Robust Fuzzy Multi-view Learning under View Conflict

2026-05-23

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenges of unreliable fusion, misleading decisions, and overfitting in multi-view learning caused by view conflicts—particularly under realistic scenarios where views exhibit inconsistency between training and inference. To this end, we propose a Robust Fuzzy Multi-View Learning framework (R-FUML), which, for the first time, integrates fuzzy set theory into multi-view conflict modeling. R-FUML characterizes class credibility through fuzzy membership degrees, employs an entropy-driven multi-view fusion strategy, and incorporates a robust training mechanism that identifies and penalizes conflicting samples. This unified approach jointly handles intra-view uncertainty and inter-view conflict. Extensive experiments on eight public datasets demonstrate that R-FUML significantly outperforms fifteen state-of-the-art methods, achieving superior performance in both robustness and uncertainty estimation.

Abstract

Trusted multi-view classification aims to deliver reliable fusion for accurate predictions and has recently attracted substantial attention in both academia and industry. However, existing TMVC methods typically assume strict alignment across different views during both training and testing phases, which is often impractical in real-world scenarios. This limitation motivates us to revisit TMVC and extend it to a more challenging setting: how to mitigate the impact of view conflict (VC) during both training and inference. To tackle this setting, existing TMVC methods suffer from three critical limitations: underestimated uncertainty, misleading decisions, and overfitting to VC. To address these issues, this paper proposes a novel Robust Fuzzy Multi-View Learning (R-FUML) framework grounded in Fuzzy Set Theory. Specifically, R-FUML models network outputs as fuzzy memberships to quantify category credibility and uses an entropy-based method for reliable multi-view fusion. To this end, we present a Robust Multi-view Fusion (RMF) strategy that accounts for both view-specific uncertainty and inter-view conflicts, thereby alleviating the adverse impacts of VC on decision-making. To identify and conquer VC during training, we further design a Robust Learning Against VC (RLVC) framework. RLVC isolates conflicting samples by leveraging neural networks' memory effects and then retrains the model by applying a penalty to these conflicting views. Extensive experiments across eight public datasets demonstrate that R-FUML consistently outperforms 15 state-of-the-art baselines in robustness and uncertainty estimation. The code will be released upon acceptance.

Problem

• multi-view learning
• view conflict
• trusted classification
• robustness
• uncertainty estimation

Innovation

• Robust Multi-view Learning
• View Conflict
• Fuzzy Set Theory
• Uncertainty Estimation
• Trusted Classification