RobustMerge: Parameter-Efficient Model Merging for MLLMs with Direction Robustness

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zeng, Fanhu, Guo, Haiyang, Zhu, Fei, Shen, Li, Tang, Hao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Zeng, Fanhu
Guo, Haiyang
Zhu, Fei
Shen, Li
Tang, Hao
author_facet Zeng, Fanhu
Guo, Haiyang
Zhu, Fei
Shen, Li
Tang, Hao
contents Fine-tuning pre-trained models with custom data leads to numerous expert models on specific tasks. Merging models into one universal model to empower multi-task ability refraining from data leakage has gained popularity. With the expansion in data and model size, parameter-efficient tuning becomes the common practice for obtaining task-specific models efficiently. However, few methods are dedicated to efficient merging, and existing methods designed for full fine-tuning merging fail under efficient merging. To address the issue, we analyze from low-rank decomposition and reveal that direction robustness during merging is crucial for merging efficient modules. We furthermore uncover that compensating for the gap between stark singular values contributes to direction robustness. Therefore, we propose RobustMerge, a training-free parameter-efficient merging method with complementary parameter adaptation to maintain direction robustness. Specifically, we (1) prune parameters and scale coefficients from inter-parameter relation for singular values to maintain direction stability away from task interference, and (2) perform cross-task normalization to enhance unseen task generalization. We establish a benchmark consisting of diverse multimodal tasks, on which we conduct experiments to certify the outstanding performance and generalizability of our method. Additional studies and extensive analyses further showcase the effectiveness. Code is available at https://github.com/AuroraZengfh/RobustMerge.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_17159
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle RobustMerge: Parameter-Efficient Model Merging for MLLMs with Direction Robustness
Zeng, Fanhu
Guo, Haiyang
Zhu, Fei
Shen, Li
Tang, Hao
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Fine-tuning pre-trained models with custom data leads to numerous expert models on specific tasks. Merging models into one universal model to empower multi-task ability refraining from data leakage has gained popularity. With the expansion in data and model size, parameter-efficient tuning becomes the common practice for obtaining task-specific models efficiently. However, few methods are dedicated to efficient merging, and existing methods designed for full fine-tuning merging fail under efficient merging. To address the issue, we analyze from low-rank decomposition and reveal that direction robustness during merging is crucial for merging efficient modules. We furthermore uncover that compensating for the gap between stark singular values contributes to direction robustness. Therefore, we propose RobustMerge, a training-free parameter-efficient merging method with complementary parameter adaptation to maintain direction robustness. Specifically, we (1) prune parameters and scale coefficients from inter-parameter relation for singular values to maintain direction stability away from task interference, and (2) perform cross-task normalization to enhance unseen task generalization. We establish a benchmark consisting of diverse multimodal tasks, on which we conduct experiments to certify the outstanding performance and generalizability of our method. Additional studies and extensive analyses further showcase the effectiveness. Code is available at https://github.com/AuroraZengfh/RobustMerge.
title RobustMerge: Parameter-Efficient Model Merging for MLLMs with Direction Robustness
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.17159