Learning to reconstruct depths from a single image by watching unlabeled videos via deep convolutional network (DCN) is attracting significant attention in recent years, e.g. (Zhou et al. 2017). In this paper, we propose to use surface normal representation for unsupervised depth estimation framework. Our estimated depths are constrained to be compatible with predicted normals, yielding more robust geometry results. Specifically, we formulate an edge-aware depth-normal consistency term, and solve it by constructing a depth-to-normal layer and a normal-to-depth layer inside of the DCN. The depth-to-normal layer takes estimated depths as input, and computes normal directions using cross production based on neighboring pixels. Then given the estimated normals, the normal-to-depth layer outputs a regularized depth map through local planar smoothness. Both layers are computed with awareness of edges inside the image to help address the issue of depth/normal discontinuity and preserve sharp edges. Finally, to train the network, we apply the photometric error and gradient smoothness to supervise both depth and normal predictions. We conducted experiments on both outdoor (KITTI) and indoor (NYUv2) datasets, and showed that our algorithm vastly outperforms state-of-the-art, which demonstrates the benefits of our approach.

It has been recently shown that a convolutional neural network can learn optical flow estimation with unsupervised learning. However, the performance of the unsupervised methods still has a relatively large gap compared to its supervised counterpart. Occlusion and large motion are some of the major factors that limit the current unsupervised learning of optical flow methods. In this work we introduce a new method which models occlusion explicitly and a new warping way that facilitates the learning of large motion. Our method shows promising results on Flying Chairs, MPI-Sintel and KITTI benchmark datasets. Especially on KITTI dataset where abundant unlabeled samples exist, our unsupervised method outperforms its counterpart trained with supervised learning.

The performance of off-policy learning, including deep Q-learning and deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG), critically depends on the choice of the exploration policy. Existing exploration methods are mostly based on adding noise to the on-going actor policy and can only explore local regions close to what the actor policy dictates. In this work, we develop a simple meta-policy gradient algorithm that allows us to adaptively learn the exploration policy in DDPG. Our algorithm allows us to train flexible exploration behaviors that are independent of the actor policy, yielding a global exploration that significantly speeds up the learning process. With an extensive study, we show that our method significantly improves the sample-efficiency of DDPG on a variety of reinforcement learning continuous control tasks.