In plain words: A network for 3D point clouds builds each layer's filters from spherical waves, so its features turn and move exactly with the points instead of needing to be shown every orientation during training. It handled geometry, physics, and chemistry tasks.
Abstract · Tensor field networks: Rotation- and translation-equivariant neural networks for 3D point clouds
We introduce tensor field neural networks, which are locally equivariant to 3D rotations, translations, and permutations of points at every layer. 3D rotation equivariance removes the need for data augmentation to identify features in arbitrary orientations. Our network uses filters built from spherical harmonics; due to the mathematical consequences of this filter choice, each layer accepts as input (and guarantees as output) scalars, vectors, and higher-order tensors, in the geometric sense of these terms. We demonstrate the capabilities of tensor field networks with tasks in geometry, physics, and chemistry.
Nathaniel Thomas, Tess Smidt, Steven Kearnes, Lusann Yang, Li Li, Kai Kohlhoff, Patrick Riley
arXiv:1802.08219 · cs.LG, cs.AI, cs.CV, cs.NE · submitted Feb 22, 2018 · updated May 18, 2018
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