient Tracking for Distributed Resource Allocation

This paper investigates privacy issues in distributed resource allocation over directed networks, where each agent holds a private cost function and optimizes its decision subject to a global coupling constraint through local interaction with other agents. Conventional methods for resource allocation over directed networks require all agents to transmit their original data to neighbors, which poses the risk of disclosing sensitive and private information. To address this issue, we propose an algorithm called differentially private dual gradient tracking (DP-DGT) for distributed resource allocation, which obfuscates the exchanged messages using independent Laplacian noise. Our algorithm ensures that the agents' decisions converge to a neighborhood of the optimal solution almost surely. Furthermore, without the assumption of bounded gradients, we prove that the cumulative differential privacy loss under the proposed algorithm is finite even when the number of iterations goes to infinity. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to simultaneously achieve these two goals in distributed resource allocation problems over directed networks. Finally, numerical simulations on economic dispatch problems within the IEEE 14-bus system illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2025

Decentralized Optimization with Amplified Privacy via Efficient Communication

Decentralized optimization is crucial for multi-agent systems, with significant concerns about communication efficiency and privacy. This paper explores the role of efficient communication in decentralized stochastic gradient descent algorithms for enhancing privacy preservation. We develop a novel algorithm that incorporates two key features: random agent activation and sparsified communication. Utilizing differential privacy, we demonstrate that these features reduce noise without sacrificing privacy, thereby amplifying the privacy guarantee and improving accuracy. Additionally, we analyze the convergence and the privacy-accuracy-communication trade-off of the proposed algorithm. Finally, we present experimental results to illustrate the effectiveness of our algorithm.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2025

An Autocovariance Least-Squares-Based Data-Driven Kalman Filter for Unknown Systems

This article investigates the problem of data-driven state estimation for linear systems with both unknown system dynamics and noise covariances. We propose an Autocovariance Least-squares-based Data-driven Kalman Filter (ADKF), which provides a unified framework for simultaneous system identification and state estimation by utilizing pre-collected input-output trajectories and estimated initial states. Specifically, we design a SDP-based algorithm for estimating the noise covariances. We quantify the impact of model inaccuracy on noise covariances estimation using this identification algorithm, and introduce a feedback control mechanism for data collection to enhance the accuracy and stability of noise covariance estimation. The estimated noise covariances account for model inaccuracy, which are shown to be more suitable for state estimation. We also quantify the performance gap between the ADKF and the traditional Kalman filter with known system dynamics and noise covariances, showing that this gap decreases as the number and length of pre-collected trajectories increase. Finally, numerical simulations validate the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed ADKF.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2025

PierGuard: A Planning Framework for Underwater Robotic Inspection of Coastal Piers

Using underwater robots instead of humans for the inspection of coastal piers can enhance efficiency while reducing risks. A key challenge in performing these tasks lies in achieving efficient and rapid path planning within complex environments. Sampling-based path planning methods, such as Rapidly-exploring Random Tree* (RRT*), have demonstrated notable performance in high-dimensional spaces. In recent years, researchers have begun designing various geometry-inspired heuristics and neural network-driven heuristics to further enhance the effectiveness of RRT*. However, the performance of these general path planning methods still requires improvement when applied to highly cluttered underwater environments. In this paper, we propose PierGuard, which combines the strengths of bidirectional search and neural network-driven heuristic regions. We design a specialized neural network to generate high-quality heuristic regions in cluttered maps, thereby improving the performance of the path planning. Through extensive simulation and real-world ocean field experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed method compared with previous research. Our method achieves approximately 2.6 times the performance of the state-of-the-art geometric-based sampling method and nearly 4.9 times that of the state-of-the-art learning-based sampling method. Our results provide valuable insights for the automation of pier inspection and the enhancement of maritime safety. The updated experimental video is available in the supplementary materials.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Sparse $H_\infty$ Controller for Networked Control Systems: Non-Structured and Optimal Structured Design

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the design of optimal structured and sparse $H_\infty$ controllers for continuous-time linear time-invariant (LTI) systems. Three problems are considered. First, designing the sparsest $H_\infty$ controller, which minimizes the sparsity of the controller while satisfying the given performance requirements. Second, designing a sparsity-promoting $H_\infty$ controller, which balances system performance and controller sparsity. Third, designing a $H_\infty$ controller subject to a structural constraint, which enhances system performance with a specified sparsity pattern. For each problem, we adopt a linearization technique that transforms the original nonconvex problem into a convex semidefinite programming (SDP) problem. Subsequently, we design an iterative linear matrix inequality (ILMI) algorithm for each problem, which ensures guaranteed convergence. We further characterize the first-order optimality using the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions and prove that any limit point of the solution sequence generated by the ILMI algorithm is a stationary point. For the first and second problems, we validate that our algorithms can reduce the number of non-zero elements and thus the communication burden through several numerical simulations. For the third problem, we refine the solutions obtained in existing literature, demonstrating that our approaches achieve significant improvements.

math.OC↗

arXiv2025

A Unified Alternating Optimization Framework for Joint Sensor and Actuator Configuration in LQG Systems

This paper fills a gap in the literature by considering a joint sensor and actuator configuration problem under the linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) performance without assuming a predefined set of candidate components. Different from the existing research, which primarily focuses on selecting or placing sensors and actuators from a fixed group, we consider a more flexible formulation where these components must be designed from scratch, subject to general-form configuration costs and constraints. To address this challenge, we first analytically characterize the gradients of the LQG performance with respect to the sensor and actuator matrices using algebraic Riccati equations. Subsequently, we derive first-order optimality conditions based on the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) analysis and develop a unified alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM)-based alternating optimization framework to address the general-form sensor and actuator configuration problem. Furthermore, we investigate three representative scenarios: sparsity promoting configuration, low-rank promoting configuration, and structure-constrained configuration. For each scenario, we provide in-depth analysis and develop tailored computational schemes. The proposed framework ensures numerical efficiency and adaptability to various design constraints and configuration costs, making it well-suited for integration into numerical solvers.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2025

Understanding the Effectiveness of Coverage Criteria for Large Language Models: A Special Angle from Jailbreak Attacks

Large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized artificial intelligence, but their increasing deployment across critical domains has raised concerns about their abnormal behaviors when faced with malicious attacks. Such vulnerability alerts the widespread inadequacy of pre-release testing. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive empirical study to evaluate the effectiveness of traditional coverage criteria in identifying such inadequacies, exemplified by the significant security concern of jailbreak attacks. Our study begins with a clustering analysis of the hidden states of LLMs, revealing that the embedded characteristics effectively distinguish between different query types. We then systematically evaluate the performance of these criteria across three key dimensions: criterion level, layer level, and token level. Our research uncovers significant differences in neuron coverage when LLMs process normal versus jailbreak queries, aligning with our clustering experiments. Leveraging these findings, we propose three practical applications of coverage criteria in the context of LLM security testing. Specifically, we develop a real-time jailbreak detection mechanism that achieves high accuracy (93.61% on average) in classifying queries as normal or jailbreak. Furthermore, we explore the use of coverage levels to prioritize test cases, improving testing efficiency by focusing on high-risk interactions and removing redundant tests. Lastly, we introduce a coverage-guided approach for generating jailbreak attack examples, enabling systematic refinement of prompts to uncover vulnerabilities. This study improves our understanding of LLM security testing, enhances their safety, and provides a foundation for developing more robust AI applications.

cs.SE↗