Riverside
Analysis of Forces Exerted by Shoulder and Elbow Fabric-based Pneumatic Actuators for Pediatric Exosuits
Ayazi, Mehrnoosh, Sahin, Ipsita, Mucchiani, Caio, Kokkoni, Elena, Karydis, Konstantinos
To enhance pediatric exosuit design, it is crucial to assess the actuator-generated forces. This work evaluates the contact forces exerted by soft fabric-based pneumatic actuators in an upper extremity pediatric exosuit. Two actuators were examined: a single-cell bidirectional actuator for shoulder abduction/adduction and a bellow-type actuator for elbow extension/flexion. Experiments assessed the impact of actuator anchoring points and the adjacent joint's angle on exerted forces and actuated joint range of motion (ROM). These were measured via load cells and encoders integrated into a custom infant-scale engineered apparatus with two degrees of freedom (two revolute joints). For the shoulder actuator, results show that anchoring it further from the shoulder joint center while the elbow is flexed at $90^\circ$ yields the highest ROM while minimizing the peak force exerted on the body. For the elbow actuator, anchoring it symmetrically while the shoulder joint is at $0^\circ$ optimizes actuator performance. These findings contribute a key step toward co-optimizing the considered exosuit design for functionality and wearability.
Online Budgeted Matching with General Bids Pengfei Li University of Houston University of California, Riverside Houston, TX, USA
Online Budgeted Matching (OBM) is a classic problem with important applications in online advertising, online service matching, revenue management, and beyond. Traditional online algorithms typically assume a small bid setting, where the maximum bid-to-budget ratio (ฮบ) is infinitesimally small. While recent algorithms have tried to address scenarios with non-small or general bids, they often rely on the Fractional Last Matching (FLM) assumption, which allows for accepting partial bids when the remaining budget is insufficient. This assumption, however, does not hold for many applications with indivisible bids. In this paper, we remove the FLM assumption and tackle the open problem of OBM with general bids. We first establish an upper bound of 1 ฮบ on the competitive ratio for any deterministic online algorithm. We then propose a novel meta algorithm, called MetaAd, which reduces to different algorithms with first known provable competitive ratios parameterized by the maximum bid-to-budget ratio ฮบ [0, 1]. As a by-product, we extend MetaAd to the FLM setting and get provable competitive algorithms. Finally, we apply our competitive analysis to the design learningaugmented algorithms.
BPINN-EM-Post: Stochastic Electromigration Damage Analysis in the Post-Void Phase based on Bayesian Physics-Informed Neural Network
Lamichhane, Subed, Lu, Haotian, Tan, Sheldon X. -D.
In contrast to the assumptions of most existing Electromigration (EM) analysis tools, the evolution of EM-induced stress is inherently non-deterministic, influenced by factors such as input current fluctuations and manufacturing non-idealities. Traditional approaches for estimating stress variations typically involve computationally expensive and inefficient Monte Carlo simulations with industrial solvers, which quantify variations using mean and variance metrics. In this work, we introduce a novel machine learning-based framework, termed BPINNEM- Post, for efficient stochastic analysis of EM-induced postvoiding aging processes. This new approach integrates closedform analytical solutions with a Bayesian Physics-Informed Neural Network (BPINN) framework to accelerate the analysis for the first time. The closed-form solutions enforce physical laws at the individual wire segment level, while the BPINN ensures that physics constraints at inter-segment junctions are satisfied and stochastic behaviors are accurately modeled. By reducing the number of variables in the loss functions through the use of analytical solutions, our method significantly improves training efficiency without accuracy loss and naturally incorporates variational effects. Additionally, the analytical solutions effectively address the challenge of incorporating initial stress distributions in interconnect structures during post-void stress calculations. Numerical results demonstrate that BPINN-EM-Post achieves over 240x speedup compared to Monte Carlo simulations using the FEM-based COMSOL solver and more than 65x speedup compared to Monte Carlo simulations using the FDM-based EMSpice method.
PLK-Calib: Single-shot and Target-less LiDAR-Camera Extrinsic Calibration using Pl\"ucker Lines
Zhang, Yanyu, Xu, Jie, Ren, Wei
Accurate LiDAR-Camera (LC) calibration is challenging but crucial for autonomous systems and robotics. In this paper, we propose two single-shot and target-less algorithms to estimate the calibration parameters between LiDAR and camera using line features. The first algorithm constructs line-to-line constraints by defining points-to-line projection errors and minimizes the projection error. The second algorithm (PLK-Calib) utilizes the co-perpendicular and co-parallel geometric properties of lines in Pl\"ucker (PLK) coordinate, and decouples the rotation and translation into two constraints, enabling more accurate estimates. Our degenerate analysis and Monte Carlo simulation indicate that three nonparallel line pairs are the minimal requirements to estimate the extrinsic parameters. Furthermore, we collect an LC calibration dataset with varying extrinsic under three different scenarios and use it to evaluate the performance of our proposed algorithms.
PDB: Not All Drivers Are the Same -- A Personalized Dataset for Understanding Driving Behavior
Wei, Chuheng, Qin, Ziye, Li, Siyan, Zhang, Ziyan, Zhao, Xuanpeng, Abdelraouf, Amr, Gupta, Rohit, Han, Kyungtae, Barth, Matthew J., Wu, Guoyuan
Driving behavior is inherently personal, influenced by individual habits, decision-making styles, and physiological states. However, most existing datasets treat all drivers as homogeneous, overlooking driver-specific variability. To address this gap, we introduce the Personalized Driving Behavior (PDB) dataset, a multi-modal dataset designed to capture personalization in driving behavior under naturalistic driving conditions. Unlike conventional datasets, PDB minimizes external influences by maintaining consistent routes, vehicles, and lighting conditions across sessions. It includes sources from 128-line LiDAR, front-facing camera video, GNSS, 9-axis IMU, CAN bus data (throttle, brake, steering angle), and driver-specific signals such as facial video and heart rate. The dataset features 12 participants, approximately 270,000 LiDAR frames, 1.6 million images, and 6.6 TB of raw sensor data. The processed trajectory dataset consists of 1,669 segments, each spanning 10 seconds with a 0.2-second interval. By explicitly capturing drivers' behavior, PDB serves as a unique resource for human factor analysis, driver identification, and personalized mobility applications, contributing to the development of human-centric intelligent transportation systems.
Human Implicit Preference-Based Policy Fine-tuning for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning in USV Swarm
Kim, Hyeonjun, Lee, Kanghoon, Park, Junho, Li, Jiachen, Park, Jinkyoo
Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) has shown promise in solving complex problems involving cooperation and competition among agents, such as an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) swarm used in search and rescue, surveillance, and vessel protection. However, aligning system behavior with user preferences is challenging due to the difficulty of encoding expert intuition into reward functions. To address the issue, we propose a Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF) approach for MARL that resolves credit-assignment challenges through an Agent-Level Feedback system categorizing feedback into intra-agent, inter-agent, and intra-team types. To overcome the challenges of direct human feedback, we employ a Large Language Model (LLM) evaluator to validate our approach using feedback scenarios such as region constraints, collision avoidance, and task allocation. Our method effectively refines USV swarm policies, addressing key challenges in multi-agent systems while maintaining fairness and performance consistency.
Uncertainty Quantification of Large Language Models through Multi-Dimensional Responses
Chen, Tiejin, Liu, Xiaoou, Da, Longchao, Chen, Jia, Papalexakis, Vagelis, Wei, Hua
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities across various tasks due to large training datasets and powerful transformer architecture. However, the reliability of responses from LLMs remains a question. Uncertainty quantification (UQ) of LLMs is crucial for ensuring their reliability, especially in areas such as healthcare, finance, and decision-making. Existing UQ methods primarily focus on semantic similarity, overlooking the deeper knowledge dimensions embedded in responses. We introduce a multi-dimensional UQ framework that integrates semantic and knowledge-aware similarity analysis. By generating multiple responses and leveraging auxiliary LLMs to extract implicit knowledge, we construct separate similarity matrices and apply tensor decomposition to derive a comprehensive uncertainty representation. This approach disentangles overlapping information from both semantic and knowledge dimensions, capturing both semantic variations and factual consistency, leading to more accurate UQ. Our empirical evaluations demonstrate that our method outperforms existing techniques in identifying uncertain responses, offering a more robust framework for enhancing LLM reliability in high-stakes applications.
FormalSpecCpp: A Dataset of C++ Formal Specifications created using LLMs
Chakraborty, Madhurima, Pirkelbauer, Peter, Yi, Qing
--FormalSpecCpp is a dataset designed to fill the gap in standardized benchmarks for verifying formal specifications in C++ programs. T o the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive collection of C++ programs with well-defined preconditions and postconditions. It provides a structured benchmark for evaluating specification inference tools and testing the accuracy of generated specifications. Researchers and developers can use this dataset to benchmark specification inference tools, fine-tune Large Language Models (LLMs) for automated specification generation, and analyze the role of formal specifications in improving program verification and automated testing. By making this dataset publicly available, we aim to advance research in program verification, specification inference, and AIassisted software development.
ACTGNN: Assessment of Clustering Tendency with Synthetically-Trained Graph Neural Networks
Luo, Yiran, Papalexakis, Evangelos E.
Determining clustering tendency in datasets is a fundamental but challenging task, especially in noisy or high-dimensional settings where traditional methods, such as the Hopkins Statistic and Visual Assessment of Tendency (VAT), often struggle to produce reliable results. In this paper, we propose ACTGNN, a graph-based framework designed to assess clustering tendency by leveraging graph representations of data. Node features are constructed using Locality-Sensitive Hashing (LSH), which captures local neighborhood information, while edge features incorporate multiple similarity metrics, such as the Radial Basis Function (RBF) kernel, to model pairwise relationships. A Graph Neural Network (GNN) is trained exclusively on synthetic datasets, enabling robust learning of clustering structures under controlled conditions. Extensive experiments demonstrate that ACTGNN significantly outperforms baseline methods on both synthetic and real-world datasets, exhibiting superior performance in detecting faint clustering structures, even in high-dimensional or noisy data. Our results highlight the generalizability and effectiveness of the proposed approach, making it a promising tool for robust clustering tendency assessment.