Multi-agent coordination studies the underlying mechanism enabling the trending spread of diverse multi-agent systems (MAS) and has received increasing attention, driven by the expansion of emerging applications and rapid AI advances. This survey outlines the current state of coordination research across applications through a unified understanding that answers four fundamental coordination questions: (1) what is coordination; (2) why coordination; (3) who to coordinate with; and (4) how to coordinate. Our purpose is to explore existing ideas and expertise in coordination and their connections across diverse applications, while identifying and highlighting emerging and promising research directions. First, general coordination problems that are essential to varied applications are identified and analyzed. Second, a number of MAS applications are surveyed, ranging from widely studied domains, e.g., search and rescue, warehouse automation and logistics, and transportation systems, to emerging fields including humanoid and anthropomorphic robots, satellite systems, and large language models (LLMs). Finally, open challenges about the scalability, heterogeneity, and learning mechanisms of MAS are analyzed and discussed. In particular, we identify the hybridization of hierarchical and decentralized coordination, human-MAS coordination, and LLM-based MAS as promising future directions.

Data-driven reduced-order models based on autoencoders generally lack interpretability compared to classical methods such as the proper orthogonal decomposition. More interpretability can be gained by disentangling the latent variables and analyzing the resulting modes. For this purpose, probabilistic $\beta$-variational autoencoders ($\beta$-VAEs) are frequently used in computational fluid dynamics and other simulation sciences. Using a benchmark periodic flow dataset, we show that competitive results can be achieved using non-probabilistic autoencoder approaches that either promote orthogonality or penalize correlation between latent variables. Compared to probabilistic autoencoders, these approaches offer more robustness with respect to the choice of hyperparameters entering the loss function. We further demonstrate the ability of a non-probabilistic approach to identify a reduced number of active latent variables by introducing a correlation penalty, a function also known from the use of $\beta$-VAE. The investigated probabilistic and non-probabilistic autoencoder models are finally used for the dimensionality reduction of aircraft ditching loads, which serves as an industrial application in this work.

Support vector machine (SVM) is a powerful machine learning algorithm to handle classification tasks. However, the classical SVM is developed for binary problems with the assumption of balanced datasets. Obviously, the multi-class imbalanced classification problems are more complex. In this paper, we propose an improved SVM via Differential Evolution (i-SVM-DE) method to deal with it. An improved SVM (i-SVM) model is proposed to handle the data imbalance by combining cost sensitive technique and separation margin modification in the constraints, which formalize a parameter optimization problem. By using one-versus-one (OVO) scheme, a multi-class problem is decomposed into a number of binary subproblems. A large optimization problem is formalized through concatenating the parameters in the binary subproblems. To find the optimal model effectively and learn the support vectors for each class simultaneously, an improved differential evolution (DE) algorithm is applied to solve this large optimization problem. Instead of the validation set, we propose the fitness functions to evaluate the learned model and obtain the optimal parameters in the search process of DE. A series of experiments are carried out to verify the benefits of our proposed method. The results indicate that i-SVM-DE is statistically superior by comparing with the other baseline methods.

Because of the global need to increase power production from renewable energy resources, developments in the online monitoring of the associated infrastructure is of interest to reduce operation and maintenance costs. However, challenges exist for data-driven approaches to this problem, such as incomplete or limited histories of labelled damage-state data, operational and environmental variability, or the desire for the quantification of uncertainty to support risk management. This work first introduces a probabilistic regression model for predicting wind-turbine power, which adjusts for wake effects learnt from data. Spatial correlations in the learned model parameters for different tasks (turbines) are then leveraged in a hierarchical Bayesian model (an approach to multi-task learning) to develop a "metamodel", which can be used to make power-predictions which adjust for turbine location - including on previously unobserved turbines not included in the training data. The results show that the metamodel is able to outperform a series of benchmark models, and demonstrates a novel strategy for making efficient use of data for inference in populations of structures, in particular where correlations exist in the variable(s) of interest (such as those from wind-turbine wake-effects).

Watch Less, Feel More: Sim-to-Real RL for Generalizable Articulated Object Manipulation via Motion Adaptation and Impedance Control Tan-Dzung Do 1,2, Nandiraju Gireesh 1,2, Jilong Wang 2, and He Wang 1,2, Figure 1: We train an RL policy to open doors and drawers in simulation that adapts its action according to the motion of objects by leveraging history observations (left). We directly transfer this policy to reach 80% joint limit in the real world with closed-loop variable impedance control and achieve 84% success rate, using only one first-frame RGBD image (right). Abstract -- Articulated object manipulation poses a unique challenge compared to rigid object manipulation as the object itself represents a dynamic environment. In this work, we present a novel RL-based pipeline equipped with variable impedance control and motion adaptation leveraging observation history for generalizable articulated object manipulation, focusing on smooth and dexterous motion during zero-shot sim-to-real transfer (Figure 1). T o mitigate the sim-to-real gap, our pipeline diminishes reliance on vision by not leveraging the vision data feature (RGBD/pointcloud) directly as policy input but rather extracting useful low-dimensional data first via off-the-shelf modules. Additionally, we experience less sim-to-real gap by inferring object motion and its intrinsic properties via observation history as well as utilizing impedance control both in the simulation and in the real world. Furthermore, we develop a well-designed training setting with great randomization and a specialized reward system (task-aware and motion-aware) that enables multi-staged, end-to-end manipulation without heuristic motion planning.

Vision Language Place Recognition (VLVPR) enhances robot localization performance by incorporating natural language descriptions from images. By utilizing language information, VLVPR directs robot place matching, overcoming the constraint of solely depending on vision. The essence of multimodal fusion lies in mining the complementary information between different modalities. However, general fusion methods rely on traditional neural architectures and are not well equipped to capture the dynamics of cross modal interactions, especially in the presence of complex intra modal and inter modal correlations. To this end, this paper proposes a novel coarse to fine and end to end connected cross modal place recognition framework, called MambaPlace. In the coarse localization stage, the text description and 3D point cloud are encoded by the pretrained T5 and instance encoder, respectively. They are then processed using Text Attention Mamba (TAM) and Point Clouds Mamba (PCM) for data enhancement and alignment. In the subsequent fine localization stage, the features of the text description and 3D point cloud are cross modally fused and further enhanced through cascaded Cross Attention Mamba (CCAM). Finally, we predict the positional offset from the fused text point cloud features, achieving the most accurate localization. Extensive experiments show that MambaPlace achieves improved localization accuracy on the KITTI360Pose dataset compared to the state of the art methods.

Kyiv also said that Russian forces launched two missile strikes and 72 air strikes, and used 1,024 kamikaze drones, along with 4,200 artillery attacks that targeted Ukrainian positions and settlements, AA reports. In Ukraine's Kharkiv region, Ukrainian forces said they prevented Russian advances towards Mala Shapkivka and Topoli, while Moscow's troops launched 16 attacks in Ukraine's Kupiansk region, with Kyiv's forces claiming to have repelled 14, as battles continue, Anadolu reports. Russia said oil flows through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, a major route for supplying Kazakhstan and exporting to the global market, have been reduced by 30 to 40 percent after a Ukrainian drone attack on a pumping station. The Caspian pipeline, which ships more than 1 percent of daily global oil supplies, stretches over 1,500km (939 miles) and carries crude oil from Kazakhstan's Tengiz oilfield on Russia's northeastern shores of the Caspian Sea as well as from Russian producers. Freedom in Russia and the end of Russian President Vladimir Putin's government depends on Ukraine winning the war, former chess world champion and Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov said.

--This paper presents a real-time trajectory planning scheme for a heterogeneous multi-robot system (consisting of a quadrotor and a ground mobile robot) for a cooperative landing task, where the landing position, landing time, and coordination between the robots are determined autonomously under the consideration of feasibility and user specifications. The proposed framework leverages the potential of the complementarity constraint as a decision-maker and an indicator for diverse cooperative tasks and extends it to the collaborative landing scenario. In a potential application of the proposed methodology, a ground mobile robot may serve as a mobile charging station and coordinates in real-time with a quadrotor to be charged, facilitating a safe and efficient rendezvous and landing. We verified the generated trajectories in simulation and real-world applications, demonstrating the real-time capabilities of the proposed landing planning framework. I. INTRODUCTION Heterogeneous multi-robot collaboration combines the advantages of different robot domains, providing wide-area coverage and high environmental adaptability. This cross-domain cooperation, where aerial and ground robots are usually involved, has been developed and utilized in various applications, such as search and rescue, logistics and delivery, and infrastructure inspection [1].

Fine-tuning text-to-image diffusion models to maximize rewards has proven effective for enhancing model performance. However, reward fine-tuning methods often suffer from slow convergence due to online sample generation. Therefore, obtaining diverse samples with strong reward signals is crucial for improving sample efficiency and overall performance. In this work, we introduce DiffExp, a simple yet effective exploration strategy for reward fine-tuning of text-to-image models. Our approach employs two key strategies: (a) dynamically adjusting the scale of classifier-free guidance to enhance sample diversity, and (b) randomly weighting phrases of the text prompt to exploit high-quality reward signals. We demonstrate that these strategies significantly enhance exploration during online sample generation, improving the sample efficiency of recent reward fine-tuning methods, such as DDPO and AlignProp.

We present a methodology for designing a generalized dual potential, or pseudo potential, for inelastic Constitutive Artificial Neural Networks (iCANNs). This potential, expressed in terms of stress invariants, inherently satisfies thermodynamic consistency for large deformations. In comparison to our previous work, the new potential captures a broader spectrum of material behaviors, including pressure-sensitive inelasticity. To this end, we revisit the underlying thermodynamic framework of iCANNs for finite strain inelasticity and derive conditions for constructing a convex, zero-valued, and non-negative dual potential. To embed these principles in a neural network, we detail the architecture's design, ensuring a priori compliance with thermodynamics. To evaluate the proposed architecture, we study its performance and limitations discovering visco-elastic material behavior, though the method is not limited to visco-elasticity. In this context, we investigate different aspects in the strategy of discovering inelastic materials. Our results indicate that the novel architecture robustly discovers interpretable models and parameters, while autonomously revealing the degree of inelasticity. The iCANN framework, implemented in JAX, is publicly accessible at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14894687.