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European Conference on Computer Vision

ECCV 2020: Computer Vision – ECCV 2020 pp 185–202Cite as

CATCH: Context-Based Meta Reinforcement Learning for Transferrable Architecture Search

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNIP,volume 12364))

Abstract

Neural Architecture Search (NAS) achieved many breakthroughs in recent years. In spite of its remarkable progress, many algorithms are restricted to particular search spaces. They also lack efficient mechanisms to reuse knowledge when confronting multiple tasks. These challenges preclude their applicability, and motivate our proposal of CATCH, a novel Context-bAsed meTa reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm for transferrable arChitecture searcH. The combination of meta-learning and RL allows CATCH to efficiently adapt to new tasks while being agnostic to search spaces. CATCH utilizes a probabilistic encoder to encode task properties into latent context variables, which then guide CATCH’s controller to quickly “catch” top-performing networks. The contexts also assist a network evaluator in filtering inferior candidates and speed up learning. Extensive experiments demonstrate CATCH’s universality and search efficiency over many other widely-recognized algorithms. It is also capable of handling cross-domain architecture search as competitive networks on ImageNet, COCO, and Cityscapes are identified. This is the first work to our knowledge that proposes an efficient transferrable NAS solution while maintaining robustness across various settings.

X. Chen and Y. Duan—Equal contribution.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Xin Chen & Yawen Duan

  2. Huawei Noah’s Ark Lab, Hong Kong, China

    Zewei Chen, Hang Xu, Zihao Chen & Zhenguo Li

  3. Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

    Xiaodan Liang

  4. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China

    Tong Zhang

Authors
  1. Xin Chen
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  2. Yawen Duan
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  3. Zewei Chen
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  4. Hang Xu
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  5. Zihao Chen
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  6. Xiaodan Liang
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  7. Tong Zhang
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  8. Zhenguo Li
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tong Zhang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Andrea Vedaldi

  2. Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

    Horst Bischof

  3. University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

    Thomas Brox

  4. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Jan-Michael Frahm

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Chen, X. et al. (2020). CATCH: Context-Based Meta Reinforcement Learning for Transferrable Architecture Search. In: Vedaldi, A., Bischof, H., Brox, T., Frahm, JM. (eds) Computer Vision – ECCV 2020. ECCV 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12364. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58529-7_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58529-7_12

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