This work proposes SafeDQN, which allows making the behavior of autonomous vehicles safe and interpretable while still being efficient. SafeDQN offers an understandable, semantic trade-off between the expected risk and the utility of actions while being algorithmically transparent. We show that SafeDQN finds interpretable and safe driving policies for various scenarios and demonstrate how state-of-the-art saliency techniques can help assess risk and utility.

We propose IALE, an imitation learning scheme that imitates the selection of the best-performing expert heuristic at each stage of the learning cycle in a batch-mode pool-based setting. We use Dagger to train a transferable policy on a dataset and later apply it to different datasets and deep classifier architectures. The policy reflects on the best choices from multiple expert heuristics given the current state of the active learning process, and learns to select samples in a complementary way that unifies the expert strategies. Our experiments on well-known image datasets show that we outperform state of the art imitation learners and heuristics.

This work proposes ‘incremental data-uploading’, a novel encoding pattern for high dimensional data that tackles these challenges. We spread the encoding gates for the feature vector of a given data point throughout the quantum circuit with parameterized gates in between them. This encoding pattern results in a better representation of data in the quantum circuit with a minimal pre-processing requirement. We show the efficiency of our encoding pattern on a classification task using the MNIST and Fashion-MNIST datasets, and compare different encoding methods via classification accuracy and the effective dimension of the model.

We propose a novel neural network architecture for multivariate time series that notably improves the classification and trajectory regression performance in online handwriting recognition. We achieve this by jointly learning the cross-entropy loss in combination with distance and similarity losses.

We propose a transfer learning (TL) method that exploits realistic synthetic Channel State Information (CSI) obtained with the Quasi Deterministic Radio channel Generator (QuaDRiGa), used to pre-train the CNN-based fingerprint model so that it can be adapted to any real (NLoS) propagation scenario with a low number of real training samples. Our experiments show that the positioning accuracy using fine-tuning improves by 37% in changed and by 19% in new environments.

In this paper, we focus on models for online handwriting recognition, one particular type of spatio-temporal data. The data is observed from a sensor-enhanced pen with the goal to classify written characters. We conduct a broad evaluation of aleatoric (data) and epistemic (model) UQ based on two prominent techniques for Bayesian inference, Stochastic Weight Averaging-Gaussian (SWAG) and Deep Ensembles. Next to a better understanding of the model, UQ techniques can detect out-of-distribution data and domain shifts when combining right-handed and left-handed writers (an underrepresented group).

We show that VQ-DQN approaches are subject to instabilities that cause the learned policy to diverge, study the extent to which this afflicts reproducibility of established results based on classical simulation, and perform systematic experiments to identify potential explanations for the observed instabilities. Additionally, we execute RL algorithms on an actual quantum processing unit (an IBM Quantum Device) and investigate differences in behaviour between simulated and physical quantum systems that suffer from implementation deficiencies. Our experiments show that it cannot be conclusively decided if known quantum approaches, even if simulated without physical imperfections, can provide an advantage as compared to classical approaches.

We evaluate multiple neural network architectures containing encoding (compressing) and decoding (reconstructing) components and compare them to the state-of-the-art compression techniques Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). We show that fully connected autoencoders achieve the lowest error, outperforming both DCT and DWT. Further experiments prove that the reconstructed CSI can be used for positioning with only mild performance deterioration at a compression of >97% and even when trained on a different environment.

We introduce a novel pipeline that builds on recent advances in imitation learning and that can generate safe and efficient behavior policies. We combine an RL step that solves for safe behavior through the introduction of safety distances with a subsequent innovative safe extraction of decision tree policies. The resulting decision tree is not only easy to interpret, it is also safer than the neural network policy trained for safety. Additionally, we formally prove the safety of trained RL agents for linearized system dynamics, showing that the learned and extracted policy successfully avoids all catastrophic events.

We examined the Google/Apple Exposure Notification Framework (ENF), which in combination with the front-end, i.e., the German Corona-Warn-App (CWA), enables digital CT in Germany. With centimeter accurate optical reference systems we show that optimal parameters are application-specific. However, they cause impractical high resource costs. In contrast, optimized general parameters offer an everyday compromise between energy costs, applicability, accuracy, and reliability of the ENF.

We present a novel representation learning approach using Siamese Metric Learning that approximates a distance preserving low-dimensional representation and that learns to estimate reasonable solutions to the assignment problem. To this end, we employ a Temporal Convolutional Network architecture that we extend with a gating mechanism to enable learning from sparse data, leading to solutions to the assignment problem exhibiting varying degrees of sparsity.

We propose to use generative deep learning models for out-of-distribution detection based on channel impulse responses (CIRs). We use a Variational Autoencoder (VAE) to predict an anomaly score for the channel of a TOF-based Ultra-wideband (UWB) system. Our experiments show that a VAE trained only on line-of-sight (LOS) training data generalizes well to new environments and detects non-line-of-sight CIRs with an accuracy of 85%. We also show that integrating our anomaly score into a TOF-based extended Kalman filter (EKF) improves tracking performance by over 25%.

The 2020 IPIN Competition included 5 diverse off-site off-site Tracks, each resembling real use cases and challenges for indoor positioning. The results in terms of participation and accuracy of the proposed systems have been encouraging. The best performing competitors obtained a third quartile of error of 1 m for the Smartphone Track and 0.5 m for the Foot-mounted IMU Track. While not running on physical systems, but only as algorithms, these results represent impressive achievements.

We propose a 1D Convolutional Neural Network to identify optimal FDPoAs as ToA directly from the raw CSI. We train our model with realistic 5G channel model data synthesized by QuaDRiGa. Metrics such as Delay Spread (DS), k-Factor (kF), and SNR are appropriate to cover most LoS-NLoS constellations. Our approach consistently outperforms the state of the art by about 17% for SNRs below -10 dB.