Attentive Regularization (AR)
We propose Attentive Regularization (AR), a method to constrain the activation maps of kernels in Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to specific regions of interest (ROIs). Each kernel learns a location of specialization along with its weights through standard backpropagation. A differentiable attention mechanism requiring no additional supervision is used to optimize the ROIs. Traditional CNNs of different types and structures can be modified with this idea into equivalent Targeted Kernel Networks (TKNs), while keeping the network size nearly identical. By restricting kernel ROIs, we reduce the number of sliding convolutional operations performed throughout the network in its forward pass, speeding up both training and inference. We evaluate our proposed architecture on both synthetic and natural tasks across multiple domains. TKNs obtain significant improvements over baselines, requiring less computation (around an order of magnitude) while achieving superior performance. …

Factored Bandits
We introduce the factored bandits model, which is a framework for learning with limited (bandit) feedback, where actions can be decomposed into a Cartesian product of atomic actions. Factored bandits incorporate rank-1 bandits as a special case, but significantly relax the assumptions on the form of the reward function. We provide an anytime algorithm for stochastic factored bandits and up to constants matching upper and lower regret bounds for the problem. Furthermore, we show that with a slight modification the proposed algorithm can be applied to utility based dueling bandits. We obtain an improvement in the additive terms of the regret bound compared to state of the art algorithms (the additive terms are dominating up to time horizons which are exponential in the number of arms). …

Hybrid Dictionary Learning Network (HDLN)
Dictionary learning methods can be split into two categories: i) class specific dictionary learning ii) class shared dictionary learning. The difference between the two categories is how to use the discriminative information. With the first category, samples of different classes are mapped to different subspaces which leads to some redundancy in the base vectors. For the second category, the samples in each specific class can not be described well. Moreover, most class shared dictionary learning methods use the L0-norm regularization term as the sparse constraint. In this paper, we first propose a novel class shared dictionary learning method named label embedded dictionary learning (LEDL) by introducing the L1-norm sparse constraint to replace the conventional L0-norm regularization term in LC-KSVD method. Then we propose a novel network named hybrid dictionary learning network (HDLN) to combine the class specific dictionary learning with class shared dictionary learning together to fully describe the feature to boost the performance of classification. Extensive experimental results on six benchmark datasets illustrate that our methods are capable of achieving superior performance compared to several conventional classification algorithms. …

Socially Aware Kalman Neural Network (SAKNN)
Trajectory prediction is a critical technique in the navigation of robots and autonomous vehicles. However, the complex traffic and dynamic uncertainties yield challenges in the effectiveness and robustness in modeling. We purpose a data-driven approach socially aware Kalman neural networks (SAKNN) where the interaction layer and the Kalman layer are embedded in the architecture, resulting in a class of architectures with huge potential to directly learn from high variance sensor input and robustly generate low variance outcomes. The evaluation of our approach on NGSIM dataset demonstrates that SAKNN performs state-of-the-art on prediction effectiveness in a relatively long-term horizon and significantly improves the signal-to-noise ratio of the predicted signal. …