Yifan Cao

Hao Xing, Yifan Cao, Maximilian Biber et al.

Supervised learning depth estimation methods can achieve good performance when trained on high-quality ground-truth, like LiDAR data. However, LiDAR can only generate sparse 3D maps which causes losing information. Obtaining high-quality ground-truth depth data per pixel is difficult to acquire. In order to overcome this limitation, we propose a novel approach combining structure information from a promising Plane and Parallax geometry pipeline with depth information into a U-Net supervised learning network, which results in quantitative and qualitative improvement compared to existing popular learning-based methods. In particular, the model is evaluated on two large-scale and challenging datasets: KITTI Vision Benchmark and Cityscapes dataset and achieve the best performance in terms of relative error. Compared with pure depth supervision models, our model has impressive performance on depth prediction of thin objects and edges, and compared to structure prediction baseline, our model performs more robustly.

Yupeng Cao, Chengyang He, Yangyang Yu et al.

Assessing the veracity of online content has become increasingly critical. Large language models (LLMs) have recently enabled substantial progress in automated veracity assessment, including automated fact-checking and claim verification systems. Typical veracity assessment pipelines break down complex claims into sub-claims, retrieve external evidence, and then apply LLM reasoning to assess veracity. However, existing methods often treat evidence retrieval as a static, isolated step and do not effectively manage or reuse retrieved evidence across claims. In this work, we propose MERMAID, a memory-enhanced multi-agent veracity assessment framework that tightly couples the retrieval and reasoning processes. MERMAID integrates agent-driven search, structured knowledge representations, and a persistent memory module within a Reason-Action style iterative process, enabling dynamic evidence acquisition and cross-claim evidence reuse. By retaining retrieved evidence in an evidence memory, the framework reduces redundant searches and improves verification efficiency and consistency. We evaluate MERMAID on three fact-checking benchmarks and two claim-verification datasets using multiple LLMs, including GPT, LLaMA, and Qwen families. Experimental results show that MERMAID achieves state-of-the-art performance while improving the search efficiency, demonstrating the effectiveness of synergizing retrieval, reasoning, and memory for reliable veracity assessment.

Shashidhar Reddy Javaji, Yupeng Cao, Haohang Li et al.

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly being used for complex research tasks such as literature review, idea generation, and scientific paper analysis, yet their ability to truly understand and process the intricate relationships within complex research papers, such as the logical links between claims and supporting evidence remains largely unexplored. In this study, we present CLAIM-BENCH, a comprehensive benchmark for evaluating LLMs' capabilities in scientific claim-evidence extraction and validation, a task that reflects deeper comprehension of scientific argumentation. We systematically compare three approaches which are inspired by divide and conquer approaches, across six diverse LLMs, highlighting model-specific strengths and weaknesses in scientific comprehension. Through evaluation involving over 300 claim-evidence pairs across multiple research domains, we reveal significant limitations in LLMs' ability to process complex scientific content. Our results demonstrate that closed-source models like GPT-4 and Claude consistently outperform open-source counterparts in precision and recall across claim-evidence identification tasks. Furthermore, strategically designed three-pass and one-by-one prompting approaches significantly improve LLMs' abilities to accurately link dispersed evidence with claims, although this comes at increased computational cost. CLAIM-BENCH sets a new standard for evaluating scientific comprehension in LLMs, offering both a diagnostic tool and a path forward for building systems capable of deeper, more reliable reasoning across full-length papers.

Bruce Yang, Xinfeng He, Huan Gao et al.

Effective prompt design is essential for improving the planning capabilities of large language model (LLM)-driven agents. However, existing structured prompting strategies are typically limited to single-agent, plan-only settings, and often evaluate performance solely based on task accuracy - overlooking critical factors such as token efficiency, modularity, and scalability in multi-agent environments. To address these limitations, we introduce CodeAgents, a prompting framework that codifies multi-agent reasoning and enables structured, token-efficient planning in multi-agent systems. In CodeAgents, all components of agent interaction - Task, Plan, Feedback, system roles, and external tool invocations - are codified into modular pseudocode enriched with control structures (e.g., loops, conditionals), boolean logic, and typed variables. This design transforms loosely connected agent plans into cohesive, interpretable, and verifiable multi-agent reasoning programs. We evaluate the proposed framework across three diverse benchmarks - GAIA, HotpotQA, and VirtualHome - using a range of representative LLMs. Results show consistent improvements in planning performance, with absolute gains of 3-36 percentage points over natural language prompting baselines. On VirtualHome, our method achieves a new state-of-the-art success rate of 56%. In addition, our approach reduces input and output token usage by 55-87% and 41-70%, respectively, underscoring the importance of token-aware evaluation metrics in the development of scalable multi-agent LLM systems. The code and resources are available at: https://anonymous.4open.science/r/CodifyingAgent-5A86

Di Feng, Yifan Cao, Lars Rosenbaum et al.

This work presents a probabilistic deep neural network that combines LiDAR point clouds and RGB camera images for robust, accurate 3D object detection. We explicitly model uncertainties in the classification and regression tasks, and leverage uncertainties to train the fusion network via a sampling mechanism. We validate our method on three datasets with challenging real-world driving scenarios. Experimental results show that the predicted uncertainties reflect complex environmental uncertainty like difficulties of a human expert to label objects. The results also show that our method consistently improves the Average Precision by up to 7% compared to the baseline method. When sensors are temporally misaligned, the sampling method improves the Average Precision by up to 20%, showing its high robustness against noisy sensor inputs.