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1. Non-parametric Models for Long-term Autonomy

   Acshi Haggenmiller ( July 2022 , none)

   In this thesis we propose novel estimation techniques for localization and planning problems, which are key challenges in long-term autonomy. We take inspiration in our methods from non-parametric estimation and use tools such as kernel density estimation, non-linear least-squares optimization, binary masking, and random sampling. We show that these methods, by avoiding explicit parametric models, outperform existing methods that use them. Despite the seeming differences between localization and planning, we demonstrate in this thesis that the problems share core structural similarities. When real or simulation-sampled measurements are expensive, noisy, or high variance, non-parametric estimation techniques give higher-quality results in less time. We first address two localization problems. In order to permit localization with a set of ad hoc-placed radios, we propose an ultra-wideband (UWB) graph realization system to localize the radios. Our system achieves high accuracy and robustness by using kernel density estimation for measurement probability densities, by explicitly modeling antenna delays, and by optimizing this combination with a non-linear least squares formulation. Next, in order to then support robotic navigation, we present a flexible system for simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) that combines elements from both traditional dense metric SLAM and topological SLAM, using a binary "masking function" tomore »focus attention. This masking function controls which lidar scans are available for loop closures. We provide several masking functions based on approximate topological class detectors. We then examine planning problems in the final chapter and in the appendix. In order to plan with uncertainty around multiple dynamic agents, we describe Monte-Carlo Policy-Tree Decision Making (MCPTDM), a framework for efficiently computing policies in partially-observable, stochastic, continuous problems. MCPTDM composes a sequence of simpler closed-loop policies and uses marginal action costs and particle repetition to improve cost estimates and sample efficiency by reducing variance. Finally, in the appendix we explore Learned Similarity Monte-Carlo Planning (LSMCP), where we seek to enhance the sample efficiency of partially observable Monte Carlo tree search-based planning by taking advantage of similarities in the final outcomes of similar states and actions. We train a multilayer perceptron to learn a similarity function which we then use to enhance value estimates in the planning. Collectively, we show in this thesis that non-parametric methods promote long-term autonomy by reducing error and increasing robustness across multiple domains.« less
2. Optimal Frameworks for Detecting Anomalies in Sensor-Intensive Heterogeneous Networks

   https://doi.org/10.1287/ijoc.2022.1192  

   Moghaddass, Ramin ; Guan, Yongtao ( January 2022 , INFORMS Journal on Computing)

   Many network/graph structures are continuously monitored by various sensors that are placed at a subset of nodes and edges. The multidimensional data collected from these sensors over time create large-scale graph data in which the data points are highly dependent. Monitoring large-scale attributed networks with thousands of nodes and heterogeneous sensor data to detect anomalies and unusual events is a complex and computationally expensive process. This paper introduces a new generic approach inspired by state-space models for network anomaly detection that can utilize the information from the network topology, the node attributes (sensor data), and the anomaly propagation sets in an integrated manner to analyze the entire network all at once. This article presents how heterogeneous network sensor data can be analyzed to locate the sources of anomalies as well as the anomalous regions in a network, which can be impacted by one or multiple anomalies at any time instance. Experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of our proposed framework in detecting anomalies in attributed graphs. Summary of Contribution: With the increasing availability of large-scale network sensors and rapid advances in artificial intelligence methods, fundamentally new analytical tools are needed that can integrate data collected from sensors across the networksmore »for decision making while taking into account the stochastic and topological dependencies between nodes, sensors, and anomalies. This paper develops a framework to intelligently and efficiently analyze complex and highly dependent data collected from disparate sensors across large-scale network/graph structures to detect anomalies and abnormal behavior in real time. Unlike general purpose (often black-box) machine learning models, this paper proposes a unique framework for network/graph structures that incorporates the complexities of networks and interdependencies between network entities and sensors. Because of the multidisciplinary nature of the paper that involves optimization, machine learning, and system monitoring and control, it can help researchers in both operations research and computer science domains to develop new network-specific computing tools and machine learning frameworks to efficiently manage large-scale network data.« less
3. End-to-End LU Factorization of Large Matrices on GPUs

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3572848.3577486  

   Xia, Yang ; Jiang, Peng ; Agrawal, Gagan ; Ramnath, Rajiv ( February 2023 , PPoPP '23: Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGPLAN Annual Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming)

   LU factorization for sparse matrices is an important computing step for many engineering and scientific problems such as circuit simulation. There have been many efforts toward parallelizing and scaling this algorithm, which include the recent efforts targeting the GPUs. However, it is still challenging to deploy a complete sparse LU factorization workflow on a GPU due to high memory requirements and data dependencies. In this paper, we propose the first complete GPU solution for sparse LU factorization. To achieve this goal, we propose an out-of-core implementation of the symbolic execution phase, thus removing the bottleneck due to large intermediate data structures. Next, we propose a dynamic parallelism implementation of Kahn's algorithm for topological sort on the GPUs. Finally, for the numeric factorization phase, we increase the parallelism degree by removing the memory limits for large matrices as compared to the existing implementation approaches. Experimental results show that compared with an implementation modified from GLU 3.0, our out-of-core version achieves speedups of 1.13--32.65X. Further, our out-of-core implementation achieves a speedup of 1.2--2.2 over an optimized unified memory implementation on the GPU. Finally, we show that the optimizations we introduce for numeric factorization turn out to be effective.
4. SDC: a software defined cache for efficient data indexing

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3330345.3330353  

   Ni, Fan ; Jiang, Song ; Jiang, Hong ; Huang, Jian ; Wu, Xingbo ( June 2019 , ICS '19 Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Supercomputing)

   CPU cache has been used to bridge the processor-memory performance gap to enable high-performance computing. As the cache is of limited capacity, for its maximum efficacy it should (1) avoid caching data that are less likely to be accessed and (2) identify and cache data that would otherwise cost a program multiple memory accesses to reach. Unfortunately, existing cache architectures are inadequate on these two efforts. First, to cost-effectively exploit the spatial locality, they adopt a relatively large and fixed-size cache line as the caching unit. Thus, much of the space in a cache line can be wasted when the data locality is weak. Second, for easy use, the cache is designed to be transparent to programs, which hinders programs from fully exploiting its performance potentials. To address these problems, we propose a high-performance Software Defined Cache (SDC) architecture providing a simple and generic key-value abstraction that allows (1) caching data at a granularity smaller than a cache line, and (2) enabling programs to explicitly insert, retrieve, and invalidate data in the cache with new instructions. By providing a program with the ability of explicitly using the cache as a lookaside key-value buffer, SDC enables a much more efficient cachemore »without disruptively changing the existing cache organization and without substantially increasing hardware cost. We have prototyped SDC on the gem5 simulator and evaluated it with various data index structures and workloads. Experiment results show that SDC can improve the cache performance for the workloads by up to 5.3× over current cache design.« less
5. A wireless signal-based sensing framework for robotics

   https://doi.org/10.1177/02783649221097989  

   Jadhav, Ninad ; Wang, Weiying ; Zhang, Diana ; Khatib, Oussama ; Kumar, Swarun ; Gil, Stephanie ( August 2022 , The International Journal of Robotics Research)

   In this paper, we develop the analytical framework for a novel Wireless signal-based Sensing capability for Robotics (WSR) by leveraging a robots’ mobility in 3D space. It allows robots to primarily measure relative direction, or Angle-of-Arrival (AOA), to other robots, while operating in non-line-of-sight unmapped environments and without requiring external infrastructure. We do so by capturing all of the paths that a wireless signal traverses as it travels from a transmitting to a receiving robot in the team, which we term as an AOA profile. The key intuition behind our approach is to enable a robot to emulate antenna arrays as it moves freely in 2D and 3D space. The small differences in the phase of the wireless signals are thus processed with knowledge of robots’ local displacement to obtain the profile, via a method akin to Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). The main contribution of this work is the development of (i) a framework to accommodate arbitrary 2D and 3D motion, as well as continuous mobility of both signal transmitting and receiving robots, while computing AOA profiles between them and (ii) a Cramer–Rao Bound analysis, based on antenna array theory, that provides a lower bound on the variance in AOAmore »estimation as a function of the geometry of robot motion. This is a critical distinction with previous work on SAR-based methods that restrict robot mobility to prescribed motion patterns, do not generalize to the full 3D space, and require transmitting robots to be stationary during data acquisition periods. We show that allowing robots to use their full mobility in 3D space while performing SAR results in more accurate AOA profiles and thus better AOA estimation. We formally characterize this observation as the informativeness of the robots’ motion, a computable quantity for which we derive a closed form. All analytical developments are substantiated by extensive simulation and hardware experiments on air/ground robot platforms using 5 GHz WiFi. Our experimental results bolster our analytical findings, demonstrating that 3D motion provides enhanced and consistent accuracy, with a total AOA error of less than 10^◦for 95% of trials. We also analytically characterize the impact of displacement estimation errors on the measured AOA and validate this theory empirically using robot displacements obtained using an off-the-shelf Intel Tracking Camera T265. Finally, we demonstrate the performance of our system on a multi-robot task where a heterogeneous air/ground pair of robots continuously measure AOA profiles over a WiFi link to achieve dynamic rendezvous in an unmapped, 300 m²environment with occlusions.

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