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Towards Robust Vision Transformer (2105.07926v4)

Published 17 May 2021 in cs.CV

Abstract: Recent advances on Vision Transformer (ViT) and its improved variants have shown that self-attention-based networks surpass traditional Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in most vision tasks. However, existing ViTs focus on the standard accuracy and computation cost, lacking the investigation of the intrinsic influence on model robustness and generalization. In this work, we conduct systematic evaluation on components of ViTs in terms of their impact on robustness to adversarial examples, common corruptions and distribution shifts. We find some components can be harmful to robustness. By using and combining robust components as building blocks of ViTs, we propose Robust Vision Transformer (RVT), which is a new vision transformer and has superior performance with strong robustness. We further propose two new plug-and-play techniques called position-aware attention scaling and patch-wise augmentation to augment our RVT, which we abbreviate as RVT*. The experimental results on ImageNet and six robustness benchmarks show the advanced robustness and generalization ability of RVT compared with previous ViTs and state-of-the-art CNNs. Furthermore, RVT-S* also achieves Top-1 rank on multiple robustness leaderboards including ImageNet-C and ImageNet-Sketch. The code will be available at \url{https://github.com/alibaba/easyrobust}.

Citations (169)

Summary

  • The paper introduces a Robust Vision Transformer (RVT) that improves resistance to adversarial examples by re-engineering traditional ViT components.
  • It details the novel Position-Aware Attention Scaling (PAAS) which dynamically refines attention mechanisms to mitigate positional vulnerabilities.
  • The study demonstrates RVT’s superior performance on ImageNet benchmarks, confirming enhanced robustness without significant accuracy trade-offs.

An Analytical Overview of "Towards Robust Vision Transformer"

The paper "Towards Robust Vision Transformer" by Xiaofeng Mao et al. presents a comprehensive paper on enhancing the robustness of Vision Transformers (ViTs) in comparison to Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). Traditional ViTs often emphasize standard accuracy metrics and computational efficiency, whereas this paper shifts the focus towards model robustness against adversarial examples, common corruptions, and distribution shifts. The authors propose a new architecture called Robust Vision Transformer (RVT) along with two novel enhancement techniques: Position-Aware Attention Scaling (PAAS) and Patch-Wise Augmentation.

Key Insights from the Paper

  1. Component Analysis of ViTs: The authors critically examine various components of ViTs, such as patch embedding, positional embedding, transformer blocks, and classification heads, with respect to their impact on robustness. They find that many components traditionally adopted for boosting accuracy may inadvertently compromise robustness.
  2. Design of Robust Vision Transformer (RVT): By leveraging insights from their component analysis, the authors construct RVT using robust components. The RVT framework accounts for stability across perturbations, without significantly compromising computational costs or standard accuracy.
  3. Position-Aware Attention Scaling (PAAS): PAAS is introduced as an alternative to traditional position embeddings. It acts as a dynamic scaling factor in the attention mechanism, allowing the model to selectively emphasize certain positional correlations, thereby reducing susceptibility to adversarial manipulations and enhancing generalization.
  4. Patch-Wise Augmentation: Recognizing the unique structure of ViTs, the authors propose patch-wise augmentation, which applies diverse augmentations at the patch level rather than the full image level. This method improves feature diversity and prevents overfitting, thus bolstering robustness.

Evaluation Results

The RVT and its augmented versions (RVT^*) showcase improved performance over traditional and several state-of-the-art ViTs on the ImageNet dataset and multiple robustness benchmarks, including ImageNet-C, ImageNet-Sketch, and ImageNet-R. Notably, RVT-S^* achieves leading scores on several robustness leaderboards, illustrating its enhanced ability to maintain performance under challenging conditions.

Implications and Future Directions

The development of RVT and its related techniques offers significant implications for the field of computer vision:

  • Practical Robustness: With the increasing deployment of AI systems in real-world applications, the focus on robustness becomes vital. RVT's performance suggests it may serve as a favorable architecture in environments where data distribution can be unpredictable.
  • Generalization Beyond Training Domains: The ability of RVTs to handle distribution shifts and common corruptions reliably indicates their potential utility in broader AI applications, including autonomous systems and safety-critical tasks.
  • Foundation for Future Research: This paper sets the groundwork for future explorations into robustness-related modifications of transformer architectures. Potential areas of investigation include further optimizing PAAS and augmentative strategies or extending these concepts to multi-modal transformers.

In conclusion, the authors make a compelling case for prioritizing robust methodologies when designing ViT architectures. The RVT model and its augmentations serve as a promising benchmark in the pursuit of achieving comprehensive model robustness amidst a growing array of challenges in real-world AI applications.