Energy
Tesla lobbied UK to strengthen rules on carbon emissions from cars and lorries
Tesla lobbied the UK government to strengthen rules on carbon emissions from cars and lorries, according to documents that also show the electric carmaker continued to push for increased taxes on fossil fuel cars. The US carmaker, which is run by Elon Musk, pushed for the British government to strengthen its zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate for cars and introduce equivalent rules for heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), in a letter to Lilian Greenwood, the Labour roads minister. Musk has launched a public feud with Labour, but his company has been more complimentary. A Tesla vice-president wrote in July that "we applaud the Labour party's strong position to decarbonisation of the energy system by 2030, growth and net zero". The letter was obtained under freedom of information laws by the Fast Charge newsletter and shared with the Guardian.
TorchSISSO: A PyTorch-Based Implementation of the Sure Independence Screening and Sparsifying Operator for Efficient and Interpretable Model Discovery
Muthyala, Madhav, Sorourifar, Farshud, Paulson, Joel A.
First principles models, derived from fundamental physical laws, have been instrumental in the development of scientific theories and technological systems. For example, the Navier-Stokes equation offers a comprehensive description of fluid flow, enabling predictions of complex behaviors in everything from blood flow [1] to weather patterns [2]. Traditionally, this pursuit has relied on the extensive expertise of domain specialists, requiring trial and error to identify features and model structures that fit the observations. In recent years, the landscape of scientific inquiry has been transformed by the availability of machine learning frameworks, such as neural networks, support vector machines, and Gaussian processes, which offer a powerful alternative for deriving predictive models [3]. These data-driven regression methods are often complex, do not typically generalize outside of the training set, and provide limited insights into the underlying physics. For instance, while these models may be trained to accurately predict the Reynolds number, they cannot capture the competitive nature between inertial and viscous forces in fluid flow. The only data-driven modeling framework that can provide insights comparable to first principles models, to the best of our knowledge, is symbolic regression (SR) [4, 5, 6].
Hierarchical Split Federated Learning: Convergence Analysis and System Optimization
Lin, Zheng, Wei, Wei, Chen, Zhe, Lam, Chan-Tong, Chen, Xianhao, Gao, Yue, Luo, Jun
As AI models expand in size, it has become increasingly challenging to deploy federated learning (FL) on resource-constrained edge devices. To tackle this issue, split federated learning (SFL) has emerged as an FL framework with reduced workload on edge devices via model splitting; it has received extensive attention from the research community in recent years. Nevertheless, most prior works on SFL focus only on a two-tier architecture without harnessing multi-tier cloudedge computing resources. In this paper, we intend to analyze and optimize the learning performance of SFL under multi-tier systems. Specifically, we propose the hierarchical SFL (HSFL) framework and derive its convergence bound. Based on the theoretical results, we formulate a joint optimization problem for model splitting (MS) and model aggregation (MA). To solve this rather hard problem, we then decompose it into MS and MA subproblems that can be solved via an iterative descending algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate that the tailored algorithm can effectively optimize MS and MA for SFL within virtually any multi-tier system.
Model predictive control-based trajectory generation for agile landing of unmanned aerial vehicle on a moving boat
Prochรกzka, Ondลej, Novรกk, Filip, Bรกฤa, Tomรกลก, Gupta, Parakh M., Pฤniฤka, Robert, Saska, Martin
This paper proposes a novel trajectory generation method based on Model Predictive Control (MPC) for agile landing of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) onto an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV)'s deck in harsh conditions. The trajectory generation exploits the state predictions of the USV to create periodically updated trajectories for a multirotor UAV to precisely land on the deck of a moving USV even in cases where the deck's inclination is continuously changing. We use an MPC-based scheme to create trajectories that consider both the UAV dynamics and the predicted states of the USV up to the first derivative of position and orientation. Compared to existing approaches, our method dynamically modifies the penalization matrices to precisely follow the corresponding states with respect to the flight phase. Especially during the landing maneuver, the UAV synchronizes attitude with the USV's, allowing for fast landing on a tilted deck. Simulations show the method's reliability in various sea conditions up to Rough sea (wave height 4 m), outperforming state-of-the-art methods in landing speed and accuracy, with twice the precision on average. Finally, real-world experiments validate the simulation results, demonstrating robust landings on a moving USV, while all computations are performed in real-time onboard the UAV.
OmniDocBench: Benchmarking Diverse PDF Document Parsing with Comprehensive Annotations
Ouyang, Linke, Qu, Yuan, Zhou, Hongbin, Zhu, Jiawei, Zhang, Rui, Lin, Qunshu, Wang, Bin, Zhao, Zhiyuan, Jiang, Man, Zhao, Xiaomeng, Shi, Jin, Wu, Fan, Chu, Pei, Liu, Minghao, Li, Zhenxiang, Xu, Chao, Zhang, Bo, Shi, Botian, Tu, Zhongying, He, Conghui
Document content extraction is crucial in computer vision, especially for meeting the high-quality data needs of large language models (LLMs) and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technologies. However, current document parsing methods suffer from significant limitations in terms of diversity and comprehensive evaluation. To address these challenges, we introduce OmniDocBench, a novel multi-source benchmark designed to advance automated document content extraction. OmniDocBench includes a meticulously curated and annotated high-quality evaluation dataset comprising nine diverse document types, such as academic papers, textbooks, slides, among others. Our benchmark provides a flexible and comprehensive evaluation framework with 19 layout category labels and 14 attribute labels, enabling multi-level assessments across entire datasets, individual modules, or specific data types. Using OmniDocBench, we perform an exhaustive comparative analysis of existing modular pipelines and multimodal end-to-end methods, highlighting their limitations in handling document diversity and ensuring fair evaluation. OmniDocBench establishes a robust, diverse, and fair evaluation standard for the document content extraction field, offering crucial insights for future advancements and fostering the development of document parsing technologies. The codes and dataset is available in https://github.com/opendatalab/OmniDocBench.
Sampling from Boltzmann densities with physics informed low-rank formats
Hagemann, Paul, Schรผtte, Janina, Sommer, David, Eigel, Martin, Steidl, Gabriele
Our method proposes the efficient generation of samples from an unnormalized Boltzmann density by solving the underlying continuity equation in the low-rank tensor train (TT) format. It is based on the annealing path commonly used in MCMC literature, which is given by the linear interpolation in the space of energies. Inspired by Sequential Monte Carlo, we alternate between deterministic time steps from the TT representation of the flow field and stochastic steps, which include Langevin and resampling steps. These adjust the relative weights of the different modes of the target distribution and anneal to the correct path distribution. We showcase the efficiency of our method on multiple numerical examples.
Bayesian Data Augmentation and Training for Perception DNN in Autonomous Aerial Vehicles
Rasul, Ashik E, Tasnim, Humaira, Yoon, Hyung-Jin, Bansal, Ayoosh, Wang, Duo, Hovakimyan, Naira, Sha, Lui, Voulgaris, Petros
Learning-based solutions have enabled incredible capabilities for autonomous systems. Autonomous vehicles, both aerial and ground, rely on DNN for various integral tasks, including perception. The efficacy of supervised learning solutions hinges on the quality of the training data. Discrepancies between training data and operating conditions result in faults that can lead to catastrophic incidents. However, collecting vast amounts of context-sensitive data, with broad coverage of possible operating environments, is prohibitively difficult. Synthetic data generation techniques for DNN allow for the easy exploration of diverse scenarios. However, synthetic data generation solutions for aerial vehicles are still lacking. This work presents a data augmentation framework for aerial vehicle's perception training, leveraging photorealistic simulation integrated with high-fidelity vehicle dynamics. Safe landing is a crucial challenge in the development of autonomous air taxis, therefore, landing maneuver is chosen as the focus of this work. With repeated simulations of landing in varying scenarios we assess the landing performance of the VTOL type UAV and gather valuable data. The landing performance is used as the objective function to optimize the DNN through retraining. Given the high computational cost of DNN retraining, we incorporated Bayesian Optimization in our framework that systematically explores the data augmentation parameter space to retrain the best-performing models. The framework allowed us to identify high-performing data augmentation parameters that are consistently effective across different landing scenarios. Utilizing the capabilities of this data augmentation framework, we obtained a robust perception model. The model consistently improved the perception-based landing success rate by at least 20% under different lighting and weather conditions.
AI-driven Conservative-to-Primitive Conversion in Hybrid Piecewise Polytropic and Tabulated Equations of State
Kacmaz, Semih, Haas, Roland, Huerta, E. A.
We present a novel AI-based approach to accelerate conservative-to-primitive inversion in relativistic hydrodynamics simulations, focusing on hybrid piecewise polytropic and tabulated equations of state. Traditional root-finding methods are computationally intensive, particularly in large-scale simulations. To address this, we employ feedforward neural networks (NNC2PS and NNC2PL), trained in PyTorch and optimized for GPU inference using NVIDIA TensorRT, achieving significant speedups with minimal loss in accuracy. The NNC2PS model achieves $L_1$ and $L_\infty$ errors of $4.54 \times 10^{-7}$ and $3.44 \times 10^{-6}$, respectively, with the NNC2PL model yielding even lower error values. TensorRT optimization ensures high accuracy, with FP16 quantization offering 7x faster performance than traditional root-finding methods. Our AI models outperform conventional CPU solvers, demonstrating enhanced inference times, particularly for large datasets. We release the scientific software developed for this work, enabling the validation and extension of our findings. These results highlight the potential of AI, combined with GPU optimization, to significantly improve the efficiency and scalability of numerical relativity simulations.
ContextModule: Improving Code Completion via Repository-level Contextual Information
Guan, Zhanming, Liu, Junlin, Liu, Jierui, Peng, Chao, Liu, Dexin, Sun, Ningyuan, Jiang, Bo, Li, Wenchao, Liu, Jie, Zhu, Hang
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities in code completion tasks, where they assist developers by predicting and generating new code in real-time. However, existing LLM-based code completion systems primarily rely on the immediate context of the file being edited, often missing valuable repository-level information, user behaviour and edit history that could improve suggestion accuracy. Additionally, challenges such as efficiently retrieving relevant code snippets from large repositories, incorporating user behavior, and balancing accuracy with low-latency requirements in production environments remain unresolved. In this paper, we propose ContextModule, a framework designed to enhance LLM-based code completion by retrieving and integrating three types of contextual information from the repository: user behavior-based code, similar code snippets, and critical symbol definitions. By capturing user interactions across files and leveraging repository-wide static analysis, ContextModule improves the relevance and precision of generated code. We implement performance optimizations, such as index caching, to ensure the system meets the latency constraints of real-world coding environments. Experimental results and industrial practise demonstrate that ContextModule significantly improves code completion accuracy and user acceptance rates.
Modeling High-Resolution Spatio-Temporal Wind with Deep Echo State Networks and Stochastic Partial Differential Equations
Wang, Kesen, Kim, Minwoo, Castruccio, Stefano, Genton, Marc G.
In the past decades, clean and renewable energy has gained increasing attention due to a global effort on carbon footprint reduction. In particular, Saudi Arabia is gradually shifting its energy portfolio from an exclusive use of oil to a reliance on renewable energy, and, in particular, wind. Modeling wind for assessing potential energy output in a country as large, geographically diverse and understudied as Saudi Arabia is a challenge which implies highly non-linear dynamic structures in both space and time. To address this, we propose a spatio-temporal model whose spatial information is first reduced via an energy distance-based approach and then its dynamical behavior is informed by a sparse and stochastic recurrent neural network (Echo State Network). Finally, the full spatial data is reconstructed by means of a non-stationary stochastic partial differential equation-based approach. Our model can capture the fine scale wind structure and produce more accurate forecasts of both wind speed and energy in lead times of interest for energy grid management and save annually as much as one million dollar against the closest competitive model.