Robotic arms mounted on spacecraft, known as space manipulator systems (SMSs), are critical for enabling on-orbit assembly, satellite servicing, and debris removal. However, controlling these systems in microgravity remains a significant challenge due to the dynamic coupling between the manipulator and the spacecraft base. This study explores the potential of using biological inspiration to address this issue, focusing on animals, particularly lizards, that exhibit mid-air righting reflexes. Based on similarities between SMSs and these animals in terms of behavior, morphology, and environment, their air-righting motion trajectories are extracted from high-speed video recordings using computer vision techniques. These trajectories are analyzed within a multi-objective optimization framework to identify the key behavioral goals and assess their relative importance. The resulting motion profiles are then applied as reference trajectories for SMS control, with baseline controllers used to track them. The findings provide a step toward translating evolved animal behaviors into interpretable, adaptive control strategies for space robotics, with implications for improving maneuverability and robustness in future missions.

The increasing deployment of large language models (LLMs) in natural language processing (NLP) tasks raises concerns about energy efficiency and sustainability. While prior research has largely focused on energy consumption during model training, the inference phase has received comparatively less attention. This study systematically evaluates the trade-offs between model accuracy and energy consumption in text classification inference across various model architectures and hardware configurations. Our empirical analysis shows that the best-performing model in terms of accuracy can also be energy-efficient, while larger LLMs tend to consume significantly more energy with lower classification accuracy. We observe substantial variability in inference energy consumption ($<$mWh to $>$kWh), influenced by model type, model size, and hardware specifications. Additionally, we find a strong correlation between inference energy consumption and model runtime, indicating that execution time can serve as a practical proxy for energy usage in settings where direct measurement is not feasible. These findings have implications for sustainable AI development, providing actionable insights for researchers, industry practitioners, and policymakers seeking to balance performance and resource efficiency in NLP applications.

Designing shape memory alloys (SMAs) that meet performance targets while remaining affordable and sustainable is a complex challenge. In this work, we focus on optimizing SMA compositions to achieve a desired martensitic start temperature (Ms) while minimizing cost. To do this, we use machine learning models as surrogate predictors and apply numerical optimization methods to search for suitable alloy combinations. We trained two types of machine learning models, a tree-based ensemble and a neural network, using a dataset of experimentally characterized alloys and physics-informed features. The tree-based model was used with a derivative-free optimizer (COBYLA), while the neural network, which provides gradient information, was paired with a gradient-based optimizer (TRUST-CONSTR). Our results show that while both models predict Ms with similar accuracy, the optimizer paired with the neural network finds better solutions more consistently. COBYLA often converged to suboptimal results, especially when the starting guess was far from the target. The TRUST-CONSTR method showed more stable behavior and was better at reaching alloy compositions that met both objectives. This study demonstrates a practical approach to exploring new SMA compositions by combining physics-informed data, machine learning models, and optimization algorithms. Although the scale of our dataset is smaller than simulation-based efforts, the use of experimental data improves the reliability of the predictions. The approach can be extended to other materials where design trade-offs must be made with limited data.

This paper introduces a high resolution, machine learning-ready heliophysics dataset derived from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), specifically designed to advance machine learning (ML) applications in solar physics and space weather forecasting. The dataset includes processed imagery from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) and Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI), spanning a solar cycle from May 2010 to July 2024. To ensure suitability for ML tasks, the data has been preprocessed, including correction of spacecraft roll angles, orbital adjustments, exposure normalization, and degradation compensation. We also provide auxiliary application benchmark datasets complementing the core SDO dataset. These provide benchmark applications for central heliophysics and space weather tasks such as active region segmentation, active region emergence forecasting, coronal field extrapolation, solar flare prediction, solar EUV spectra prediction, and solar wind speed estimation. By establishing a unified, standardized data collection, this dataset aims to facilitate benchmarking, enhance reproducibility, and accelerate the development of AI-driven models for critical space weather prediction tasks, bridging gaps between solar physics, machine learning, and operational forecasting.

This study investigates the application of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in public management, focusing on optimizing path planning to address challenges such as energy consumption, obstacle avoidance, and airspace constraints. As UAVs transition from 'technical tools' to 'governance infrastructure', driven by advancements in low-altitude economy policies and smart city demands, efficient path planning becomes critical. The research proposes an enhanced Rapidly-exploring Random Tree algorithm (dRRT), incorporating four strategies: Target Bias (to accelerate convergence), Dynamic Step Size (to balance exploration and obstacle navigation), Detour Priority (to prioritize horizontal detours over vertical ascents), and B-spline smoothing (to enhance path smoothness). Simulations in a 500 m3 urban environment with randomized buildings demonstrate dRRT's superiority over traditional RRT, A*, and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). Results show dRRT achieves a 100\% success rate with an average runtime of 0.01468s, shorter path lengths, fewer waypoints, and smoother trajectories (maximum yaw angles <45°). Despite improvements, limitations include increased computational overhead from added mechanisms and potential local optima due to goal biasing. The study highlights dRRT's potential for efficient UAV deployment in public management scenarios like emergency response and traffic monitoring, while underscoring the need for integration with real-time obstacle avoidance frameworks. This work contributes to interdisciplinary advancements in urban governance, robotics, and computational optimization.

Reward machines (RMs) provide a structured way to specify non-Markovian rewards in reinforcement learning (RL), thereby improving both expressiveness and programmability. Viewed more broadly, they separate what is known about the environment, captured by the reward mechanism, from what remains unknown and must be discovered through sampling. This separation supports techniques such as counterfactual experience generation and reward shaping, which reduce sample complexity and speed up learning. We introduce physics-informed reward machines (pRMs), a symbolic machine designed to express complex learning objectives and reward structures for RL agents, thereby enabling more programmable, expressive, and efficient learning. We present RL algorithms capable of exploiting pRMs via counterfactual experiences and reward shaping. Our experimental results show that these techniques accelerate reward acquisition during the training phases of RL. We demonstrate the expressiveness and effectiveness of pRMs through experiments in both finite and continuous physical environments, illustrating that incorporating pRMs significantly improves learning efficiency across several control tasks.

Large language models have revolutionized artificial intelligence by enabling large, generalizable models trained through self-supervision. This paradigm has inspired the development of scientific foundation models (FMs). However, applying this capability to experimental particle physics is challenging due to the sparse, spatially distributed nature of detector data, which differs dramatically from natural language. This work addresses if an FM for particle physics can scale and generalize across diverse tasks. We introduce a new dataset with more than 11 million particle collision events and a suite of downstream tasks and labeled data for evaluation. We propose a novel self-supervised training method for detector data and demonstrate its neural scalability with models that feature up to 188 million parameters. With frozen weights and task-specific adapters, this FM consistently outperforms baseline models across all downstream tasks. The performance also exhibits robust data-efficient adaptation. Further analysis reveals that the representations extracted by the FM are task-agnostic but can be specialized via a single linear mapping for different downstream tasks.

Accurate electricity price forecasting (EPF) is crucial for effective decision-making in power trading on the spot market. While recent advances in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and pre-trained large language models (LLMs) have inspired the development of numerous time series foundation models (TSFMs) for time series forecasting, their effectiveness in EPF remains uncertain. To address this gap, we benchmark several state-of-the-art pretrained models--Chronos-Bolt, Chronos-T5, TimesFM, Moirai, Time-MoE, and TimeGPT--against established statistical and machine learning (ML) methods for EPF. Using 2024 day-ahead auction (DAA) electricity prices from Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, and Belgium, we generate daily forecasts with a one-day horizon. Chronos-Bolt and Time-MoE emerge as the strongest among the TSFMs, performing on par with traditional models. However, the biseasonal MSTL model, which captures daily and weekly seasonality, stands out for its consistent performance across countries and evaluation metrics, with no TSFM statistically outperforming it.

Abstract-- The interaction between humans and AI in safety-critical systems presents a unique set of challenges that re main partially addressed by existing frameworks. These challen ges stem from the complex interplay of requirements for transparency, trust, and explainability, coupled with the neces sity for robust and safe decision-making. A framework that holistic ally integrates human and AI capabilities while addressing thes e concerns is notably required, bridging the critical gaps in designing, deploying, and maintaining safe and effective sys tems. This paper proposes a holistic conceptual framework for cri tical infrastructures by adopting an interdisciplinary approac h. It integrates traditionally distinct fields such as mathemati cs, decision theory, computer science, philosophy, psycholog y, and cognitive engineering and draws on specialized engineerin g domains, particularly energy, mobility, and aeronautics. Its flexibility is further demonstrated through a case study on power grid management. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is showing high potential to transform the management of critical infrastructures [1], tackling pressing challenges like climate change and the rising demand for energy and mobility systems while advancing strategic objectives such as energy transition and digi tal transformation. On the other hand, integrating AI in critic al sectors introduces significant challenges, many of which ar e already being addressed by emerging regulatory frameworks, such as the European Union AI Act. These frameworks emphasize the importance of safety, transparency, and adhe r-ence to ethical standards and principles to mitigate a wide range of risks, including technical, social, and environme ntal hazards associated with deploying AI in high-risk domains. Another key challenge lies in fostering effective human-AI collaboration.

In recent years, the increasing frequency of extreme urban rainfall events has posed significant challenges to emergency scheduling systems. Urban flooding often leads to severe traffic congestion and service disruptions, threatening public safety and mobility. However, effective decision making remains hindered by three key challenges: (1) managing trade-offs among competing goals (e.g., traffic flow, task completion, and risk mitigation) requires dynamic, context-aware strategies; (2) rapidly evolving environmental conditions render static rules inadequate; and (3) LLM-generated strategies frequently suffer from semantic instability and execution inconsistency. Existing methods fail to align perception, global optimization, and multi-agent coordination within a unified framework. To tackle these challenges, we introduce H-J, a hierarchical multi-agent framework that integrates knowledge-guided prompting, entropy-constrained generation, and feedback-driven optimization. The framework establishes a closed-loop pipeline spanning from multi-source perception to strategic execution and continuous refinement. We evaluate H-J on real-world urban topology and rainfall data under three representative conditions: extreme rainfall, intermittent bursts, and daily light rain. Experiments show that H-J outperforms rule-based and reinforcement-learning baselines in traffic smoothness, task success rate, and system robustness. These findings highlight the promise of uncertainty-aware, knowledge-constrained LLM-based approaches for enhancing resilience in urban flood response.