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Xun Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Xun Liu.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

DecentRAN: Decentralized Radio Access Network for 5.5G and beyond

Radio Access Network faces challenges from privacy and flexible wide area and local area network access. RAN is limited from providing local service directly due to centralized design of cellular network and concerns of user privacy and data security. DecentRAN or Decentralized Radio Access Network offers an alternative perspective to cope with the emerging demands of 5G Non-public Network and the hybrid deployment of 5GS and Wi-Fi in the campus network. Starting from Public key as an Identity, independent mutual authentication between UE and RAN are made possible in a privacy-preserving manner. With the introduction of decentralized architecture and network functions using blockchain and smart contracts, DecentRAN has ability to provide users with locally managed, end-to-end encrypted 5G NPN and the potential connectivity to Local Area Network via campus routers. Furthermore, the performance regarding throughput and latency are discussed, offering the deployment guidance for DecentRAN.

cs.CR↗

A trained humanoid robot can perform human-like crossmodal social attention and conflict resolution

To enhance human-robot social interaction, it is essential for robots to process multiple social cues in a complex real-world environment. However, incongruency of input information across modalities is inevitable and could be challenging for robots to process. To tackle this challenge, our study adopted the neurorobotic paradigm of crossmodal conflict resolution to make a robot express human-like social attention. A behavioural experiment was conducted on 37 participants for the human study. We designed a round-table meeting scenario with three animated avatars to improve ecological validity. Each avatar wore a medical mask to obscure the facial cues of the nose, mouth, and jaw. The central avatar shifted its eye gaze while the peripheral avatars generated sound. Gaze direction and sound locations were either spatially congruent or incongruent. We observed that the central avatar's dynamic gaze could trigger crossmodal social attention responses. In particular, human performances are better under the congruent audio-visual condition than the incongruent condition. Our saliency prediction model was trained to detect social cues, predict audio-visual saliency, and attend selectively for the robot study. After mounting the trained model on the iCub, the robot was exposed to laboratory conditions similar to the human experiment. While the human performances were overall superior, our trained model demonstrated that it could replicate attention responses similar to humans.

cs.RO↗

Ab initio melting temperatures of bcc and hcp iron under the Earth's inner core condition

There has been a long debate on the stable phase of iron under the Earth's inner core conditions. Because of the solid-liquid coexistence at the inner core boundary, the thermodynamic stability of solid phases directly relates to their melting temperatures, which remains considerable uncertainty. In the present study, we utilized a semi-empirical potential fitted to high-temperature ab initio data to perform a thermodynamic integration from classical systems described by this potential to ab initio systems. This method provides a smooth path for thermodynamic integration and significantly reduces the uncertainty caused by the finite-size effect. Our results suggest the hcp phase is the stable phase of pure iron under the inner core conditions, while the free energy difference between the hcp and bcc phases is tiny, on the order of 10s meV/atom near the melting temperature.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Experimental Characterization of Three-Band Braid Relations in Non-Hermitian Acoustic Systems

The nature of complex eigenenergy enables unique band topology to the non-Hermitian (NH) lattice systems. Recently, there has been a fast growing interest in the elusive winding and braiding topologies of the NH single and double bands, respectively. Here, we explore the even more intricate NH multi-band topology and present the first experimental characterization of the three-band braid relations by acoustic systems. Based on a concise tight-binding model, we design a ternary cavity-tube structure equipped with a highly controllable unidirectional coupler, through which the acoustic NH Bloch bands are experimentally reproduced in a synthetic dimension. We identify the NH three-band braid relations from both the perspectives of eigenvalues and eigenstates, including a noncommutative braid relation and a swappable braid relation. Our results could promote the understanding of NH Bloch band topology and pave the way toward designing new devices for manipulating acoustic states.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Observation of Acoustic Non-Hermitian Bloch Braids and Associated Topological Phase Transitions

Topological features embedded in ancient braiding and knotting arts endow significant impacts on our daily life and even cutting-edge science. Recently, fast growing efforts are invested to the braiding topology of complex Bloch bands in non-Hermitian systems. This new classification of band topology goes far beyond those established in Hermitian counterparts. Here, we present the first acoustic realization of the topological non-Hermitian Bloch braids, based on a two-band model easily accessible for realizing any desired knot structure. The non-Hermitian bands are synthesized by a simple binary cavity-tube system, where the long-range, complex-valued, and momentum-resolved couplings are accomplished by a well-controlled unidirectional coupler. In addition to directly visualizing various two-band braiding patterns, we unambiguously observe the highly-elusive topological phase transitions between them. Not only do our results provide a direct demonstration for the non-Hermitian band topology, but also the experimental techniques open new avenues for designing unconventional acoustic metamaterials.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Can AI detect pain and express pain empathy? A review from emotion recognition and a human-centered AI perspective

Sensory and emotional experiences such as pain and empathy are essential for mental and physical health. Cognitive neuroscience has been working on revealing mechanisms underlying pain and empathy. Furthermore, as trending research areas, computational pain recognition and empathic artificial intelligence (AI) show progress and promise for healthcare or human-computer interaction. Although AI research has recently made it increasingly possible to create artificial systems with affective processing, most cognitive neuroscience and AI research do not jointly address the issues of empathy in AI and cognitive neuroscience. The main aim of this paper is to introduce key advances, cognitive challenges and technical barriers in computational pain recognition and the implementation of artificial empathy. Our discussion covers the following topics: How can AI recognize pain from unimodal and multimodal information? Is it crucial for AI to be empathic? What are the benefits and challenges of empathic AI? Despite some consensus on the importance of AI, including empathic recognition and responses, we also highlight future challenges for artificial empathy and possible paths from interdisciplinary perspectives. Furthermore, we discuss challenges for responsible evaluation of cognitive methods and computational techniques and show approaches to future work to contribute to affective assistants capable of empathy.

cs.AI↗

Misaligned orientations of 4f optical neural network for image classification accuracy on various datasets

In recent years, the optical 4f system has drawn much attention in building high-speed and ultra-low-power optical neural networks (ONNs). Most optical systems suffer from the misalignment of the optical devices during installment. The performance of ONN based on the optical 4f system (4f-ONN) is considered sensitive to the misalignment in the optical path introduced. In order to comprehensively investigate the influence caused by the misalignment, we proposed a method for estimating the performance of a 4f-ONN in response to various misalignment in the context of the image classification task.The misalignment in numerical simulation is estimated by manipulating the optical intensity distributions in the fourth focus plane in the 4f system. Followed by a series of physical experiments to validate the simulation results. Using our method to test the impact of misalignment of 4f system on the classification accuracy of two popular image classification datasets, MNIST and Quickdraw16. On both datasets, we found that the performances of 4f-ONN generally degraded dramatically as the positioning error increased. Different positioning error tolerance in the misalignment orientations was observed over the two datasets. Classification performance could be preserved by positioning errors up to 200 microns in a specific direction.

physics.optics↗

GPNet: Simplifying Graph Neural Networks via Multi-channel Geometric Polynomials

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are a promising deep learning approach for circumventing many real-world problems on graph-structured data. However, these models usually have at least one of four fundamental limitations: over-smoothing, over-fitting, difficult to train, and strong homophily assumption. For example, Simple Graph Convolution (SGC) is known to suffer from the first and fourth limitations. To tackle these limitations, we identify a set of key designs including (D1) dilated convolution, (D2) multi-channel learning, (D3) self-attention score, and (D4) sign factor to boost learning from different types (i.e. homophily and heterophily) and scales (i.e. small, medium, and large) of networks, and combine them into a graph neural network, GPNet, a simple and efficient one-layer model. We theoretically analyze the model and show that it can approximate various graph filters by adjusting the self-attention score and sign factor. Experiments show that GPNet consistently outperforms baselines in terms of average rank, average accuracy, complexity, and parameters on semi-supervised and full-supervised tasks, and achieves competitive performance compared to state-of-the-art model with inductive learning task.

cs.LG↗

S-transformations for CFT$_2$ as linear mappings from closed to open sector linear spaces

We make the first attempt to define S-transformations for CFT$_2$ as linear mappings from closed to open sector linear spaces. The definition is based on closed-open sector linear space isomorphisms and boundary condition completeness. Diagonal RCFTs can be applied to our definition straight-forwardly, while more classes of CFT$_2$ are expected to be applicable. An unconventional open sector sewing, not among open sector sewing introduced by Lewellen, rises naturally and generalizes the definition. Our geometrical approach, partially inspired by string field theory, reveals the relationship between algebraic information in CFT$_2$ and curvature on surfaces.

hep-th↗

A Concurrent Switching Model for Traffic Congestion Control

We introduce a new conservation-based approach for traffic coordination modeling and control in a network of interconnected roads (NOIR) with switching movement phase rotations at every NOIR junction. For modeling of traffic evolution, we first assume that the movement phase rotation is cyclic at every NOIR junction, but the duration of each movement phase can be arbitrarily commanded by traffic signals. Then, we propose a novel concurrent switching dynamics (CSD) with deterministic transitions among a finite number of states, representing the NOIR movement phases. We define the CSD control as a cyclic receding horizon optimization problem with periodic quadratic cost and constraints. More specifically, the cost is defined so that the traffic density is minimized and the boundary inflow is uniformly distributed over the boundary inlet roads, whereas the cost parameters are periodically changed with time. The constraints are linear and imposed by a trapezoidal fundamental diagram at every NOIR road so that traffic feasibility is assured and traffic over-saturation is avoided. The success of the proposed traffic boundary control is demonstrated by simulation of traffic congestion control in Downtown Phoenix.

eess.SY↗

Boundary Control of Traffic Congestion Modeled as a Non-stationary Stochastic Process

In this paper, we introduce a new conservation-based approach to model traffic dynamics, and apply the model predictive control (MPC) approach to control the boundary traffic inflow and outflow, so that the traffic congestion is reduced. We establish an interface between the Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) software and MATLAB to define a network of interconnected roads (NOIR) as a directed graph, and present traffic congestion management as a network control problem. By formally specifying the traffic feasibility conditions, and using the linear temporal logic, we present the proposed MPC-based boundary control problem as a quadratic programming with linear equality and inequality constraints. The success of the proposed traffic boundary control is demonstrated by simulation of traffic congestion control in Center City Philadelphia.

eess.SY↗

Apache Submarine: A Unified Machine Learning Platform Made Simple

As machine learning is applied more widely, it is necessary to have a machine learning platform for both infrastructure administrators and users including expert data scientists and citizen data scientists to improve their productivity. However, existing machine learning platforms are ill-equipped to address the "Machine Learning tech debts" such as glue code, reproducibility, and portability. Furthermore, existing platforms only take expert data scientists into consideration, and thus they are inflexible for infrastructure administrators and non-user-friendly for citizen data scientists. We propose Submarine, a unified machine learning platform, to address the challenges.

cs.DC↗

Conservation-Based Modeling and Boundary Control of Congestion with an Application to Traffic Management in Center City Philadelphia

This paper develops a conservation-based approach to model traffic dynamics and alleviate traffic congestion in a network of interconnected roads (NOIR). We generate a NOIR by using the Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) software based on the real street map of Philadelphia Center City. The NOIR is then represented by a directed graph with nodes identifying distinct streets in the Center City area. By classifying the streets as inlets, outlets, and interior nodes, the model predictive control (MPC) method is applied to alleviate the network traffic congestion by optimizing the traffic inflow and outflow across the boundary of the NOIR with consideration of the inner traffic dynamics as a stochastic process. The proposed boundary control problem is defined as a quadratic programming problem with constraints imposing the feasibility of traffic coordination, and a cost function defined based on the traffic density across the NOIR.

eess.SY↗

Analysis for Lorentzian conformal field theories through sine-square deformation

We reexamine two-dimensional Lorentzian conformal field theory using the formalism previously developed in a study of sine-square deformation of Euclidean conformal field theory. We construct three types of Virasoro algebra. One of them reproduces the result by Lüscher and Mack, while another type exhibits the divergence in the central charge term. The other leads the continuous spectrum and contains no closed time-like curve in the system.

hep-th↗

What can computational models learn from human selective attention? A review from an audiovisual crossmodal perspective

Selective attention plays an essential role in information acquisition and utilization from the environment. In the past 50 years, research on selective attention has been a central topic in cognitive science. Compared with unimodal studies, crossmodal studies are more complex but necessary to solve real-world challenges in both human experiments and computational modeling. Although an increasing number of findings on crossmodal selective attention have shed light on humans' behavioral patterns and neural underpinnings, a much better understanding is still necessary to yield the same benefit for computational intelligent agents. This article reviews studies of selective attention in unimodal visual and auditory and crossmodal audiovisual setups from the multidisciplinary perspectives of psychology and cognitive neuroscience, and evaluates different ways to simulate analogous mechanisms in computational models and robotics. We discuss the gaps between these fields in this interdisciplinary review and provide insights about how to use psychological findings and theories in artificial intelligence from different perspectives.

cs.CV↗

Hybrid Low-order and Higher-order Graph Convolutional Networks

With higher-order neighborhood information of graph network, the accuracy of graph representation learning classification can be significantly improved. However, the current higher order graph convolutional network has a large number of parameters and high computational complexity. Therefore, we propose a Hybrid Lower order and Higher order Graph convolutional networks (HLHG) learning model, which uses weight sharing mechanism to reduce the number of network parameters. To reduce computational complexity, we propose a novel fusion pooling layer to combine the neighborhood information of high order and low order. Theoretically, we compare the model complexity of the proposed model with the other state-of-the-art model. Experimentally, we verify the proposed model on the large-scale text network datasets by supervised learning, and on the citation network datasets by semi-supervised learning. The experimental results show that the proposed model achieves highest classification accuracy with a small set of trainable weight parameters.

cs.LG↗

Assessing the Contribution of Semantic Congruency to Multisensory Integration and Conflict Resolution

The efficient integration of multisensory observations is a key property of the brain that yields the robust interaction with the environment. However, artificial multisensory perception remains an open issue especially in situations of sensory uncertainty and conflicts. In this work, we extend previous studies on audio-visual (AV) conflict resolution in complex environments. In particular, we focus on quantitatively assessing the contribution of semantic congruency during an AV spatial localization task. In addition to conflicts in the spatial domain (i.e. spatially misaligned stimuli), we consider gender-specific conflicts with male and female avatars. Our results suggest that while semantically related stimuli affect the magnitude of the visual bias (perceptually shifting the location of the sound towards a semantically congruent visual cue), humans still strongly rely on environmental statistics to solve AV conflicts. Together with previously reported results, this work contributes to a better understanding of how multisensory integration and conflict resolution can be modelled in artificial agents and robots operating in real-world environments.

cs.AI↗

A Neurorobotic Experiment for Crossmodal Conflict Resolution in Complex Environments

Crossmodal conflict resolution is crucial for robot sensorimotor coupling through the interaction with the environment, yielding swift and robust behaviour also in noisy conditions. In this paper, we propose a neurorobotic experiment in which an iCub robot exhibits human-like responses in a complex crossmodal environment. To better understand how humans deal with multisensory conflicts, we conducted a behavioural study exposing 33 subjects to congruent and incongruent dynamic audio-visual cues. In contrast to previous studies using simplified stimuli, we designed a scenario with four animated avatars and observed that the magnitude and extension of the visual bias are related to the semantics embedded in the scene, i.e., visual cues that are congruent with environmental statistics (moving lips and vocalization) induce the strongest bias. We implement a deep learning model that processes stereophonic sound, facial features, and body motion to trigger a discrete behavioural response. After training the model, we exposed the iCub to the same experimental conditions as the human subjects, showing that the robot can replicate similar responses in real time. Our interdisciplinary work provides important insights into how crossmodal conflict resolution can be modelled in robots and introduces future research directions for the efficient combination of sensory observations with internally generated knowledge and expectations.

cs.RO↗