Jiajia Zhang

Shuhan Qi, Shuhao Zhang, Qiang Wang et al.

Value-decomposition methods, which reduce the difficulty of a multi-agent system by decomposing the joint state-action space into local observation-action spaces, have become popular in cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). However, value-decomposition methods still have the problems of tremendous sample consumption for training and lack of active exploration. In this paper, we propose a scalable value-decomposition exploration (SVDE) method, which includes a scalable training mechanism, intrinsic reward design, and explorative experience replay. The scalable training mechanism asynchronously decouples strategy learning with environmental interaction, so as to accelerate sample generation in a MapReduce manner. For the problem of lack of exploration, an intrinsic reward design and explorative experience replay are proposed, so as to enhance exploration to produce diverse samples and filter non-novel samples, respectively. Empirically, our method achieves the best performance on almost all maps compared to other popular algorithms in a set of StarCraft II micromanagement games. A data-efficiency experiment also shows the acceleration of SVDE for sample collection and policy convergence, and we demonstrate the effectiveness of factors in SVDE through a set of ablation experiments.

Shuhan Qi, Shuhao Zhang, Xiaohan Hou et al.

Multi-agent reinforcement learning for incomplete information environments has attracted extensive attention from researchers. However, due to the slow sample collection and poor sample exploration, there are still some problems in multi-agent reinforcement learning, such as unstable model iteration and low training efficiency. Moreover, most of the existing distributed framework are proposed for single-agent reinforcement learning and not suitable for multi-agent. In this paper, we design an distributed MARL framework based on the actor-work-learner architecture. In this framework, multiple asynchronous environment interaction modules can be deployed simultaneously, which greatly improves the sample collection speed and sample diversity. Meanwhile, to make full use of computing resources, we decouple the model iteration from environment interaction, and thus accelerate the policy iteration. Finally, we verified the effectiveness of propose framework in MaCA military simulation environment and the SMAC 3D realtime strategy gaming environment with imcomplete information characteristics.

Peijin Xie, Lin Sun, Bingquan Liu et al.

Distinguishing spatial relations is a basic part of human cognition which requires fine-grained perception on cross-instance. Although benchmarks like MME, MMBench and SEED comprehensively have evaluated various capabilities which already include visual spatial reasoning(VSR). There is still a lack of sufficient quantity and quality evaluation and optimization datasets for Vision Large Language Models(VLLMs) specifically targeting visual positional reasoning. To handle this, we first diagnosed current VLLMs with the VSR dataset and proposed a unified test set. We found current VLLMs to exhibit a contradiction of over-sensitivity to language instructions and under-sensitivity to visual positional information. By expanding the original benchmark from two aspects of tunning data and model structure, we mitigated this phenomenon. To our knowledge, we expanded spatially positioned image data controllably using diffusion models for the first time and integrated original visual encoding(CLIP) with other 3 powerful visual encoders(SigLIP, SAM and DINO). After conducting combination experiments on scaling data and models, we obtained a VLLM VSR Expert(VSRE) that not only generalizes better to different instructions but also accurately distinguishes differences in visual positional information. VSRE achieved over a 27\% increase in accuracy on the VSR test set. It becomes a performant VLLM on the position reasoning of both the VSR dataset and relevant subsets of other evaluation benchmarks. We open-sourced the expanded model with data and Appendix at \url{https://github.com/peijin360/vsre} and hope it will accelerate advancements in VLLM on VSR learning.

Zewei Zhou, Jiajun Zou, Jiajia Zhang et al.

Graph neural networks (GNNs) are increasingly applied to physical design tasks such as congestion prediction and wirelength estimation, yet progress is hindered by inconsistent circuit representations and the absence of controlled evaluation protocols. We present R2G (RTL-to-GDSII), a multi-view circuit-graph benchmark suite that standardizes five stage-aware views with information parity (every view encodes the same attribute set, differing only in where features attach) over 30 open-source IP cores (up to $10^6$ nodes/edges). R2G provides an end-to-end DEF-to-graph pipeline spanning synthesis, placement, and routing stages, together with loaders, unified splits, domain metrics, and reproducible baselines. By decoupling representation choice from model choice, R2G isolates a confound that prior EDA and graph-ML benchmarks leave uncontrolled. In systematic studies with GINE, GAT, and ResGatedGCN, we find: (i) view choice dominates model choice, with Test R$^2$ varying by more than 0.3 across representations for a fixed GNN; (ii) node-centric views generalize best across both placement and routing; and (iii) decoder-head depth (3--4 layers) is the primary accuracy driver, turning divergent training into near-perfect predictions (R$^2$$>$0.99). Code and datasets are available at https://github.com/ShenShan123/R2G.

Dingwen Zhang, Bo Wang, Gerong Wang et al.

Onfocus detection aims at identifying whether the focus of the individual captured by a camera is on the camera or not. Based on the behavioral research, the focus of an individual during face-to-camera communication leads to a special type of eye contact, i.e., the individual-camera eye contact, which is a powerful signal in social communication and plays a crucial role in recognizing irregular individual status (e.g., lying or suffering mental disease) and special purposes (e.g., seeking help or attracting fans). Thus, developing effective onfocus detection algorithms is of significance for assisting the criminal investigation, disease discovery, and social behavior analysis. However, the review of the literature shows that very few efforts have been made toward the development of onfocus detector due to the lack of large-scale public available datasets as well as the challenging nature of this task. To this end, this paper engages in the onfocus detection research by addressing the above two issues. Firstly, we build a large-scale onfocus detection dataset, named as the OnFocus Detection In the Wild (OFDIW). It consists of 20,623 images in unconstrained capture conditions (thus called ``in the wild'') and contains individuals with diverse emotions, ages, facial characteristics, and rich interactions with surrounding objects and background scenes. On top of that, we propose a novel end-to-end deep model, i.e., the eye-context interaction inferring network (ECIIN), for onfocus detection, which explores eye-context interaction via dynamic capsule routing. Finally, comprehensive experiments are conducted on the proposed OFDIW dataset to benchmark the existing learning models and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed ECIIN. The project (containing both datasets and codes) is at https://github.com/wintercho/focus.

Hang Ren, Yulin Wu, Shuhan Qi et al.

Regret minimization is a powerful method for finding Nash equilibria in Normal-Form Games (NFGs) and Extensive-Form Games (EFGs), but it typically guarantees convergence only for the average strategy. However, computing the average strategy requires significant computational resources or introduces additional errors, limiting its practical applicability. The Reward Transformation (RT) framework was introduced to regret minimization to achieve last-iterate convergence through reward function regularization. However, it faces practical challenges: its performance is highly sensitive to manually tuned parameters, which often deviate from theoretical convergence conditions, leading to slow convergence, oscillations, or stagnation in local optima. Inspired by previous work, we propose an adaptive technique to address these issues, ensuring better consistency between theoretical guarantees and practical performance for RT Regret Matching (RTRM), RT Counterfactual Regret Minimization (RTCFR), and their variants in solving NFGs and EFGs more effectively. Our adaptive methods dynamically adjust parameters, balancing exploration and exploitation while improving regret accumulation, ultimately enhancing asymptotic last-iterate convergence and achieving linear convergence. Experimental results demonstrate that our methods significantly accelerate convergence, outperforming state-of-the-art algorithms.

Jiajia Zhang, Jiyuan Tian, Dibin Zhu et al.

This paper presents a novel design and experimental investigation for a self-propelled capsule robot that can be used for painless colonoscopy during a retrograde progression from the patient's rectum. The steerable robot is driven forward and backward via its internal vibration and impact with orientation control by using an electromagnetic actuator. The actuator contains four sets of coils and a shaft made by permanent magnet. The shaft can be excited linearly in a controllable and tilted angle, so guide the progression orientation of the robot. Two control strategies are studied in this work and compared via simulation and experiment. Extensive results are presented to demonstrate the progression efficiency of the robot and its potential for robotic colonoscopy.

Yukun Cheng, Mengce Zheng, Fan Huang et al.

Persistent Fault Attack (PFA) is a recently proposed Fault Attack (FA) method in CHES 2018. It is able to recover full AES secret key in the Single-Byte-Fault scenario. It is demonstrated that classical FA countermeasures, such as Dual Modular Redundancy (DMR) and mask protection, are unable to thwart PFA. In this paper, we propose a fast-detection and faultcorrection algorithm to prevent PFA. We construct a fixed input and output pair to detect faults rapidly. Then we build two extra redundant tables to store the relationship between the adjacent elements in the S-box, by which the algorithm can correct the faulty elements in the S-box. Our experimental results show that our algorithm can effectively prevent PFA in both Single-ByteFault and Multiple-Bytes-Faults scenarios. Compared with the classical FA countermeasures, our algorithm has a much better effect against PFA. Further, the time cost of our algorithm is 40% lower than the classical FA countermeasures.

Huale Li, Xuan Wang, Zengyue Guo et al.

Counterfactual Regret Minimization (CFR)} is the popular method for finding approximate Nash equilibrium in two-player zero-sum games with imperfect information. CFR solves games by travsersing the full game tree iteratively, which limits its scalability in larger games. When applying CFR to solve large-scale games in previously, large-scale games are abstracted into small-scale games firstly. Secondly, CFR is used to solve the abstract game. And finally, the solution strategy is mapped back to the original large-scale game. However, this process requires considerable expert knowledge, and the accuracy of abstraction is closely related to expert knowledge. In addition, the abstraction also loses certain information, which will eventually affect the accuracy of the solution strategy. Towards this problem, a recent method, \textit{Deep CFR} alleviates the need for abstraction and expert knowledge by applying deep neural networks directly to CFR in full games. In this paper, we introduces \textit{Neural Network Counterfactual Regret Minimization (NNCFR)}, an improved variant of \textit{Deep CFR} that has a faster convergence by constructing a dueling netwok as the value network. Moreover, an evaluation module is designed by combining the value network and Monte Carlo, which reduces the approximation error of the value network. In addition, a new loss function is designed in the procedure of training policy network in the proposed \textit{NNCFR}, which can be good to make the policy network more stable. The extensive experimental tests are conducted to show that the \textit{NNCFR} converges faster and performs more stable than \textit{Deep CFR}, and outperforms \textit{Deep CFR} with respect to exploitability and head-to-head performance on test games.

Zhimin Luo, Mengce Zheng, Ping Wang et al.

In recent years, various deep learning techniques have been exploited in side channel attacks, with the anticipation of obtaining more appreciable attack results. Most of them concentrate on improving network architectures or putting forward novel algorithms, assuming that there are adequate profiling traces available to train an appropriate neural network. However, in practical scenarios, profiling traces are probably insufficient, which makes the network learn deficiently and compromises attack performance. In this paper, we investigate a kind of data augmentation technique, called mixup, and first propose to exploit it in deep-learning based side channel attacks, for the purpose of expanding the profiling set and facilitating the chances of mounting a successful attack. We perform Correlation Power Analysis for generated traces and original traces, and discover that there exists consistency between them regarding leakage information. Our experiments show that mixup is truly capable of enhancing attack performance especially for insufficient profiling traces. Specifically, when the size of the training set is decreased to 30% of the original set, mixup can significantly reduce acquired attacking traces. We test three mixup parameter values and conclude that generally all of them can bring about improvements. Besides, we compare three leakage models and unexpectedly find that least significant bit model, which is less frequently used in previous works, actually surpasses prevalent identity model and hamming weight model in terms of attack results.

Huale Li, Xuan Wang, Fengwei Jia et al.

Counterfactual regret minimization (CFR) is a popular method to deal with decision-making problems of two-player zero-sum games with imperfect information. Unlike existing studies that mostly explore for solving larger scale problems or accelerating solution efficiency, we propose a framework, RLCFR, which aims at improving the generalization ability of the CFR method. In the RLCFR, the game strategy is solved by the CFR in a reinforcement learning framework. And the dynamic procedure of iterative interactive strategy updating is modeled as a Markov decision process (MDP). Our method, RLCFR, then learns a policy to select the appropriate way of regret updating in the process of iteration. In addition, a stepwise reward function is formulated to learn the action policy, which is proportional to how well the iteration strategy is at each step. Extensive experimental results on various games have shown that the generalization ability of our method is significantly improved compared with existing state-of-the-art methods.