In recent years, Artificial Intelligence technology has excelled in various applications across all domains and fields. However, the various algorithms in neural networks make it difficult to understand the reasons behind decisions. For this reason, trustworthy AI techniques have started gaining popularity. The concept of trustworthiness is cross-disciplinary; it must meet societal standards and principles, and technology is used to fulfill these requirements. In this paper, we first surveyed developments from various countries and regions on the ethical elements that make AI algorithms trustworthy; and then focused our survey on the state of the art research into the interpretability of AI. We have conducted an intensive survey on technologies and techniques used in making AI explainable. Finally, we identified new trends in achieving explainable AI. In particular, we elaborate on the strong link between the explainability of AI and the meta-reasoning of autonomous systems. The concept of meta-reasoning is 'reason the reasoning', which coincides with the intention and goal of explainable Al. The integration of the approaches could pave the way for future interpretable AI systems.

Autonomous driving has made significant strides through data-driven techniques, achieving robust performance in standardized tasks. However, existing methods frequently overlook user-specific preferences, offering limited scope for interaction and adaptation with users. To address these challenges, we propose a "fast-slow" decision-making framework that integrates a Large Language Model (LLM) for high-level instruction parsing with a Reinforcement Learning (RL) agent for low-level real-time decision. In this dual system, the LLM operates as the "slow" module, translating user directives into structured guidance, while the RL agent functions as the "fast" module, making time-critical maneuvers under stringent latency constraints. By decoupling high-level decision making from rapid control, our framework enables personalized user-centric operation while maintaining robust safety margins. Experimental evaluations across various driving scenarios demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. Compared to baseline algorithms, the proposed architecture not only reduces collision rates but also aligns driving behaviors more closely with user preferences, thereby achieving a human-centric mode. By integrating user guidance at the decision level and refining it with real-time control, our framework bridges the gap between individual passenger needs and the rigor required for safe, reliable driving in complex traffic environments.

Two standard models for probabilistic systems are Markov chains (MCs) and Markov decision processes (MDPs). Classic objectives for such probabilistic models for control and planning problems are reachability and stochastic shortest path. The widely studied algorithmic approach for these problems is the Value Iteration (VI) algorithm which iteratively applies local updates called Bellman updates. There are many practical approaches for VI in the literature but they all require exponentially many Bellman updates for MCs in the worst case. A preprocessing step is an algorithm that is discrete, graph-theoretical, and requires linear space. An important open question is whether, after a polynomial-time preprocessing, VI can be achieved with sub-exponentially many Bellman updates. In this work, we present a new approach for VI based on guessing values. Our theoretical contributions are twofold. First, for MCs, we present an almost-linear-time preprocessing algorithm after which, along with guessing values, VI requires only subexponentially many Bellman updates. Second, we present an improved analysis of the speed of convergence of VI for MDPs. Finally, we present a practical algorithm for MDPs based on our new approach. Experimental results show that our approach provides a considerable improvement over existing VI-based approaches on several benchmark examples from the literature.

--Lane-changing (LC) behavior, a critical yet complex driving maneuver, significantly influences driving safety and traffic dynamics. Traditional analytical LC decision (LCD) models, while effective in specific environments, often oversimplify behavioral heterogeneity and complex interactions, limiting their capacity to capture real LCD. Data-driven approaches address these gaps by leveraging rich empirical data and machine learning to decode latent decision-making patterns, enabling adaptive LCD modeling in dynamic environments. In light of the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the demand for data-driven models oriented towards connected vehicles and autonomous vehicles, this paper presents a comprehensive survey of data-driven LCD models, with a particular focus on human drivers' LC decision-making. It systematically reviews the modeling framework, covering data sources and preprocessing, model inputs and outputs, objectives, structures, and validation methods. This survey further discusses the opportunities and challenges faced by data-driven LCD models, including driving safety, uncertainty, as well as the integration and improvement of technical frameworks. Compared to car-following (CF) behavior, LC behavior entails higher collision risks due to its dependency on holistic evaluations of traffic conditions in both the original and target lanes, requiring drivers to navigate multi-criteria decision-making processes. More specifically, safe LC execution necessitates gaps in the target lane to satisfy collision-avoidance criteria. Drivers must continuously monitor the real-time states of surrounding vehicles (e.g., velocity, acceleration) and adjust their LC maneuvers in response to unexpected behavioral changes (e.g., sudden deceleration, lane encroachment). Human drivers' irrational decision-making (e.g., sudden risk-preference shifts) in dynamic environments pose challenges to traditional LC models based on hypothesis of rational man. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72288101, 72171018, 72242102). D.-F Xie is with the School of Systems Science, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China (e-mail: dfxie@bjtu.edu.cn). L. Li is with the Department of Automation, BNRist, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. He is with Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA 02139, the United States (e-mail: he.zb@hotmail.com) This effort will provide critical support for trustworthy traffic simulations, dynamic traffic management, and LC decision-making of autonomous vehicles (A Vs).

Wind power plays an increasingly significant role in achieving the 2050 Net Zero Strategy. Despite its rapid growth, its inherent variability presents challenges in forecasting. Accurately forecasting wind power generation is one key demand for the stable and controllable integration of renewable energy into existing grid operations. This paper proposes an adaptive method for very short-term forecasting that combines the generalised logit transformation with a Bayesian approach. The generalised logit transformation processes double-bounded wind power data to an unbounded domain, facilitating the application of Bayesian methods. A novel adaptive mechanism for updating the transformation shape parameter is introduced to leverage Bayesian updates by recovering a small sample of representative data. Four adaptive forecasting methods are investigated, evaluating their advantages and limitations through an extensive case study of over 100 wind farms ranging four years in the UK. The methods are evaluated using the Continuous Ranked Probability Score and we propose the use of functional reliability diagrams to assess calibration. Results indicate that the proposed Bayesian method with adaptive shape parameter updating outperforms benchmarks, yielding consistent improvements in CRPS and forecast reliability. The method effectively addresses uncertainty, ensuring robust and accurate probabilistic forecasting which is essential for grid integration and decision-making.

Combinatorial Optimization (CO) encompasses a wide range of problems that arise in many real-world scenarios. While significant progress has been made in developing learning-based methods for specialized CO problems, a unified model with a single architecture and parameter set for diverse CO problems remains elusive. Such a model would offer substantial advantages in terms of efficiency and convenience. In this paper, we introduce UniCO, a unified model for solving various CO problems. Inspired by the success of next-token prediction, we frame each problem-solving process as a Markov Decision Process (MDP), tokenize the corresponding sequential trajectory data, and train the model using a transformer backbone. To reduce token length in the trajectory data, we propose a CO-prefix design that aggregates static problem features. To address the heterogeneity of state and action tokens within the MDP, we employ a two-stage self-supervised learning approach. In this approach, a dynamic prediction model is first trained and then serves as a pre-trained model for subsequent policy generation. Experiments across 10 CO problems showcase the versatility of UniCO, emphasizing its ability to generalize to new, unseen problems with minimal fine-tuning, achieving even few-shot or zero-shot performance. Our framework offers a valuable complement to existing neural CO methods that focus on optimizing performance for individual problems.

Lane determination and lane sequence determination are important components for many Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) applications. Lane determination has been solved using Hidden Markov Model (HMM) among other methods. The existing HMM literature for lane sequence determination uses empirical definitions with user-modified parameters to calculate HMM probabilities. The probability definitions in the literature can cause breaks in the HMM due to the inability to directly calculate probabilities of off-road positions, requiring post-processing of data. This paper develops a time-varying HMM using the physical properties of the roadway and vehicle, and the stochastic properties of the sensors. This approach yields emission and transition probability models conditioned on the sensor data without parameter tuning. It also accounts for the probability that the vehicle is not in any roadway lane (e.g., on the shoulder or making a U-turn), which eliminates the need for post-processing to deal with breaks in the HMM processing. This approach requires adapting the Viterbi algorithm and the HMM to be conditioned on the sensor data, which are then used to generate the most-likely sequence of lanes the vehicle has traveled. The proposed approach achieves an average accuracy of 95.9%. Compared to the existing literature, this provides an average increase of 2.25% by implementing the proposed transition probability and an average increase of 5.1% by implementing both the proposed transition and emission probabilities.

We propose a novel approach to enable Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) for Non-Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring (NIALM), also known as Energy Disaggregation, through Bayesian Optimization. NIALM offers a cost-effective alternative to smart meters for measuring the energy consumption of electric devices and appliances. NIALM methods analyze the entire power consumption signal of a household and predict the type of appliances as well as their individual power consumption (i.e., their contributions to the aggregated signal). We enable NIALM domain experts and practitioners who typically have no deep data analytics or Machine Learning (ML) skills to benefit from state-of-the-art ML approaches to NIALM. Further, we conduct a survey and benchmarking of the state of the art and show that in many cases, simple and basic ML models and algorithms, such as Decision Trees, outperform the state of the art. Finally, we present our open-source tool, AutoML4NIALM, which will facilitate the exploitation of existing methods for NIALM in the industry.

In tackling frequent batch anomalies in high-speed stamping processes, this study introduces a novel semi-supervised in-process anomaly monitoring framework, utilizing accelerometer signals and physics information, to capture the process anomaly effectively. The proposed framework facilitates the construction of a monitoring model with imbalanced sample distribution, which enables in-process condition monitoring in real-time to prevent batch anomalies, which helps to reduce batch defects risk and enhance production yield. Firstly, to effectively capture key features from raw data containing redundant information, a hybrid feature extraction algorithm is proposed to utilize data-driven methods and physical mechanisms simultaneously. Secondly, to address the challenge brought by imbalanced sample distribution, a semi-supervised anomaly detection model is established, which merely employs normal samples to build a golden baseline model, and a novel deviation score is proposed to quantify the anomaly level of each online stamping stroke. The effectiveness of the proposed feature extraction method is validated with various classification algorithms. A real-world in-process dataset from stamping manufacturing workshop is employed to illustrate the superiority of proposed semi-supervised framework with enhance performance for process anomaly monitoring.

Online Federated Learning (OFL) is a real-time learning paradigm that sequentially executes parameter aggregation immediately for each random arriving client. To motivate clients to participate in OFL, it is crucial to offer appropriate incentives to offset the training resource consumption. However, the design of incentive mechanisms in OFL is constrained by the dynamic variability of Two-sided Incomplete Information (TII) concerning resources, where the server is unaware of the clients' dynamically changing computational resources, while clients lack knowledge of the real-time communication resources allocated by the server. To incentivize clients to participate in training by offering dynamic rewards to each arriving client, we design a novel Dynamic Bayesian persuasion pricing for online Federated learning (DaringFed) under TII. Specifically, we begin by formulating the interaction between the server and clients as a dynamic signaling and pricing allocation problem within a Bayesian persuasion game, and then demonstrate the existence of a unique Bayesian persuasion Nash equilibrium. By deriving the optimal design of DaringFed under one-sided incomplete information, we further analyze the approximate optimal design of DaringFed with a specific bound under TII. Finally, extensive evaluation conducted on real datasets demonstrate that DaringFed optimizes accuracy and converges speed by 16.99%, while experiments with synthetic datasets validate the convergence of estimate unknown values and the effectiveness of DaringFed in improving the server's utility by up to 12.6%.