Ferroelectric polarization switching underpins the functional performance of a wide range of materials and devices, yet its dependence on complex local microstructural features renders systematic exploration by manual or grid-based spectroscopic measurements impractical. Here, we introduce a multi-objective kernel-learning workflow that infers the microstructural rules governing switching behavior directly from high-resolution imaging data. Applied to automated piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) experiments, our framework efficiently identifies the key relationships between domain-wall configurations and local switching kinetics, revealing how specific wall geometries and defect distributions modulate polarization reversal. Post-experiment analysis projects abstract reward functions, such as switching ease and domain symmetry, onto physically interpretable descriptors including domain configuration and proximity to boundaries. This enables not only high-throughput active learning, but also mechanistic insight into the microstructural control of switching phenomena. While demonstrated for ferroelectric domain switching, our approach provides a powerful, generalizable tool for navigating complex, non-differentiable design spaces, from structure-property correlations in molecular discovery to combinatorial optimization across diverse imaging modalities.

Agentic UAVs represent a new frontier in autonomous aerial intelligence, integrating perception, decision-making, memory, and collaborative planning to operate adaptively in complex, real-world environments. Driven by recent advances in Agentic AI, these systems surpass traditional UAVs by exhibiting goal-driven behavior, contextual reasoning, and interactive autonomy. We provide a comprehensive foundation for understanding the architectural components and enabling technologies that distinguish Agentic UAVs from traditional autonomous UAVs. Furthermore, a detailed comparative analysis highlights advancements in autonomy with AI agents, learning, and mission flexibility. This study explores seven high-impact application domains precision agriculture, construction & mining, disaster response, environmental monitoring, infrastructure inspection, logistics, security, and wildlife conservation, illustrating the broad societal value of agentic aerial intelligence. Furthermore, we identify key challenges in technical constraints, regulatory limitations, and data-model reliability, and we present emerging solutions across hardware innovation, learning architectures, and human-AI interaction. Finally, a future roadmap is proposed, outlining pathways toward self-evolving aerial ecosystems, system-level collaboration, and sustainable, equitable deployments. This survey establishes a foundational framework for the future development, deployment, and governance of agentic aerial systems (Agentic UAVs) across diverse societal and industrial domains.

Atomistic simulations are essential tools in chemistry and materials science, accelerating the discovery of novel catalysts, energy storage materials, and pharmaceuticals. However, running these simulations remains challenging due to the wide range of computational methods, diverse software ecosystems, and the need for expert knowledge and manual effort for the setup, execution, and validation stages. In this work, we present ChemGraph, an agentic framework powered by artificial intelligence and state-of-the-art simulation tools to streamline and automate computational chemistry and materials science workflows. ChemGraph leverages graph neural network-based foundation models for accurate yet computationally efficient calculations and large language models (LLMs) for natural language understanding, task planning, and scientific reasoning to provide an intuitive and interactive interface. Users can perform tasks such as molecular structure generation, single-point energy, geometry optimization, vibrational analysis, and thermochemistry calculations with methods ranging from tight-binding and machine learning interatomic potentials to density functional theory or wave function theory-based methods. We evaluate ChemGraph across 13 benchmark tasks and demonstrate that smaller LLMs (GPT-4o-mini, Claude-3.5-haiku, Qwen2.5-14B) perform well on simple workflows, while more complex tasks benefit from using larger models like GPT-4o. Importantly, we show that decomposing complex tasks into smaller subtasks through a multi-agent framework enables smaller LLM models to match or exceed GPT-4o's performance in specific scenarios.

The discovery and optimization of materials for specific applications is hampered by the practically infinite number of possible elemental combinations and associated properties, also known as the `combinatorial explosion'. By nature of the problem, data are scarce and all possible data sources should be used. In addition to simulations and experimental results, the latent knowledge in scientific texts is not yet used to its full potential. We present an iterative framework that refines a given scientific corpus by strategic selection of the most diverse documents, training Word2Vec models, and monitoring the convergence of composition-property correlations in embedding space. Our approach is applied to predict high-performing materials for oxygen reduction (ORR), hydrogen evolution (HER), and oxygen evolution (OER) reactions for a large number of possible candidate compositions. Our method successfully predicts the highest performing compositions among a large pool of candidates, validated by experimental measurements of the electrocatalytic performance in the lab. This work demonstrates and validates the potential of iterative corpus refinement to accelerate materials discovery and optimization, offering a scalable and efficient tool for screening large compositional spaces where reliable data are scarce or non-existent.

Abstract: This paper introduces an enhanced Genetic Algorithm technique, which optimizes neural networks for binary image classificatio n tasks, such as cat vs. non - cat classification. The proposed method employs only two individuals for crossover, represented by two parameter sets: Leader and Follower. The Leader focuses on exploitation, representing the primary optimal solution, while the Follower promotes exploration by preserving diversity and avoiding premature convergence. Leader and Follower are modeled as two phases or roles. The key contributions of this work are threefold: (1) a self - adaptive layer dimension mechanism that eliminates the need for manual tuning of layer architectures; (2) generates two parameter sets, leader and follower parameter sets, with 10 layer architect ure configurations (5 for each set), ranked by Pareto dominance and cost post - optimization; and (3) achieved better results compared to gradient - based methods. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves 99.04% training acc uracy and 80% testing accuracy (cost = 0. 06) on a three - layer network with architecture [12288, 17, 4, 1], higher performance a gradient - based approach that achieves 98% training accuracy and 80% testing accuracy (cost = 0.092) on a four - layer network with architecture [12288, 20, 7, 5, 1]. Reinforcement Learning (RL) is the strategy of learning where an agent learns optimal behaviors by interacting with an environment through trial and error. The agent performs actions, receives rewards or penalties as feedback, and aims to maximize the cumulative reward over time [1] . RL has made exciting progress in domains like game playing (e.g., AlphaGo), robotics, and autonomous systems. However, it still faces challenges, such as sparse rewards [2,3], high - dimensional action spaces [4], and training instability [5] . Genetic Algorithms (GA), inspired by the principles of natural evolution, such as selection, mutation, and reproduction, offer versatile support for RL across multiple stages [6] .

This paper presents an adaptive path planner for object search in agricultural fields using UAVs. The path planner uses a high-altitude coverage flight path and plans additional low-altitude inspections when the detection network is uncertain. The path planner was evaluated in an offline simulation environment containing real-world images. We trained a YOLOv8 detection network to detect artificial plants placed in grass fields to showcase the potential of our path planner. We evaluated the effect of different detection certainty measures, optimized the path planning parameters, investigated the effects of localization errors, and different numbers of objects in the field. The YOLOv8 detection confidence worked best to differentiate between true and false positive detections and was therefore used in the adaptive planner. The optimal parameters of the path planner depended on the distribution of objects in the field. When the objects were uniformly distributed, more low-altitude inspections were needed compared to a non-uniform distribution of objects, resulting in a longer path length. The adaptive planner proved to be robust against localization uncertainty. When increasing the number of objects, the flight path length increased, especially when the objects were uniformly distributed. When the objects were non-uniformly distributed, the adaptive path planner yielded a shorter path than a low-altitude coverage path, even with a high number of objects. Overall, the presented adaptive path planner allowed finding non-uniformly distributed objects in a field faster than a coverage path planner and resulted in a compatible detection accuracy. The path planner is made available at https://github.com/wur-abe/uav_adaptive_planner.

Retrieving operational data from nuclear power plants requires exceptional accuracy and transparency due to the criticality of the decisions it supports. Traditionally, natural language to SQL (NL-to-SQL) approaches have been explored for querying such data. While NL-to-SQL promises ease of use, it poses significant risks: end-users cannot easily validate generated SQL queries, and legacy nuclear plant databases -- often complex and poorly structured -- complicate query generation due to decades of incremental modifications. These challenges increase the likelihood of inaccuracies and reduce trust in the approach. In this work, we propose an alternative paradigm: leveraging function-calling large language models (LLMs) to address these challenges. Instead of directly generating SQL queries, we define a set of pre-approved, purpose-specific functions representing common use cases. Queries are processed by invoking these functions, which encapsulate validated SQL logic. This hybrid approach mitigates the risks associated with direct NL-to-SQL translations by ensuring that SQL queries are reviewed and optimized by experts before deployment. While this strategy introduces the upfront cost of developing and maintaining the function library, we demonstrate how NL-to-SQL tools can assist in the initial generation of function code, allowing experts to focus on validation rather than creation. Our study includes a performance comparison between direct NL-to-SQL generation and the proposed function-based approach, highlighting improvements in accuracy and maintainability. This work underscores the importance of balancing user accessibility with operational safety and provides a novel, actionable framework for robust data retrieval in critical systems.

Real-world robotic applications, from autonomous exploration to assistive technologies, require adaptive, interpretable, and data-efficient learning paradigms. While deep learning architectures and foundation models have driven significant advances in diverse robotic applications, they remain limited in their ability to operate efficiently and reliably in unknown and dynamic environments. In this position paper, we critically assess these limitations and introduce a conceptual framework for combining data-driven learning with deliberate, structured reasoning. Specifically, we propose leveraging differentiable physics for efficient world modeling, Bayesian inference for uncertainty-aware decision-making, and meta-learning for rapid adaptation to new tasks. By embedding physical symbolic reasoning within neural models, robots could generalize beyond their training data, reason about novel situations, and continuously expand their knowledge. We argue that such hybrid neuro-symbolic architectures are essential for the next generation of autonomous systems, and to this end, we provide a research roadmap to guide and accelerate their development.

With the development of smart grids, High-Dimensional and Incomplete (HDI) Power Load Monitoring (PLM) data challenges the performance of Power Load Forecasting (PLF) models. In this paper, we propose a potential characterization model VAE-LF based on Variational Autoencoder (VAE) for efficiently representing and complementing PLM missing data. VAE-LF learns a low-dimensional latent representation of the data using an Encoder-Decoder structure by splitting the HDI PLM data into vectors and feeding them sequentially into the VAE-LF model, and generates the complementary data. Experiments on the UK-DALE dataset show that VAE-LF outperforms other benchmark models in both 5% and 10% sparsity test cases, with significantly lower RMSE and MAE, and especially outperforms on low sparsity ratio data. The method provides an efficient data-completion solution for electric load management in smart grids.

Transformers have become the architecture of choice for learning long-range dependencies, yet their adoption in hyperspectral imaging (HSI) is still emerging. We reviewed more than 300 papers published up to 2025 and present the first end-to-end survey dedicated to Transformer-based HSI classification. The study categorizes every stage of a typical pipeline-pre-processing, patch or pixel tokenization, positional encoding, spatial-spectral feature extraction, multi-head self-attention variants, skip connections, and loss design-and contrasts alternative design choices with the unique spatial-spectral properties of HSI. We map the field's progress against persistent obstacles: scarce labeled data, extreme spectral dimensionality, computational overhead, and limited model explainability. Finally, we outline a research agenda prioritizing valuable public data sets, lightweight on-edge models, illumination and sensor shifts robustness, and intrinsically interpretable attention mechanisms. Our goal is to guide researchers in selecting, combining, or extending Transformer components that are truly fit for purpose for next-generation HSI applications.