Effective demand forecasting is critical for inventory management, production planning, and decision making across industries. Selecting the appropriate model and suitable features to efficiently capture patterns in the data is one of the main challenges in demand forecasting. In reality, this becomes even more complicated when the recorded sales have zeroes, which can happen naturally or due to some anomalies, such as stockouts and recording errors. Mistreating the zeroes can lead to the application of inappropriate forecasting methods, and thus leading to poor decision making. Furthermore, the demand itself can have different fundamental characteristics, and being able to distinguish one type from another might bring substantial benefits in terms of accuracy and thus decision making. We propose a two-stage model-based classification framework that in the first step, identifies artificially occurring zeroes, and in the second, classifies demand to one of the possible types: regular/intermittent, intermittent smooth/lumpy, fractional/count. The framework relies on statistical modelling and information criteria. We argue that different types of demand need different features, and show empirically that they tend to increase the accuracy of the forecasting methods and reduce inventory costs compared to those applied directly to the dataset without the generated features and the two-stage framework.

Most existing robotic manipulation benchmarks focus on simplified tabletop scenarios, typically involving a stationary robotic arm interacting with various objects on a flat surface. To address this limitation, we introduce RoboBench-Mart, a more challenging and realistic benchmark designed for dark store environments, where robots must perform complex manipulation tasks with diverse grocery items. This setting presents significant challenges, including dense object clutter and varied spatial configurations -- with items positioned at different heights, depths, and in close proximity. By targeting the retail domain, our benchmark addresses a setting with strong potential for near-term automation impact. We demonstrate that current state-of-the-art generalist models struggle to solve even common retail tasks. To support further research, we release the RoboBenchMart suite, which includes a procedural store layout generator, a trajectory generation pipeline, evaluation tools and fine-tuned baseline models.

KEF powered speakers strike the right c(h)ords, but there are also passive pairs to pick from--standmount and floor-standing. We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. If you're a space-challenged, sound-obsessed modern music lover, you need a pair of powered bookshelf speakers . Luckily, some of the best are on sale today. When someone tells me they're more interested in getting wrapped up in playlists than worrying about banana plugs, I say skip components and grab a pair of KEF's compact but compelling speakers.

Science Archaeology Ancient Rome's fanciest glasses are full of cryptic symbols They were the ancient equivalent of a brand.' Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Tiny symbols engraved into ancient Roman drinkware may be more than merely decorative accents. After two years of research, an art historian believes that the designs on glass Roman cage cups are testaments to the skill and collaborative efforts required to craft some of the empire's most renowned pieces of glasswork. The talent of ancient Rome's artisans is displayed across the empire's vast archaeological remains, such as its architecture, mosaics, and sculptures .

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Abstract-- High degree-of-freedom dual-arm robots are becoming increasingly common due to their morphology enabling them to operate effectively in human environments. However, motion planning in real-time within unknown, changing environments remains a challenge for such robots due to the high dimensionality of the configuration space and the complex collision-avoidance constraints that must be obeyed. In this work, we propose a novel way to alleviate the curse of dimensionality by leveraging the structure imposed by shared joints (e.g. First, we build two dynamic roadmaps (DRM) for each kinematic chain (i.e. Then, we show that we can leverage this structure to efficiently search through the composition of the two roadmaps and largely sidestep the curse of dimensionality. Finally, we run several experiments in a real-world grocery store with this motion planner on a 19 DoF mobile manipulation robot executing a grocery fulfillment task, achieving 0.4s average planning times with 99.9% success rate across more than 2000 motion plans.

Skip the takeout coffee and grab one of these high-end espresso machines or coffee makers. They'll pay for themselves in the long run. We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. My friend recently started working at a popular coffee shop and I stopped in to get an iced mocha. I ended up spending more than $8 after tip.

Microsoft's Surface Laptop Is Marked Down by $350 While Apple may have the first-party laptop market cornered with the MacBook lineup, Microsoft's Surface laptops have been steadily improving over the past few years, and are now an increasingly appealing option. Last year's seventh-generation Surface Laptop is currently marked down by $350 on Amazon for the base model, bringing the price down to a tantalizing $849. While the screen is a somewhat rare 3:2 aspect ratio, it's an excellent panel for everyday use and productivity. It can reach a decently bright 600 nits, which should be plenty for a quick work call from the park, and it has a 120-Hz refresh rate, which should smooth things out a bit, even if you don't plan on gaming. It's a touch panel as well, in case you like to get physical with your Windows, but I'm still not super enthused by the touchscreen support in the Microsoft OS.

Is a Robot Vacuum Worth It? It's not for everyone, but sometimes my robot vacuum is my only friend. Every single day--weekend, weekday, rain or shine--whichever robot vacuum I'm currently testing starts running at 9 am. I heave a sigh of relief and continue with whatever else I was doing, content that at least f*cking chore in my house is getting done. When I first started testing robot vacuums eight years ago, it sometimes seemed like more trouble than it was worth. I cleaned up the floor .

At only 16, Jared Lepora has also co-authored a paper. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. In October, a student presented a robotic hand made entirely from LEGOs at the 2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Hangzhou, China. Nonetheless, the 16-year-old co-authored research recently published on arXiv along with colleagues including his father Nathan Lepora, a professor of robotics and artificial intelligence at the University of Bristol. Jared used LEGO MINDSTORMS, a LEGO robotics kit, to build a LEGO version of SoftHand-A, a 3D-printed anthropomorphic robot hand introduced in an earlier study .