Jingyi Huang

Xiaoyu Wang, Yijia Xu, Jingyi Huang et al.

Remote sensing (RS) technique, enabling the non-contact acquisition of extensive ground observations, is a valuable tool for crop yield predictions. Traditional process-based models struggle to incorporate large volumes of RS data, and most users lack understanding of crop growth mechanisms. In contrast, machine learning (ML) models are often criticized as "black boxes" due to their limited interpretability. To address these limitations, we utilized Knowledge-Guided Machine Learning (KGML), a framework that leverages the strengths of both process-based and ML models. Existing works have either overlooked the role of soil moisture in corn growth or did not embed this effect into their models. To bridge this gap, we developed the Knowledge-Guided Machine Learning with Soil Moisture (KGML-SM) framework, treating soil moisture as an intermediate variable in corn growth to emphasize its key role in plant development. Additionally, based on the prior knowledge that the model may overestimate under drought conditions, we designed a drought-aware loss function that penalized predicted yield in drought-affected areas. Our experiments showed that the KGML-SM model outperformed other traditional ML models. We explored the relationships between drought, soil moisture, and corn yield prediction by assessing the importance of different features within the model, and analyzing how soil moisture impacts predictions across different regions and time periods. Finally we provided interpretability for prediction errors to guide future model optimization.

Jingyi Huang, Yizheng Zhang, Fabio Giardina et al.

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) experiments are commonly performed in simulated environments due to the tremendous training sample demands from deep neural networks. In contrast, model-based Bayesian Learning allows a robot to learn good policies within a few trials in the real world. Although it takes fewer iterations, Bayesian methods pay a relatively higher computational cost per trial, and the advantage of such methods is strongly tied to dimensionality and noise. In here, we compare a Deep Bayesian Learning algorithm with a model-free DRL algorithm while analyzing our results collected from both simulations and real-world experiments. While considering Sim and Real learning, our experiments show that the sample-efficient Deep Bayesian RL performance is better than DRL even when computation time (as opposed to number of iterations) is taken in consideration. Additionally, the difference in computation time between Deep Bayesian RL performed in simulation and in experiments point to a viable path to traverse the reality gap. We also show that a mix between Sim and Real does not outperform a purely Real approach, pointing to the possibility that reality can provide the best prior knowledge to a Bayesian Learning. Roboticists design and build robots every day, and our results show that a higher learning efficiency in the real-world will shorten the time between design and deployment by skipping simulations.