85 accepted papers
Synthetic time series are vital for data augmentation, stress testing, and prototyping in quantitative finance. Yet in cryptocurrency markets, characterized by 24/7 trading, extreme volatility, and rapid regime shifts, existing Time Series Generation (TSG) methods and benchmarks often fall short, je…
Multimodal Summarization (MMS) aims to generate concise textual summaries by understanding and integrating information across videos, transcripts, and images. However, existing approaches still suffer from three main challenges: (1) reliance on domain-specific supervision, (2) implicit fusion with w
Temporal embeddings play a crucial role in dynamic graph neural networks (DGNNs) by capturing the temporal dynamics of interactions. However, existing Random Fourier Feature (RFF)-based methods in DGNNs directly sample Fourier frequencies from a fixed, data-independent distribution $p(\omega)$, negl
News image captioning aims to produce journalistically informative descriptions by combining visual content with contextual cues from associated articles. Despite recent advances, existing methods struggle with three key challenges: (1) incomplete information coverage, (2) weak cross-modal alignment
In recent years, estimating causal effects of treatment on the outcome variable in network environments has attracted growing interest. The intrinsic interconnectedness of network and the attendant violation of the SUTVA assumption have prompted a wave of treatment effect estimation methods tailored…
Concept Bottleneck Models (CBMs) enhance interpretability by introducing a layer of human-understandable concepts between inputs and predictions. While recent methods automate concept generation using Large Language Models (LLMs) and Vision-Language Models (VLMs), they still face three fundamental c
**This position paper argues that Large Language Models (LLMs) should incorporate explicit mechanisms for human empathy.** As LLMs become increasingly deployed in high-stakes human-centered settings, their success depends not only on correctness or fluency but on faithful preservation of human persp…
**This position paper argues that text embedding research should move beyond surface meaning and embrace implicit semantics as a central modeling objective.** Text embeddings are a foundational component of modern NLP, underpinning a wide range of applications and driving sustained research progress…
Unified Multimodal Models (UMMs) built on shared autoregressive (AR) transformers are attractive for their architectural simplicity. However, we identify a critical limitation: when trained on multimodal inputs, modality-shared transformers suffer from severe gradient conflicts between vision and te…
This letter addresses the inherent inefficiencies and limited agility of traditional gait-based locomotion by proposing the continuum drive paradigm as a high-performance alternative. Existing control frameworks are limited by their simplified predictive models and decoupled planners, which prevent
Semantic text embedding is essential to many tasks in Natural Language Processing (NLP). While black-box models are capable of generating high-quality embeddings, their lack of interpretability limits their use in tasks that demand transparency. Recent approaches have improved interpretability by le…
Training high-performing Small Language Models (SLMs) remains computationally expensive, even with knowledge distillation and pruning from larger teacher models. Existing approaches often face three key challenges: (1) information loss from hard pruning, (2) inefficient alignment of representations…
Microassembly plays an important role in fabricating complex structures with small basic components in industrial and biomedical fields. Inverted optical microscope could provide high-quality image feedback for microassembly with its continuously improving resolution. However, a compact stage capabl
Chemical reactions constitute a cornerstone of fundamental scientific inquiry, yet traditional methodologies and platforms are encumbered by excessive reagent and consumable demands. Emerging alternatives, such as microfluidic systems, while innovative, suffer from intricate fabrication processes an
Microrobots have garnered significant attention due to their vast potential applications across various fields. Among various types of microrobots, piezoelectric robots stand out due to their exceptional motion accuracy, low power consumption, and simple structural design. This work introduces a nov
Recent advancements in legged robot locomotion and reinforcement learning have demonstrated significant potential for the development of bipedal robot. But the state estimation accuracy and bipedal robot locomotion robustness of Reinforcement Learning based (RL-based) controller is significantly inf
During the past decade, DNA origami has emerged as a promising technology to construct DNA nanorobots with programmable configurations and excellent biocompatibility. However, existing DNA origami-based nanorobots exhibit weak stability in complex biological environments and lack efficient delivery
In this work, we investigate an important task named instruction-following text embedding, which generates dynamic text embeddings that adapt to user instructions, highlighting specific attributes of text. Despite recent advancements, existing approaches suffer from significant computational overhea…
Micromanipulation techniques struggle to achieve three-dimensional rotational control at the microscale without compromising biocompatibility or spatial flexibility. Conventional methods based on mechanical contact, optical forces, or confined microfluidics constrain dynamic reconfiguration and surg
Miniature robots hold great promise for performing micromanipulation tasks within hard-to-reach confined spaces. However, effectively maneuvering across complex and unstructured terrain, achieving adaptive morphogenesis, and developing adaptive multimodal locomotion strategies remain challenges for
Micro-nano robots must break the symmetry of the flow field to generate net displacement in the low Reynolds number environment. The spherical micro-robots utilize the frictional forces generated through interaction with the surface. We designed a magnetic microroller robot powered by the rotating A
Multi-label causal feature selection has garnered considerable attention for its ability to identify the most informative features while accounting for the causal dependencies between labels and features. However, previous work often overlooks the unique contributions of labels to the target variabl
A magnetically controlled catheter system is proposed to enhance the precision and safety of vascular interventions by reducing procedure time and radiation exposure. The system can also function as a support channel for guidewire deployment. A novel navigation approach is introduced, employing an e
Traditional single-cell mechanical characterization techniques (e.g., atomic force microscopy) often face limitations in throughput, require invasive labeling, or fail to replicate physiological microenvironments, impeding their clinical utility for rapid cancer cell analysis. To address these limit
Magnetic helical microrobots have been widely applicated in environmental remediation, sensing, targeted medical applications, and so on. However, for locomotion and manipulation in unstructured liquid environments, the capabilities of distinguished motions and on-demand parking/starting over a team
Semantic Text Embedding is a fundamental NLP task that encodes textual content into vector representations, where proximity in the embedding space reflects semantic similarity. While existing embedding models excel at capturing general meaning, they often overlook ideological nuances, limiting their…
Magnetic helical microrobots have attracted considerable attraction in microscale targeted delivery due to their high propulsion efficiency and movement flexibility. However, for biomedical applications in unstructured and multibranched liquid environments, the capabilities of high swimming performa
Micromanipulation techniques that can achieve controlled fine operations at the micro scale play an important role in biomedical fields including embryo engineering, gene engineering, drug screening, and cell analysis. However, micromanipulation of biological micro-objects, such as cells and micro t…
Counterfactual estimation from observations represents a critical endeavor in numerous application fields, such as healthcare and finance, with the primary challenge being the mitigation of treatment bias. The balancing strategy aimed at reducing covariate disparities between different treatment gro…
Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) is a fundamental problem with broad machine learning applications. In this paper, we investigate the KDE problem under Local Differential Privacy (LDP), a setting in which users privatize data on their own devices before sending them to an untrusted server for analyti…
Micro-assembly is an emerging method to fabricate microrobots with multiple modules or particles. However, there is always a lack of a flexible and efficient method to freely create the desired magnetic soft microrobots. In this paper, an automated assembly system based on a two-fingered microhand i…
Prompt-based Large Language Models(LLMs) are surprisingly powerful in generating natural language reasoning steps or Chains of Thoughts(CoT) for multi-hop question answering(QA). However, LLMs struggle when they lack access to necessary knowledge or when the knowledge within their parameters is outd…
In recent years, micromanipulation technology has achieved extensive applications in industry and life science. Improving the precision and bandwidth of the micromanipulator and simultaneously reducing size, weight, and cost pose significant challenges to the existing micromanipulator design and fab…
High-frequency and accurate state estimation is crucial for biped robots. This paper presents a tightly-coupled LiDAR-Inertial-Kinematic Odometry (LIKO) for biped robot state estimation based on an iterated extended Kalman filter. Beyond state estimation, the foot contact position is also modeled an…
This work focuses on the active learning in video captioning. In particular, we propose to address the learnability problem in active learning, which has been brought up by collective outliers in video captioning and neglected in the literature. To start with, we conduct a comprehensive study of col…
Recent advances in both legged robot locomotion and Reinforcement Learning have shown a promising path for developing bipedal robot controllers. While the difference in dynamics between real world and simulation, also known as reality gap, still hinders the use. In this paper, we focus on sim-to-rea…
Embodying in vitro biological neural networks (BNNs) with robots to explore the rise of intelligence in these simpler models and to endow robots with biological intelligence has been attracting increasing attention in the fields of neuroscience and robotics. However, current research suffers from un
In the last decade, researchers have been trying to develop many microrobots that mimic the extraordinary abilities of bionts in complex environments. How to fabricate the biomimetic microrobot with satisfying deformability and complex shapes to realize desired precise motion is the key issue. In th…
This paper investigates a new yet challenging problem called Reverse k-Maximum Inner Product Search (RkMIPS). Given a query (item) vector, a set of item vectors, and a set of user vectors, the problem of RkMIPS aims to find a set of user vectors whose inner products with the query vector are one of…
Existing micromanipulation methods, whether contact micromanipulation or non-contact micromanipulation, can hardly meet the requirements of low damage and multiple functions in the biomedical field. This study provides a high-speed micromanipulator that can simulate circular vibrations and generate
Whiskers of some animals, such as rats and cats, can actively sense stimuli from their surrounding environment. Such a capability is attractive for intelligent mobile robots. However, an artificial whisker with similar abilities has not been fully developed so that the robots acquire their surroundi
The magnetic microrobot has become a promising approach in many biomedical applications due to its small volume, flexible motion, and untethered micromachines. The micro-chain robot is one of the most popular magnetic microrobots. However, the uncontrollable magnetic moment direction and quantity of…
In this paper, we fabricated a soft sensor based on PEDOT:PSS for thin film structure. The developed soft sensor can measure the contraction force at real time to be embedded in a modular bio-actuator [1]. The modular actuator generated contraction forces at 0.3 mN when applying electric pulse stimu…
Zebrafish embryo injection is often required in biomedical research using zebrafish. In the injecting operation, trapping and rotating the zebrafish embryo to achieve a proper posture is essential for the high success rate. We proposed an on-chip platform capable of efficient and automatic trapping
In this paper, we propose an automatic robot-rat interaction framework that enables a robotic rat to realize real-time localization, tracking and movement analysis of a laboratory rat. Specifically, we combine an object detector with stereo matching to achieve fast localization of the laboratory rat…
Fabricated cellular micro-scaffold that recapitulates natural extracellular matrix (ECM) has shown huge potential in the study of cell behaviors. However, the reproducing of the physiological morphology with high efficiency and accuracy in the micro-scaffold still remains as a major challenge. Here,
In spite of recent high attention of the biohybrid robot system, the previous researches focused on actuation system depend on simple on/off control without feedback control. To solve this problem, we proposed a soft sensor for feedback control of a bio-actuator driven by skeletal muscle. The propos…
Cell stiffness is an essential label-free biomarker used to diagnose and sort cells at the single-cell level. Here, we integrated magnetic tweezers on an efficient cell arraying microfluidic device to evaluate the mechanical properties of single cells. Two motion modes under pulsed electromagnetic f
Anomalous audio in speech recordings is often caused by speaker voice distortion, external noise, or even electric interferences. These obstacles have become a serious problem in some fields, such as high-quality dubbing and speech processing. In this paper, a novel approach using a temporal convolu…
Three-dimensional multi-layer microfluidic device (MMD) fabricated by polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is a solution for on-chip high-complexity serial or parallel processes. In this letter, we propose and set up an automated 8-DOF alignment system assisted by computer vision, which is capable of automat
Many previous works have facilitated muscle cell (C2C12) alignment to form fiber-like cell structures. However, there still remains a challenge how to induce C2C12 myoblasts in the cell structures to differentiate into matured myocytes to form a functional muscle tissue, while external mechanical st…
The bi-articular muscle-tendon complex (MTC) in an animal's leg allows a transfer of mechanical power between adjacent joints and exertion of a large force at the toes. It is capable of storing and releasing elastic energy efficiently during motions. In our previous studies, we proposed mechanisms o
Compliance is important for humanoid robots, especially a position-controlled one, to perform tasks in complicated environments where unexpected or sudden contacts will result in large impacts which may cause instability or destroy the hardware of robots. This paper presents a compliance control met…
In this paper, an automated tracking system with head and tail recognition for time-lapse observation of free-moving C. elegans is presented. In microscale field, active C. elegans can move out of the view easily without an automated tracking system because of the narrow field of view and rapid spee…
In this paper, we have constructed actively perfusable multiple hepatic lobule-like vascular networks in a 3D cellular structure by using magnetic tweezers. Without well-organized channel networks, cells in a large 3D tissue cannot receive nutrients and oxygen from the channel, and therefore, the ce…
In this paper, a hierarchical attention network is proposed to generate utterance-level embeddings (H-vectors) for speaker identification and verification. Since different parts of an utterance may have different contributions to speaker identities, the use of hierarchical structure aims to learn sp…
Interaction with the environment is arguably one of the necessary actions for many robot applications such as haptic devices, manipulation, parts assembly, cooperation with humans, and the use of tools. Taxonomy of interaction behaviours is classified into three categories: cooperation, collaboratio…
Tissue engineering is trying to use modular tissue micro-rings to construct artificial biological microtubes as substitute of autologous tissue tubes to alleviate the shortage of donor sources. However, because of the lack of effective assembly strategies, it is still challenging to achieve high-spe…
In this paper, we have fabricated a multilayered hepatic lobule-like vascular network in a 3D tissue using a heptapole magnetic tweezer. The tissue consists of cell-laden hydrogels with 3D channel networks. To fabricate multilayered channel system, magnetic hydrogel fibers were manipulated by a magn…
The research on rare cells makes a significant contribution to biology research and medical treatment for the application of diagnostic operation as well as prognoses treatment. Therefore, sorting them from heterogeneous mixtures is crucial and valuable. Traditional cell sorting methods featured wit…
We have successfully achieved manipulation and assembly of microbeads having the size of 100μm diameter by hemispherical end-effectors with high stability and accuracy. The motivation of achieving assembly of actual cells lies in the great significance of it in tissue regeneration and cell analysis.…
Generally, large knee joint torque is required when a leg is flexed. However, the large torque motor will increase the robot size and total weight. Also, a large reduction ratio gear box to realize the large torque will decrease output speed and lower backdrivability of the joint. It makes the robot…
Social interaction between a robot and rats is important since the robot can generate reproducible social behaviors across trials. However, lacking internal state feedback from the rat makes current robot-rat interaction a very preliminary level comparing with rat-rat interaction. Previous biologica…
Nearest Neighbor Search (NNS) over generalized weighted space is a fundamental problem which has many applications in various fields. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no sublinear time solution to this problem. Based on the idea of Asymmetric Locality-Sensitive Hashing (ALSH), we intr…
Microgrippers play a significant role in manipulation of micro-objects. To achieve dexterous and precise manipulation, a microgripper is required to be compactly designed and embedded with sensing feedback. Meanwhile, to convert the sensor position into displacement of the microgripper, the embedded…
In this paper, we propose a divide-and-conquer approach using two generative adversarial networks (GANs) to explore how a machine can draw colorful pictures (bird) using a small amount of training data. In our work, we simulate the procedure of an artist drawing a picture, where one begins with draw…
Automatic and fast tagging of natural sounds in audio collections is a very challenging task due to wide acoustic variations, the large number of possible tags, the incomplete and ambiguous tags provided by different labellers. To handle these problems, we use a co-regularization approach to learn a…
This study presents the high-precision microinjection of fluorescent micro-gel beads into Caenorhabditis elegans trapped in a suction microchannel. In our previous works, we demonstrated survival microinjection by a conventional micromanipulation technique. However, the focal planes differed between…
The interaction test between a robotic rat and living rat is considered as a possible way to quantitatively characterize the rat sociality. In such robot-rat interactions, the robot should be designed to fully replicate a real rat in terms of morphological and behavioral characteristics. To address…
In micromanipulation, lots of methods have been developed to manipulate objects in microscale. However, few of them can be applied in both the transportation and the rotation of the micro objects. In this paper, we present a novel method to realize the non-contact transportation and rotation of the…
Helical structure assembled by hydrogel microfibers is significant for culture of smooth muscle cells. However, the helical structure is only fabricated at the macroscale, while the fabrication of helical microstructure is still a challenge due to the lack of assembly method. In this paper, we propo…
It is of great importance to pick up a single carbon nanotube (CNT) from a bulk of CNTs for nanodevice fabrication. In this study, we have proposed a nanorobotic manipulation system allowing automated pick-up of CNTs based on visual feedback. We utilize histogram normalization for automatic binariza…
Constructing 3D cell module with certain shape and high cell density is a very important issue for artificial tissue engineering. In this letter, we present a novel method of fabricating compact microtissue with gear-like shape by electrodepositing of Ca <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/M
Cats have protractible claws to fold their tips to keep them sharp. They protract claws while hunting and pawing on slippery surfaces. Protracted claws by tendons and muscles of toes can help cats anchoring themselves steady while their locomotion trends to slip and releasing the hold while they ret…
In vitro tissues are significant biological substitute for drug test, cell morphogenesis exploration and organ transplantation. In this letter, a novel microrobotic bioassembly method is proposed to engineer 3-D cellular structure, which can be utilized to culture in vitro tissue with microstructura
Vascular-like microtube takes an important role in delivering oxygen and nutrient to keep cell alive in the generated tissue. In this paper, we present an automated micromanipulation system to assemble 2-D gel micro-rings to vascular-like microtubes by means of generating and controlling microbubble
Alginate hydrogel microfibers are a promising cell-laden module for three-dimensional (3-D) assembly to build cellular structures. However, it is still a challenge to manipulate them for microassembly. In this letter, we report a novel magnetic control method to handle this challenge. To enhance the
This paper presents a novel In situ nanomanipulation integrated with scanning electron microscope- computed tomography (SEM-CT) imaging system for 3D nanomanipulation. In our previous works, a nanorobotic manipulation system was established inside an environmental-SEM (E-SEM) for water-contained sam
In this paper, we propose a new method to assemble microstructures with biological cells towards in vitro 3D cellular structures. The proposed assembly method uses self-assembly process of magnetized toroidal microstructures. Biocompatible toroidal hydrogel microstructures are prepared by electrodep…
Deep architecture based Deep Brief Nets (DBNs) has shown its data modelling power by stacking up several Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs). However, the multiple-layer structure used in DBN brings expensive computation, and furthermore leads to slow convergence. This is because the pretraining st…
Fabrication of artificial blood vessels in micro scale significantly benefits the regeneration of functional human vascular networks. In this paper, we develop an efficient multi-microrobotic system with an innovative motorized sample holder (MSH) and two manipulators. Air is injected into the solut…
In this study, cell-laden alginate-poly-L-lysine (PLL) hydrogel structures with arbitrary shapes were constructed based on electrodeposition method. Electrolysis of water in alginate solutions with calcium carbonate particles induced alginate gelation on micro-patterned anode electrode, and cell-lad…
In this paper, we conducted a new method to assemble microstructures inside a droplet named “Lab in a Droplet (LiD)”. The method can realize the assembly of micro-nano structures inside a droplet size. The surface tension is used to assemble microstructures automatically. Micro-scale or nano-scale o…
This study presents the survival microinjection into Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) with in vivo observation based on micromanipulation. The microinjections were achieved with micro-gel beads which are enable to encapsulate chemicals for injection. In this study, a fluorescent material was used…
Due to the poor controllability in hydrogels, Hydrogels-based assembly to form larger 3D complex shapes is still a big challenge. In this paper, we have reported a novel “bottom-up” method to fabricate three-dimensional (3D) magnetic alginate microfibers (MAMs) assemblies with complex shapes. Specif…