Publications

2022

• Linear convergence of dual coordinate descent on non-polyhedral convex problems
  
  • Necoara Ion
  • Fercoq Olivier
  Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, 2022. This paper deals with constrained convex problems, where the objective function is smooth strongly convex and the feasible set is given as the intersection of a large number of closed convex (possibly non-polyhedral) sets. In order to deal efficiently with the complicated constraints we consider a dual formulation of this problem. We prove that the corresponding dual function satisfies a quadratic growth property on any sublevel set, provided that the objective function is smooth and strongly convex and the sets verify the Slater's condition. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first deriving a quadratic growth condition for the dual under these general assumptions. Existing works derive similar quadratic growth conditions under more conservative assumptions, e.g., the sets need to be either polyhedral or compact. Then, for finding the minimum of the dual problem, due to its special composite structure, we propose random (accelerated) coordinate descent algorithms. However, with the existing theory one can prove that such methods converge only sublinearly. Based on our new quadratic growth property derived for the dual, we now show that such methods have faster convergence, that is the dual random (accelerated) coordinate descent algorithms converge linearly. Besides providing a general dual framework for the analysis of randomized coordinate descent schemes, our results resolve an open problem in the literature related to the convergence of Dykstra algorithm on the best feasibility problem for a collection of convex sets. That is, we establish linear convergence rate for the randomized Dykstra algorithm when the convex sets satisfy the Slater's condition and derive also a new accelerated variant for the Dykstra algorithm. (10.1287/moor.2021.1222)
  DOI : 10.1287/moor.2021.1222
• Escaping limit cycles: Global convergence for constrained nonconvex-nonconcave minimax problems
  
  • Pethick Thomas
  • Latafat Puya
  • Patrinos Panagiotis
  • Fercoq Olivier
  • Cevher Volkan
  , 2022. This paper introduces a new extragradient-type algorithm for a class of nonconvex-nonconcave minimax problems. It is well-known that finding a local solution for general minimax problems is computationally intractable. This observation has recently motivated the study of structures sufficient for convergence of first order methods in the more general setting of variational inequalities when the so-called weak Minty variational inequality (MVI) holds. This problem class captures non-trivial structures as we demonstrate with examples, for which a large family of existing algorithms provably converge to limit cycles. Our results require a less restrictive parameter range in the weak MVI compared to what is previously known, thus extending the applicability of our scheme. The proposed algorithm is applicable to constrained and regularized problems, and involves an adaptive stepsize allowing for potentially larger stepsizes. Our scheme also converges globally even in settings where the underlying operator exhibits limit cycles. Moreover, a variant with stochastic oracles is proposed-making it directly relevant for training of generative adversarial networks. For the stochastic algorithm only one of the stepsizes is required to be diminishing while the other may remain constant, making it interesting even in the monotone setting.
• GIPSO: Geometrically Informed Propagation for Online Adaptation in 3D LiDAR Segmentation
  
  • Saltori Cristiano
  • Krivosheev Evgeny
  • Lathuilière Stéphane
  • Sebe Nicu
  • Galasso Fabio
  • Fiameni Giuseppe
  • Ricci Elisa
  • Poiesi Fabio
  , 2022. 3D point cloud semantic segmentation is fundamental for autonomous driving. Most approaches in the literature neglect an important aspect, i.e., how to deal with domain shift when handling dynamic scenes. This can significantly hinder the navigation capabilities of self-driving vehicles. This paper advances the state of the art in this research field. Our first contribution consists in analysing a new unexplored scenario in point cloud segmentation, namely Source-Free Online Unsupervised Domain Adaptation (SF-OUDA). We experimentally show that state-of-the-art methods have a rather limited ability to adapt pre-trained deep network models to unseen domains in an online manner. Our second contribution is an approach that relies on adaptive self-training and geometric-feature propagation to adapt a pre-trained source model online without requiring either source data or target labels. Our third contribution is to study SF-OUDA in a challenging setup where source data is synthetic and target data is point clouds captured in the real world. We use the recent SynLiDAR dataset as a synthetic source and introduce two new synthetic (source) datasets, which can stimulate future synthetic-to-real autonomous driving research. Our experiments show the effectiveness of our segmentation approach on thousands of real-world point clouds. Code and synthetic datasets are available at https://github.com/saltoricristiano/gipso-sfouda.
• Outline and Shape Reconstruction in 2D
  
  • Ohrhallinger Stefan
  • Parakkat Amal Dev
  • Peethambaran Jiju
  , 2022. Outline and shape reconstruction from unstructured points in a plane is a fundamental problem with many applications that have generated research interest for decades. Involved aspects like handling open, sharp, multiple and non-manifold outlines, run-time and provability, and potential extension to 3D for surface reconstruction have led to many different algorithms. This multitude of reconstruction methods with quite different strengths and focus makes it difficult for users to choose a suitable algorithm for their specific problem. In this tutorial, we present proximity graphs, graph-based algorithms, and algorithms with sampling guarantees, all in detail. Then, we show algorithms targeted at specific problem classes, such as reconstructing from noise, outliers, or sharp corners. Examples of the evaluation will show how its results can guide users in selecting an appropriate algorithm for their input data. As a special application, we show the reconstruction of lines in the context of sketch completion and sketch simplification. Shape characterization of dot patterns will be shown as an additional field closely related to boundary reconstruction.
• Mid-infrared free-space cryptosystem
  
  • Spitz Olivier
  • Herdt Andreas
  • Didier Pierre
  • Elsäßer Wolfgang
  • Grillot Frédéric
  Nonlinear Theory and Its Applications, IEICE, The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, 2022, 13, pp.44 - 52. Communication privacy is one of the key requirements for always expanding networks. Furthermore, fibre systems are becoming saturated and many remote areas do not have access to broadband connection because current systems are too difficult or expensive to deploy. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate a mid-infrared free-space cryptosystem that is based on chaos synchronization between two quantum cascade lasers. Optimal amplitude conditions to ensure both privacy and acceptable deciphering are described, paving the way towards a wide adoption of quantum cascade lasers for future communication systems. (10.1587/nolta.13.44)
  DOI : 10.1587/nolta.13.44
• On the decoding of lattices constructed via a single parity check
  
  • Corlay Vincent
  • Boutros Joseph J
  • Ciblat Philippe
  IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2022, 68 (5), pp.2951 - 2968. This paper investigates the decoding of a remarkable set of lattices: We treat in a unified framework the Leech lattice in dimension 24, the Nebe lattice in dimension 72, and the Barnes-Wall lattices. A new interesting lattice is constructed as a simple application of single parity-check principle on the Leech lattice. The common aspect of these lattices is that they can be obtained via a single parity check or via the king construction. We exploit these constructions to introduce a new efficient paradigm for decoding. This leads to efficient list decoders and quasi-optimal decoders on the Gaussian channel. Both theoretical and practical performance (point error probability and complexity) of the new decoders are provided. (10.1109/TIT.2022.3148196)
  DOI : 10.1109/TIT.2022.3148196
• Pulling, Pressing, and Sensing with In-Flat: Transparent Touch Overlay for Smartphones
  
  • Zhang Zhuoming
  • Alvina Jessalyn
  • Détienne Françoise
  • Lecolinet Eric
  , 2022, pp.1-9. (10.1145/3531073.3531111)
  DOI : 10.1145/3531073.3531111
• Le pillage de la communauté des logiciels libres
  
  • O'Neil Mathieu
  • Muselli Laure
  • Pailler Fred
  • Zacchiroli Stefano
  Le Monde Diplomatique, Le Monde, 2022, pp.20-21.
• High-capacity free-space optical link in the midinfrared thermal atmospheric windows using unipolar quantum devices
  
  • Didier Pierre
  • Dely Hamza
  • Bonazzi Thomas
  • Spitz Olivier
  • Awwad Elie
  • Rodriguez Etienne
  • Vasanelli Angela
  • Sirtori Carlo
  • Grillot Frédéric
  Advanced photonics, SPIE, 2022, 4 (5), pp.056004. Free-space optical communication is a very promising alternative to fiber communication systems, in terms of ease of deployment and costs. Midinfrared light has several features of utter relevance for free-space applications: low absorption when propagating in the atmosphere even under adverse conditions, robustness of the wavefront during long-distance propagation, and absence of regulations and restrictions for this range of wavelengths. A proof-of-concept of high-speed transmission taking advantage of intersubband devices has recently been demonstrated, but this effort was limited by the short-distance optical path (up to 1 m). In this work, we study the possibility of building a long-range link using unipolar quantum optoelectronics. Two different detectors are used: an uncooled quantum cascade detector and a nitrogen-cooled quantum well-infrared photodetector. We evaluate the maximum data rate of our link in a back-to-back configuration before adding a Herriott cell to increase the length of the light path up to 31 m. By using pulse shaping, pre- and post-processing, we reach a record bitrate of 30 Gbit s − 1 for both two-level (OOK) and four-level (PAM-4) modulation schemes for a 31-m propagation link and a bit error rate compatible with error-correction codes. (10.1117/1.AP.4.5.056004)
  DOI : 10.1117/1.AP.4.5.056004
• A Quadrature Rule combining Control Variates and Adaptive Importance Sampling
  
  • Leluc Rémi
  • Portier François
  • Zhuman Aigerim
  • Segers Johan
  Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2022, 35, pp.11842--11853. Driven by several successful applications such as in stochastic gradient descent or in Bayesian computation, control variates have become a major tool for Monte Carlo integration. However, standard methods do not allow the distribution of the particles to evolve during the algorithm, as is the case in sequential simulation methods. Within the standard adaptive importance sampling framework, a simple weighted least squares approach is proposed to improve the procedure with control variates. The procedure takes the form of a quadrature rule with adapted quadrature weights to reflect the information brought in by the control variates. The quadrature points and weights do not depend on the integrand, a computational advantage in case of multiple integrands. Moreover, the target density needs to be known only up to a multiplicative constant. Our main result is a non-asymptotic bound on the probabilistic error of the procedure. The bound proves that for improving the estimate's accuracy, the benefits from adaptive importance sampling and control variates can be combined. The good behavior of the method is illustrated empirically on synthetic examples and real-world data for Bayesian linear regression.
• Handwriting and Drawing Features for Detecting Personality Traits: An Analysis on Big Five Sub-dimensions
  
  • Esposito Anna
  • Amorese Terry
  • Buonanno Michele
  • Cuciniello Marialucia
  • Esposito Antonietta
  • Faundez-Zanuy Marcos
  • Likforman-Sulem Laurence
  • Riviello Maria Teresa
  • Spagnuolo Carmine
  • Troncone Alda
  • Cordasco Gennaro
  Acta Polytechnica Hungarica, Óbuda University, 2022, 19 (11), pp.65-84. : Handwriting and Drawing are functional tasks involving physical and cognitive processes. Recently they have been investigated for detecting cognitive and motor disorders. In this work, handwriting/drawing features are investigated for identifying connections with personality traits. For this purpose, an experiment comprising seven handwriting/drawing tasks has been administrated to 78 young adults (mean age=24.6 ± 2.4 years) equally balanced by gender. Handwriting and Drawing activities - both on and close to the paper – had been recorded online through a digitizing tablet able to measure handwriting and drawing features such as pressure, speed, dimension, and inclination of each pen-stroke on the paper. Participants were asked to fill the Big Five Personality Questionnaire (BFQ) and according to the scores obtained for each of the 5 dimensions and 10 Big Five sub-dimensions, were partitioned into three categories: low, typical, and high. To evaluate whether the recorded handwriting/drawing features are connected with personality traits ANOVA repeated measures have been performed with gender and group category (low, typical, and high) as between and the listed handwriting/drawing features as within factors. The analyses show significant differences among low, typical and, high BFQ scores for the main Big Five dimensions and the ten Big Five sub-dimensions, indicating that personality traits can be revealed by a quantitative analysis of the proposed handwriting/drawing features. (10.12700/APH.19.11.2022.11.4)
  DOI : 10.12700/APH.19.11.2022.11.4
• Selected Topics in Malliavin Calculus
  
  • Decreusefond Laurent
  , 2022, 10. (10.1007/978-3-031-01311-9)
  DOI : 10.1007/978-3-031-01311-9
• Enhanced four-wave mixing dynamics in epitaxial quantum dot laser on silicon
  
  • Ding Shihao
  • Dong Bozhang
  • Chow Weng
  • Bowers John
  • Grillot Frédéric
  , 2022, pp.NpTh3D.1. The four-wave mixing conversion efficiency of quantum dot laser is much higher than that of quantum well. These results are important for self-mode-locked pulse production and high-bandwidth optical frequency comb generation. (10.1364/NP.2022.NpTh3D.1)
  DOI : 10.1364/NP.2022.NpTh3D.1
• Unsupervised Audio Source Separation Using Differentiable Parametric Source Models
  
  • Schulze-Forster Kilian
  • Doire Clement S J
  • Richard Gael
  • Badeau Roland
  Computing Research Repository, ACM / ArXiv, 2022. Supervised deep learning approaches to underdetermined audio source separation achieve state-of-the-art performance but require a dataset of mixtures along with their corresponding isolated source signals. Such datasets can be extremely costly to obtain for musical mixtures. This raises a need for unsupervised methods. We propose a novel unsupervised modelbased deep learning approach to musical source separation. Each source is modelled with a differentiable parametric sourcefilter model. A neural network is trained to reconstruct the observed mixture as a sum of the sources by estimating the source models' parameters given their fundamental frequencies. At test time, soft masks are obtained from the synthesized source signals. The experimental evaluation on a vocal ensemble separation task shows that the proposed method outperforms learning-free methods based on nonnegative matrix factorization and a supervised deep learning baseline. Integrating domain knowledge in the form of source models into a data-driven method leads to high data efficiency: the proposed approach achieves good separation quality even when trained on less than three minutes of audio. This work makes powerful deep learning based separation usable in scenarios where training data with ground truth is expensive or nonexistent.
• Introduction
  
  • Bloch Isabelle
  • Euzenat Jérôme
  • Lang Jérôme
  • Schwarzentruber François
  Revue Ouverte d'Intelligence Artificielle, Association pour la diffusion de la recherche francophone en intelligence artificielle, 2022, 3, pp.193-199. no abstract (10.5802/roia.28fr)
  DOI : 10.5802/roia.28fr
• Compositional Equivalences Based on Open pNets
  
  • Ameur-Boulifa Rabéa
  • Henrio Ludovic
  • Madelaine Eric
  Journal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming, Elsevier, 2022, 131, pp.100842. Establishing equivalences between programs is crucial both for verifying correctness of programs and for justifying optimisations and program transformations. There exist several equivalence relations for programs, and bisimulations are among the most versatile of these equivalences. Among bisimulations one distinguishes strong bisimulation that requires that each action of a program is simulated by a single action of the equivalent program, and weak bisimulation that allows some of the actions to be invisible, and thus not simulated. pNet is a generalisation of automata that model open systems. They feature variables and hierarchical composition. Open pNets are pNets with holes, i.e. placeholders that can be filled later by subsystems. However, there is no standard tool for defining the semantics of an open system in this context. This article first defines open automata that are labelled transition systems with parameters and holes. Relying on open automata, it then defines bisimilarity relations for the comparison of systems specified as pNets. We first present a strong bisimilarity for open pNets called FH-bisimilarity. Next we offer an equivalence relation similar to the classical weak bisimulation equivalence, and study its properties. Among these properties we are interested in compositionality: if two systems are proven equivalent they will be indistinguishable by their context, and they will also be indistinguishable when their holes are filled with equivalent systems. We identify sufficient conditions to ensure compositionality of strong and weak bisimulation. The contributions of this article are illustrated using a transport protocol as running example. (10.1016/j.jlamp.2022.100842)
  DOI : 10.1016/j.jlamp.2022.100842
• (Complex) natural gradient optimization for optical quantum circuit design
  
  • Yao Yuan
  • Cussenot Pierre
  • Wolf Richard A.
  • Miatto Filippo M.
  Physical Review A, American Physical Society, 2022, 105 (5), pp.052402. Few-mode optical quantum circuits can be simulated and optimized using gradient-descent methods, as optical gates can be parametrized by continuous parameters. However, the parameter space as seen by a nonholomorphic cost function is not Euclidean, which means that the Euclidean gradient does not generally point in the direction of steepest ascent. In order to retrieve the true steepest-ascent direction, one must take into account the local metric in what is known as the natural-gradient (NG) method. In this work we implement the NG for the optimization of optical quantum circuits. Specifically, we adapt the NG approach to a complex-valued parameter space, allowing us to apply the NG method directly within the Bargmann formalism, which we rely on for transforming between phase space and Fock space. We then compare the NG approach to vanilla gradient descent and to Adam over two standard state-preparation benchmarks: a single-photon source and a Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill state source. We observe that the NG approach converges significantly faster (due in part to the possibility of using larger learning rates) and with a smoother decay of the cost function throughout the optimization. This result further improves our ability to design quantum circuits via classical optimization methods. (10.1103/PhysRevA.105.052402)
  DOI : 10.1103/PhysRevA.105.052402
• Combining Embeddings and Rules for Fact Prediction
  
  • Boschin Armand
  • Jain Nitisha
  • Keretchashvili Gurami
  • Suchanek Fabian M.
  , 2022. Knowledge bases are typically incomplete, meaning that they are missing information that we would expect to be there. Recent years have seen two main approaches to guess missing facts: Rule Mining and Knowledge Graph Embeddings. The first approach is symbolic, and finds rules such as "If two people are married, they most likely live in the same city". These rules can then be used to predict missing statements. Knowledge Graph Embeddings, on the other hand, are trained to predict missing facts for a knowledge base by mapping entities to a vector space. Each of these approaches has their strengths and weaknesses, and this article provides a survey of neuro-symbolic works that combine embeddings and rule mining approaches for fact prediction. (10.4230/OASIcs.AIB.2022.4)
  DOI : 10.4230/OASIcs.AIB.2022.4
• Post-actes de la Conférence Nationale en Intelligence Artificielle (CNIA 2018-2020)
  
  • Bloch Isabelle
  • Euzenat Jérôme
  • Lang Jérôme
  • Schwarzentruber François
  Revue Ouverte d'Intelligence Artificielle, Association pour la diffusion de la recherche francophone en intelligence artificielle, 2022, 3, pp.193-413. no abstract
• LAKE DETECTION WITH SENTINEL-1 DATA USING A GRAB-CUT METHOD AND ITS MULTI-TEMPORAL EXTENSION
  
  • Gasnier Nicolas
  • Denis Loïc
  • Fjørtoft Roger
  • Liege Frédéric
  • Tupin Florence
  , 2022. This paper presents a semi-guided method to detect lakes in Sentinel-1 SAR data. The proposed approach is an adaptation of the grab-cut framework developed in [1]. Starting from a coarse bounding box around the lake, an accurate segmentation is extracted using a Conditional Random Field formalism and a graph-cut based optimization. Then an extension of this approach to process jointly a stack of multi-temporal data is presented. A temporal regularization term is introduced to control the joint segmentation. The proposed approach is evaluated on Sentinel-1 datasets. Qualitative and quantitative results demonstrate the interest of the proposed framework and its robustness to the initialization polygon of the lake. (10.1109/IGARSS46834.2022.9883219)
  DOI : 10.1109/IGARSS46834.2022.9883219
• Characterization of the majority matrices of profiles of equivalence relations
  
  • Hudry Olivier
  , 2022.
• From Coherent Systems Technology to Advanced Fiber Sensing for Smart Network Monitoring
  
  • Dorize Christian
  • Guerrier Sterenn
  • Awwad Elie
  • Mardoyan Haik
  • Renaudier Jeremie
  Journal of Lightwave Technology, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)/Optical Society of America(OSA), 2022, pp.1-10. (10.1109/JLT.2022.3221552)
  DOI : 10.1109/JLT.2022.3221552
• PBRE: A Rule Extraction Method from Trained Neural Networks Designed for Smart Home Services
  
  • Qiu Mingming
  • Najm Elie
  • Sharrock Rémi
  • Traverson Bruno
  , 2022, 13427, pp.158-173. Designing smart home services is a complex task when multiple services with a large number of sensors and actuators are deployed simultaneously. It may rely on knowledge-based or data-driven approaches. The former can use rule-based methods to design services statically, and the latter can use learning methods to discover inhabitants’ preferences dynamically. However, neither of these approaches is entirely satisfactory because rules cannot cover all possible situations that may change, and learning methods may make decisions that are sometimes incomprehensible to the inhabitant. In this paper, PBRE (Pedagogic Based Rule Extractor) is proposed to extract rules from learning methods to realize dynamic rule generation for smart home systems. The expected advantage is that both the explainability of rule-based methods and the dynamicity of learning methods are adopted. We compare PBRE with an existing rule extraction method, and the results show better performance of PBRE. We also apply PBRE to extract rules from a smart home service represented by an NRL (Neural Network-based Reinforcement Learning). The results show that PBRE can help the NRL-simulated service to make understandable suggestions to the inhabitant. (10.1007/978-3-031-12426-6_13)
  DOI : 10.1007/978-3-031-12426-6_13
• Towards Globally Optimized Hybrid Homomorphic Encryption - Featuring the Elisabeth Stream Cipher
  
  • Cosseron Orel
  • Hoffmann Clément
  • Méaux Pierrick
  • Standaert François-Xavier
  , 2022.
• DNN-FREE LOW-LATENCY ADAPTIVE SPEECH ENHANCEMENT BASED ON FRAME-ONLINE BEAMFORMING POWERED BY BLOCK-ONLINE FASTMNMF
  
  • Nugraha Aditya Arie
  • Sekiguchi Kouhei
  • Fontaine Mathieu
  • Bando Yoshiaki
  • Yoshii Kazuyoshi
  , 2022. This paper describes a practical dual-process speech enhancement system that adapts environment-sensitive frame-online beamforming (front-end) with help from environment-free block-online source separation (back-end). To use minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamforming, one may train a deep neural network (DNN) that estimates timefrequency masks used for computing the covariance matrices of sources (speech and noise). Backpropagation-based runtime adaptation of the DNN was proposed for dealing with the mismatched training-test conditions. Instead, one may try to directly estimate the source covariance matrices with a state-ofthe-art blind source separation method called fast multichannel non-negative matrix factorization (FastMNMF). In practice, however, neither the DNN nor the FastMNMF can be updated in a frame-online manner due to its computationally-expensive iterative nature. Our DNN-free system leverages the posteriors of the latest source spectrograms given by block-online FastMNMF to derive the current source covariance matrices for frame-online beamforming. The evaluation shows that our frame-online system can quickly respond to scene changes caused by interfering speaker movements and outperformed an existing block-online system with DNN-based beamforming by 5.0 points in terms of the word error rate.