Searching in a denied environment is challenging for swarm robots as no assistance from GNSS, mapping, data sharing, and central processing is allowed. However, using olfactory and auditory signals to cooperate like animals could be an important way to improve the collaboration of swarm robots. In this paper, an Olfactory-Auditory augmented Bug algorithm (OA-Bug) is proposed for a swarm of autonomous robots to explore a denied environment. A simulation environment is built to measure the performance of OA-Bug. The coverage of the search task can reach 96.93% using OA-Bug, which is significantly improved compared with a similar algorithm, SGBA. Furthermore, experiments are conducted on real swarm robots to prove the validity of OA-Bug. Results show that OA-Bug can improve the performance of swarm robots in a denied environment.

Parameter inference for dynamical models of (bio)physical systems remains a challenging problem. Intractable gradients, high-dimensional spaces, and non-linear model functions are typically problematic without large computational budgets. A recent body of work in that area has focused on Bayesian inference methods, which consider parameters under their statistical distributions and therefore, do not derive point estimates of optimal parameter values. Here we propose a new metaheuristic that drives dimensionality reductions from feature-informed transformations (DR-FFIT) to address these bottlenecks. DR-FFIT implements an efficient sampling strategy that facilitates a gradient-free parameter search in high-dimensional spaces. We use artificial neural networks to obtain differentiable proxies for the model's features of interest. The resulting gradients enable the estimation of a local active subspace of the model within a defined sampling region. This approach enables efficient dimensionality reductions of highly non-linear search spaces at a low computational cost. Our test data show that DR-FFIT boosts the performances of random-search and simulated-annealing against well-established metaheuristics, and improves the goodness-of-fit of the model, all within contained run-time costs.

A typical machine learning (ML) development cycle for edge computing is to maximise the performance during model training and then minimise the memory/area footprint of the trained model for deployment on edge devices targeting CPUs, GPUs, microcontrollers, or custom hardware accelerators. This paper proposes a methodology for automatically generating predictor circuits for classification of tabular data with comparable prediction performance to conventional ML techniques while using substantially fewer hardware resources and power. The proposed methodology uses an evolutionary algorithm to search over the space of logic gates and automatically generates a classifier circuit with maximised training prediction accuracy. Classifier circuits are so tiny (i.e., consisting of no more than 300 logic gates) that they are called "Tiny Classifier" circuits, and can efficiently be implemented in ASIC or on an FPGA. We empirically evaluate the automatic Tiny Classifier circuit generation methodology or "Auto Tiny Classifiers" on a wide range of tabular datasets, and compare it against conventional ML techniques such as Amazon's AutoGluon, Google's TabNet and a neural search over Multi-Layer Perceptrons. Despite Tiny Classifiers being constrained to a few hundred logic gates, we observe no statistically significant difference in prediction performance in comparison to the best-performing ML baseline. When synthesised as a Silicon chip, Tiny Classifiers use 8-18x less area and 4-8x less power. When implemented as an ultra-low cost chip on a flexible substrate (i.e., FlexIC), they occupy 10-75x less area and consume 13-75x less power compared to the most hardware-efficient ML baseline. On an FPGA, Tiny Classifiers consume 3-11x fewer resources.

Federated learning enables multiple clients to collaboratively contribute to the learning of a global model orchestrated by a central server. This learning scheme promotes clients' data privacy and requires reduced communication overheads. In an application like network traffic classification, this helps hide the network vulnerabilities and weakness points. However, federated learning is susceptible to backdoor attacks, in which adversaries inject manipulated model updates into the global model. These updates inject a salient functionality in the global model that can be launched with specific input patterns. Nonetheless, the vulnerability of network traffic classification models based on federated learning to these attacks remains unexplored. In this paper, we propose GABAttack, a novel genetic algorithm-based backdoor attack against federated learning for network traffic classification. GABAttack utilizes a genetic algorithm to optimize the values and locations of backdoor trigger patterns, ensuring a better fit with the input and the model. This input-tailored dynamic attack is promising for improved attack evasiveness while being effective. Extensive experiments conducted over real-world network datasets validate the success of the proposed GABAttack in various situations while maintaining almost invisible activity. This research serves as an alarming call for network security experts and practitioners to develop robust defense measures against such attacks.

E-mobility, or electric mobility, has emerged as a pivotal solution to address pressing environmental and sustainability concerns in the transportation sector. The depletion of fossil fuels, escalating greenhouse gas emissions, and the imperative to combat climate change underscore the significance of transitioning to electric vehicles (EVs). This paper seeks to explore the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in addressing various challenges related to effective energy management in e-mobility systems (EMS). These challenges encompass critical factors such as range anxiety, charge rate optimization, and the longevity of energy storage in EVs. By analyzing existing literature, we delve into the role that AI can play in tackling these challenges and enabling efficient energy management in EMS. Our objectives are twofold: to provide an overview of the current state-of-the-art in this research domain and propose effective avenues for future investigations. Through this analysis, we aim to contribute to the advancement of sustainable and efficient e-mobility solutions, shaping a greener and more sustainable future for transportation.

Machine learning (ML) methods offer a wide range of configurable hyperparameters that have a significant influence on their performance. While accuracy is a commonly used performance objective, in many settings, it is not sufficient. Optimizing the ML models with respect to multiple objectives such as accuracy, confidence, fairness, calibration, privacy, latency, and memory consumption is becoming crucial. To that end, hyperparameter optimization, the approach to systematically optimize the hyperparameters, which is already challenging for a single objective, is even more challenging for multiple objectives. In addition, the differences in objective scales, the failures, and the presence of outlier values in objectives make the problem even harder. We propose a multi-objective Bayesian optimization (MoBO) algorithm that addresses these problems through uniform objective normalization and randomized weights in scalarization. We increase the efficiency of our approach by imposing constraints on the objective to avoid exploring unnecessary configurations (e.g., insufficient accuracy). Finally, we leverage an approach to parallelize the MoBO which results in a 5x speed-up when using 16x more workers.

When researching robot swarms, many studies observe complex group behavior emerging from the individual agents' simple local actions. However, the task of learning an individual policy to produce a desired emergent behavior remains a challenging and largely unsolved problem. We present a method of training distributed robotic swarm algorithms to produce emergent behavior. Inspired by the biological evolution of emergent behavior in animals, we use an evolutionary algorithm to train a 'population' of individual behaviors to approximate a desired group behavior. We perform experiments using simulations of the Georgia Tech Miniature Autonomous Blimps (GT-MABs) aerial robotics platforms conducted in the CoppeliaSim simulator. Additionally, we test on simulations of Anki Vector robots to display our algorithm's effectiveness on various modes of actuation. We evaluate our algorithm on various tasks where a somewhat complex group behavior is required for success. These tasks include an Area Coverage task, a Surround Target task, and a Wall Climb task. We compare behaviors evolved using our algorithm against 'designed policies', which we create in order to exhibit the emergent behaviors we desire.

The NSGA-II is one of the most prominent algorithms to solve multi-objective optimization problems. Despite numerous successful applications, several studies have shown that the NSGA-II is less effective for larger numbers of objectives. In this work, we use mathematical runtime analyses to rigorously demonstrate and quantify this phenomenon. We show that even on the simple $m$-objective generalization of the discrete OneMinMax benchmark, where every solution is Pareto optimal, the NSGA-II also with large population sizes cannot compute the full Pareto front (objective vectors of all Pareto optima) in sub-exponential time when the number of objectives is at least three. The reason for this unexpected behavior lies in the fact that in the computation of the crowding distance, the different objectives are regarded independently. This is not a problem for two objectives, where any sorting of a pair-wise incomparable set of solutions according to one objective is also such a sorting according to the other objective (in the inverse order).

Bayesian optimization (BO) is a promising approach for hyperparameter optimization of deep neural networks (DNNs), where each model training can take minutes to hours. In BO, a computationally cheap surrogate model is employed to learn the relationship between parameter configurations and their performance such as accuracy. Parallel BO methods often adopt single manager/multiple workers strategies to evaluate multiple hyperparameter configurations simultaneously. Despite significant hyperparameter evaluation time, the overhead in such centralized schemes prevents these methods to scale on a large number of workers. We present an asynchronous-decentralized BO, wherein each worker runs a sequential BO and asynchronously communicates its results through shared storage. We scale our method without loss of computational efficiency with above 95% of worker's utilization to 1,920 parallel workers (full production queue of the Polaris supercomputer) and demonstrate improvement in model accuracy as well as faster convergence on the CANDLE benchmark from the Exascale computing project.

Evolutionary robotics offers a powerful framework for designing and evolving robot morphologies, particularly in the context of modular robots. However, the role of query mechanisms during the genotype-to-phenotype mapping process has been largely overlooked. This research addresses this gap by conducting a comparative analysis of query mechanisms in the brain-body co-evolution of modular robots. Using two different query mechanisms, Breadth-First Search (BFS) and Random Query, within the context of evolving robot morphologies using CPPNs and robot controllers using tensors, and testing them in two evolutionary frameworks, Lamarckian and Darwinian systems, this study investigates their influence on evolutionary outcomes and performance. The findings demonstrate the impact of the two query mechanisms on the evolution and performance of modular robot bodies, including morphological intelligence, diversity, and morphological traits. This study suggests that BFS is both more effective and efficient in producing highly performing robots. It also reveals that initially, robot diversity was higher with BFS compared to Random Query, but in the Lamarckian system, it declines faster, converging to superior designs, while in the Darwinian system, BFS led to higher end-process diversity.