Country
Decoding the Past: Explainable Machine Learning Models for Dating Historical Texts
Pinto, Paulo J. N., Pinho, Armando J., Pratas, Diogo
Accurately dating historical texts is essential for organizing and interpreting cultural heritage collections. This article addresses temporal text classification using interpretable, feature-engineered tree-based machine learning models. We integrate five feature categories - compression-based, lexical structure, readability, neologism detection, and distance features - to predict the temporal origin of English texts spanning five centuries. Comparative analysis shows that these feature domains provide complementary temporal signals, with combined models outperforming any individual feature set. On a large-scale corpus, we achieve 76.7% accuracy for century-scale prediction and 26.1% for decade-scale classification, substantially above random baselines (20% and 2.3%). Under relaxed temporal precision, performance increases to 96.0% top-2 accuracy for centuries and 85.8% top-10 accuracy for decades. The final model exhibits strong ranking capabilities with AUCROC up to 94.8% and AUPRC up to 83.3%, and maintains controlled errors with mean absolute deviations of 27 years and 30 years, respectively. For authentication-style tasks, binary models around key thresholds (e.g., 1850-1900) reach 85-98% accuracy. Feature importance analysis identifies distance features and lexical structure as most informative, with compression-based features providing complementary signals. SHAP explainability reveals systematic linguistic evolution patterns, with the 19th century emerging as a pivot point across feature domains. Cross-dataset evaluation on Project Gutenberg highlights domain adaptation challenges, with accuracy dropping by 26.4 percentage points, yet the computational efficiency and interpretability of tree-based models still offer a scalable, explainable alternative to neural architectures.
MindPower: Enabling Theory-of-Mind Reasoning in VLM-based Embodied Agents
Zhang, Ruoxuan, Zheng, Qiyun, Zhou, Zhiyu, Liao, Ziqi, Wu, Siyu, Jiang-Lin, Jian-Yu, Wen, Bin, Xie, Hongxia, Fu, Jianlong, Cheng, Wen-Huang
Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to infer others' mental states, such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. Current vision-language embodied agents lack ToM-based decision-making, and existing benchmarks focus solely on human mental states while ignoring the agent's own perspective, hindering coherent decision and action generation. To address this, we propose MindPower, a Robot-Centric framework integrating Perception, Mental Reasoning, Decision Making and Action. Given multimodal inputs, MindPower first perceives the environment and human states, then performs ToM Reasoning to model both self and others, and finally generates decisions and actions guided by inferred mental states. Furthermore, we introduce Mind-Reward, a novel optimization objective that encourages VLMs to produce consistent ToM Reasoning and behavior. Our model outperforms GPT-4o by 12.77% in decision making and 12.49% in action generation.
High-Resolution Probabilistic Data-Driven Weather Modeling with a Stretched-Grid
Nordhagen, Even Marius, Haugen, Hรฅvard Homleid, Salihi, Aram Farhad Shafiq, Ingstad, Magnus Sikora, Nipen, Thomas Nils, Seierstad, Ivar Ambjรธrn, Frogner, Inger-Lise, Clare, Mariana, Lang, Simon, Chantry, Matthew, Dueben, Peter, Kristiansen, Jรธrn
We present a probabilistic data-driven weather model capable of providing an ensemble of high spatial resolution realizations of 87 variables at arbitrary forecast length and ensemble size. The model uses a stretched grid, dedicating 2.5 km resolution to a region of interest, and 31 km resolution elsewhere. Based on a stochastic encoder-decoder architecture, the model is trained using a loss function based on the Continuous Ranked Probability Score (CRPS) evaluated point-wise in real and spectral space. The spectral loss components is shown to be necessary to create fields that are spatially coherent. The model is compared to high-resolution operational numerical weather prediction forecasts from the MetCoOp Ensemble Prediction System (MEPS), showing competitive forecasts when evaluated against observations from surface weather stations. The model produced fields that are more spatially coherent than mean squared error based models and CRPS based models without the spectral component in the loss.
Social Perceptions of English Spelling Variation on Twitter: A Comparative Analysis of Human and LLM Responses
Spelling variation (e.g. funnnn vs. fun) can influence the social perception of texts and their writers: we often have various associations with different forms of writing (is the text informal? does the writer seem young?). In this study, we focus on the social perception of spelling variation in online writing in English and study to what extent this perception is aligned between humans and large language models (LLMs). Building on sociolinguistic methodology, we compare LLM and human ratings on three key social attributes of spelling variation (formality, carefulness, age). We find generally strong correlations in the ratings between humans and LLMs. However, notable differences emerge when we analyze the distribution of ratings and when comparing between different types of spelling variation.
Time Extrapolation with Graph Convolutional Autoencoder and Tensor Train Decomposition
Chen, Yuanhong, Pichi, Federico, Gao, Zhen, Rozza, Gianluigi
Graph autoencoders have gained attention in nonlinear reduced-order modeling of parameterized partial differential equations defined on unstructured grids. Despite they provide a geometrically consistent way of treating complex domains, applying such architectures to parame-terized dynamical systems for temporal prediction beyond the training data, i.e. the extrapolation regime, is still a challenging task due to the simultaneous need of temporal causality and general-izability in the parametric space. In this work, we explore the integration of graph convolutional autoencoders (GCAs) with tensor train (TT) decomposition and Operator Inference (OpInf) to develop a time-consistent reduced-order model. In particular, high-fidelity snapshots are represented as a combination of parametric, spatial, and temporal cores via TT decomposition, while OpInf is used to learn the evolution of the latter. Moreover, we enhance the generalization performance by developing a multi-fidelity two-stages approach in the framework of Deep Operator Networks (DeepONet), treating the spatial and temporal cores as the trunk networks, and the parametric core as the branch network. Numerical results, including heat-conduction, advection-diffusion and vortex-shedding phenomena, demonstrate great performance in effectively learning the dynamic in the extrapolation regime for complex geometries, also in comparison with state-of-the-art approaches e.g.
DiskChunGS: Large-Scale 3D Gaussian SLAM Through Chunk-Based Memory Management
Feldmann, Casimir, Wilder-Smith, Maximum, Patil, Vaishakh, Oechsle, Michael, Niemeyer, Michael, Tateno, Keisuke, Hutter, Marco
Abstract--Recent advances in 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) have demonstrated impressive results for novel view synthesis with real-time rendering capabilities. However, integrating 3DGS with SLAM systems faces a fundamental scalability limitation: methods are constrained by GPU memory capacity, restricting reconstruction to small-scale environments. We present DiskChunGS, a scalable 3DGS SLAM system that overcomes this bottleneck through an out-of-core approach that partitions scenes into spatial chunks and maintains only active regions in GPU memory while storing inactive areas on disk. Our architecture integrates seamlessly with existing SLAM frameworks for pose estimation and loop closure, enabling globally consistent reconstruction at scale. Our method uniquely completes all 11 KITTI sequences without memory failures while achieving superior visual quality, demonstrating that algorithmic innovation can overcome the memory constraints that have limited previous 3DGS SLAM methods. ECENT advances in neural representations for 3D scene reconstruction have revolutionized novel view synthesis, with 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) [1] emerging as an exceptionally efficient and high-quality approach. Unlike volume-based methods [2]-[4] that struggle with rendering speed due to expensive ray marching, 3DGS provides real-time rendering capabilities while maintaining impressive visual fidelity.
A Game-Theoretic Approach for Adversarial Information Fusion in Distributed Sensor Networks
Every day we share our personal information through digital systems which are constantly exposed to threats. For this reason, security-oriented disciplines of signal processing have received increasing attention in the last decades: multimedia forensics, digital watermarking, biometrics, network monitoring, steganography and steganalysis are just a few examples. Even though each of these fields has its own peculiarities, they all have to deal with a common problem: the presence of one or more adversaries aiming at making the system fail. Adversarial Signal Processing lays the basis of a general theory that takes into account the impact that the presence of an adversary has on the design of effective signal processing tools. By focusing on the application side of Adversarial Signal Processing, namely adversarial information fusion in distributed sensor networks, and adopting a game-theoretic approach, this thesis contributes to the above mission by addressing four issues. First, we address decision fusion in distributed sensor networks by developing a novel soft isolation defense scheme that protect the network from adversaries, specifically, Byzantines. Second, we develop an optimum decision fusion strategy in the presence of Byzantines. In the next step, we propose a technique to reduce the complexity of the optimum fusion by relying on a novel near-optimum message passing algorithm based on factor graphs. Finally, we introduce a defense mechanism to protect decentralized networks running consensus algorithm against data falsification attacks.
Control Barrier Function for Unknown Systems: An Approximation-free Approach
Sawarkar, Shubham, Jagtap, Pushpak
We study the prescribed-time reach-avoid (PT-RA) control problem for nonlinear systems with unknown dynamics operating in environments with moving obstacles. Unlike robust or learning based Control Barrier Function (CBF) methods, the proposed framework requires neither online model learning nor uncertainty bound estimation. A CBF-based Quadratic Program (CBF-QP) is solved on a simple virtual system to generate a safe reference satisfying PT-RA conditions with respect to time-varying, tightened obstacle and goal sets. The true system is confined to a Virtual Confinement Zone (VCZ) around this reference using an approximation-free feedback law. This construction guarantees real-time safety and prescribed-time target reachability under unknown dynamics and dynamic constraints without explicit model identification or offline precomputation. Simulation results illustrate reliable dynamic obstacle avoidance and timely convergence to the target set.
Adaptive Factor Graph-Based Tightly Coupled GNSS/IMU Fusion for Robust Positionin
Ahmadi, Elham, Olama, Alireza, Vรคlisuo, Petri, Kuusniemi, Heidi
Reliable positioning in GNSS-challenged environments remains a critical challenge for navigation systems. Tightly coupled GNSS/IMU fusion improves robustness but remains vulnerable to non-Gaussian noise and outliers. We present a robust and adaptive factor graph-based fusion framework that directly integrates GNSS pseudorange measurements with IMU preintegration factors and incorporates the Barron loss, a general robust loss function that unifies several m-estimators through a single tunable parameter. By adaptively down weighting unreliable GNSS measurements, our approach improves resilience positioning. The method is implemented in an extended GTSAM framework and evaluated on the UrbanNav dataset. The proposed solution reduces positioning errors by up to 41% relative to standard FGO, and achieves even larger improvements over extended Kalman filter (EKF) baselines in urban canyon environments. These results highlight the benefits of Barron loss in enhancing the resilience of GNSS/IMU-based navigation in urban and signal-compromised environments.
A transfer learning approach for automatic conflicts detection in software requirement sentence pairs based on dual encoders
Wang, Yizheng, Jiang, Tao, Bai, Jinyan, Zou, Zhengbin, Xue, Tiancheng, Zhang, Nan, Luan, Jie
Software Requirement Document (RD) typically contain tens of thousands of individual requirements, and ensuring consistency among these requirements is critical for the success of software engineering projects. Automated detection methods can significantly enhance efficiency and reduce costs; however, existing approaches still face several challenges, including low detection accuracy on imbalanced data, limited semantic extraction due to the use of a single encoder, and suboptimal performance in cross-domain transfer learning. To address these issues, this paper proposes a Transferable Software Requirement Conflict Detection Framework based on SBERT and SimCSE, termed TSRCDF-SS. First, the framework employs two independent encoders, Sentence-BERT (SBERT) and Simple Contrastive Sentence Embedding (SimCSE), to generate sentence embeddings for requirement pairs, followed by a six-element concatenation strategy. Furthermore, the classifier is enhanced by a two-layer fully connected feedforward neural network (FFNN) with a hybrid loss optimization strategy that integrates a variant of Focal Loss, domain-specific constraints, and a confidence-based penalty term. Finally, the framework synergistically integrates sequential and cross-domain transfer learning. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves a 10.4% improvement in both macro-F1 and weighted-F1 scores in in-domain settings, and an 11.4% increase in macro-F1 in cross-domain scenarios.