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Conference paperLiu S, Davison A, Johns E, 2019,
Self-supervised generalisation with meta auxiliary learning
, 33rd Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2019), Publisher: Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation, Inc.Learning with auxiliary tasks can improve the ability of a primary task to generalise.However, this comes at the cost of manually labelling auxiliary data. We propose anew method which automatically learns appropriate labels for an auxiliary task,such that any supervised learning task can be improved without requiring access toany further data. The approach is to train two neural networks: a label-generationnetwork to predict the auxiliary labels, and a multi-task network to train theprimary task alongside the auxiliary task. The loss for the label-generation networkincorporates the loss of the multi-task network, and so this interaction between thetwo networks can be seen as a form of meta learning with a double gradient. Weshow that our proposed method, Meta AuXiliary Learning (MAXL), outperformssingle-task learning on 7 image datasets, without requiring any additional data.We also show that MAXL outperforms several other baselines for generatingauxiliary labels, and is even competitive when compared with human-definedauxiliary labels. The self-supervised nature of our method leads to a promisingnew direction towards automated generalisation. Source code can be found athttps://github.com/lorenmt/maxl.
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Journal articleRakicevic N, Kormushev P, 2019,
Active learning via informed search in movement parameter space for efficient robot task learning and transfer
, Autonomous Robots, Vol: 43, Pages: 1917-1935, ISSN: 0929-5593Learning complex physical tasks via trial-and-error is still challenging for high-degree-of-freedom robots. Greatest challenges are devising a suitable objective function that defines the task, and the high sample complexity of learning the task. We propose a novel active learning framework, consisting of decoupled task model and exploration components, which does not require an objective function. The task model is specific to a task and maps the parameter space, defining a trial, to the trial outcome space. The exploration component enables efficient search in the trial-parameter space to generate the subsequent most informative trials, by simultaneously exploiting all the information gained from previous trials and reducing the task model’s overall uncertainty. We analyse the performance of our framework in a simulation environment and further validate it on a challenging bimanual-robot puck-passing task. Results show that the robot successfully acquires the necessary skills after only 100 trials without any prior information about the task or target positions. Decoupling the framework’s components also enables efficient skill transfer to new environments which is validated experimentally.
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Conference paperNadler P, Arcucci R, Guo YK, 2019,
Data assimilation for parameter estimation in economic modelling
, Pages: 649-656We propose a data assimilation approach for latent parameter estimation in economic models. We describe a dynamic model of an economic system with latent state variables describing the relationship of economic entities over time as well as a stochastic volatility component. We show and discuss the model's relationship with data assimilation and how it is derived. We apply it to conduct a multivariate analysis of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Combining these approaches opens a new dimension of analysis to economic modelling. Economics, Multivariate Analysis, Dynamical System, Bitcoin, Data Assimilation.
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Conference paperLim EM, Molina Solana M, Pain C, et al., 2019,
Hybrid data assimilation: An ensemble-variational approach
, Pages: 633-640Data Assimilation (DA) is a technique used to quantify and manage uncertainty in numerical models by incorporating observations into the model. Variational Data Assimilation (VarDA) accomplishes this by minimising a cost function which weighs the errors in both the numerical results and the observations. However, large-scale domains pose issues with the optimisation and execution of the DA model. In this paper, ensemble methods are explored as a means of sampling the background error at a reduced rank to condition the problem. The impact of ensemble size on the error is evaluated and benchmarked against other preconditioning methods explored in previous work such as using truncated singular value decomposition (TSVD). Localisation is also investigated as a form of reducing the long-range spurious errors in the background error covariance matrix. Both the mean squared error (MSE) and execution time are used as measure of performance. Experimental results for a 3D case for pollutant dispersion within an urban environment are presented with promise for future work using dynamic ensembles and 4D state vectors.
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Journal articleAristodemou E, Arcucci R, Mottet L, et al., 2019,
Enhancing CFD-LES air pollution prediction accuracy using data assimilation
, Building and Environment, Vol: 165, ISSN: 0007-3628It is recognised worldwide that air pollution is the cause of premature deaths daily, thus necessitating the development of more reliable and accurate numerical tools. The present study implements a three dimensional Variational (3DVar) data assimilation (DA) approach to reduce the discrepancy between predicted pollution concentrations based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) with the ones measured in a wind tunnel experiment. The methodology is implemented on a wind tunnel test case which represents a localised neighbourhood environment. The improved accuracy of the CFD simulation using DA is discussed in terms of absolute error, mean squared error and scatter plots for the pollution concentration. It is shown that the difference between CFD results and wind tunnel data, computed by the mean squared error, can be reduced by up to three order of magnitudes when using DA. This reduction in error is preserved in the CFD results and its benefit can be seen through several time steps after re-running the CFD simulation. Subsequently an optimal sensors positioning is proposed. There is a trade-off between the accuracy and the number of sensors. It was found that the accuracy was improved when placing/considering the sensors which were near the pollution source or in regions where pollution concentrations were high. This demonstrated that only 14% of the wind tunnel data was needed, reducing the mean squared error by one order of magnitude.
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Journal articlePeach R, Yaliraki S, Lefevre D, et al., 2019,
Data-driven unsupervised clustering of online learner behaviour 
, npj Science of Learning, Vol: 4, ISSN: 2056-7936The widespread adoption of online courses opens opportunities for analysing learner behaviour and optimising web-based learning adapted to observed usage. Here we introduce a mathematical framework for the analysis of time series of online learner engagement, which allows the identification of clusters of learners with similar online temporal behaviour directly from the raw data without prescribing a priori subjective reference behaviours. The method uses a dynamic time warping kernel to create a pairwise similarity between time series of learner actions, and combines it with an unsupervised multiscale graph clustering algorithm to identify groups of learners with similar temporal behaviour. To showcase our approach, we analyse task completion data from a cohort of learners taking an online post-graduate degree at Imperial Business School. Our analysis reveals clusters of learners with statistically distinct patterns of engagement, from distributed to massed learning, with different levels of regularity, adherence to pre-planned course structure and task completion. The approach also reveals outlier learners with highly sporadic behaviour. A posteriori comparison against student performance shows that, whereas high performing learners are spread across clusters with diverse temporal engagement, low performers are located significantly in the massed learning cluster, and our unsupervised clustering identifies low performers more accurately than common machine learning classification methods trained on temporal statistics of the data. Finally, we test the applicability of the method by analysing two additional datasets: a different cohort of the same course, and time series of different format from another university.
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Conference paperLertvittayakumjorn P, Toni F, 2019,
Human-grounded evaluations of explanation methods for text classification
, 2019 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing and 9th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing, Publisher: ACL Anthology, Pages: 5195-5205Due to the black-box nature of deep learning models, methods for explaining the models’ results are crucial to gain trust from humans and support collaboration between AIsand humans. In this paper, we consider several model-agnostic and model-specific explanation methods for CNNs for text classification and conduct three human-grounded evaluations, focusing on different purposes of explanations: (1) revealing model behavior, (2)justifying model predictions, and (3) helping humans investigate uncertain predictions.The results highlight dissimilar qualities of thevarious explanation methods we consider andshow the degree to which these methods couldserve for each purpose.
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Conference paperFalck F, Doshi S, Smuts N, et al., 2019,
Human-centered manipulation and navigation with robot DE NIRO
Social assistance robots in health and elderly care have the potential tosupport and ease human lives. Given the macrosocial trends of aging andlong-lived populations, robotics-based care research mainly focused on helpingthe elderly live independently. In this paper, we introduce Robot DE NIRO, aresearch platform that aims to support the supporter (the caregiver) and alsooffers direct human-robot interaction for the care recipient. Augmented byseveral sensors, DE NIRO is capable of complex manipulation tasks. It reliablyinteracts with humans and can autonomously and swiftly navigate throughdynamically changing environments. We describe preliminary experiments in ademonstrative scenario and discuss DE NIRO's design and capabilities. We putparticular emphases on safe, human-centered interaction procedures implementedin both hardware and software, including collision avoidance in manipulationand navigation as well as an intuitive perception stack through speech and facerecognition.
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Journal articleČyras K, Birch D, Guo Y, et al., 2019,
Explanations by arbitrated argumentative dispute
, Expert Systems with Applications, Vol: 127, Pages: 141-156, ISSN: 0957-4174Explaining outputs determined algorithmically by machines is one of the most pressing and studied problems in Artificial Intelligence (AI) nowadays, but the equally pressing problem of using AI to explain outputs determined by humans is less studied. In this paper we advance a novel methodology integrating case-based reasoning and computational argumentation from AI to explain outcomes, determined by humans or by machines, indifferently, for cases characterised by discrete (static) features and/or (dynamic) stages. At the heart of our methodology lies the concept of arbitrated argumentative disputesbetween two fictitious disputants arguing, respectively, for or against a case's output in need of explanation, and where this case acts as an arbiter. Specifically, in explaining the outcome of a case in question, the disputants put forward as arguments relevant cases favouring their respective positions, with arguments/cases conflicting due to their features, stages and outcomes, and the applicability of arguments/cases arbitrated by the features and stages of the case in question. We in addition use arbitrated dispute trees to identify the excess features that help the winning disputant to win the dispute and thus complement the explanation. We evaluate our novel methodology theoretically, proving desirable properties thereof, and empirically, in the context of primary legislation in the United Kingdom (UK), concerning the passage of Bills that may or may not become laws. High-level factors underpinning a Bill's passage are its content-agnostic features such as type, number of sponsors, ballot order, as well as the UK Parliament's rules of conduct. Given high numbers of proposed legislation (hundreds of Bills a year), it is hard even for legal experts to explain on a large scale why certain Bills pass or not. We show how our methodology can address this problem by automatically providing high-level explanations of why Bills pass or not, based on the given Bills and the
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Conference paperLaw M, Russo A, Bertino E, et al., 2019,
Representing and learning grammars in answer set programming
, AAAI-19: Thirty-third AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Publisher: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Pages: 2919-2928In this paper we introduce an extension of context-free grammars called answer set grammars (ASGs). These grammars allow annotations on production rules, written in the language of Answer Set Programming (ASP), which can express context-sensitive constraints. We investigate the complexity of various classes of ASG with respect to two decision problems: deciding whether a given string belongs to the language of an ASG and deciding whether the language of an ASG is non-empty. Specifically, we show that the complexity of these decision problems can be lowered by restricting the subset of the ASP language used in the annotations. To aid the applicability of these grammars to computational problems that require context-sensitive parsers for partially known languages, we propose a learning task for inducing the annotations of an ASG. We characterise the complexity of this task and present an algorithm for solving it. An evaluation of a (prototype) implementation is also discussed.
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Conference paperTavakoli A, Levdik V, Islam R, et al., 2019,
Exploring Restart Distributions
, Montréal, Canada, The Fourth Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making, Publisher: arXivWe consider the generic approach of using an experience memory to help exploration by adapting a restart distribution. That is, given the capacity to reset the state with those corresponding to the agent's past observations, we help exploration by promoting faster state-space coverage via restarting the agent from a more diverse set of initial states, as well as allowing it to restart in states associated with significant past experiences. This approach is compatible with both on-policy and off-policy methods. However, a caveat is that altering the distribution of initial states could change the optimal policies when searching within a restricted class of policies. To reduce this unsought learning bias, we evaluate our approach in deep reinforcement learning which benefits from the high representational capacity of deep neural networks. We instantiate three variants of our approach, each inspired by an idea in the context of experience replay. Using these variants, we show that performance gains can be achieved, especially in hard exploration problems.
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Conference paperČyras K, Letsios D, Misener R, et al., 2019,
Argumentation for explainable scheduling
, Thirty-Third AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-19), Publisher: AAAI, Pages: 2752-2759Mathematical optimization offers highly-effective tools for finding solutions for problems with well-defined goals, notably scheduling. However, optimization solvers are often unexplainable black boxes whose solutions are inaccessible to users and which users cannot interact with. We define a novel paradigm using argumentation to empower the interaction between optimization solvers and users, supported by tractable explanations which certify or refute solutions. A solution can be from a solver or of interest to a user (in the context of 'what-if' scenarios). Specifically, we define argumentative and natural language explanations for why a schedule is (not) feasible, (not) efficient or (not) satisfying fixed user decisions, based on models of the fundamental makespan scheduling problem in terms of abstract argumentation frameworks (AFs). We define three types of AFs, whose stable extensions are in one-to-one correspondence with schedules that are feasible, efficient and satisfying fixed decisions, respectively. We extract the argumentative explanations from these AFs and the natural language explanations from the argumentative ones.
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Journal articleJohnston I, Hoffmann T, Greenbury S, et al., 2019,
Precision identification of high-risk phenotypes and progression pathways in severe malaria without requiring longitudinal data
, npj Digital Medicine, Vol: 2, ISSN: 2398-6352More than 400,000 deaths from severe malaria (SM) are reported every year, mainly in African children. The diversity of clinical presentations associated with SM indicates important differences in disease pathogenesis that require specific treatment, and this clinical heterogeneity of SM remains poorly understood. Here, we apply tools from machine learning and model-based inference to harness large-scale data and dissect the heterogeneity in patterns of clinical features associated with SM in 2904 Gambian children admitted to hospital with malaria. This quantitative analysis reveals features predicting the severity of individual patient outcomes, and the dynamic pathways of SM progression, notably inferred without requiring longitudinal observations. Bayesian inference of these pathways allows us assign quantitative mortality risks to individual patients. By independently surveying expert practitioners, we show that this data-driven approach agrees with and expands the current state of knowledge on malaria progression, while simultaneously providing a data-supported framework for predicting clinical risk.
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Journal articleEspinosa-González AB, Delaney BC, Marti J, et al., 2019,
The impact of governance in primary health care delivery: a systems thinking approach with a European panel
, Health Research Policy and Systems, Vol: 17, Pages: 1-16, ISSN: 1478-4505Enhancing primary health care (PHC) is considered a policy priority for health systems strengthening due to PHC’s ability to provide accessible and continuous care and manage multimorbidity. Research in PHC often focuses on the effects of specific interventions (e.g. physicians’ contracts) in health care outcomes. This informs narrowly designed policies that disregard the interactions between the health functions (e.g. financing and regulation) and actors involved (i.e. public, professional, private), and their impact in care delivery and outcomes. The purpose of this study is to analyse the interactions between PHC functions and their impact in PHC delivery, particularly in providers’ behaviour and practice organisation.
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Conference paperFalck F, Larppichet K, Kormushev P, 2019,
DE VITO: A dual-arm, high degree-of-freedom, lightweight, inexpensive, passive upper-limb exoskeleton for robot teleoperation
, TAROS: Annual Conference Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems, Publisher: Springer, ISSN: 0302-9743While robotics has made significant advances in perception, planning and control in recent decades, the vast majority of tasks easily completed by a human, especially acting in dynamic, unstructured environments, are far from being autonomously performed by a robot. Teleoperation, remotely controlling a slave robot by a human operator, can be a realistic, complementary transition solution that uses the motion intelligence of a human in complex tasks while exploiting the robot’s autonomous reliability and precision in less challenging situations.We introduce DE VITO, a seven degree-of-freedom, dual-arm upper-limb exoskeleton that passively measures the pose of a human arm. DE VITO is a lightweight, simplistic and energy-efficient design with a total material cost of at least an order of magnitude less than previous work. Given the estimated human pose, we implement both joint and Cartesian space kinematic control algorithms and present qualitative experimental results on various complex manipulation tasks teleoperating Robot DE NIRO, a research platform for mobile manipulation, that demonstrate the functionality of DE VITO. We provide the CAD models, open-source code and supplementary videos of DE VITO at http://www.imperial.ac.uk/robot-intelligence/robots/de_vito/.
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Conference paperAlAttar A, Rouillard L, Kormushev P, 2019,
Autonomous air-hockey playing cobot using optimal control and vision-based Bayesian tracking
, Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems, Publisher: Springer, ISSN: 0302-9743This paper presents a novel autonomous air-hockey playing collaborative robot (cobot) that provides human-like gameplay against human opponents. Vision-based Bayesian tracking of the puck and striker are used in an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)-based probabilistic tactical layer for high-speed perception. The tactical layer provides commands for an active control layer that controls the Cartesian position and yaw angle of a custom end effector. The active layer uses optimal control of the cobot’s posture inside the task nullspace. The kinematic redundancy is resolved using a weighted Moore-Penrose pseudo-inversion technique. Experiments with human players show high-speed human-like gameplay with potential applications in the growing field of entertainment robotics.
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Conference paperArulkumaran K, Cully A, Togelius J, 2019,
AlphaStar: an evolutionary computation perspective
, The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2019, Publisher: ACM, Pages: 314-315In January 2019, DeepMind revealed AlphaStar to the world—thefirst artificial intelligence (AI) system to beat a professional playerat the game of StarCraft II—representing a milestone in the progressof AI. AlphaStar draws on many areas of AI research, includingdeep learning, reinforcement learning, game theory, and evolution-ary computation (EC). In this paper we analyze AlphaStar primar-ily through the lens of EC, presenting a new look at the systemandrelating it to many concepts in the field. We highlight some ofitsmost interesting aspects—the use of Lamarckian evolution,com-petitive co-evolution, and quality diversity. In doing so,we hopeto provide a bridge between the wider EC community and one ofthe most significant AI systems developed in recent times.
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Journal articleSchaub MT, Delvenne JC, Lambiotte R, et al., 2019,
Multiscale dynamical embeddings of complex networks
, Physical Review E, Vol: 99, Pages: 062308-1-062308-18, ISSN: 1539-3755Complex systems and relational data are often abstracted as dynamical processes on networks. To understand, predict, and control their behavior, a crucial step is to extract reduced descriptions of such networks. Inspired by notions from control theory, we propose a time-dependent dynamical similarity measure between nodes, which quantifies the effect a node-input has on the network. This dynamical similarity induces an embedding that can be employed for several analysis tasks. Here we focus on (i) dimensionality reduction, i.e., projecting nodes onto a low-dimensional space that captures dynamic similarity at different timescales, and (ii) how to exploit our embeddings to uncover functional modules. We exemplify our ideas through case studies focusing on directed networks without strong connectivity and signed networks. We further highlight how certain ideas from community detection can be generalized and linked to control theory, by using the here developed dynamical perspective.
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Journal articleMoriconi R, Kumar KSS, Deisenroth MP, 2020,
High-dimensional Bayesian optimization with projections using quantile Gaussian processes
, Optimization Letters, ISSN: 1862-4472 -
Journal articleWarren L, Clarke J, Arora S, et al., 2019,
Transitions of care across hospital settings in patients with inflammatory bowel disease
, World Journal of Gastroenterology, Vol: 25, Pages: 2122-2132, ISSN: 1007-9327BACKGROUNDInflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic, inflammatory disorder characterised by both intestinal and extra-intestinal pathology. Patients may receive both emergency and elective care from several providers, often in different hospital settings. Poorly managed transitions of care between providers can lead to inefficiencies in care and patient safety issues. To ensure that the sharing of patient information between providers is appropriate, timely, accurate and secure, effective data-sharing infrastructure needs to be developed. To optimise inter-hospital data-sharing for IBD patients, we need to better understand patterns of hospital encounters in this group.AIMTo determine the type and location of hospital services accessed by IBD patients in England.METHODSThis was a retrospective observational study using Hospital Episode Statistics, a large administrative patient data set from the National Health Service in England. Adult patients with a diagnosis of IBD following admission to hospital were followed over a 2-year period to determine the proportion of care accessed at the same hospital providing their outpatient IBD care, defined as their ‘home provider’. Secondary outcome measures included the geographic distribution of patient-sharing, regional and age-related differences in accessing services, and type and frequency of outpatient encounters.RESULTSOf 95055 patients accessed hospital services on 1760156 occasions over a 2-year follow-up period. The proportion of these encounters with their identified IBD ‘home provider’ was 73.3%, 87.8% and 83.1% for accident and emergency, inpatient and outpatient encounters respectively. Patients living in metropolitan centres and younger patients were less likely to attend their ‘home provider’ for hospital services. The most commonly attended specialty services were gastroenterology, general surgery and ophthalmology.CONCLUSIONTransitions of care between secondary care sett
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