Energy
maxVSTAR: Maximally Adaptive Vision-Guided CSI Sensing with Closed-Loop Edge Model Adaptation for Robust Human Activity Recognition
WiFi Channel State Information (CSI)-based human activity recognition (HAR) provides a privacy-preserving, device-free sensing solution for smart environments. However, its deployment on edge devices is severely constrained by domain shift, where recognition performance deteriorates under varying environmental and hardware conditions. This study presents maxVSTAR (maximally adaptive Vision-guided Sensing Technology for Activity Recognition), a closed-loop, vision-guided model adaptation framework that autonomously mitigates domain shift for edge-deployed CSI sensing systems. The proposed system integrates a cross-modal teacher-student architecture, where a high-accuracy YOLO-based vision model serves as a dynamic supervisory signal, delivering real-time activity labels for the CSI data stream. These labels enable autonomous, online fine-tuning of a lightweight CSI-based HAR model, termed Sensing Technology for Activity Recognition (STAR), directly at the edge. This closed-loop retraining mechanism allows STAR to continuously adapt to environmental changes without manual intervention. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of maxVSTAR. When deployed on uncalibrated hardware, the baseline STAR model's recognition accuracy declined from 93.52% to 49.14%. Following a single vision-guided adaptation cycle, maxVSTAR restored the accuracy to 81.51%. These results confirm the system's capacity for dynamic, self-supervised model adaptation in privacy-conscious IoT environments, establishing a scalable and practical paradigm for long-term autonomous HAR using CSI sensing at the network edge.
The FM Agent
Li, Annan, Wu, Chufan, Ge, Zengle, Chong, Yee Hin, Hou, Zhinan, Cao, Lizhe, Ju, Cheng, Wu, Jianmin, Li, Huaiming, Zhang, Haobo, Feng, Shenghao, Zhao, Mo, Qiu, Fengzhi, Yang, Rui, Zhang, Mengmeng, Zhu, Wenyi, Sun, Yingying, Sun, Quan, Yan, Shunhao, Liu, Danyu, Yin, Dawei, Shen, Dou
Large language models (LLMs) are catalyzing the development of autonomous AI research agents for scientific and engineering discovery. We present FM Agent, a novel and general-purpose multi-agent framework that leverages a synergistic combination of LLM-based reasoning and large-scale evolutionary search to address complex real-world challenges. The core of FM Agent integrates several key innovations: 1) a cold-start initialization phase incorporating expert guidance, 2) a novel evolutionary sampling strategy for iterative optimization, 3) domain-specific evaluators that combine correctness, effectiveness, and LLM-supervised feedback, and 4) a distributed, asynchronous execution infrastructure built on Ray. Demonstrating broad applicability, our system has been evaluated across diverse domains, including operations research, machine learning, GPU kernel optimization, and classical mathematical problems. FM Agent reaches state-of-the-art results autonomously, without human interpretation or tuning -- 1976.3 on ALE-Bench (+5.2\%), 43.56\% on MLE-Bench (+4.0pp), up to 20x speedups on KernelBench, and establishes new state-of-the-art(SOTA) results on several classical mathematical problems. Beyond academic benchmarks, FM Agent shows considerable promise for both large-scale enterprise R\&D workflows and fundamental scientific research, where it can accelerate innovation, automate complex discovery processes, and deliver substantial engineering and scientific advances with broader societal impact.
Beyond Benchmarks: The Economics of AI Inference
Zhuang, Boqin, Qiao, Jiacheng, Liu, Mingqian, Yu, Mingxing, Hong, Ping, Li, Rui, Song, Xiaoxia, Xu, Xiangjun, Chen, Xu, Ma, Yaoyao, Gao, Yujie
The inference cost of Large Language Models (LLMs) has become a critical factor in determining their commercial viability and widespread adoption. This paper introduces a quantitative ``economics of inference'' framework, treating the LLM inference process as a compute-driven intelligent production activity. We analyze its marginal cost, economies of scale, and quality of output under various performance configurations. Based on empirical data from WiNEval-3.0, we construct the first ``LLM Inference Production Frontier,'' revealing three principles: diminishing marginal cost, diminishing returns to scale, and an optimal cost-effectiveness zone. This paper not only provides an economic basis for model deployment decisions but also lays an empirical foundation for the future market-based pricing and optimization of AI inference resources.
RADRON: Cooperative Localization of Ionizing Radiation Sources by MAVs with Compton Cameras
Stibinger, Petr, Baca, Tomas, Doubravova, Daniela, Rusnak, Jan, Solc, Jaroslav, Jakubek, Jan, Stepan, Petr, Saska, Martin
This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Abstract-- We present a novel approach to localizing radioactive material by cooperating Micro Aerial V ehicles (MA Vs). The detector's exceptionally low weight (40 g) opens up new possibilities of radiation detection by a team of cooperating agile MA Vs. We propose a new fundamental concept of fusing the Compton camera measurements to estimate the position of the radiation source in real time even from extremely sparse measurements. The data readout and processing are performed directly onboard and the results are used in a dynamic feedback to drive the motion of the vehicles. The MA Vs are stabilized in a tightly cooperating swarm to maximize the information gained by the Compton cameras, rapidly locate the radiation source, and even track a moving radiation source. I. INTRODUCTION Nuclear environments represent a domain particularly well suited for the deployment of mobile robots [1]-[3]. The primary driving force is to reduce human exposure to harmful radiation, and to facilitate access to areas that are difficult to reach by conventional means.
A General and Streamlined Differentiable Optimization Framework
Rosemberg, Andrew W., Garcia, Joaquim Dias, Pacaud, Franรงois, Parker, Robert B., Legat, Benoรฎt, Sundar, Kaarthik, Bent, Russell, Van Hentenryck, Pascal
Differentiating through constrained optimization problems is increasingly central to learning, control, and large-scale decision-making systems, yet practical integration remains challenging due to solver specialization and interface mismatches. This paper presents a general and streamlined framework-an updated DiffOpt.jl-that unifies modeling and differentiation within the Julia optimization stack. The framework computes forward - and reverse-mode solution and objective sensitivities for smooth, potentially nonconvex programs by differentiating the KKT system under standard regularity assumptions. A first-class, JuMP-native parameter-centric API allows users to declare named parameters and obtain derivatives directly with respect to them - even when a parameter appears in multiple constraints and objectives - eliminating brittle bookkeeping from coefficient-level interfaces. We illustrate these capabilities on convex and nonconvex models, including economic dispatch, mean-variance portfolio selection with conic risk constraints, and nonlinear robot inverse kinematics. Two companion studies further demonstrate impact at scale: gradient-based iterative methods for strategic bidding in energy markets and Sobolev-style training of end-to-end optimization proxies using solver-accurate sensitivities. Together, these results demonstrate that differentiable optimization can be deployed as a routine tool for experimentation, learning, calibration, and design-without deviating from standard JuMP modeling practices and while retaining access to a broad ecosystem of solvers.
A New Type of Axis-Angle Attitude Control Law for Rotational Systems: Synthesis, Analysis, and Experiments
Gonรงalves, Francisco M. F. R., Bena, Ryan M., Pรฉrez-Arancibia, Nรฉstor O.
Over the past few decades, continuous quaternion-based attitude control has been proven highly effective for driving rotational systems that can be modeled as rigid bodies, such as satellites and drones. However, methods rooted in this approach do not enforce the existence of a unique closed-loop (CL) equilibrium attitude-error quaternion (AEQ); and, for rotational errors about the attitude-error Euler axis larger than ฯrad, their proportional-control effect diminishes as the system state moves away from the stable equilibrium of the CL rotational dynamics. In this paper, we introduce a new type of attitude control law that more effectively leverages the attitude-error Euler axis-angle information to guarantee a unique CL equilibrium AEQ and to provide greater flexibility in the use of proportional-control efforts. Furthermore, using two different control laws as examples-through the construction of a strict Lyapunov function for the CL dynamics-we demonstrate that the resulting unique equilibrium of the CL rotational system can be enforced to be uniformly asymptotically stable. To assess and demonstrate the functionality and performance of the proposed approach, we performed numerical simulations and executed dozens of real-time tumble-recovery maneuvers using a small quadrotor. These simulations and flight tests compellingly demonstrate that the proposed axis-angle-based method achieves superior flight performance-compared with that obtained using a high-performance quaternion-based controller-in terms of stabilization time.
WaveVerif: Acoustic Side-Channel based Verification of Robotic Workflows
Erdogan, Zeynep Yasemin, Nagaraja, Shishir, Ahmed, Chuadhry Mujeeb, Shah, Ryan
In this paper, we present a framework that uses acoustic side-channel analysis (ASCA) to monitor and verify whether a robot correctly executes its intended commands. We develop and evaluate a machine-learning-based workflow verification system that uses acoustic emissions generated by robotic movements. The system can determine whether real-time behavior is consistent with expected commands. The evaluation takes into account movement speed, direction, and microphone distance. The results show that individual robot movements can be validated with over 80% accuracy under baseline conditions using four different classifiers: Support Vector Machine (SVM), Deep Neural Network (DNN), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Additionally, workflows such as pick-and-place and packing could be identified with similarly high confidence. Our findings demonstrate that acoustic signals can support real-time, low-cost, passive verification in sensitive robotic environments without requiring hardware modifications.
Application and Validation of Geospatial Foundation Model Data for the Prediction of Health Facility Programmatic Outputs -- A Case Study in Malawi
Metz, Lynn, Haggard, Rachel, Moszczynski, Michael, Asbah, Samer, Mwase, Chris, Khomani, Patricia, Smith, Tyler, Cooper, Hannah, Mwale, Annie, Muslim, Arbaaz, Prasad, Gautam, Sun, Mimi, Shekel, Tomer, Paul, Joydeep, Carter, Anna, Shetty, Shravya, Green, Dylan
The reliability of routine health data in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) is often constrained by reporting delays and incomplete coverage, necessitating the exploration of novel data sources and analytics. Geospatial Foundation Models (GeoFMs) offer a promising avenue by synthesizing diverse spatial, temporal, and behavioral data into mathematical embeddings that can be efficiently used for downstream prediction tasks. This study evaluated the predictive performance of three GeoFM embedding sources - Google Population Dynamics Foundation Model (PDFM), Google AlphaEarth (derived from satellite imagery), and mobile phone call detail records (CDR) - for modeling 15 routine health programmatic outputs in Malawi, and compared their utility to traditional geospatial interpolation methods. We used XGBoost models on data from 552 health catchment areas (January 2021-May 2023), assessing performance with R2, and using an 80/20 training and test data split with 5-fold cross-validation used in training. While predictive performance was mixed, the embedding-based approaches improved upon baseline geostatistical methods in 13 of 15 (87%) indicators tested. A Multi-GeoFM model integrating all three embedding sources produced the most robust predictions, achieving average 5-fold cross validated R2 values for indicators like population density (0.63), new HIV cases (0.57), and child vaccinations (0.47) and test set R2 of 0.64, 0.68, and 0.55, respectively. Prediction was poor for prediction targets with low primary data availability, such as TB and malnutrition cases. These results demonstrate that GeoFM embeddings imbue a modest predictive improvement for select health and demographic outcomes in an LMIC context. We conclude that the integration of multiple GeoFM sources is an efficient and valuable tool for supplementing and strengthening constrained routine health information systems.
Send Less, Save More: Energy-Efficiency Benchmark of Embedded CNN Inference vs. Data Transmission in IoT
Karic, Benjamin, Herrmann, Nina, Stenkamp, Jan, Scharf, Paula, Gieseke, Fabian, Schwering, Angela
The integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence offers significant opportunities to enhance our ability to monitor and address ecological changes. As environmental challenges become increasingly pressing, the need for effective remote monitoring solutions is more critical than ever. A major challenge in designing IoT applications for environmental monitoring - particularly those involving image data - is to create energy-efficient IoT devices capable of long-term operation in remote areas with limited power availability. Advancements in the field of Tiny Machine Learning allow the use of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) on resource-constrained, battery-operated microcontrollers. Since data transfer is energy-intensive, performing inference directly on microcontrollers to reduce the message size can extend the operational lifespan of IoT nodes. This work evaluates the use of common Low Power Wide Area Networks and compressed CNNs trained on domain specific datasets on an ESP32-S3. Our experiments demonstrate, among other things, that executing CNN inference on-device and transmitting only the results reduces the overall energy consumption by a factor of up to five compared to sending raw image data. These findings advocate the development of IoT applications with reduced carbon footprint and capable of operating autonomously in environmental monitoring scenarios by incorporating EmbeddedML.
Hierarchical Graph Networks for Accurate Weather Forecasting via Lightweight Training
Bailie, Thomas, Mukkavilli, S. Karthik, Vetrova, Varvara, Koh, Yun Sing
Climate events arise from intricate, multivariate dynamics governed by global-scale drivers, profoundly impacting food, energy, and infrastructure. Yet, accurate weather prediction remains elusive due to physical processes unfolding across diverse spatio-temporal scales, which fixed-resolution methods cannot capture. Hierarchical Graph Neural Networks (HGNNs) offer a multiscale representation, but nonlinear downward mappings often erase global trends, weakening the integration of physics into forecasts. We introduce HiFlowCast and its ensemble variant HiAntFlow, HGNNs that embed physics within a multiscale prediction framework. Two innovations underpin their design: a Latent-Memory-Retention mechanism that preserves global trends during downward traversal, and a Latent-to-Physics branch that integrates PDE solution fields across diverse scales. Our Flow models cut errors by over 5% at 13-day lead times and by 5-8% under 1st and 99th quantile extremes, improving reliability for rare events. Leveraging pretrained model weights, they converge within a single epoch, reducing training cost and their carbon footprint. Such efficiency is vital as the growing scale of machine learning challenges sustainability and limits research accessibility. Code and model weights are in the supplementary materials.