Publications | Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

178 results (View BibTeX file of all listed publications)

2013

3-D Object Reconstruction of Symmetric Objects by Fusing Visual and Tactile Sensing

Illonen, J., Bohg, J., Kyrki, V.

The International Journal of Robotics Research, 33(2):321-341, Sage, October 2013 (article)

Abstract

In this work, we propose to reconstruct a complete 3-D model of an unknown object by fusion of visual and tactile information while the object is grasped. Assuming the object is symmetric, a first hypothesis of its complete 3-D shape is generated. A grasp is executed on the object with a robotic manipulator equipped with tactile sensors. Given the detected contacts between the fingers and the object, the initial full object model including the symmetry parameters can be refined. This refined model will then allow the planning of more complex manipulation tasks. The main contribution of this work is an optimal estimation approach for the fusion of visual and tactile data applying the constraint of object symmetry. The fusion is formulated as a state estimation problem and solved with an iterative extended Kalman filter. The approach is validated experimentally using both artificial and real data from two different robotic platforms.

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2013

am Illonen, J., Bohg, J., Kyrki, V. 3-D Object Reconstruction of Symmetric Objects by Fusing Visual and Tactile Sensing The International Journal of Robotics Research, 33(2):321-341, Sage, October 2013 (article)

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Correlation of Simultaneously Acquired Diffusion-Weighted Imaging and 2-Deoxy-[18F] fluoro-2-D-glucose Positron Emission Tomography of Pulmonary Lesions in a Dedicated Whole-Body Magnetic Resonance/Positron Emission Tomography System

Schmidt, H., Brendle, C., Schraml, C., Martirosian, P., Bezrukov, I., Hetzel, J., Müller, M., Sauter, A., Claussen, C., Pfannenberg, C., Schwenzer, N.

Investigative Radiology, 48(5):247-255, May 2013 (article)

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ei Schmidt, H., Brendle, C., Schraml, C., Martirosian, P., Bezrukov, I., Hetzel, J., Müller, M., Sauter, A., Claussen, C., Pfannenberg, C., Schwenzer, N. Correlation of Simultaneously Acquired Diffusion-Weighted Imaging and 2-Deoxy-[18F] fluoro-2-D-glucose Positron Emission Tomography of Pulmonary Lesions in a Dedicated Whole-Body Magnetic Resonance/Positron Emission Tomography System Investigative Radiology, 48(5):247-255, May 2013 (article)

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Replacing Causal Faithfulness with Algorithmic Independence of Conditionals

Lemeire, J., Janzing, D.

Minds and Machines, 23(2):227-249, May 2013 (article)

Abstract

Independence of Conditionals (IC) has recently been proposed as a basic rule for causal structure learning. If a Bayesian network represents the causal structure, its Conditional Probability Distributions (CPDs) should be algorithmically independent. In this paper we compare IC with causal faithfulness (FF), stating that only those conditional independences that are implied by the causal Markov condition hold true. The latter is a basic postulate in common approaches to causal structure learning. The common spirit of FF and IC is to reject causal graphs for which the joint distribution looks ‘non-generic’. The difference lies in the notion of genericity: FF sometimes rejects models just because one of the CPDs is simple, for instance if the CPD describes a deterministic relation. IC does not behave in this undesirable way. It only rejects a model when there is a non-generic relation between different CPDs although each CPD looks generic when considered separately. Moreover, it detects relations between CPDs that cannot be captured by conditional independences. IC therefore helps in distinguishing causal graphs that induce the same conditional independences (i.e., they belong to the same Markov equivalence class). The usual justification for FF implicitly assumes a prior that is a probability density on the parameter space. IC can be justified by Solomonoff’s universal prior, assigning non-zero probability to those points in parameter space that have a finite description. In this way, it favours simple CPDs, and therefore respects Occam’s razor. Since Kolmogorov complexity is uncomputable, IC is not directly applicable in practice. We argue that it is nevertheless helpful, since it has already served as inspiration and justification for novel causal inference algorithms.

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ei Lemeire, J., Janzing, D. Replacing Causal Faithfulness with Algorithmic Independence of Conditionals Minds and Machines, 23(2):227-249, May 2013 (article)

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What can neurons do for their brain? Communicate selectivity with bursts

Balduzzi, D., Tononi, G.

Theory in Biosciences , 132(1):27-39, Springer, March 2013 (article)

Abstract

Neurons deep in cortex interact with the environment extremely indirectly; the spikes they receive and produce are pre- and post-processed by millions of other neurons. This paper proposes two information-theoretic constraints guiding the production of spikes, that help ensure bursting activity deep in cortex relates meaningfully to events in the environment. First, neurons should emphasize selective responses with bursts. Second, neurons should propagate selective inputs by burst-firing in response to them. We show the constraints are necessary for bursts to dominate information-transfer within cortex, thereby providing a substrate allowing neurons to distribute credit amongst themselves. Finally, since synaptic plasticity degrades the ability of neurons to burst selectively, we argue that homeostatic regulation of synaptic weights is necessary, and that it is best performed offline during sleep.

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ei Balduzzi, D., Tononi, G. What can neurons do for their brain? Communicate selectivity with bursts Theory in Biosciences , 132(1):27-39, Springer, March 2013 (article)

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Apprenticeship Learning with Few Examples

Boularias, A., Chaib-draa, B.

Neurocomputing, 104, pages: 83-96, March 2013 (article)

Abstract

We consider the problem of imitation learning when the examples, provided by an expert human, are scarce. Apprenticeship learning via inverse reinforcement learning provides an efficient tool for generalizing the examples, based on the assumption that the expert's policy maximizes a value function, which is a linear combination of state and action features. Most apprenticeship learning algorithms use only simple empirical averages of the features in the demonstrations as a statistics of the expert's policy. However, this method is efficient only when the number of examples is sufficiently large to cover most of the states, or the dynamics of the system is nearly deterministic. In this paper, we show that the quality of the learned policies is sensitive to the error in estimating the averages of the features when the dynamics of the system is stochastic. To reduce this error, we introduce two new approaches for bootstrapping the demonstrations by assuming that the expert is near-optimal and the dynamics of the system is known. In the first approach, the expert's examples are used to learn a reward function and to generate furthermore examples from the corresponding optimal policy. The second approach uses a transfer technique, known as graph homomorphism, in order to generalize the expert's actions to unvisited regions of the state space. Empirical results on simulated robot navigation problems show that our approach is able to learn sufficiently good policies from a significantly small number of examples.

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ei Boularias, A., Chaib-draa, B. Apprenticeship Learning with Few Examples Neurocomputing, 104, pages: 83-96, March 2013 (article)

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Quasi-Newton Methods: A New Direction

Hennig, P., Kiefel, M.

Journal of Machine Learning Research, 14(1):843-865, March 2013 (article)

Abstract

Four decades after their invention, quasi-Newton methods are still state of the art in unconstrained numerical optimization. Although not usually interpreted thus, these are learning algorithms that fit a local quadratic approximation to the objective function. We show that many, including the most popular, quasi-Newton methods can be interpreted as approximations of Bayesian linear regression under varying prior assumptions. This new notion elucidates some shortcomings of classical algorithms, and lights the way to a novel nonparametric quasi-Newton method, which is able to make more efficient use of available information at computational cost similar to its predecessors.

ei ps pn

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ei ps pn Hennig, P., Kiefel, M. Quasi-Newton Methods: A New Direction Journal of Machine Learning Research, 14(1):843-865, March 2013 (article)

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Regional effects of magnetization dispersion on quantitative perfusion imaging for pulsed and continuous arterial spin labeling

Cavusoglu, M., Pohmann, R., Burger, H. C., Uludag, K.

Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 69(2):524-530, Febuary 2013 (article)

Abstract

Most experiments assume a global transit delay time with blood flowing from the tagging region to the imaging slice in plug flow without any dispersion of the magnetization. However, because of cardiac pulsation, nonuniform cross-sectional flow profile, and complex vessel networks, the transit delay time is not a single value but follows a distribution. In this study, we explored the regional effects of magnetization dispersion on quantitative perfusion imaging for varying transit times within a very large interval from the direct comparison of pulsed, pseudo-continuous, and dual-coil continuous arterial spin labeling encoding schemes. Longer distances between tagging and imaging region typically used for continuous tagging schemes enhance the regional bias on the quantitative cerebral blood flow measurement causing an underestimation up to 37% when plug flow is assumed as in the standard model.

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ei Cavusoglu, M., Pohmann, R., Burger, H. C., Uludag, K. Regional effects of magnetization dispersion on quantitative perfusion imaging for pulsed and continuous arterial spin labeling Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 69(2):524-530, Febuary 2013 (article)

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The multivariate Watson distribution: Maximum-likelihood estimation and other aspects

Sra, S., Karp, D.

Journal of Multivariate Analysis, 114, pages: 256-269, February 2013 (article)

Abstract

This paper studies fundamental aspects of modelling data using multivariate Watson distributions. Although these distributions are natural for modelling axially symmetric data (i.e., unit vectors where View the MathML source are equivalent), for high-dimensions using them can be difficult—largely because for Watson distributions even basic tasks such as maximum-likelihood are numerically challenging. To tackle the numerical difficulties some approximations have been derived. But these are either grossly inaccurate in high-dimensions [K.V. Mardia, P. Jupp, Directional Statistics, second ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2000] or when reasonably accurate [A. Bijral, M. Breitenbach, G.Z. Grudic, Mixture of Watson distributions: a generative model for hyperspherical embeddings, in: Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, AISTATS 2007, 2007, pp. 35–42], they lack theoretical justification. We derive new approximations to the maximum-likelihood estimates; our approximations are theoretically well-defined, numerically accurate, and easy to compute. We build on our parameter estimation and discuss mixture-modelling with Watson distributions; here we uncover a hitherto unknown connection to the “diametrical clustering” algorithm of Dhillon et al. [I.S. Dhillon, E.M. Marcotte, U. Roshan, Diametrical clustering for identifying anticorrelated gene clusters, Bioinformatics 19 (13) (2003) 1612–1619].

Web DOI [BibTex]

ei Sra, S., Karp, D. The multivariate Watson distribution: Maximum-likelihood estimation and other aspects Journal of Multivariate Analysis, 114, pages: 256-269, February 2013 (article)

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How the result of graph clustering methods depends on the construction of the graph

Maier, M., von Luxburg, U., Hein, M.

ESAIM: Probability & Statistics, 17, pages: 370-418, January 2013 (article)

Abstract

We study the scenario of graph-based clustering algorithms such as spectral clustering. Given a set of data points, one rst has to construct a graph on the data points and then apply a graph clustering algorithm to nd a suitable partition of the graph. Our main question is if and how the construction of the graph (choice of the graph, choice of parameters, choice of weights) in uences the outcome of the nal clustering result. To this end we study the convergence of cluster quality measures such as the normalized cut or the Cheeger cut on various kinds of random geometric graphs as the sample size tends to innity. It turns out that the limit values of the same objective function are systematically dierent on dierent types of graphs. This implies that clustering results systematically depend on the graph and can be very dierent for dierent types of graph. We provide examples to illustrate the implications on spectral clustering.

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