SearcharxivSearch

arXiv subjects

Ryan Mckenna

Publications and source records attributed to Ryan Mckenna.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

Learn from the Past: Language-conditioned Object Rearrangement with Large Language Models

Object manipulation for rearrangement into a specific goal state is a significant task for collaborative robots. Accurately determining object placement is a key challenge, as misalignment can increase task complexity and the risk of collisions, affecting the efficiency of the rearrangement process. Most current methods heavily rely on pre-collected datasets to train the model for predicting the goal position. As a result, these methods are restricted to specific instructions, which limits their broader applicability and generalisation. In this paper, we propose a framework of flexible language-conditioned object rearrangement based on the Large Language Model (LLM). Our approach mimics human reasoning by making use of successful past experiences as a reference to infer the best strategies to achieve a current desired goal position. Based on LLM's strong natural language comprehension and inference ability, our method generalises to handle various everyday objects and free-form language instructions in a zero-shot manner. Experimental results demonstrate that our methods can effectively execute the robotic rearrangement tasks, even those involving long sequences of orders.

cs.RO

Fair Decision Making using Privacy-Protected Data

Data collected about individuals is regularly used to make decisions that impact those same individuals. We consider settings where sensitive personal data is used to decide who will receive resources or benefits. While it is well known that there is a tradeoff between protecting privacy and the accuracy of decisions, we initiate a first-of-its-kind study into the impact of formally private mechanisms (based on differential privacy) on fair and equitable decision-making. We empirically investigate novel tradeoffs on two real-world decisions made using U.S. Census data (allocation of federal funds and assignment of voting rights benefits) as well as a classic apportionment problem. Our results show that if decisions are made using an $ε$-differentially private version of the data, under strict privacy constraints (smaller $ε$), the noise added to achieve privacy may disproportionately impact some groups over others. We propose novel measures of fairness in the context of randomized differentially private algorithms and identify a range of causes of outcome disparities.

cs.DB