The Internet of Things (IoT) is on the verge of a major paradigm shift. In the IoT system of the future, IoFT, the cloud will be substituted by the crowd where model training is brought to the edge, allowing IoT devices to collaboratively extract knowledge and build smart analytics/models while keeping their personal data stored locally. This paradigm shift was set into motion by the tremendous increase in computational power on IoT devices and the recent advances in decentralized and privacy-preserving model training, coined as federated learning (FL). This article provides a vision for IoFT and a systematic overview of current efforts towards realizing this vision. Specifically, we first introduce the defining characteristics of IoFT and discuss FL data-driven approaches, opportunities, and challenges that allow decentralized inference within three dimensions: (i) a global model that maximizes utility across all IoT devices, (ii) a personalized model that borrows strengths across all devices yet retains its own model, (iii) a meta-learning model that quickly adapts to new devices or learning tasks. We end by describing the vision and challenges of IoFT in reshaping different industries through the lens of domain experts. Those industries include manufacturing, transportation, energy, healthcare, quality & reliability, business, and computing.

Learning dynamics is at the heart of many important applications of machine learning (ML), such as robotics and autonomous driving. In these settings, ML algorithms typically need to reason about a physical system using high dimensional observations, such as images, without access to the underlying state. Recently, several methods have proposed to integrate priors from classical mechanics into ML models to address the challenge of physical reasoning from images. In this work, we take a sober look at the current capabilities of these models. To this end, we introduce a suite consisting of 17 datasets with visual observations based on physical systems exhibiting a wide range of dynamics. We conduct a thorough and detailed comparison of the major classes of physically inspired methods alongside several strong baselines. While models that incorporate physical priors can often learn latent spaces with desirable properties, our results demonstrate that these methods fail to significantly improve upon standard techniques. Nonetheless, we find that the use of continuous and time-reversible dynamics benefits models of all classes.

Learning-based methods for training embodied agents typically require a large number of high-quality scenes that contain realistic layouts and support meaningful interactions. However, current simulators for Embodied AI (EAI) challenges only provide simulated indoor scenes with a limited number of layouts. This paper presents Luminous, the first research framework that employs state-of-the-art indoor scene synthesis algorithms to generate large-scale simulated scenes for Embodied AI challenges. Further, we automatically and quantitatively evaluate the quality of generated indoor scenes via their ability to support complex household tasks. Luminous incorporates a novel scene generation algorithm (Constrained Stochastic Scene Generation (CSSG)), which achieves competitive performance with human-designed scenes. Within Luminous, the EAI task executor, task instruction generation module, and video rendering toolkit can collectively generate a massive multimodal dataset of new scenes for the training and evaluation of Embodied AI agents. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the data generated by Luminous, enabling the comprehensive assessment of embodied agents on generalization and robustness.

This paper presents a comprehensive framework for run-time self-checking of logical agents, by means of temporal axioms to be dynamically checked. These axioms are specified by using an agent-oriented interval temporal logic defined to this purpose. We define syntax, semantics and pragmatics for this new logic, specifically tailored for application to agents. In the resulting framework, we encompass and extend our past work.

In the wake of Facebook rebranding as Meta, reflecting its focus on the "metaverse", Microsoft has now announced it, too, will launch into this space. Meta has proposed that the metaverse will eventually allow us to engage across education, work and social contexts, while Microsoft looks to be focusing specifically on the realm of the virtual office for now. But what actually is the metaverse and to what extent should we believe that the vision being presented to us is really going to be central to our daily lives? Science fiction author Neal Stephenson coined the term "metaverse" in his 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, presenting a 3D virtual world in which people, represented as avatars, could interact with each other and artificially intelligent agents. As with any big vision of a future that doesn't yet exist, many people have tried to stamp their own definitions on the metaverse.

We propose a model-free reinforcement learning method for controlling mixed autonomy traffic in simulated traffic networks with through-traffic-only two-way and four-way intersections. Our method utilizes multi-agent policy decomposition which allows decentralized control based on local observations for an arbitrary number of controlled vehicles. We demonstrate that, even without reward shaping, reinforcement learning learns to coordinate the vehicles to exhibit traffic signal-like behaviors, achieving near-optimal throughput with 33-50% controlled vehicles. With the help of multi-task learning and transfer learning, we show that this behavior generalizes across inflow rates and size of the traffic network. Our code, models, and videos of results are available at https://github.com/ZhongxiaYan/mixed_autonomy_intersections.

In the last decade, there have been significant advances in multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) but there are still numerous challenges, such as high sample complexity and slow convergence to stable policies, that need to be overcome before wide-spread deployment is possible. However, many real-world environments already, in practice, deploy sub-optimal or heuristic approaches for generating policies. An interesting question which arises is how to best use such approaches as advisors to help improve reinforcement learning in multi-agent domains. In this paper, we provide a principled framework for incorporating action recommendations from online sub-optimal advisors in multi-agent settings. We describe the problem of ADvising Multiple Intelligent Reinforcement Agents (ADMIRAL) in nonrestrictive general-sum stochastic game environments and present two novel Q-learning based algorithms: ADMIRAL - Decision Making (ADMIRAL-DM) and ADMIRAL - Advisor Evaluation (ADMIRAL-AE), which allow us to improve learning by appropriately incorporating advice from an advisor (ADMIRAL-DM), and evaluate the effectiveness of an advisor (ADMIRAL-AE). We analyze the algorithms theoretically and provide fixed-point guarantees regarding their learning in general-sum stochastic games. Furthermore, extensive experiments illustrate that these algorithms: can be used in a variety of environments, have performances that compare favourably to other related baselines, can scale to large state-action spaces, and are robust to poor advice from advisors.

Emergency vehicles (EMVs) play a critical role in a city's response to time-critical events such as medical emergencies and fire outbreaks. The existing approaches to reduce EMV travel time employ route optimization and traffic signal pre-emption without accounting for the coupling between route these two subproblems. As a result, the planned route often becomes suboptimal. In addition, these approaches also do not focus on minimizing disruption to the overall traffic flow. To address these issues, we introduce EMVLight in this paper. This is a decentralized reinforcement learning (RL) framework for simultaneous dynamic routing and traffic signal control. EMVLight extends Dijkstra's algorithm to efficiently update the optimal route for an EMV in real-time as it travels through the traffic network. Consequently, the decentralized RL agents learn network-level cooperative traffic signal phase strategies that reduce EMV travel time and the average travel time of non-EMVs in the network. We have carried out comprehensive experiments with synthetic and real-world maps to demonstrate this benefit. Our results show that EMVLight outperforms benchmark transportation engineering techniques as well as existing RL-based traffic signal control methods.

Many intelligent transportation systems are multi-agent systems, i.e., both the traffic participants and the subsystems within the transportation infrastructure can be modeled as interacting agents. The use of AI-based methods to achieve coordination among the different agents systems can provide greater safety over transportation systems containing only human-operated vehicles, and also improve the system efficiency in terms of traffic throughput, sensing range, and enabling collaborative tasks. However, increased autonomy makes the transportation infrastructure vulnerable to compromised vehicular agents or infrastructure. This paper proposes a new framework by embedding the trust authority into transportation infrastructure to systematically quantify the trustworthiness of agents using an epistemic logic known as subjective logic. In this paper, we make the following novel contributions: (i) We propose a framework for using the quantified trustworthiness of agents to enable trust-aware coordination and control. (ii) We demonstrate how to synthesize trust-aware controllers using an approach based on reinforcement learning. (iii) We comprehensively analyze an autonomous intersection management (AIM) case study and develop a trust-aware version called AIM-Trust that leads to lower accident rates in scenarios consisting of a mixture of trusted and untrusted agents.

Artificial intelligence AI can bring substantial benefits to society by helping to reduce costs, increase efficiency and enable new solutions to complex problems. Using Floridi's notion of how to design the 'infosphere' as a starting point, in this chapter I consider the question: what are the limits of design, i.e. what are the conceptual constraints on designing AI for social good? The main argument of this chapter is that while design is a useful conceptual tool to shape technologies and societies, collective efforts towards designing future societies are constrained by both internal and external factors. Internal constraints on design are discussed by evoking Hardin's thought experiment regarding 'the Tragedy of the Commons'. Further, Hayek's classical distinction between 'cosmos' and 'taxis' is used to demarcate external constraints on design. Finally, five design principles are presented which are aimed at helping policymakers manage the internal and external constraints on design. A successful approach to designing future societies needs to account for the emergent properties of complex systems by allowing space for serendipity and socio-technological coevolution.