Adaptive Scenario Generation for KL-DRO Around a Learned Density Model
Aron Brenner, Saurabh Amin
AI 速览：提出以拟合密度模型为中心的KL散度球替代经验分布中心，并用自适应场景生成求解由此得到的两阶段随机规划问题。
Distributionally robust optimization (DRO) hedges data-driven two-stage stochastic programs against error in the distribution estimated from a finite record, and standard ambiguity sets differ in how they treat realizations absent from that record. A divergence ball around the empirical distribution contains only reweightings of the record, whereas a transport ball also contains distributions supported off the record, including on realizations the data-generating process cannot produce, against which the decision is then hedged as well. We instead propose a Kullback-Leibler (KL) ball centered at a density model fitted to the record, the learned nominal, which lets the adversary up-weight costly unobserved realizations in proportion to the probability the model assigns them. Solving the resulting problem poses a second difficulty, because it can accommodate only a few scenarios, and an independent sample of that size is likely to omit the rare realizations on which the worst case concentrates. We therefore build the scenario set adaptively, alternating between solving the finite problem and drawing new realizations from the learned nominal, steered toward the worst case at the current decision, with importance weights that correct the draws back to the model. On a multi-item newsvendor problem and a capacity expansion problem on realistic grid data, centering the ball at the learned nominal rather than at the record lowers cost under distribution shift, at comparable in-distribution cost, when the record is scarce and the model class captures structure that lets it extrapolate beyond the record. The advantage fades as the record grows or as the shift departs from the structure the model has learned.
AI 速览：本教程第一部分系统介绍基于数据驱动变形雅可比的可变形物体形状伺服控制的基本要素与完整闭环。
In robotics, shape control (or shape servoing) refers to the automatic manipulation of a deformable object to achieve a desired shape. It involves a feedback loop that exploits the relation between robot motion and changes in the measured shape. This relation, known as the interaction Jacobian or, in this context, the deformation Jacobian, depends on the object's mechanical properties, geometry, and boundary conditions (e.g., where the object is grasped). Because these factors are often difficult to model accurately, the deformation Jacobian can be estimated locally from observed shape changes produced by commanded robot motions, without requiring a fine-tuned mechanical model. This article is the first of a two-part tutorial on data-driven Jacobian-based shape control of deformable objects. It introduces the central elements of the approach: the formulation of the shape-control problem, shape representation, estimation and online update of the deformation Jacobian, and a standard control law from the literature. It then assembles these elements into a complete shape-servoing loop, derives a local stability condition for this loop, and illustrates why some target shapes cannot be reached. Part II covers more advanced topics. Throughout both parts, a simulated planar example in which two robot arms manipulate an elastic rod observed by a camera illustrates the concepts.
A Two-Wheeled Quadrotor with All-Clockwise Tilted Rotors for Level-Attitude Surface Locomotnion
Takumi Ito, Satoshi Nakano
AI 速览：提出一种四个旋翼均顺时针倾斜的两轮四旋翼，利用地面接触约束在不倾斜机身的情况下产生切向推力，实现保持水平姿态的地面移动。
Conventional wheel-equipped quadrotor UAVs must tilt their bodies to generate lateral forces, limiting their ability to maintain a desired attitude during lateral motion. This paper proposes a wheeled quadrotor with all-clockwise tilted rotors that uses surface contact as a constraint to generate propulsion along the contact surface without tilting the vehicle. We analyze feasible forces and system controllability under surface contact and optimize the vehicle design considering different rotor-spin configurations. The optimization results show that a configuration in which all four rotors spin clockwise can generate a larger tangential force than the conventional alternating-spin configuration. This approach enables both aerial and contact-based locomotion without additional rotor-tilting actuators or mechanisms. Simulation results demonstrate both hovering in free space and horizontal locomotion on a floor while maintaining a level attitude.
AI 速览：该论文从支撑估计角度刻画基于采样端点估计可达集的几何（Hausdorff）误差，并给出样本复杂度上界与匹配的极小极大下界。
Sampling-based reachability estimates reachable sets from finitely many simulated trajectory endpoints. Existing guarantees often control missed probability mass or approximation error relative to the convex hull of the reachable set, leaving the geometric error relative to the reachable set incompletely characterized. We study this error as a problem of support estimation under flow distortion. Our assumptions combine a uniform lower bound on the local volume density of the initial set, a lower bound on the sampling density, and a one-sided Lipschitz constant $μ$ for the vector field. These conditions admit initial sets with corners and dynamics that may expand or contract. In the fine-accuracy regime, $\tilde{\mathcal O}\bigl(2^ne^{nμT}(R/r)^n/(ρκ)\bigr)$ independent endpoint samples suffice for Hausdorff accuracy $r$ using the endpoint cloud. Here, $n$ is the state dimension, $T$ is the horizon, $R$ is the volume-equivalent radius, and $ρ$ and $κ$ quantify sampling density and local volume density. For $n\ge2$ and sufficiently small $κ$, a minimax lower bound over all estimators based only on independent endpoints matches these dependencies up to a dimension-dependent factor $2\cdot4^n$ and logarithmic factors, within the stated parameter range and when the state domain accommodates the construction. The exponential burden in dimension, and in the horizon for expanding systems, is therefore intrinsic to this observation model. Planar experiments illustrate the predicted effects of corners and contraction; robot-arm experiments show how empirical accuracy deteriorates with dimension.
In this article, we present socx, a GPU-accelerated solver for lifted convex reformulations of linear stochastic optimal control under chance constraints, implemented in JAX. We demonstrate that by exploiting the sparse and independent structure of the problem, distributed optimization can reduce it to simpler problems: independent linear-quadratic tracking (LQT) problems and Euclidean projections onto sets. These simpler problems can be solved in parallel and then coupled using the constraints. To validate our solver, we run it on a hover-linearized 3D quadrotor and show a speed-up of up to $98\times$ over MOSEK and up to $2224\times$ over SCS. socx also solves horizons up to $N=1120$, whereas MOSEK runs out of memory at $N=320$. We present ablations to isolate the key components that enable the speed-up.
Finite-Sample LTI System Identification from a Misspecified Finite Model Set
Nicolas Chatzikiriakos, Andrea Iannelli
AI 速览：研究真实LTI系统不在有限假设类内时，有限样本辨识的估计目标、失败概率下界及指数加权算法的鲁棒性上界。
We consider the problem of finite-sample identification of an unknown LTI system from a finite hypothesis class. In contrast to existing results that assume the hypothesis class contains the true system, we consider the misspecified setting, where the true system does not belong to the hypothesis class. We first characterize the resulting estimation target and its dependence on the data-generation scheme. We then establish a finite-sample lower bound on the failure probability that any identification algorithm must incur. Finally, we analyze the robustness of an existing exponential weighting-based identification algorithm to the misspecification and derive a finite-sample upper bound on its failure probability. Our results illustrate when using a misspecified finite hypothesis class can provide an advantage over identification without prior knowledge of the candidate systems.
Robust Taylor-Lagrange Control for Safety-Critical Systems with Guaranteed Feasibility
Wei Xiao, Christos Cassandras, Anni Li
AI 速览：提出鲁棒Taylor-Lagrange控制（rTLC），通过Taylor展开与Lagrange余项将安全函数展开到高于相对阶的阶数，以缓解离散化下的可行性保持问题并用于最优控制。
The Control Barrier Function (CBF) method has been widely adopted in solving safety-critical control problems. However, the existence of a CBF is only a sufficient condition for system safety. The recently proposed Taylor-Lagrange Control (TLC) method addresses this limitation by providing a necessary and sufficient condition, but it is still vulnerable to the feasibility preservation problem (e.g., due to the inter-sampling effect when time is discretized). In this paper, we propose a robust TLC (rTLC) method to address the feasibility preservation problem and show how to use it to solve optimal control problems. Specifically, the rTLC method expands the safety function to an order higher than its relative degree using Taylor's expansion with Lagrange remainder, which allows the control to explicitly show up at the current time instead of a future time in the original TLC method. This implies that the safety constraint remains satisfied over the entire discretization time interval that follows. Moreover, the rTLC method naturally addresses the feasibility preservation problem with only a single hyper-parameter (the discretization time interval size during implementation), compared to significantly more parameters for its counterparts. Finally, we illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed rTLC method through an adaptive cruise control problem, and compare it with existing safety-critical control methods.
Hooman Hamze, Benjamin Houshmand, Deepthi Pathare, Erik Börve, Morteza Haghir Chehreghani, Nikolce Murgovski
Autonomous highway driving for heavy-duty trucks is a challenging control problem. The greater mass, dimensions and intricate dynamics increase the requirements for cooperation from surrounding traffic in critical maneuvers, requiring a careful balance between safety constraints and efficient long-horizon decision making. Model Predictive Control (MPC) provides rigorous constraint satisfaction but relies on terminal cost which can limit its effectiveness at short, computationally affordable horizons. Reinforcement Learning (RL) captures long-term driving behavior but offers no constraint guarantees and tends toward overly conservative policies when trained under sparse collision penalties. In this paper, we propose a hybrid MPC and RL framework for highway driving in autonomous trucks, where a finite-horizon MPC, solved via dynamic programming, uses a pre-trained RL model for terminal cost estimation. We evaluate the framework in a simulation environment with reactive surrounding traffic and compare it against pure MPC with zero terminal cost, rollout with terminal cost estimation using a base policy, and pure RL. Results show that the hybrid approach achieves zero collisions with the lowest cost of any configuration.
The way software gets built is changing dramatically. AI agents now create pull requests, select dependencies, refactor codebases, interpret test failures, and execute infrastructure changes across the entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). AI agents are autonomous team members, but unlike human engineers, they are ephemeral - their reasoning, decisions, and tool calls vanish the moment the session ends. Modern Security incidents involving intent mismatch or injection are becoming increasingly common - forcing us to address AI Agents as an insider threat. No widely adopted standard yet enables agentic provenance and governance and its obvious that you can't hold an ephemeral process accountable. The git log was designed for human commits. It shows what changed. It does not show what an AI agent did, which model it used, which tools it called, or whether anyone was accountable for the outcome. Every governance framework, every audit trail, every compliance control in the SDLC was built around one assumption: a human made the decision. That assumption no longer holds. This shift introduces 3 main procedural problems (not addressing scale) - Supply-chain vector - The agentic coder is software, so it is a supply-chain security risk. Policy guardrails - How to ensure the agentic coder is compliant with the policies of the organization. Task-alignment - How to align the agentic coder on its tasks and goals. We introduce Agentic Process Evidence (APE), a signed, tamper-evident, machine-readable attestation of agentic processes, linking the sessions to their outcome (process-aware logging). APE enables Policy-as-Code control over the agentic processes, allowing for human in the loop only when it's needed. We support the in-toto style attestation framework, and the protocol is aligned with the relevant regulations
Agentic artificial intelligence built on large language models shows promise for automating Open Radio Access Network supervisory control. However, action-level safeguards alone may be insufficient: evidence acquisition consumes time and shared resources, and network changes can invalidate approvals before release. We propose Progressive Risk-Gated Actuation (PRGA), an executor-side model and contract governing intents from assessment to release or termination. PRGA combines local checks with selective retrieval of coordination evidence to reduce acquisition costs while preserving mandatory evidence requirements. Version and lease rechecks prevent release under invalidated approvals, while reevaluation requires recorded progress within each transaction's retry budget. Building on this contract, we formulate evidence allocation to maximize the expected whole-period rate of timely valid releases under risk, quality-of-service, deadline, and shared byte-budget constraints. For energy-saving and slice-protection workloads with stable daily load cycles, thresholds are selected offline and interpolated using an online load-phase estimate. On average over modeled start phases and quota levels, the allocation policy improves timely valid release rates over arrival-order fetching and an offline-selected global threshold under identical quotas and release checks. In OpenAirInterface radio emulation, an immediate scripted resend after a version-mismatch refusal raises on-time receiver delivery from 77.3% to 89.9% at modest additional command cost.
Prabhu Nithin Gollapudi, Andreas Maier, Franziska Mathis-Ullrich, Water Zhao, Jia Wang, Siming Bayer
In the context of multi-stage trajectory planning for robotic percutaneous liver interventions, identifying a kinematically feasible entry point remains a critical computational bottleneck. Existing methods rely on exhaustive inverse kinematics or randomized searches, incurring delays of 13 to 27 seconds per target and limiting real-time intraoperative adaptation. This paper introduces an Orientation-Based Reachability Map (ORM) that precomputes the kinematic feasibility of a 6 Degrees of Freedom (DoF) serial manipulator across 188,873 workspace positions and encodes orientation feasibility into a compact, indexed 83 MB map. A Just-In-Time (JIT) compiled runtime pipeline replaces live optimization with near-instantaneous array lookups. Experimental evaluation demonstrates a reduction in planning latency from 13.5-26.9 s to 0.289-0.349 s per target while maintaining high geometric fidelity, achieving a mean convex hull volume overlap ratio of 0.933 and a mean alpha-shape volume ratio of 0.976 relative to the baseline reachable point cloud. The proposed ORM framework enables sub-second entry point planning and provides an efficient computational framework for robotic needle insertion in percutaneous liver ablation.
Rohit Murali, Benaissa Dekhici, Tao Chen, Dongda Zhang, Michael Short
Anaerobic digestion (AD) requires close monitoring of key process variables, including pH, the ratio of volatile organic acids to alkaline buffer capacity and biogas production, to maintain biological stability and prevent process failure. While mechanistic frameworks such as the Anaerobic Digestion Model No. 1 are highly parameterised, computationally expensive, and difficult to calibrate for real-time applications, data-driven Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks offer a potentially more adaptable alternative. However, current data-driven approaches in AD are predominantly limited to single-output architectures that focus solely on production yields, as opposed to simultaneous prediction of vital stability indicators. Furthermore, industrial AD datasets are typically sparse and skewed toward steady-state operations. Baseline evaluations demonstrated this scarcity prevents standard algorithms (Random Forest, XGBoost) and unaugmented LSTMs from recognising the transition to unstable operations, resulting in poor estimation of stability indicators. To overcome these challenges, this study proposes a novel generative data augmentation framework using an LSTM-beta-Variational Autoencoder coupled with a multi-output LSTM (MO-LSTM) soft sensor. By synthesising physically valid sequences of these transitions to unstable operations from one year of full-scale plant data, the method safely populates sparse regions of the feature space. Trained on this augmented dataset, the MO-LSTM achieved robust simultaneous estimation across all targets. This approach mitigates data sparsity, providing a basis for hybrid mechanistic-data-driven modelling and early-warning soft sensors in industrial bioprocesses.
Simon Hellmann, Leander Lerch, Terrance Wilms, Moritz Reumschüssel, Alberto Meola, Félix Delory, Steffi Knorn, Stefan Streif 等 9 位作者
Anaerobic digestion (AD) models can be challenging to calibrate against real data due to limited practical identifiability, data scarcity, and model complexity. Weighted least squares objective functions and gradient-based solvers using finite differences are often used in literature, but result in suboptimal parameter estimates and large uncertainty bands. This paper identifies the parameters of a reduced-order ADM1 by comparing the frameworks of maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and Bayesian inference (BI), and quantifies uncertainties of parameters and outputs. Multirate experimental data are taken from a lab-scale AD reactor fed with agricultural substrates and operated at organic loading rates of 3$\,$g VS $\mathrm{m^{-3}d^{-1}}$. Global optima are found via global and gradient-based local search algorithms using forward sensitivities. Enhanced scatter search provides the best global search results. These are refined by the Gauss-Newton algorithm as the best local search, which delivers $R^2$ values of 0.95 for acetic acid and 0.77 for biogas production. BI yields substantially narrower uncertainty bands than MLE and avoids the need for a global search by incorporating prior knowledge about parameter distributions. The search space is captured efficiently by log10 scaling of parameters. Algorithmic details on its implications are provided. Despite a high-resolution lab-scale dataset, the ADM1-specific inhibition parameter $K_\mathrm{I,nh3}$ is practically not identifiable with MLE, and shows a low output sensitivity, whereas a parameter for the effective ion concentration shows superb practical identifiabilty at high confidence with both MLE and BI. The present work lays a scalable base for calibration of nonlinear AD models by providing reliable simulations. It thus advances model-based monitoring and control applications of multirate processes such as agricultural AD plants.
Filip Katulić, Damir Sumina, Stjepan Groš, Tena Velki
Given the increasing frequency of industrial cybersecurity incidents, governments, industry, and the research community are all working to find ways to protect industrial automation and control systems (IACSs). A key regulatory effort in the European context is the EU's Network and Information Security Directive 2 (NIS2), which aims to strengthen cybersecurity requirements and improve resilience across critical and important sectors. Nevertheless, translating cybersecurity requirements into practical engineering remains challenging within IACS environments. This paper explores how Croatian IACS system integrators perceive cybersecurity requirements, implementation challenges, and current practices in the industrial environments in which they operate. The findings are based on three focus groups with system integrators working with clients in the energy, chemical and pharmaceutical, and food and beverage sectors. Participants reported limited cybersecurity awareness among IACS owners, as well as perceived differences in practices between smaller and larger companies and between domestic and foreign firms. Participants were divided in their expectations regarding regulatory pressure: while some believed it could improve cybersecurity, others expected only minimal compliance focused on cost reduction. The results of this study provide a basis for developing more practical cybersecurity practices and offer a deeper understanding of the key challenges faced by IACS system integrators and owners when dealing with cybersecurity.
Szabolcs Szentpéteri, Péter Kovács, Balázs Csanád Csáji
This paper studies robust uncertainty quantification for separable nonlinear least squares (SNLLS) problems. We propose two identification methods, (i) Residual-Perturbed Gradient (RPG) and (ii) Global-Fit-Gap (GFG), to construct joint distribution-free confidence regions for both the linear and nonlinear parameters. By exploiting assumed group invariance of the noise (such as symmetry or exchangeability), we apply random perturbations (such as sign-changes or permutations) to build the regions based on resampling and ranking. We prove that both methods guarantee non-asymptotically exact coverage (type I error). Finally, we illustrate the constructions through two numerical experiments: (i) identifying generalized finite impulse response (GFIR) systems using Laguerre polynomials with an adjustable decay rate and (ii) fitting Gaussian radial basis function (RBF) models with variable knots and widths.
Xi Zheng, Ivan Ruchkin, Hong Jin Kang, Tevfik Bultan, Vijay Ganesh, Taylor T. Johnson, Ziyang Li, Lei Ma 等 14 位作者
Learning-enabled cyber-physical systems (CPS), including autonomous vehicles and UAVs, increasingly incorporate foundation models, yet fragmented assurance practices provide insufficient support for system-level guarantees. We argue that restoring engineering control across stochastic neural, symbolic, and physical boundaries requires a shift from model-centric evaluation to system-level assurance. We introduce the Foundation Model Assurance Stack, connecting three directions: (i) neuro-symbolic architectures that constrain foundation models through explicit symbolic world models, reasoning layers, and interfaces; (ii) semantically grounded, conformance-based testing that combines formal specifications and symbolic world models with foundation-model-assisted specification mining, scenario generation, and test synthesis; and (iii) compositional verification and runtime assurance that target formally tractable components and interfaces through modular contracts, equivalence checking, verified synthesis, uncertainty-aware reasoning, and runtime monitoring and enforcement. Symbolic abstractions establish assurance boundaries between stochastic learning and formal reasoning, connecting testing, verification, and runtime evidence across the system lifecycle. Foundation models serve as constrained assistants whose outputs are independently checked wherever correctness can be formally specified. We identify research challenges in specification engineering, abstraction fidelity, evidence composition, and lifecycle certification, and outline a staged agenda toward trustworthy, deployable, and certifiable learning-enabled CPS.
This paper considers coordinating a heterogeneous team of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) traversing a domain containing an unknown number of potentially hazardous targets. The UAVs provide aerial sensing using onboard optical cameras, adapting their trajectories to ground routes and target information. We formulate the aerial search problem using ergodic control, which distributes sensing effort according to a spatial information density to balance exploration and target localization. The formulation incorporates dynamic camera field-of-view footprints and pose-dependent probabilistic detection models. Angles-only measurements are processed through Bayesian inference and marginalization over data-association hypotheses to obtain a Poisson multi-Bernoulli (PMB) approximation of the target posterior, representing both detected and undetected targets. This belief directs aerial sensing toward unexplored regions along the ground routes and viewpoints that improve target localization. Ground planning combines chance-constrained target avoidance, enforced through confidence sets, with a void-probability objective that favors routes unlikely to contain threats. We solve each team's optimization problem in a fully decentralized manner using a nested SCvx*--C-ADMM scheme, with outer sequential convex programming iterations and inner distributed consensus optimization, accounting for nonlinearities, nonseparable objectives, and continuous-time inter-agent separation constraints. A closed-loop scheme updates both fleets' trajectories as information becomes available and permits ground motion when the remaining route risk falls below a prescribed threshold. Numerical case studies examine sensing geometry and target uncertainty, compare decentralized and centralized solvers, and demonstrate full closed-loop collaboration between multiple UAVs and UGVs.
Inspired by birds flying through cluttered environments, Karaman and Frazzoli showed that high-speed flight through an ergodic random forest exhibits an ultimate speed limit: above a critical speed, almost surely no infinite collision-free trajectory exists for a single bird. This paper formulates a corresponding bulk-transport problem for many birds. We construct an explicit directed corridor network in a Poisson disk forest and impose a common temporal headway at its waypoints. The maximum current equals a minimum vertex-cut capacity and is achieved by repeated flight along vertex-disjoint paths. The same schedule maximizes completed traversals at every finite horizon, with constant forward speed and no internal waiting. For a forest belt of fixed depth, exact transverse superadditivity yields an almost-sure deterministic current-density limit. A uniform shape theorem for an asymmetric planar dual identifies the current when depth and width grow together. For diverging depth bounded by a constant times width, this current equals the width-first, depth-second limit and is independent of the positive aspect ratio. When diagonal corridors are available, bulk current is positive at sufficiently low obstacle intensity and zero at sufficiently high intensity. For stochastic demand, an upstream admission queue is stable at every rate below the finite-network capacity.
Learning-based traffic signal control (TSC) has achieved promising performance, but most methods rely on structured traffic states that must be estimated from sensor observations in real deployments. Visual TSC learns signal decisions directly from images, yet existing methods depend on fixed roadside cameras and remain tied to specific intersection configurations and visual domains. UAVs offer on-demand bird's-eye-view (BEV) observations that jointly capture intersection topology and traffic dynamics, making them a promising sensing platform for visual TSC. We present BEVLight, a generalizable TSC framework that directly maps BEV observations to signal actions. BEVLight grounds visual features onto individual lanes and composes them along the junction topology into movement and phase representations, allowing a shared policy to score candidate phases across heterogeneous intersection layouts and signal plans. To train the policy, we develop a web-based virtual teleoperation platform and collect over 5K human control decisions together with their underlying traffic states. Simulator-provided traffic states first supervise lane- and movement-level representations, after which human phase selections and rankings supervise the phase scorer. Re-rendering the recorded trajectories under diverse appearances preserves both forms of supervision and encourages robustness to visual changes. Closed-loop experiments demonstrate zero-shot generalization across traffic demands, signal plans, and intersections: BEVLight reduces average waiting time by 7--9\% relative to perception-to-control visual baselines and matches or outperforms structured-state RL controllers that receive ground-truth traffic states, achieving the lowest waiting time in 12 of 16 scenarios. An offline study further shows that BEVLight transfers to real UAV observations without target-domain adaptation.
Large language model (LLM) agents often receive access to more files, accounts, and services than a task requires. Prompt injection turns this excess access into an opportunity to redirect execution toward unrelated resources. Applying least privilege therefore requires identifying the assets needed by a task, including assets whose identities emerge only during execution. We present REALM (Required Execution Assets Linked to a Mission), an approach to identifying and maintaining a task's required assets and their permitted uses. The approach represents required assets as Dependency Graph nodes, resolves prerequisite relationships, and admits newly discovered assets through source-scoped selection. It separates discovering an asset from authorizing its use, while preserving the agent's freedom to choose its computation. The REALM Builder maintains the selected grants and projects Asset Files; the Partial API Manager exposes resource-bound Partial APIs to the Agent inside a Task Container. Across 60 clean tasks and 560 injected cases in AgentDyn, it completes 40.0% and 36.4% of tasks and decreases ASR from 16.6% to 0.2% with qwen3.5-flash as the base model.
Password-based authentication remains challenging for many users, especially for those who face usability and accessibility issues. The burden of maintaining security can cause user fatigue, frustration and non-engagement. To address these issues, we conducted a pilot study to assess ECG-based biometric authentication as a passwordless alternative and to gather adult participants' perspectives on this approach. The research consisted of a survey study, an authentication prototype and a follow-up usability experience questionnaire. Our approach combined an online survey of 337 adults examining authentication practices and perceptions, with a separate usability evaluation in which 49 participants interacted with a simulated ECG-authentication and password interface in a health-care application prototype, then completed a post-test usability test questionnaire. The survey examined how adults across age groups use and perceive various authentication techniques, their experiences with biometrics, their views on security and convenience, and their willingness to adopt ECG authentication. In parallel, the usability prototype and questionnaire captured participants' responses after hands-on interaction with an ECG authentication prototype.
Modern Security Operations Centers struggle with delayed manual incident response, enabling adversaries to advance through the Cyber Kill Chain during early stage reconnaissance. While classical game theoretic defense models optimize strategic resource allocation, they rely on static utility matrices that fail to adapt to dynamic telemetry. This paper presents an integrated, metrics driven decision engine that bridges quantitative risk parameterization and continuous automated response time. Common Vulnerability Scoring Systems exploitability parameters are mapped to attacker success probabilities and evaluate defender log distributions via Factor Analysis of Information Risk Monte Carlo simulations. Real time SIEM logs streams are modeled as Poisson process arrival rates, dynamically updating defender posterior threat belief through sequential Bayesian filtering. A closed form threshold is derived by framing the interaction as a dynamic Bayesian Stackelberg game, where the expected unmitigated risk exceeds proactive containment cost. Parameterized against empirical data from the 2023 MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment cyber incident, simulation results demonstrate that the engine suppresses transient background noise while triggering automated SOAR network isolation within seconds of adversarial probing. Multi parameter sensitivity analysis confirms that the decision boundary dynamically adjusts to live perimeter vulnerability, offering a control theoretic foundation for sub minute automated threat containment.
In this chapter, we explore how a team of autonomous agents can flexibly reconfigure the distribution of its members across many spatially embedded tasks using a task allocation strategy grounded in a generalization of the recently proposed Nonlinear Opinion Dynamics model. Motivated by an adaptive maritime survey application, we couple opinion dynamics directly to spatial movement and examine how the emergent macroscopic allocation is shaped by the interplay between environmental geometry, nature of social interactions, and task demands. We illustrate in simulation how social coupling in the model tunes group cohesion, producing macroscopic allocation patterns ranging from maximally dispersed states, to intermediate semi-dispersed states with a smaller number of distinct subgroups, to maximally cohesive consensus states, in distinct and interpretable parameter regimes. Furthermore, we demonstrate with illustrative examples how a team can reconfigure itself in real time under changing task demands. For allocation scenarios with distance-based task preference and matched number of agents and tasks, we relate numerically the final allocation in the group to the Hungarian optimum, illustrating close-to-optimal performance. We illustrate performance of this method under realistic communication constraints in the MOOS-IvP-Multi simulation environment with simulated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Together, these examples show how a common set of local interaction rules can support a large range of interpretable macroscopic allocation states and flexible transitions between them.
Quadrotor control under disturbances such as wind gusts and payload variations remains challenging. First-order sliding mode control (SMC) and matched/unmatched uncertainty distinction are classical approaches; however, neither tells a practitioner which loops in a cascaded controller should be made robust to sustain disturbances, how to tune those loops, nor what the additional costs are on an embedded processor. Applying robust control uniformly across all axes addresses disturbances indiscriminately, adding tuning effort on axes where no disturbance acts. On inherently underactuated vehicles, disturbances along some axes cannot be opposed directly at all. We propose a principled methodology for deciding where robust control belongs in a cascaded architecture, with all control running onboard the vehicle. We recover the acting disturbance from PID hover flights under disturbance by inverting the equations of motion, use the recovered signal to identify and quantify the excited axes, and deploy robust control where it counts. Experiments on a Crazyflie 2.1 quadrotor under slung-payload and oblique-wind disturbances show tracking improvements concentrated on the axes the rule selects, and gain sweeps confirm that the switching gain reduces error on matched axes but has no effect on an excited unmatched axis, as the analysis predicts.
Mathis Turgeon-Roy, Mohamed Ounally, Veronica Vannini, Olivier Roy, François Pomerleau
Tracked vehicles are widely used in off-road applications, but their conventional motion models often rely on no-slip assumptions that become inaccurate on low-adherence surfaces. Rather than treating inertial effects arising from slip as a disturbance to be minimized, this work investigates how inertial effects arising from a moving mass can be deliberately exploited for steering on low-friction surfaces. A dynamic model for an articulated tracked vehicle with a passive trailer is developed, allowing inertial effects from trailer motion to be captured. The approach is experimentally evaluated on ice, where our dynamic model outperforms the kinematic baseline. We also propose a mixed dynamic-kinematic model to adapt predictions to both surface and situation by exploiting predictions from both methods. Finally, we demonstrate inertial steering on a mono-track vehicle without a conventional steering mechanism, showing that controlled movements of an internal mass can generate turning motion on ice. The resulting behavior can be predicted using the proposed dynamic model by representing the internal mass as a frictionless trailer, revealing the analogous dynamics between the two configurations. These results demonstrate the feasibility of inertial steering as an alternative steering mechanism for tracked vehicles operating in low-adherence environments.
Martín de Frutos, Baptiste Corban, Claire Bizon Monroc, Ana Bušić, Donatien Dubuc, Jiamin Zhud, Esteban Ferrer
Existing noise mitigation strategies for wind farms usually consist in reducing turbines power output, without accounting for the wake interactions between them and the noise emission directivity. This leads to over-conservative policies and unexploited wind power. Yet, turbine yaw can simultaneously affect wake interactions and the direction of noise emission, offering an additional degree of freedom for farm-level noise control. We therefore propose Noise Steering, a model-free reinforcement learning (RL) strategy that jointly controls turbine yaw angles and power setpoints to maximise farm power while satisfying a local noise constraint in a defined region. To enable training at a reduced computational cost, a low-fidelity acoustic model is coupled with the steady-state FLORIS simulator. The RL agent effectively learns how to redirect wakes and noise directivity away from the protected region while redistributing power across the farm. On a six-turbine test farm, the policy satisfies the 40 dB noise constraint throughout the full range of turbulent winds, with an average power deficit of only 2% relative to greedy unimpeded control, and up to 7.7% at high wind speeds. In comparison, the industry-standard noise-reduced operation (NRO) baseline here generates an average power loss of 17%. When deployed in the higher-fidelity FASTFarm simulator, the policy largely retains its performance under steady and turbulent inflow, despite differences in simulation fidelity. These results demonstrate the potential of combining yaw control and power derating through RL to improve the power-noise trade-off in wind farm operation.
AI compute is becoming large and fast-changing electrical loads. Its impacts on data center infrastructure and power grids depend not only on total energy consumption, but also on how their power draw moves over sub-second to minute timescales, including peaks, ramps, and synchronized fluctuations across accelerators. Existing energy benchmarks for large language models (LLMs) report aggregate quantities such as joules per token and rarely release the underlying time-series measurements, leaving these power dynamics poorly characterized and difficult to model. We introduce LLM-PowerTrace, an open dataset of time-resolved, per-GPU power traces for LLM fine-tuning and inference, sampled every 100\,ms on varying NVIDIA platforms paired with complete workload and system metadata. For fine-tuning, LLM-PowerTrace profiles open model families spanning a wide range of model sizes and fine-tuning methods, together with controlled sweeps over batch size, sequence length, precision, parallelism, and checkpointing. For inference, it covers variations in concurrency, GPU frequency, KV-cache and weight quantization, prompt and output lengths, and request-arrival patterns. LLM-PowerTrace profiles a set of open model families across a wide range of model sizes, and controlled sweeps over batch size, sequence length, precision, parallelism, and checkpointing for fine-tuning, and it sweeps concurrency, GPU frequency, KV cache and weight quantization, prompt and output lengths, and request arrival patterns for inference. Built upon power traces, we define power-grid-facing metrics as well as AI-compute power\&energy scaling law for extrapolating beyond the measured settings. Together, LLM-PowerTrace provides a dataset foundation for modeling, forecasting, and managing the fast-changing electrical behavior of AI compute.
Robot-learning studies often compare position and velocity actions as though each label identified a single experimental treatment, yet the label alone does not determine what the robot executes. Before affecting robot motion, bounded policy output passes through filtering, physical scaling, reference construction, feedback, timing, and effort limits. We study how these omitted properties affect attribution under one shared learner and training budget. Across three contact-rich Factory tasks (PegInsert, GearMesh, and NutThread), we compare five joint-space interfaces, with ten independently trained policies per condition. We first remain within the same position-feedback law and vary the executed interface: substituting only the physical action scale as the directly modified component changes sample-median evaluation success by 0.645-1.000 across tasks, while removing an exponential moving average produces task-dependent changes. We then move to a cross-law comparison and choose a velocity scale that exactly matches the position interface's local raw-torque command gain. This calibration raises the sample median on GearMesh and NutThread, with no median change on PegInsert. Yet clear residual sample-median gaps remain on PegInsert and GearMesh, while the NutThread interval includes zero. Thus, even this explicit equality leaves feedback and held-action dynamics unmatched and does not establish position-velocity trained-outcome equivalence. Action-interface comparisons should therefore report the executed pathway and state the physical quantity they match.
Libya possesses significant renewable energy potential that remains largely untapped. This paper presents PyPSA-Libya, a national-scale model built on the PyPSA-Earth framework, designed to explore optimal transition pathways for the Libyan power sector. We present two primary studies: (1) an electricity-only capacity expansion analysis comparing a zero-emission constraint against an unconstrained baseline at 36-cluster resolution, and (2) a sector-coupled hydrogen export study evaluating the levelized cost of exporting 70 TWh/year of hydrogen to Europe under three technological scenarios and a 100 EUR/tonne CO2 carbon tax regime. Results indicate that while solar PV dominates the domestic capacity mix, integration of hydrogen production significantly alters grid storage requirements. Furthermore, under carbon pricing, steam methane reforming with carbon capture (SMR-CC) frequently out-competes pure green electrolysis, establishing a lower-cost compliance pathway for cross-border export. The model, data, and configuration files are released under an open-source license to support transparent energy planning in Libya.
Liang Wu, Honghui Zheng, Bo Yang, Xu Yang, Yilin Mo, Ján Drgoňa
Solving large-scale multiparametric quadratic programs (mpQPs) in real time often requires thousands of iterative optimization updates, creating a major computational bottleneck in model predictive control and learning-enabled systems. This paper proposes TQPNet, a self-supervised neural compression framework that learns to compress long ADMM optimization trajectories into a compact neural warm start followed by a few refinement iterations. We derive a low-dimensional ADMM scheme operating on the primal-dual variables $(x,β)$ and show that its iteration admits an equivalent ReLU-layer representation, termed ADMM(ReLU). Building on this insight, TQPNet combines a multilayer perceptron with ReLU activations (MLP(ReLU)) and a small number of unrolled ADMM(ReLU) refinement layers. The network is trained offline using an optimality-condition-informed residual loss, eliminating the need for solver-generated labels. The proposed residual-based framework enables both self-supervised training and online solution certification through adaptive ADMM(ReLU) refinement. Experiments on large-scale mpQPs and real-time MPC applications demonstrate that TQPNet achieves high accuracy, strong generalization, and substantially faster inference than conventional optimization-based methods.