Peng Gao

Jiaer Xia, Yuhang Zang, Peng Gao et al.

Learning general-purpose reasoning capabilities has long been a challenging problem in AI. Recent research in large language models (LLMs), such as DeepSeek-R1, has shown that reinforcement learning techniques like GRPO can enable pre-trained LLMs to develop reasoning capabilities using simple question-answer pairs. In this paper, we aim to train visual language models (VLMs) to perform reasoning on image data through reinforcement learning and visual question-answer pairs, without any explicit chain-of-thought (CoT) supervision. Our findings indicate that simply applying reinforcement learning to a VLM -- by prompting the model to produce a reasoning chain before providing an answer -- can lead the model to develop shortcuts from easy questions, thereby reducing its ability to generalize across unseen data distributions. We argue that the key to mitigating shortcut learning is to encourage the model to interpret images prior to reasoning. Therefore, we train the model to adhere to a caption-reason-answer output format: initially generating a detailed caption for an image, followed by constructing an extensive reasoning chain. When trained on 273K CoT-free visual question-answer pairs and using only reinforcement learning, our model, named Visionary-R1, outperforms strong multimodal models, such as GPT-4o, Claude3.5-Sonnet, and Gemini-1.5-Pro, on multiple visual reasoning benchmarks.

Peng Gao, Tao Yu, Fei Wang et al.

Designing distributed filter circuits (DFCs) is complex and time-consuming, involving setting and optimizing multiple hyperparameters. Traditional optimization methods, such as using the commercial finite element solver HFSS (High-Frequency Structure Simulator) to enumerate all parameter combinations with fixed steps and then simulate each combination, are not only time-consuming and labor-intensive but also rely heavily on the expertise and experience of electronics engineers, making it difficult to adapt to rapidly changing design requirements. Additionally, these commercial tools struggle with precise adjustments when parameters are sensitive to numerical changes, resulting in limited optimization effectiveness. This study proposes a novel end-to-end automated method for DFC design. The proposed method harnesses reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, eliminating the dependence on the design experience of engineers. Thus, it significantly reduces the subjectivity and constraints associated with circuit design. The experimental findings demonstrate clear improvements in design efficiency and quality when comparing the proposed method with traditional engineer-driven methods. Furthermore, the proposed method achieves superior performance when designing complex or rapidly evolving DFCs, highlighting the substantial potential of RL in circuit design automation. In particular, compared to the existing DFC automation design method CircuitGNN, our method achieves an average performance improvement of 8.72%. Additionally, the execution efficiency of our method is 2000 times higher than CircuitGNN on the CPU and 241 times higher on the GPU.