Energy
Expanding the Workspace of Electromagnetic Navigation Systems Using Dynamic Feedback for Single- and Multi-agent Control
Zughaibi, Jasan, von Arx, Denis, Derungs, Maurus, Heemeyer, Florian, Antonelli, Luca A., Boehler, Quentin, Muehlebach, Michael, Nelson, Bradley J.
Abstract--Electromagnetic navigation systems (eMNS) enable a number of magnetically guided surgical procedures. A challenge in magnetically manipulating surgical tools is that the effective workspace of an eMNS is often severely constrained by power and thermal limits. We show that system-level control design significantly expands this workspace by reducing the currents needed to achieve a desired motion. We identified five key system approaches that enable this expansion: (i) motion-centric torque/force objectives, (ii) energy-optimal current allocation, (iii) real-time pose estimation, (iv) dynamic feedback, and (v) high-bandwidth eMNS components. As a result, we stabilize a 3D inverted pendulum on an eight-coil OctoMag eMNS with significantly lower currents (0.1-0.2 We generalize to multi-agent control by simultaneously stabilizing two inverted pendulums within a shared workspace, exploiting magnetic-field nonlinearity and coil redundancy for independent actuation. A structured analysis compares the electromagnetic workspaces of both paradigms and examines current-allocation strategies that map motion objectives to coil currents. Cross-platform evaluation of the clinically oriented Navion eMNS further demonstrates substantial workspace expansion by maintaining stable balancing at distances up to 50 cm from the coils. The results demonstrate that feedback is a practical path to scalable, efficient, and clinically relevant magnetic manipulation. A video presenting our approach is available at https://youtu.be/PQeAKPL_iS0. Magnetic navigation systems are rapidly emerging as a key technology in medical robotics, enabling breakthroughs from precision drug delivery to sophisticated endoscopic procedures [1]-[3]. These systems act on nanometer to centimeter scales and encompass both soft and hard magnetomagnetic materials [4], [5]. Michael Muehlebach is with the Learning and Dynamical Systems Group, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, 72076 T ubingen, Germany (email: michael.muehlebach@tuebingen.mpg.de). We balance two 3D inverted pendulums simultaneously within the same magnetic workspace, leveraging the magnetic field created by the OctoMag eMNS. Because both pendulums are identical, independent actuation under a global field requires exploiting the nonlinearity of the magnetic field. This setup is used as an experimental platform to compare different strategies for multi-agent control. Each inverted pendulum system includes an arm driven by the external magnetic field and a non-magnetic pendulum. Balancing two inverted pendulums within the same magnetic workspace is challenging due to coupling effects not only between each coil and the permanent magnets, but also between the magnets themselves.
MOMA-AC: A preference-driven actor-critic framework for continuous multi-objective multi-agent reinforcement learning
Callaghan, Adam, Mason, Karl, Mannion, Patrick
This paper addresses a critical gap in Multi-Objective Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MOMARL) by introducing the first dedicated inner-loop actor-critic framework for continuous state and action spaces: Multi-Objective Multi-Agent Actor-Critic (MOMA-AC). Building on single-objective, single-agent algorithms, we instantiate this framework with Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (TD3) and Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG), yielding MOMA-TD3 and MOMA-DDPG. The framework combines a multi-headed actor network, a centralised critic, and an objective preference-conditioning architecture, enabling a single neural network to encode the Pareto front of optimal trade-off policies for all agents across conflicting objectives in a continuous MOMARL setting. We also outline a natural test suite for continuous MOMARL by combining a pre-existing multi-agent single-objective physics simulator with its multi-objective single-agent counterpart. Evaluating cooperative locomotion tasks in this suite, we show that our framework achieves statistically significant improvements in expected utility and hypervolume relative to outer-loop and independent training baselines, while demonstrating stable scalability as the number of agents increases. These results establish our framework as a foundational step towards robust, scalable multi-objective policy learning in continuous multi-agent domains.
A Coordinated Dual-Arm Framework for Delicate Snap-Fit Assemblies
Kumar, Shreyas, S, Barat, Das, Debojit, Desai, Yug, Jain, Siddhi, Kumar, Rajesh, Palanthandalam-Madapusi, Harish J.
Delicate snap-fit assemblies, such as inserting a lens into an eye-wear frame or during electronics assembly, demand timely engagement detection and rapid force attenuation to prevent overshoot-induced component damage or assembly failure. We address these challenges with two key contributions. First, we introduce SnapNet, a lightweight neural network that detects snap-fit engagement from joint-velocity transients in real-time, showing that reliable detection can be achieved using proprioceptive signals without external sensors. Second, we present a dynamical-systems-based dual-arm coordination framework that integrates SnapNet driven detection with an event-triggered impedance modulation, enabling accurate alignment and compliant insertion during delicate snap-fit assemblies. Experiments across diverse geometries on a heterogeneous bimanual platform demonstrate high detection accuracy (over 96% recall) and up to a 30% reduction in peak impact forces compared to standard impedance control.
MASTEST: A LLM-Based Multi-Agent System For RESTful API Tests
Testing RESTful API is increasingly important in quality assurance of cloud-native applications. Recent advances in machine learning (ML) techniques have demonstrated that various testing activities can be performed automatically by large language models (LLMs) with reasonable accuracy. This paper develops a multi-agent system called MASTEST that combines LLM-based and programmed agents to form a complete tool chain that covers the whole workflow of API test starting from generating unit and system test scenarios from API specification in the OpenAPI Swagger format, to generating of Pytest test scripts, executing test scripts to interact with web services, to analysing web service response messages to determine test correctness and calculate test coverage. The system also supports the incorporation of human testers in reviewing and correcting LLM generated test artefacts to ensure the quality of testing activities. MASTEST system is evaluated on two LLMs, GPT-4o and DeepSeek V3.1 Reasoner with five public APIs. The performances of LLMs on various testing activities are measured by a wide range of metrics, including unit and system test scenario coverage and API operation coverage for the quality of generated test scenarios, data type correctness, status code coverage and script syntax correctness for the quality of LLM generated test scripts, as well as bug detection ability and usability of LLM generated test scenarios and scripts. Experiment results demonstrated that both DeepSeek and GPT-4o achieved a high overall performance. DeepSeek excels in data type correctness and status code detection, while GPT-4o performs best in API operation coverage. For both models, LLM generated test scripts maintained 100\% syntax correctness and only required minimal manual edits for semantic correctness. These findings indicate the effectiveness and feasibility of MASTEST.
Uncertainty-Aware Federated Learning for Cyber-Resilient Microgrid Energy Management
Babayomi, Oluleke, Kim, Dong-Seong
Maintaining economic efficiency and operational reliability in microgrid energy management systems under cyberattack conditions remains challenging. Most approaches assume non-anomalous measurements, make predictions with unquantified uncertainties, and do not mitigate malicious attacks on renewable forecasts for energy management optimization. This paper presents a comprehensive cyber-resilient framework integrating federated Long Short-Term Memory-based photovoltaic forecasting with a novel two-stage cascade false data injection attack detection and energy management system optimization. The approach combines autoencoder reconstruction error with prediction uncertainty quantification to enable attack-resilient energy storage scheduling while preserving data privacy. Extreme false data attack conditions were studied that caused 58% forecast degradation and 16.9\% operational cost increases. The proposed integrated framework reduced false positive detections by 70%, recovered 93.7% of forecasting performance losses, and achieved 5\% operational cost savings, mitigating 34.7% of attack-induced economic losses. Results demonstrate that precision-focused cascade detection with multi-signal fusion outperforms single-signal approaches, validating security-performance synergy for decentralized microgrids.
A multi-view contrastive learning framework for spatial embeddings in risk modelling
Holvoet, Freek, Blier-Wong, Christopher, Antonio, Katrien
Incorporating spatial information, particularly those influenced by climate, weather, and demographic factors, is crucial for improving underwriting precision and enhancing risk management in insurance. However, spatial data are often unstructured, high-dimensional, and difficult to integrate into predictive models. Embedding methods are needed to convert spatial data into meaningful representations for modelling tasks. We propose a novel multi-view contrastive learning framework for generating spatial embeddings that combine information from multiple spatial data sources. To train the model, we construct a spatial dataset that merges satellite imagery and OpenStreetMap features across Europe. The framework aligns these spatial views with coordinate-based encodings, producing low-dimensional embeddings that capture both spatial structure and contextual similarity. Once trained, the model generates embeddings directly from latitude-longitude pairs, enabling any dataset with coordinates to be enriched with meaningful spatial features without requiring access to the original spatial inputs. In a case study on French real estate prices, we compare models trained on raw coordinates against those using our spatial embeddings as inputs. The embeddings consistently improve predictive accuracy across generalised linear, additive, and boosting models, while providing interpretable spatial effects and demonstrating transferability to unseen regions.
Efficient Dynamic and Momentum Aperture Optimization for Lattice Design Using Multipoint Bayesian Algorithm Execution
Zhang, Z., Agapov, I., Gasiorowski, S., Hellert, T., Neiswanger, W., Huang, X., Ratner, D.
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 (Dated: November 25, 2025) We demonstrate that multipoint Bayesian algorithm execution can overcome fundamental computational challenges in storage ring design optimization. Dynamic (DA) and momentum (MA) optimization is a multipoint, multiobjective design task for storage rings, ultimately informing the flux of x-ray sources and luminosity of colliders. We remove this bottleneck using multipointBAX, which selects, simulates, and models each trial configuration at the single particle level. We demonstrate our approach on a novel design for a fourth-generation light source, with neural-network powered multipointBAX achieving equivalent Pareto front results using more than two orders of magnitude fewer tracking computations compared to genetic algorithms. The significant reduction in cost positions multipointBAX as a promising alternative to black-box optimization, and we anticipate multipointBAX will be instrumental in the design of future light sources, colliders, and large-scale scientific facilities. Designing modern scientific facilities -- from synchrotron light sources to particle colliders -- requires optimizing hundreds of parameters in a complex, nonlinear systems, where a single design evaluation can take hours of computation. In storage rings, this challenge is exemplified by dynamic aperture (DA) and momentum aperture (MA) optimization, where maximizing the regions of particle stability directly determines injection efficiency, beam lifetime, and ultimately the photon flux or luminosity achievable in next-generation facilities. The computational bottleneck is severe: maximizing DA and MA is a type of multipoint optimization, where evaluating a single lattice design requires tracking tens of thousands of particles for hundreds of thousands of turns, making global optimization prohibitively expensive. Moreover, there is a trade-off between maximizing DA and MA area, so the standard approach is to find a Pareto front; i.e.
Scaling Kinetic Monte-Carlo Simulations of Grain Growth with Combined Convolutional and Graph Neural Networks
Tian, Zhihui, Suwandi, Ethan, Oppelstrup, Tomas, Bulatov, Vasily V., Harley, Joel B., Zhou, Fei
Graph neural networks (GNN) have emerged as a promising machine learning method for microstructure simulations such as grain growth. However, accurate modeling of realistic grain boundary networks requires large simulation cells, which GNN has difficulty scaling up to. To alleviate the computational costs and memory footprint of GNN, we propose a hybrid architecture combining a convolutional neural network (CNN) based bijective autoencoder to compress the spatial dimensions, and a GNN that evolves the microstructure in the latent space of reduced spatial sizes. Our results demonstrate that the new design significantly reduces computational costs with using fewer message passing layer (from 12 down to 3) compared with GNN alone. The reduction in computational cost becomes more pronounced as the spatial size increases, indicating strong computational scalability. For the largest mesh evaluated (160^3), our method reduces memory usage and runtime in inference by 117x and 115x, respectively, compared with GNN-only baseline. More importantly, it shows higher accuracy and stronger spatiotemporal capability than the GNN-only baseline, especially in long-term testing. Such combination of scalability and accuracy is essential for simulating realistic material microstructures over extended time scales. The improvements can be attributed to the bijective autoencoder's ability to compress information losslessly from spatial domain into a high dimensional feature space, thereby producing more expressive latent features for the GNN to learn from, while also contributing its own spatiotemporal modeling capability. The training was optimized to learn from the stochastic Potts Monte Carlo method. Our findings provide a highly scalable approach for simulating grain growth.
A segment anchoring-based balancing algorithm for agricultural multi-robot task allocation with energy constraints
Chen, Peng, Liang, Jing, Qiao, Kang-Jia, Song, Hui, Ma, Tian-lei, Yu, Kun-Jie, Yue, Cai-Tong, Suganthan, Ponnuthurai Nagaratnam, Pedryc, Witold
Multi-robot systems have emerged as a key technology for addressing the efficiency and cost challenges in labor-intensive industries. In the representative scenario of smart farming, planning efficient harvesting schedules for a fleet of electric robots presents a highly challenging frontier problem. The complexity arises not only from the need to find Pareto-optimal solutions for the conflicting objectives of makespan and transportation cost, but also from the necessity to simultaneously manage payload constraints and finite battery capacity. When robot loads are dynamically updated during planned multi-trip operations, a mandatory recharge triggered by energy constraints introduces an unscheduled load reset. This interaction creates a complex cascading effect that disrupts the entire schedule and renders traditional optimization methods ineffective. To address this challenge, this paper proposes the segment anchoring-based balancing algorithm (SABA). The core of SABA lies in the organic combination of two synergistic mechanisms: the sequential anchoring and balancing mechanism, which leverages charging decisions as `anchors' to systematically reconstruct disrupted routes, while the proportional splitting-based rebalancing mechanism is responsible for the fine-grained balancing and tuning of the final solutions' makespans. Extensive comparative experiments, conducted on a real-world case study and a suite of benchmark instances, demonstrate that SABA comprehensively outperforms 6 state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of both solution convergence and diversity. This research provides a novel theoretical perspective and an effective solution for the multi-robot task allocation problem under energy constraints.
CompTrack: Information Bottleneck-Guided Low-Rank Dynamic Token Compression for Point Cloud Tracking
Zhou, Sifan, Cao, Yichao, Nie, Jiahao, Fu, Yuqian, Zhao, Ziyu, Lu, Xiaobo, Wang, Shuo
Despite great success having been achieved, the inherent sparsity of point clouds introduces a dual-redundancy challenge that limits existing trackers: (1) vast spatial redundancy from background noise impairs accuracy, and (2) informational redundancy within the foreground hinders efficiency. To tackle these issues, we propose CompTrack, an novel end-to-end framework that systematically eliminates both forms of redundancy in point clouds. First, CompTrack incorporates a Spatial F oreground Predictor (SFP) module to filter out irrelevant background noise based on information entropy, addressing spatial redundancy. Subsequently, its core is an Information Bottleneck-guided Dynamic T oken Compression (IB-DTC) module that eliminates the informational redundancy within the foreground. Theoretically grounded in low-rank approximation, this module leverages an online SVD analysis to adaptively compress the redundant foreground into a compact and highly informative set of proxy tokens.Extensive experiments on KITTI, nuScenes and Waymo datasets demonstrate that CompTrack achieves top-performing tracking performance with superior efficiency, running at a real-time 90 FPS on a single RTX 3090 GPU.