Thinh Nguyen

David B. D'Ambrosio, Jonathan Abelian, Saminda Abeyruwan et al.

We present a deep-dive into a real-world robotic learning system that, in previous work, was shown to be capable of hundreds of table tennis rallies with a human and has the ability to precisely return the ball to desired targets. This system puts together a highly optimized perception subsystem, a high-speed low-latency robot controller, a simulation paradigm that can prevent damage in the real world and also train policies for zero-shot transfer, and automated real world environment resets that enable autonomous training and evaluation on physical robots. We complement a complete system description, including numerous design decisions that are typically not widely disseminated, with a collection of studies that clarify the importance of mitigating various sources of latency, accounting for training and deployment distribution shifts, robustness of the perception system, sensitivity to policy hyper-parameters, and choice of action space. A video demonstrating the components of the system and details of experimental results can be found at https://youtu.be/uFcnWjB42I0.

Son Nguyen, Thinh Nguyen, Khoa D Doan et al.

Federated Learning (FL) is a distributed machine learning approach that maintains data privacy by training on decentralized data sources. Similar to centralized machine learning, FL is also susceptible to backdoor attacks, where an attacker can compromise some clients by injecting a backdoor trigger into local models of those clients, leading to the global model's behavior being manipulated as desired by the attacker. Most backdoor attacks in FL assume a predefined target class and require control over a large number of clients or knowledge of benign clients' information. Furthermore, they are not imperceptible and are easily detected by human inspection due to clear artifacts left on the poison data. To overcome these challenges, we propose Venomancer, an effective backdoor attack that is imperceptible and allows target-on-demand. Specifically, imperceptibility is achieved by using a visual loss function to make the poison data visually indistinguishable from the original data. Target-on-demand property allows the attacker to choose arbitrary target classes via conditional adversarial training. Additionally, experiments showed that the method is robust against state-of-the-art defenses such as Norm Clipping, Weak DP, Krum, Multi-Krum, RLR, FedRAD, Deepsight, and RFLBAT. The source code is available at https://github.com/nguyenhongson1902/Venomancer.

ALOHA 2 Team, Jorge Aldaco, Travis Armstrong et al.

Diverse demonstration datasets have powered significant advances in robot learning, but the dexterity and scale of such data can be limited by the hardware cost, the hardware robustness, and the ease of teleoperation. We introduce ALOHA 2, an enhanced version of ALOHA that has greater performance, ergonomics, and robustness compared to the original design. To accelerate research in large-scale bimanual manipulation, we open source all hardware designs of ALOHA 2 with a detailed tutorial, together with a MuJoCo model of ALOHA 2 with system identification. See the project website at aloha-2.github.io.

Nam Nguyen, Thinh Nguyen, Bella Bose

We study task-oriented lossy compression through the lens of rate-distortion-classification (RDC) representations. The source is Bernoulli, the distortion measure is Hamming, and the binary classification variable is coupled to the source via a binary symmetric model. Building on the one-shot common-randomness formulation, we first derive closed-form characterizations of the one-shot RDC and the dual distortion-rate-classification (DRC) tradeoffs. We then use a representation-based viewpoint and characterize the achievable distortion-classification (DC) region induced by a fixed representation by deriving its lower boundary via a linear program. Finally, we study universal encoders that must support a family of DC operating points and derive computable lower and upper bounds on the minimum asymptotic rate required for universality, thereby yielding bounds on the corresponding rate penalty. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the achievable regions and the resulting universal RDC/DRC curves.

Thinh Nguyen, Khoa D Doan, Binh T. Nguyen et al.

Federated Class-Incremental Learning (FCIL) increasingly becomes important in the decentralized setting, where it enables multiple participants to collaboratively train a global model to perform well on a sequence of tasks without sharing their private data. In FCIL, conventional Federated Learning algorithms such as FedAVG often suffer from catastrophic forgetting, resulting in significant performance declines on earlier tasks. Recent works, based on generative models, produce synthetic images to help mitigate this issue across all classes, but these approaches' testing accuracy on previous classes is still much lower than recent classes, i.e., having better plasticity than stability. To overcome these issues, this paper presents Federated Global Twin Generator (FedGTG), an FCIL framework that exploits privacy-preserving generative-model training on the global side without accessing client data. Specifically, the server trains a data generator and a feature generator to create two types of information from all seen classes, and then it sends the synthetic data to the client side. The clients then use feature-direction-controlling losses to make the local models retain knowledge and learn new tasks well. We extensively analyze the robustness of FedGTG on natural images, as well as its ability to converge to flat local minima and achieve better-predicting confidence (calibration). Experimental results on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and tiny-ImageNet demonstrate the improvements in accuracy and forgetting measures of FedGTG compared to previous frameworks.

Hassan Tavakoli, Thinh Nguyen, Bella Bose

We study the problem of estimating a parametric discrete memoryless channel \( p(y \mid x; \boldsymbolθ) \) when the transmitter selects its input distribution \( π\) to maximize mutual information under the true parameter \( \boldsymbolθ^* \). Using only i.i.d.\ observations of the channel output, we aim to jointly estimate the capacity-achieving input distribution \( \boldsymbolπ^* \) and the true channel parameter \( \boldsymbolθ^* \). In general, recovery of \( \boldsymbolπ^* \) and \( \boldsymbolθ^* \) can be challenging. To that end, we propose two efficient algorithms based on the Blahut--Arimoto (BA) optimality conditions: (i) a bilevel fixed-point method and (ii) an augmented Lagrangian method. Empirical results demonstrate that both proposed algorithms successfully recover the true \( \boldsymbolθ^* \) and \( \boldsymbolπ^* \), whereas a naive maximum-likelihood approach that ignores the mutual-information maximization constraint fails to do so.

Hassan Tavakoli, Thinh Nguyen, Bella Bose

We introduce \textbf{RankGuard-Polar}, a framework for safely publishing a subset of polar codeword coordinates over shared public resources. We assume a strong eavesdropper who has access to the channel input, i.e., the transmitted codeword coordinates published on a public resource access model. Working over \(\mathbb F_2\) and focusing on time-shared public/private BEC uses, we show that leakage from a published index set \(\mathbf{P}\) admits an exact algebraic characterization comes from an information-theoretic viewpoint, and we construct an explicit linear extractor ($R$) that identifies the leaked linear combinations. Building on this identity, we (i) give efficient procedures to compute and certify leakage for any \(\mathbf{P}\), (ii) propose a practical fast algorithm with provable efficiency.

Nam Nguyen, Hassan Tavakoli, An Vuong et al.

This paper studies cross-domain lossy compression through the lens of minimum entropy coupling (MEC) with rate and classification constraints. In this setting, an encoder observes samples from a degraded source domain, while the decoder is required to generate outputs following a prescribed target distribution and to preserve information relevant to a downstream classification task. Motivated by logarithmic-loss distortion, we adopt an information-based objective that maximizes the coupling strength between the source and reconstruction, rather than minimizing a sample-wise distortion. Under common randomness, we formulate a rate-constrained MEC problem (MEC-B) and show that the intermediate representation can be removed without loss of optimality, yielding an equivalent deterministic coupling formulation. For Bernoulli sources, closed-form expressions are derived with and without classification constraints. In addition, we implement a neural restoration framework using quantization, entropy modeling, distribution matching, and classification regularization. Experiments on MNIST super-resolution and SVHN denoising show that increasing the available rate improves classification accuracy and yields more informative reconstructions.

An Vuong, Thinh Nguyen

Multiplicative noise, also known as speckle or pepper noise, commonly affects images produced by synthetic aperture radar (SAR), lasers, or optical lenses. Unlike additive noise, which typically arises from thermal processes or external factors, multiplicative noise is inherent to the system, originating from the fluctuation in diffuse reflections. These fluctuations result in multiple copies of the same signal with varying magnitudes being combined. Consequently, despeckling, or removing multiplicative noise, necessitates different techniques compared to those used for additive noise removal. In this paper, we propose a novel approach using Stochastic Differential Equations based diffusion models to address multiplicative noise. We demonstrate that multiplicative noise can be effectively modeled as a Geometric Brownian Motion process in the logarithmic domain. Utilizing the Fokker-Planck equation, we derive the corresponding reverse process for image denoising. To validate our method, we conduct extensive experiments on two different datasets, comparing our approach to both classical signal processing techniques and contemporary CNN-based noise removal models. Our results indicate that the proposed method significantly outperforms existing methods on perception-based metrics such as FID and LPIPS, while maintaining competitive performance on traditional metrics like PSNR and SSIM.

Nam Nguyen, Thinh Nguyen, Bella Bose

Image denoising aims to remove noise while preserving structural details and perceptual realism, yet distortion-driven methods often produce over-smoothed reconstructions, especially under strong noise and distribution shift. This paper proposes a generative compression framework for perception-based denoising, where restoration is achieved by reconstructing from entropy-coded latent representations that enforce low-complexity structure, while generative decoders recover realistic textures via perceptual measures such as learned perceptual image patch similarity (LPIPS) loss and Wasserstein distance. Two complementary instantiations are introduced: (i) a conditional Wasserstein GAN (WGAN)-based compression denoiser that explicitly controls the rate-distortion-perception (RDP) trade-off, and (ii) a conditional diffusion-based reconstruction strategy that performs iterative denoising guided by compressed latents. We further establish non-asymptotic guarantees for the compression-based maximum-likelihood denoiser under additive Gaussian noise, including bounds on reconstruction error and decoding error probability. Experiments on synthetic and real-noise benchmarks demonstrate consistent perceptual improvements while maintaining competitive distortion performance.

Thinh Nguyen, Le Huy Khiem, Van-Tuan Tran et al.

Federated Learning (FL) enables collaborative model training across distributed clients without sharing raw data, offering a significant privacy benefit. However, most existing Personalized Federated Learning (pFL) methods assume a static client participation, which does not reflect real-world scenarios where new clients may continuously join the federated system (i.e., dynamic client onboarding). In this paper, we explore a practical scenario in which a new batch of clients is introduced incrementally while the learning task remains unchanged. This dynamic environment poses various challenges, including preserving performance for existing clients without retraining and enabling efficient knowledge transfer between client batches. To address these issues, we propose Personalized Federated Data-Free Sub-Hypernetwork (pFedDSH), a novel framework based on a central hypernetwork that generates personalized models for each client via embedding vectors. To maintain knowledge stability for existing clients, pFedDSH incorporates batch-specific masks, which activate subsets of neurons to preserve knowledge. Furthermore, we introduce a data-free replay strategy motivated by DeepInversion to facilitate backward transfer, enhancing existing clients' performance without compromising privacy. Extensive experiments conducted on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and Tiny-ImageNet demonstrate that pFedDSH outperforms the state-of-the-art pFL and Federated Continual Learning baselines in our investigation scenario. Our approach achieves robust performance stability for existing clients, as well as adaptation for new clients and efficient utilization of neural resources.

Thinh Nguyen, Trung Phan, Binh T. Nguyen et al.

Federated Learning (FL) is a decentralized approach where multiple clients collaboratively train a shared global model without sharing their raw data. Despite its effectiveness, conventional FL faces scalability challenges due to excessive computational and communication demands placed on a single central server as the number of participating devices grows. Hierarchical Federated Learning (HFL) addresses these issues by distributing model aggregation tasks across intermediate nodes (stations), thereby enhancing system scalability and robustness against single points of failure. However, HFL still suffers from a critical yet often overlooked limitation: domain shift, where data distributions vary significantly across different clients and stations, reducing model performance on unseen target domains. While Federated Domain Generalization (FedDG) methods have emerged to improve robustness to domain shifts, their integration into HFL frameworks remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we formally introduce Hierarchical Federated Domain Generalization (HFedDG), a novel scenario designed to investigate domain shift within hierarchical architectures. Specifically, we propose HFedATM, a hierarchical aggregation method that first aligns the convolutional filters of models from different stations through Filter-wise Optimal Transport Alignment and subsequently merges aligned models using a Shrinkage-aware Regularized Mean Aggregation. Our extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate that HFedATM significantly boosts the performance of existing FedDG baselines across multiple datasets and maintains computational and communication efficiency. Moreover, theoretical analyses indicate that HFedATM achieves tighter generalization error bounds compared to standard hierarchical averaging, resulting in faster convergence and stable training behavior.

Thinh Nguyen, Cuong N. Nguyen, Quang Pham et al.

In continual learning, understanding the properties of task sequences and their relationships to model performance is important for developing advanced algorithms with better accuracy. However, efforts in this direction remain underdeveloped despite encouraging progress in methodology development. In this work, we investigate the impacts of sequence transferability on continual learning and propose two novel measures that capture the total transferability of a task sequence, either in the forward or backward direction. Based on the empirical properties of these measures, we then develop a new method for the task order selection problem in continual learning. Our method can be shown to offer a better performance than the conventional strategy of random task selection.

Loc Bao Pham, Huong Hoang Luong, Phu Thien Tran et al.

Melody stuck in your head, also known as "earworm", is tough to get rid of, unless you listen to it again or sing it out loud. But what if you can not find the name of that song? It must be an intolerable feeling. Recognizing a song name base on humming sound is not an easy task for a human being and should be done by machines. However, there is no research paper published about hum tune recognition. Adapting from Hum2Song Zalo AI Challenge 2021 - a competition about querying the name of a song by user's giving humming tune, which is similar to Google's Hum to Search. This paper covers details about the pre-processed data from the original type (mp3) to usable form for training and inference. In training an embedding model for the feature extraction phase, we ran experiments with some states of the art, such as ResNet, VGG, AlexNet, MobileNetV2. And for the inference phase, we use the Faiss module to effectively search for a song that matched the sequence of humming sound. The result comes at nearly 94\% in MRR@10 metric on the public test set, along with the top 1 result on the public leaderboard.

Thuan Nguyen, Thinh Nguyen

We consider a channel with a binary input X being corrupted by a continuous-valued noise that results in a continuous-valued output Y. An optimal binary quantizer is used to quantize the continuous-valued output Y to the final binary output Z to maximize the mutual information I(X; Z). We show that when the ratio of the channel conditional density r(y) = P(Y=y|X=0)/ P(Y =y|X=1) is a strictly increasing/decreasing function of y, then a quantizer having a single threshold can maximize mutual information. Furthermore, we show that an optimal quantizer (possibly with multiple thresholds) is the one with the thresholding vector whose elements are all the solutions of r(y) = r* for some constant r* > 0. Interestingly, the optimal constant r* is unique. This uniqueness property allows for fast algorithmic implementation such as a bisection algorithm to find the optimal quantizer. Our results also confirm some previous results using alternative elementary proofs. We show some numerical examples of applying our results to channels with additive Gaussian noises.

Thuan Nguyen, Thinh Nguyen

Given an original discrete source X with the distribution p_X that is corrupted by noise to produce the noisy data Y with the given joint distribution p(X, Y). A quantizer/classifier Q : Y -> Z is then used to classify/quantize the data Y to the discrete partitioned output Z with probability distribution p_Z. Next, Z is transmitted over a deterministic channel with a given channel matrix A that produces the final discrete output T. One wants to design the optimal quantizer/classifier Q^* such that the cost function F(X; T) between the input X and the final output T is minimized while the probability of the partitioned output Z satisfies a concave constraint G(p_Z) < C. Our results generalized some famous previous results. First, an iteration linear time complexity algorithm is proposed to find the local optimal quantizer. Second, we show that the optimal partition should produce a hard partition that is equivalent to the cuts by hyper-planes in the probability space of the posterior probability p(X|Y). This result finally provides a polynomial-time algorithm to find the globally optimal quantizer.

Thuan Nguyen, Thinh Nguyen

Set partitioning is a key component of many algorithms in machine learning, signal processing, and communications. In general, the problem of finding a partition that minimizes a given impurity (loss function) is NP-hard. As such, there exists a wealth of literature on approximate algorithms and theoretical analyses of the partitioning problem under different settings. In this paper, we formulate and solve a variant of the partition problem called the minimum impurity partition under constraint (MIPUC). MIPUC finds an optimal partition that minimizes a given loss function under a given concave constraint. MIPUC generalizes the recently proposed deterministic information bottleneck problem which finds an optimal partition that maximizes the mutual information between the input and partition output while minimizing the partition output entropy. Our proposed algorithm is developed based on a novel optimality condition, which allows us to find a locally optimal solution efficiently. Moreover, we show that the optimal partition produces a hard partition that is equivalent to the cuts by hyperplanes in the probability space of the posterior probability that finally yields a polynomial time complexity algorithm to find the globally optimal partition. Both theoretical and numerical results are provided to validate the proposed algorithm.

Thinh Nguyen, Ionela Prodan, Laurent Lefèvre

This paper proposes several nonlinear control strategies for trajectory tracking of a quadcopter system based on the property of differential flatness. Its originality is twofold. Firstly, it provides a flat output for the quadcopter dynamics capable of creating full flat parametrization of the states and inputs. Moreover, B-splines characterizations of the flat output and their properties allow for optimal trajectory generation subject to way-point constraints. Secondly, several control strategies based on computed torque control and feedback linearization are presented and compared. The advantages of flatness within each control strategy are analyzed and detailed through extensive simulation results.