Multi-Domain Learning with Global Expert Mapping
Summary
The paper introduces Global Expert Mapping (GEM), a planner-compiler framework designed to enhance multi-domain object detection (MDOD) by optimizing Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) routing. Traditional MoE models struggle with diverse datasets due to load-balancing mechanisms that conflict with expert specialization, leading to redundant representations and poor performance on underrepresented domains. GEM addresses this by replacing the learned router with a global scheduler, using linear programming relaxation (LPR) to compute a fractional assignment of datasets to experts, followed by hierarchical rounding to convert this into a deterministic, capacity-aware mapping. Integrated into the DINO object detector, GEM-DINO achieves state-of-the-art performance on the UODB benchmark, outperforming existing MoE baselines by +2.1 AP over SoftMoE, +0.8 AP over REMoE, and +1.2 AP over MoE++. It also demonstrates superior parameter efficiency and effectively resolves task interference in few-shot adaptation scenarios.
Key takeaway
For research scientists developing robust computer vision models for diverse, real-world applications, you should consider adopting GEM's planner-compiler approach. This method directly addresses the limitations of traditional MoE load-balancing, enabling true expert specialization and significantly improving performance on challenging multi-domain and few-shot tasks. Implementing GEM can lead to more stable training, better interpretability, and superior accuracy compared to existing MoE routing strategies.
Key insights
GEM's planner-compiler framework optimizes MoE routing for multi-domain learning, achieving superior specialization and performance.
Principles
- Global scheduling outperforms local routing for MoE specialization.
- Capacity constraints prevent expert collapse and task interference.
- Deterministic assignment improves interpretability and stability.
Method
GEM uses linear programming relaxation (LPR) to plan fractional dataset-to-expert assignments, then applies hierarchical rounding to convert this into a deterministic, capacity-aware mapping, eliminating load-balancing losses.
In practice
- Integrate GEM into DINO for multi-domain object detection.
- Use a frozen backbone to compute dataset-expert affinity scores.
- Apply class-level specialization for fine-grained tasks.
Topics
- Multi-Domain Learning
- Mixture-of-Experts
- Global Expert Mapping
- Linear Programming Relaxation
- Hierarchical Rounding
Best for: Research Scientist, AI Scientist, Machine Learning Engineer, Computer Vision Engineer
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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by cs.CV updates on arXiv.org.