Achieving robustness in image segmentation models is challenging due to the fine-grained nature of pixel-level classification. These models, which are crucial for many real-time perception applications, particularly struggle when faced with natural corruptions in the wild for autonomous systems. While sensitivity analysis can help us understand how input variables influence model outputs, its application to natural and uncontrollable corruptions in training data is computationally expensive. In this work, we present an adaptive, sensitivity-guided augmentation method to enhance robustness against natural corruptions. Our sensitivity analysis on average runs 10 times faster and requires about 200 times less storage than previous sensitivity analysis, enabling practical, on-the-fly estimation during training for a model-free augmentation policy. With minimal fine-tuning, our sensitivity-guided augmentation method achieves improved robustness on both real-world and synthetic datasets compared to state-of-the-art data augmentation techniques in image segmentation.

Long-duration, off-road, autonomous missions require robots to continuously perceive their surroundings regardless of the ambient lighting conditions. Most existing autonomy systems heavily rely on active sensing, e.g., LiDAR, RADAR, and Time-of-Flight sensors, or use (stereo) visible light imaging sensors, e.g., color cameras, to perceive environment geometry and semantics. In scenarios where fully passive perception is required and lighting conditions are degraded to an extent that visible light cameras fail to perceive, most downstream mobility tasks such as obstacle avoidance become impossible. To address such a challenge, this paper presents a Multi-Modal Passive Perception dataset, M2P2, to enable off-road mobility in low-light to no-light conditions. We design a multi-modal sensor suite including thermal, event, and stereo RGB cameras, GPS, two Inertia Measurement Units (IMUs), as well as a high-resolution LiDAR for ground truth, with a multi-sensor calibration procedure that can efficiently transform multi-modal perceptual streams into a common coordinate system. Our 10-hour, 32 km dataset also includes mobility data such as robot odometry and actions and covers well-lit, low-light, and no-light conditions, along with paved, on-trail, and off-trail terrain. Our results demonstrate that off-road mobility and scene understanding under degraded visual environments is possible through only passive perception in extreme low-light conditions. The project website can be found at https://cs.gmu.edu/˜xiao/Research/M2P2/.

We present a parameter evaluation of FMCW mmWave Radar to assess surface dampness and ruggedness and enhance the navigability of autonomous ground robots. We begin by designing and 3D-printing a mount for the mmWave Radar on a Rosmaster X3 platform. We then collect raw mmWave Radar data from various surfaces (grass, soil, puddles, and mulch) across different seasons (summer, winter, and rainy). Our findings demonstrate that the energy strength parameter is a reliable indicator for assessing the surface: dry surfaces (e.g., dry grass, dry mud) exhibit lower energy strength, whereas wet surfaces display higher values. This dampness and ruggedness factor can be leveraged to develop a cost-map navigability score for autonomous ground robots.

We present a novel unsupervised obstacle segmentation architecture that follows a novel Relation Distillation (RD) paradigm. Our architecture design was inspired by a self-supervised teacher-student approach that relies on the Semantic Distillation originally devised for representation learning. While the teacher in the Semantic Distillation considers a single patch at a time, the teacher within RD takes a ‘pair of patches’ instead to transfer the local Semantic Co-occurrence Localization (SCooL) relationship that focuses more on the segmentation-boosting signals. To further improve the proposed architecture, we introduce the utilization of another teacher that leverages the depth information which inherently separates the entities at different physical distances, often tied with the boundaries of the obstacles. As the depth is distilled towards the student network only at the time of training, it adds zero computational/hardware cost at run-time. As no relevant public dataset is available, we have curated the Avoiding Obstacles In unstructured Driving (AvOID) dataset as a new testbed for unsupervised obstacle segmentation. We have validated that both the Relation Distillation and depth contribute to boosting the no-annotation segmentation performance on AvOID and KITTI-Obstacles.

Factor graphs are a ubiquitous tool for multisource inference in robotics and multi-sensor networks. They allow for heterogeneous measurements from many sources to be concurrently represented as factors in the state posterior distribution, so that inference can be conducted via sparse graphical methods. Adding measurements from many sources can supply robustness to state estimation, as seen in distributed pose graph optimization. However, adding excessive measurements to a factor graph can also quickly degrade their performance as more cycles are added to the graph. In both situations, the relevant quality is the redundancy of information. Drawing on recent work in information theory on partial information decomposition (PID), we articulate two potential definitions of redundancy in factor graphs, both within a common axiomatic framework for redundancy in factor graphs. This is the first application of PID to factor graphs, and only one of a few quantitative measures of redundancy.

Imagery collected from outdoor visual environments is often degraded due to the presence of dense smoke or haze. A key challenge for research in scene understanding in these degraded visual environments (DVE) is the lack of representative benchmark datasets. These datasets are required to evaluate state-of-the-art object recognition and other computer vision algorithms in degraded settings. In this paper, we address some of these limitations by introducing the first realistic haze image benchmark, from both aerial and ground view, with paired haze-free images, and in-situ haze density measurements. This dataset was produced in a controlled environment with professional smoke generating machines that covered the entire scene, and consists of images captured from the perspective of both an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV). We also evaluate a set of representative state-of-the-art dehazing approaches as well as object detectors on the dataset. The full dataset presented in this paper, including the ground truth object classification bounding boxes and haze density measurements, is provided for the community to evaluate their algorithms at: https://a2i2-archangel.vision. A subset of this dataset has been used for the "Object Detection in Haze" Track of CVPR UG2 2022 challenge at https://cvpr2022.ug2challenge.org/track1.html.

In theory, visual saliency in a graph should be used to draw attention to its most important component(s). Thus salience is commonly viewed both as a basis for predicting where graph readers are likely to look, and as a core design technique for emphasizing what a reader is intended to see among competing elements in a given chart or plot. We briefly review models, metrics, and applicable theories as they pertain to graphs. We then introduce new saliency models based on perceptual and cognitive theories that, to our knowledge, have not been previously applied to models for viewing statistical graphics. The resulting frameworks can be broadly classified as bottom-up perceptual models or top-down cognitive models. We report the results of evaluating these new theory-informed approaches on gaze data collected for statistical graphs and for more general information visualizations. Interestingly, the new models fare no better than previous ones. We review the experience, noting why we expected these hypotheses to be effective, and discuss how and why their performance did not match our aspirations. We suggest directions for future research that may help to clarify some of the issues raised.

In this paper we present the circuits and simulation results for a silicon neuron which is based on a modified version of the Mihalas-Niebur neural model [1]. This silicon neuron produces 15 of the 20 known neural spiking and bursting behaviors. It has low complexity and reliable matching and can thus be easily integrated into more complex neuromorphic systems. Implemented in a 0.15um 1.5V CMOS process, each neuron consumes about 7.5nW of power at 1kHz and occupies an area of 70um by 70um.