One-stage object referring with gaze estimation

2022
Download Copy BibTeX
Copy BibTeX
The classic object referring task aims at localizing the referred object in the image and requires a reference image and a natural language description as inputs. Given the facts that gaze signal can be easily obtained by a modern human-computer interaction system with a camera and that human tends to look at the object when referring to it, we propose a novel gaze-assisted object referring framework. The formulation not only simplifies the state-of-the-art gaze-assisted object referring system requiring many input signals besides gaze, but also incorporates the one-stage object detection idea to improve the inference efficiency. More importantly, it implicitly considers all object candidates and thus resolves the main pain point of existing two-stage object referring solutions for proposing an appropriate number of candidates – it cannot be too large, otherwise the computational cost can be prohibitive; it cannot be too small, otherwise the chance of missing a referred object can be significant. To utilize the gaze information, we propose to build a gaze heatmap by using the anchor position encoding map and the gaze prediction result. The gaze heatmap and the language feature are then merged into the feature pyramid in the object detection as the final one-stage referring system. In the CityScapes-OR dataset, the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art by 7.8% for Acc@1.
Research areas

Latest news

IN, TS, Hyderabad
Welcome to the Worldwide Returns & ReCommerce team (WWR&R) at Amazon.com. WWR&R is an agile, innovative organization dedicated to ‘making zero happen’ to benefit our customers, our company, and the environment. Our goal is to achieve the three zeroes: zero cost of returns, zero waste, and zero defects. We do this by developing products and driving truly innovative operational excellence to help customers keep what they buy, recover returned and damaged product value, keep thousands of tons of waste from landfills, and create the best customer returns experience in the world. We have an eye to the future – we create long-term value at Amazon by focusing not just on the bottom line, but on the planet. We are building the most sustainable re-use channel we can by driving multiple aspects of the Circular Economy for Amazon – Returns & ReCommerce. Amazon WWR&R is comprised of business, product, operational, program, software engineering and data teams that manage the life of a returned or damaged product from a customer to the warehouse and on to its next best use. Our work is broad and deep: we train machine learning models to automate routing and find signals to optimize re-use; we invent new channels to give products a second life; we develop highly respected product support to help customers love what they buy; we pilot smarter product evaluations; we work from the customer backward to find ways to make the return experience remarkably delightful and easy; and we do it all while scrutinizing our business with laser focus. You will help create everything from customer-facing and vendor-facing websites to the internal software and tools behind the reverse-logistics process. You can develop scalable, high-availability solutions to solve complex and broad business problems. We are a group that has fun at work while driving incredible customer, business, and environmental impact. We are backed by a strong leadership group dedicated to operational excellence that empowers a reasonable work-life balance. As an established, experienced team, we offer the scope and support needed for substantial career growth. Amazon is earth’s most customer-centric company and through WWR&R, the earth is our customer too. Come join us and innovate with the Amazon Worldwide Returns & ReCommerce team!
US, MA, Westborough
Amazon is looking for talented Postdoctoral Scientists to join our Fulfillment Technology and Robotics team for a one-year, full-time research position. The Innovation Lab in BOS27 is a physical space in which new ideas can be explored, hands-on. The Lab provides easier access to tools and equipment our inventors need while also incubating critical technologies necessary for future robotic products. The Lab is intended to not only develop new technologies that can be used in future Fulfillment, Technology, and Robotics products but additionally promote deeper technical collaboration with universities from around the world. The Lab’s research efforts are focused on highly autonomous systems inclusive of robotic manipulation of packages and ASINs, multi-robot systems utilizing vertical space, Amazon integrated gantries, advancements in perception, and collaborative robotics. These five areas of research represent an impactful set of technical capabilities that when realized at a world class level will unlock our desire for a highly automated and adaptable fulfillment supply chain. As a Postdoctoral Scientist you will be developing a coordinated multi-agent system to achieve optimized trajectories under realistic constraints. The project will explore the utility of state-of-the-art methods to solve multi-agent, multi-objective optimization problems with stochastic time and location constraints. The project is motivated by a new technology being developed in the Innovation Lab to introduce efficiencies in the last-mile delivery systems. Key job responsibilities In this role you will: * Work closely with a senior science advisor, collaborate with other scientists and engineers, and be part of Amazon’s diverse global science community. * Publish your innovation in top-tier academic venues and hone your presentation skills. * Be inspired by challenges and opportunities to invent new techniques in your area(s) of expertise.
GB, MLN, Edinburgh
We’re looking for a Machine Learning Scientist in the Personalization team for our Edinburgh office experienced in generative AI and large models. You will be responsible for developing and disseminating customer-facing personalized recommendation models. This is a hands-on role with global impact working with a team of world-class engineers and scientists across the Edinburgh offices and wider organization. You will lead the design of machine learning models that scale to very large quantities of data, and serve high-scale low-latency recommendations to all customers worldwide. You will embody scientific rigor, designing and executing experiments to demonstrate the technical efficacy and business value of your methods. You will work alongside a science team to delight customers by aiding in recommendations relevancy, and raise the profile of Amazon as a global leader in machine learning and personalization. Successful candidates will have strong technical ability, focus on customers by applying a customer-first approach, excellent teamwork and communication skills, and a motivation to achieve results in a fast-paced environment. Our position offers exceptional opportunities for every candidate to grow their technical and non-technical skills. If you are selected, you have the opportunity to make a difference to our business by designing and building state of the art machine learning systems on big data, leveraging Amazon’s vast computing resources (AWS), working on exciting and challenging projects, and delivering meaningful results to customers world-wide. Key job responsibilities Develop machine learning algorithms for high-scale recommendations problems. Rapidly design, prototype and test many possible hypotheses in a high-ambiguity environment, making use of both quantitative analysis and business judgement. Collaborate with software engineers to integrate successful experimental results into large-scale, highly complex Amazon production systems capable of handling 100,000s of transactions per second at low latency. Report results in a manner which is both statistically rigorous and compellingly relevant, exemplifying good scientific practice in a business environment.
US, CA, Palo Alto
Amazon’s Advertising Technology team builds the technology infrastructure and ad serving systems to manage billions of advertising queries every day. The result is better quality advertising for publishers and more relevant ads for customers. In this organization you’ll experience the benefits of working in a dynamic, entrepreneurial environment, while leveraging the resources of Amazon.com (AMZN), one of the world's leading companies. Amazon Publisher Services (APS) helps publishers of all sizes and on all channels better monetize their content through effective advertising. APS unites publishers with advertisers across devices and media channels. We work with Amazon teams across the globe to solve complex problems for our customers. The end results are Amazon products that let publishers focus on what they do best - publishing. The APS Publisher Products Engineering team is responsible for building cloud-based advertising technology services that help Web, Mobile, Streaming TV broadcasters and Audio publishers grow their business. The engineering team focuses on unlocking our ad tech on the most impactful Desktop, mobile and Connected TV devices in the home, bringing real-time capabilities to this medium for the first time. As a Data Scientist in our team, you will collaborate directly with developers and scientists to produce modeling solutions, you will partner with software developers and data engineers to build end-to-end data pipelines and production code, and you will have exposure to senior leadership as we communicate results and provide scientific guidance to the business. You will analyze large amounts of business data, automate and scale the analysis, and develop metrics (like ROAS, Share of Wallet) that will enable us to continually delight our customers worldwide. As a successful data scientist, you are an analytical problem solver who enjoys diving into data, is excited about investigations and algorithms, can multi-task, and can credibly interface between technical teams and business stakeholders. Your analytical abilities, business understanding, and technical aptitude will be used to identify specific and actionable opportunities to solve existing business problems and look around corners for future opportunities. Your expertise in synthesizing and communicating insights and recommendations to audiences of varying levels of technical sophistication will enable you to answer specific business questions and innovate for the future. Major responsibilities include: · Utilizing code (Apache, Spark, Python, R, Scala, etc.) for analyzing data and building statistical models to solve specific business problems. · Collaborate with product, BIEs, software developers, and business leaders to define product requirements and provide analytical support · Build customer-facing reporting to provide insights and metrics which track system performance · Communicating verbally and in writing to business customers and leadership team with various levels of technical knowledge, educating them about our systems, as well as sharing insights and recommendations
US, WA, Seattle
Amazon Advertising operates at the intersection of eCommerce and advertising, and is investing heavily in building a world-class advertising business. We are defining and delivering a collection of self-service performance advertising products that drive discovery and sales. Our products are strategically important to our Retail and Marketplace businesses driving long-term growth. We deliver billions of ad impressions and millions of clicks daily and are breaking fresh ground to create world-class products to improve both shopper and advertiser experience. With a broad mandate to experiment and innovate, we grow at an unprecedented rate with a seemingly endless range of new opportunities. The Ad Response Prediction team in Sponsored Products organization build advanced deep-learning models, large-scale machine-learning pipelines, and real-time serving infra to match shoppers’ intent to relevant ads on all devices, for all contexts and in all marketplaces. Through precise estimation of shoppers’ interaction with ads and their long-term value, we aim to drive optimal ads allocation and pricing, and help to deliver a relevant, engaging and delightful ads experience to Amazon shoppers. As the business and the complexity of various new initiatives we take continues to grow, we are looking for talented Applied Scientists to join the team. Key job responsibilities As a Applied Scientist II, you will: * Conduct hands-on data analysis, build large-scale machine-learning models and pipelines * Work closely with software engineers on detailed requirements, technical designs and implementation of end-to-end solutions in production * Run regular A/B experiments, gather data, perform statistical analysis, and communicate the impact to senior management * Establish scalable, efficient, automated processes for large-scale data analysis, machine-learning model development, model validation and serving * Provide technical leadership, research new machine learning approaches to drive continued scientific innovation * Be a member of the Amazon-wide Machine Learning Community, participating in internal and external MeetUps, Hackathons and Conferences
US, WA, Seattle
Prime Video is a first-stop entertainment destination offering customers a vast collection of premium programming in one app available across thousands of devices. Prime members can customize their viewing experience and find their favorite movies, series, documentaries, and live sports – including Amazon MGM Studios-produced series and movies; licensed fan favorites; and programming from Prime Video add-on subscriptions such as Apple TV+, Max, Crunchyroll and MGM+. All customers, regardless of whether they have a Prime membership or not, can rent or buy titles via the Prime Video Store, and can enjoy even more content for free with ads. Are you interested in shaping the future of entertainment? Prime Video's technology teams are creating best-in-class digital video experience. As a Prime Video technologist, you’ll have end-to-end ownership of the product, user experience, design, and technology required to deliver state-of-the-art experiences for our customers. You’ll get to work on projects that are fast-paced, challenging, and varied. You’ll also be able to experiment with new possibilities, take risks, and collaborate with remarkable people. We’ll look for you to bring your diverse perspectives, ideas, and skill-sets to make Prime Video even better for our customers. With global opportunities for talented technologists, you can decide where a career Prime Video Tech takes you! In Prime Video READI, our mission is to automate infrastructure scaling and operational readiness. We are growing a team specialized in time series modeling, forecasting, and release safety. This team will invent and develop algorithms for forecasting multi-dimensional related time series. The team will develop forecasts on key business dimensions with optimization recommendations related to performance and efficiency opportunities across our global software environment. As a founding member of the core team, you will apply your deep coding, modeling and statistical knowledge to concrete problems that have broad cross-organizational, global, and technology impact. Your work will focus on retrieving, cleansing and preparing large scale datasets, training and evaluating models and deploying them to production where we continuously monitor and evaluate. You will work on large engineering efforts that solve significantly complex problems facing global customers. You will be trusted to operate with complete independence and are often assigned to focus on areas where the business and/or architectural strategy has not yet been defined. You must be equally comfortable digging in to business requirements as you are drilling into design with development teams and developing production ready learning models. You consistently bring strong, data-driven business and technical judgment to decisions. You will work with internal and external stakeholders, cross-functional partners, and end-users around the world at all levels. Our team makes a big impact because nothing is more important to us than delivering for our customers, continually earning their trust, and thinking long term. You are empowered to bring new technologies to your solutions. If you crave a sense of ownership, this is the place to be.
US, WA, Bellevue
mmPROS Surface Research Science seeks an exceptional Applied Scientist with expertise in optimization and machine learning to optimize Amazon's middle mile transportation network, the backbone of its logistics operations. Amazon's middle mile transportation network utilizes a fleet of semi-trucks, trains, and airplanes to transport millions of packages and other freight between warehouses, vendor facilities, and customers, on time and at low cost. The Surface Research Science team delivers innovation, models, algorithms, and other scientific solutions to efficiently plan and operate the middle mile surface (truck and rail) transportation network. The team focuses on large-scale problems in vehicle route planning, capacity procurement, network design, forecasting, and equipment re-balancing. Your role will be to build innovative optimization and machine learning models to improve driver routing and procurement efficiency. Your models will impact business decisions worth billions of dollars and improve the delivery experience for millions of customers. You will operate as part of a team of innovative, experienced scientists working on optimization and machine learning. You will work in close collaboration with partners across product, engineering, business intelligence, and operations. Key job responsibilities - Design and develop optimization and machine learning models to inform our hardest planning decisions. - Implement models and algorithms in Amazon's production software. - Lead and partner with product, engineering, and operations teams to drive modeling and technical design for complex business problems. - Lead complex modeling and data analyses to aid management in making key business decisions and set new policies. - Write documentation for scientific and business audiences. About the team This role is part of mmPROS Surface Research Science. Our mission is to build the most efficient and optimal transportation network on the planet, using our science and technology as our biggest advantage. We leverage technologies in optimization, operations research, and machine learning to grow our businesses and solve Amazon's unique logistical challenges. Scientists in the team work in close collaboration with each other and with partners across product, software engineering, business intelligence, and operations. They regularly interact with software engineering teams and business leadership.
US, WA, Seattle
Success in any organization begins with its people and having a comprehensive understanding of our workforce and how we best utilize their unique skills and experience is paramount to our future success.. Come join the team that owns the technology behind AWS People Planning products, services, and metrics. We leverage technology to improve the experience of AWS Executives, HR/Recruiting/Finance leaders, and internal AWS planning partners. A Sr. Data Scientist in the AWS Workforce Planning team, will partner with Software Engineers, Data Engineers and other Scientists, TPMs, Product Managers and Senior Management to help create world-class solutions. We're looking for people who are passionate about innovating on behalf of customers, demonstrate a high degree of product ownership, and want to have fun while they make history. You will leverage your knowledge in machine learning, advanced analytics, metrics, reporting, and analytic tooling/languages to analyze and translate the data into meaningful insights. You will have end-to-end ownership of operational and technical aspects of the insights you are building for the business, and will play an integral role in strategic decision-making. Further, you will build solutions leveraging advanced analytics that enable stakeholders to manage the business and make effective decisions, partner with internal teams to identify process and system improvement opportunities. As a tech expert, you will be an advocate for compelling user experiences and will demonstrate the value of automation and data-driven planning tools in the People Experience and Technology space. Key job responsibilities * Engineering execution - drive crisp and timely execution of milestones, consider and advise on key design and technology trade-offs with engineering teams * Priority management - manage diverse requests and dependencies from teams * Process improvements – define, implement and continuously improve delivery and operational efficiency * Stakeholder management – interface with and influence your stakeholders, balancing business needs vs. technical constraints and driving clarity in ambiguous situations * Operational Excellence – monitor metrics and program health, anticipate and clear blockers, manage escalations To be successful on this journey, you love having high standards for yourself and everyone you work with, and always look for opportunities to make our services better.
US, CA, El Segundo
Amazon is seeking an exceptional Senior Applied Scientist to join AGI Info Content team. In this role, you will be at the forefront of developing and enhancing the intelligence of AmazonBot crawler and content processing. The team is a key enabler of Amazon's AGI initiatives such as data pipelines for Olympus model training and collecting data for AGI Info grounding services. Our systems operate on web scale. This requires great combination of innovation to utilize all SOTA ML techniques in combination with model optimization to operate on 100k+ requests/decision per second. Your work will directly impact the quality and efficiency of our data acquisition efforts, ultimately benefiting millions of customers worldwide. Key job responsibilities - Design, develop, and implement advanced algorithms and machine learning models to improve the intelligence and effectiveness of our web crawler and content processing pipelines. - Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify and prioritize crawling targets, ensuring alignment with business objectives - Analyze and optimize crawling strategies to maximize coverage, freshness, and quality of acquired data while minimizing operational costs as well as dive deep into data to select the highest quality data for LLM model training and grounding. - Conduct in-depth research to stay at the forefront of web acquisition and processing. - Develop and maintain scalable, fault-tolerant systems to handle the vast scale of Amazon's web crawling operations - Monitor and analyze performance metrics, identifying opportunities for improvement and implementing data-driven optimizations - Mentor and guide junior team members, fostering a culture of innovation and continuous learning
US, WA, Seattle
Amazon's Pricing & Promotions Optimization Science is seeking a motivated Applied Scientist to harness planet scale multi-modal datasets, and navigate a continuously evolving competitor landscape, in order to regularly generate fresh customer-relevant prices and promotions on billions of Amazon and Third Party Seller products worldwide. We are looking for a talented, organized, and customer-focused applied scientists to define, measure, and launch customer-obsessed solutions across all products listed on Amazon. This role requires an individual with exceptional AI and data science expertise, excellent cross-functional collaboration skills, strong business acumen, and an entrepreneurial spirit. We are looking for an experienced innovator, who is a self-starter, comfortable with ambiguity, demonstrates strong attention to detail, and has the ability to work in a fast-paced and ever-changing environment. Key job responsibilities - See the big picture. Understand and influence the long term vision for Amazon's science-based competitive, perception-preserving pricing/promotion techniques - Build strong collaborations. Partner with product, engineering, and science teams within and outside Pricing & Promotions org to deploy AI/ML solutions at Amazon scale - Stay informed. Establish mechanisms to stay up to date on latest scientific advancements in machine learning, neural networks, natural language processing, probabilistic forecasting, reinforcement learning, and multi-objective optimization techniques. Identify opportunities to apply them to relevant Pricing & Promotions business problems - Keep innovating for our customers. Foster an environment that promotes rapid experimentation, continuous learning, and incremental value delivery - Successfully execute & deliver. Apply your exceptional technical machine learning expertise to incrementally move the needle on some of our hardest science and tech problems About the team About the team: the Pricing and Promotion Optimization team within P2 Science leads the definition, measurement, and implementation of the state-of-the-art AI and data science solutions to improve price/promotion quality across the site and bring value to customers, sellers and Amazon.