Toward Robust Sensing for Autonomous Vehicles: An Adversarial Perspective

Autonomous Vehicles rely on accurate and robust sensor observations for safety critical decision-making in a variety of conditions. Fundamental building blocks of such systems are sensors and classifiers that process ultrasound, RADAR, GPS, LiDAR and camera signals~\cite{Khan2018}. It is of primary importance that the resulting decisions are robust to perturbations, which can take the form of different types of nuisances and data transformations, and can even be adversarial perturbations (APs). Adversarial perturbations are purposefully crafted alterations of the environment or of the sensory measurements, with the objective of attacking and defeating the autonomous systems. A careful evaluation of the vulnerabilities of their sensing system(s) is necessary in order to build and deploy safer systems in the fast-evolving domain of AVs. To this end, we survey the emerging field of sensing in adversarial settings: after reviewing adversarial attacks on sensing modalities for autonomous systems, we discuss countermeasures and present future research directions

Resampled Datasets Are Not Enough: Mitigating Societal Bias Beyond Single Attributes

We tackle societal bias in image-text datasets by removing spurious correlations between protected groups and image attributes. Traditional methods only target labeled attributes, ignoring biases from unlabeled ones. Using text-guided inpainting models, our approach ensures protected group independence from all attributes and mitigates inpainting biases through data filtering. Evaluations on multi-label image classification and image captioning tasks show our method effectively reduces bias without compromising performance across various models

AKO-kevytsorabetonisen seinäelementin käyttö asuntokohteessa

Työn tarkoituksena oli tarkastella AKO-kevytsorabetonisen seinäelementin asennustyötä tehdystä sopimuksesta elementtien asennuksen loppuun saakka. Tuotannossa on aiemmissa kohteissa havaittu pieniä epäkohtia niin sopimusyksityiskohdissa kuin vastuukysymyksissä. Opinnäytetyön avulla työn toimeksiantaja Skanska Talonrakennus Oy sai lisävalmiuksia tuleviin sopimuksiin ja elementtien asennuksiin. Tarkastellaan aiemmin havaittujen tietojen pohjalta, miten voi ennalta valmistautua elementtiasennukseen. Sopimusyksityiskohtien tarkastelu ja mahdollisten lisätöiden muodostuminen ja niistä muodostuvat lisäkustannukset ovat pääasialliset tutkinnan kohteet. Opinnäytetyön tulokset tehtiin sopimuksiin perehtymällä, työmaalla tehtyjä havaintoja tekemällä ja epäkohtiin välittömästi puuttumalla ja kantaa ottamalla. Tulevissa kohteissa pölyyn ja sen muodostamaan haittaan osataan varautua varmasti paremmin. Täyttöjen osalta sopimusyksityiskohtia osataan täydentää.The purpose of this thesis was to examine the installation of AKO light gravel concrete wall elements from contracts to the finish of the actual installation work. In earlier building projects, Skanska has noticed faults relating to contracts details and responsibility issues. With the help of this study, Skanska was provited with more information for upcoming AKO element contracts and installation work. At first, earlier contracts, issues from previous work sites and causes of extra work in element installation were examined. The purchase and installation process of AKO elements were observed as a whole. Then, problems oc-curred at the construction site were reported. The main result of this thesis was further clarity regarding contract responsibility issues. Dust control of AKO element installations was also improved for future projects. The remaining contract details can be supplemented later on

Benchmark for Human-to-Robot Handovers of Unseen Containers With Unknown Filling

The real-time estimation through vision of the physical properties of objects manipulated by humans is important to inform the control of robots for performing accurate and safe grasps of objects handed over by humans. However, estimating the 3D pose and dimensions of previously unseen objects using only RGB cameras is challenging due to illumination variations, reflective surfaces, transparencies, and occlusions caused both by the human and the robot. In this letter, we present a benchmark for dynamic human-to-robot handovers that do not rely on a motion capture system, markers, or prior knowledge of specific objects. To facilitate comparisons, the benchmark focuses on cups with different levels of transparencies and with an unknown amount of an unknown filling. The performance scores assess the overall system as well as its components in order to help isolate modules of the pipeline that need improvements. In addition to the task description and the performance scores, we also present and distribute as open source a baseline implementation for the overall pipeline to enable comparisons and facilitate progress

Cardiac Computed Tomographic Angiography after Abnormal Ischemia Test as a Gatekeeper to Invasive Coronary Angiography.

Abstract ObjectivesThis study aimed to determine the impact of systematic coronary computed tomographic angiography (CCTA) use following an abnormal non-invasive ischemia test (NIST) on patient selection strategy for invasive coronary angiography (ICA).BackgroundIn patients with suspected stable coronary artery disease (CAD), NIST use frequently results in sub-optimal diagnostic and revascularization yields of ICA.MethodsThis randomized clinical trial, conducted at a single academic tertiary center, selected 220 symptomatic patients with mild-to-moderately abnormal NIST results who were referred for ICA. Patients received either the originally intended ICA (n = 105) or CCTA (n = 115). The primary endpoint was the diagnostic yield of ICA in each group. Revascularization yield and major adverse cardiovascular events at 12 months were also assessed.ResultsThe patients were 69 ± 9 years old, 60% were men, and 31% had typical angina. Mean pre-test probability of obstructive CAD was 34%. Overall prevalence of obstructive CAD was 37.7% on the index angiographic procedure. In the CCTA group, ICA was cancelled by referring physicians in 83 patients (72.2%) after receiving CCTA results. For those undergoing ICA, diagnostic (84.4% vs 41.7%, p &lt; 0.001) and revascularization (71.9% vs 38.8%, p = 0.001) yields were significantly higher for CCTA-guided ICA than for standard NIST-guided ICA. Mean cumulative radiation exposure was significantly lower in the CCTA-guided ICA arm than in the NIST-guided ICA arm (12 ± 9 vs 16 ± 10 mSv, respectively, p = 0.024). There were no significant differences in the primary safety endpoint rates between the strategies (p = 0.439).ConclusionsIn patients with suspected CAD and mild-to-moderately abnormal ischemia tests, a diagnostic strategy including CCTA as a gatekeeper is safe and effective and significantly improves diagnostic and revascularization yields of ICA.</jats:p