As machine learning (ML) systems are increasingly adopted across industries, addressing fairness and bias has become essential. While many solutions focus on ethical challenges in ML, recent studies highlight that data itself is a major source of bias. Pre-processing techniques, which mitigate bias before training, are effective but may impact model performance and pose integration difficulties. In contrast, fairness-aware Data Preparation practices are both familiar to practitioners and easier to implement, providing a more accessible approach to reducing bias. Objective. This registered report proposes an empirical evaluation of how optimally selected fairness-aware practices, applied in early ML lifecycle stages, can enhance both fairness and performance, potentially outperforming standard pre-processing bias mitigation methods. Method. To this end, we will introduce FATE, an optimization technique for selecting 'Data Preparation' pipelines that optimize fairness and performance. Using FATE, we will analyze the fairness-performance trade-off, comparing pipelines selected by FATE with results by pre-processing bias mitigation techniques.

The design of soft robots is still commonly driven by manual trial-and-error approaches, requiring the manufacturing of multiple physical prototypes, which in the end, is time-consuming and requires significant expertise. To reduce the number of manual interventions in this process, topology optimization can be used to assist the design process. The design is then guided by simulations and numerous prototypes can be tested in simulation rather than being evaluated through laborious experiments. To implement this simulation-driven design process, the possible design space of a slender soft pneumatic actuator is generalized to the design of the circular cross-section. We perform a black-box topology optimization using genetic algorithms to obtain a cross-sectional design of a soft pneumatic actuator that is capable of reaching a target workspace defined by the end-effector positions at different pressure values. This design method is evaluated for three different case studies and target workspaces, which were either randomly generated or specified by the operator of the design assistant. The black-box topology optimization based on genetic algorithms proves to be capable of finding good designs under given plausible target workspaces. We considered a simplified simulation model to verify the efficacy of the employed method. An experimental validation has not yet been performed. It can be concluded that the employed black-box topology optimization can assist in the design process for slender soft pneumatic actuators. It supports at searching for possible design prototypes that reach points specified by corresponding actuation pressures. This helps reduce the trial-and-error driven iterative manual design process and enables the operator to focus on prototypes that already offer a good viable solution.

Inspection of infrastructure using static sensor nodes has become a well established approach in recent decades. In this work, we present an experimental setup to address a binary inspection task using mobile sensor nodes. The objective is to identify the predominant tile type in a 1mx1m tiled surface composed of vibrating and non-vibrating tiles. A swarm of miniaturized robots, equipped with onboard IMUs for sensing and IR sensors for collision avoidance, performs the inspection. The decision-making approach leverages a Bayesian algorithm, updating robots' belief using inference. The original algorithm uses one of two information sharing strategies. We introduce a novel information sharing strategy, aiming to accelerate the decision-making. To optimize the algorithm parameters, we develop a simulation framework calibrated to our real-world setup in the high-fidelity Webots robotic simulator. We evaluate the three information sharing strategies through simulations and real-world experiments. Moreover, we test the effectiveness of our optimization by placing swarms with optimized and non-optimized parameters in increasingly complex environments with varied spatial correlation and fill ratios. Results show that our proposed information sharing strategy consistently outperforms previously established information-sharing strategies in decision time. Additionally, optimized parameters yield robust performance across different environments. Conversely, non-optimized parameters perform well in simpler scenarios but show reduced accuracy in complex settings.

Urban planning faces a critical challenge in balancing city-wide infrastructure needs with localized demographic preferences, particularly in rapidly developing regions. Although existing approaches typically focus on top-down optimization or bottom-up community planning, only some frameworks successfully integrate both perspectives. Our methodology employs a two-tier approach: First, a deterministic solver optimizes basic infrastructure requirements in the city region. Second, four specialized planning agents, each representing distinct sub-regions, propose demographic-specific modifications to a master planner. The master planner then evaluates and integrates these suggestions to ensure cohesive urban development. We validate our framework using a newly created dataset comprising detailed region and sub-region maps from three developing cities in India, focusing on areas undergoing rapid urbanization. The results demonstrate that this hybrid approach enables more nuanced urban development while maintaining overall city functionality.

In real-world applications, spectral Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are powerful tools for processing diverse types of graphs. However, a single GNN often struggles to handle different graph types-such as homogeneous and heterogeneous graphs-simultaneously. This challenge has led to the manual design of GNNs tailored to specific graph types, but these approaches are limited by the high cost of labor and the constraints of expert knowledge, which cannot keep up with the rapid growth of graph data. To overcome these challenges, we propose AutoSGNN, an automated framework for discovering propagation mechanisms in spectral GNNs. AutoSGNN unifies the search space for spectral GNNs by integrating large language models with evolutionary strategies to automatically generate architectures that adapt to various graph types. Extensive experiments on nine widely-used datasets, encompassing both homophilic and heterophilic graphs, demonstrate that AutoSGNN outperforms state-of-the-art spectral GNNs and graph neural architecture search methods in both performance and efficiency.

Neural networks are a group of neurons stacked together in multiple layers to mimic the biological neurons in a human brain. Neural networks have been trained using the backpropagation algorithm based on gradient descent strategy for several decades. Several variants have been developed to improve the backpropagation algorithm. The loss function for the neural network is optimized through backpropagation, but several local minima exist in the manifold of the constructed neural network. We obtain several solutions matching the minima. The gradient descent strategy cannot avoid the problem of local minima and gets stuck in the minima due to the initialization. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) was proposed to select the best local minima among the search space of the loss function. The search space is limited to the instantiated particles in the PSO algorithm, and sometimes it cannot select the best solution. In the proposed approach, we overcome the problem of gradient descent and the limitation of the PSO algorithm by training individual neurons separately, capable of collectively solving the problem as a group of neurons forming a network.

Federated learning (FL) is an emerging distributed artificial In the context of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs), federated intelligence framework that enables privacy-preserving machine learning (FL) is employed to address several intrinsic challenges learning by synthesizing local models instead of sharing associated with these models. FL offers an effective actual data [1]. The general fundamental process can be outlined approach to managing these challenges, enhancing the performance as follows [2]: the federation process is initiated by a and applicability of FCMs. One necessary issue in the single server or participant who provides an initial model for FCMs is the decentralised nature of data sources and the need individual participants to train using their local data. These to preserve data privacy and security while enabling collaborative participants then share the model's weights or gradients with model development. FCM models frequently rely on the server (or other participants) for aggregation, typically using data distributed across multiple locations or organisations.

When it comes to expensive black-box optimization problems, Bayesian Optimization (BO) is a well-known and powerful solution. Many real-world applications involve a large number of dimensions, hence scaling BO to high dimension is of much interest. However, state-of-the-art high-dimensional BO methods still suffer from the curse of dimensionality, highlighting the need for further improvements. In this work, we introduce BOIDS, a novel high-dimensional BO algorithm that guides optimization by a sequence of one-dimensional direction lines using a novel tailored line-based optimization procedure. To improve the efficiency, we also propose an adaptive selection technique to identify most optimal lines for each round of line-based optimization. Additionally, we incorporate a subspace embedding technique for better scaling to high-dimensional spaces. We further provide theoretical analysis of our proposed method to analyze its convergence property. Our extensive experimental results show that BOIDS outperforms state-of-the-art baselines on various synthetic and real-world benchmark problems.

In this paper, a novel classification algorithm that is based on Data Importance (DI) reformatting and Genetic Algorithms (GA) named GADIC is proposed to overcome the issues related to the nature of data which may hinder the performance of the Machine Learning (ML) classifiers. GADIC comprises three phases which are data reformatting phase which depends on DI concept, training phase where GA is applied on the reformatted training dataset, and testing phase where the instances of the reformatted testing dataset are being averaged based on similar instances in the training dataset. GADIC is an approach that utilizes the exiting ML classifiers with involvement of data reformatting, using GA to tune the inputs, and averaging the similar instances to the unknown instance. The averaging of the instances becomes the unknown instance to be classified in the stage of testing. GADIC has been tested on five existing ML classifiers which are Support Vector Machine (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN), Logistic Regression (LR), Decision Tree (DT), and Na\"ive Bayes (NB). All were evaluated using seven open-source UCI ML repository and Kaggle datasets which are Cleveland heart disease, Indian liver patient, Pima Indian diabetes, employee future prediction, telecom churn prediction, bank customer churn, and tech students. In terms of accuracy, the results showed that, with the exception of approximately 1% decrease in the accuracy of NB classifier in Cleveland heart disease dataset, GADIC significantly enhanced the performance of most ML classifiers using various datasets. In addition, KNN with GADIC showed the greatest performance gain when compared with other ML classifiers with GADIC followed by SVM while LR had the lowest improvement. The lowest average improvement that GADIC could achieve is 5.96%, whereas the maximum average improvement reached 16.79%.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is driving transformative changes across numerous fields, revolutionizing conventional processes and creating new opportunities for innovation. The development of mechatronic systems is undergoing a similar transformation. Over the past decade, modeling, simulation, and optimization techniques have become integral to the design process, paving the way for the adoption of AI-based methods. In this paper, we examine the potential for integrating AI into the engineering design process, using the V-model from the VDI guideline 2206, considered the state-of-the-art in product design, as a foundation. We identify and classify AI methods based on their suitability for specific stages within the engineering product design workflow. Furthermore, we present a series of application examples where AI-assisted design has been successfully implemented by the authors. These examples, drawn from research projects within the DFG Priority Program \emph{SPP~2353: Daring More Intelligence - Design Assistants in Mechanics and Dynamics}, showcase a diverse range of applications across mechanics and mechatronics, including areas such as acoustics and robotics.