Weintroduce thenotions of proxy convexity and proxy Polyak-Lojasiewicz (PL) inequalities, which are satisfied iftheoriginal objectivefunction induces aproxy objectivefunction that is implicitly minimized when using gradient methods.

First-order optimizers are reliable but slow in sharp, anisotropic regions. We study a curvature-adaptive method that periodically sketches a low-rank Hessian subspace via Hessian--vector products and preconditions gradients only in that subspace, leaving the orthogonal complement first-order. For L-smooth non-convex objectives, we recover the standard O(1/T) stationarity guarantee with a widened stable stepsize range; under a Polyak--Lojasiewicz (PL) condition with bounded residual curvature outside the sketch, the loss contracts at refresh steps. On CIFAR-10/100 with ResNet-18/34, the method enters the low-loss region substantially earlier: measured by epochs to a pre-declared train-loss threshold (0.75), it reaches the threshold 2.95x faster than Adam on CIFAR-100/ResNet-18, while matching final test accuracy. The approach is one-knob: performance is insensitive to the sketch rank k across {1,3,5}, and k=0 yields a principled curvature-free ablation. We release anonymized logs and scripts that regenerate all figures and tables.

INFRASTRUCTURE SENSOR-ENABLED VEHICLE DA T A GENERA TION USING MUL TI-SENSOR FUSION FOR PROACTIVE SAFETY APPLICA TIONS A T WORK ZONE Suhala Rabab Saba Department of Civil, Construction & Environmental Engineering, The University of Alabama Smart Communities and Innovation Building (SCIB), 28 Kirkbride Lane, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0288 Email: ssaba@crimson.ua.edu Saba, Khan, Ahmad, Cao, Rahman, Zhao, Huynh, and Ozguven 3 ABSTRACT Infrastructure-based sensing and real-time trajectory generation hold significant promise for improving safety in high-risk roadway segments like work zones, yet practical deployments are hindered by perspective distortion, complex geometry, occlusions, and costs. This study tackles these barriers by (i) integrating roadside camera and LiDAR sensors into a cosimulation environment to develop a scalable, cost-effective vehicle detection and localization framework, and (ii) employing a Kalman Filter-based late fusion strategy to enhance trajectory consistency and accuracy. In simulation, the fusion algorithm reduced longitudinal error by up to 70% compared to individual sensors while preserving lateral accuracy within 1-3 meters. Field validation in an active work zone, using LiDAR, a radar-camera rig, and RTK-GPS as ground truth, demonstrated that the fused trajectories closely match real vehicle paths, even when single-sensor data are intermittent or degraded. These results confirm that KF based sensor fusion can reliably compensate for individual sensor limitations, providing precise and robust vehicle tracking capabilities. Our approach thus offers a practical pathway to deploy infrastructure-enabled multi-sensor systems for proactive safety measures in complex traffic environments. Keywords: work zone, fusion, lidar, camera, localization, safety Saba, Khan, Ahmad, Cao, Rahman, Zhao, Huynh, and Ozguven 4 INTRODUCTION Work zone crashes do not necessarily impact only the vehicles and people directly involved; instead, they have cascading effects that cause operational delays for passing vehicles and project completion delays for work zone contractors. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) report indicates that commercial motor vehicles (CMVs) are involved in one-third of work zone fatal crashes, although they represent only 5% of all vehicular traffic (1). In addition, speed is a contributing factor in 26% of all fatal work zone crashes (2). According to Jiao (2022) (3), 13% of CMV drivers are fatigued when they are involved in crashes.

Zero-Shot Object Navigation (ZSON) requires agents to navigate to objects specified via open-ended natural language without predefined categories or prior environmental knowledge. While recent methods leverage foundation models or multi-modal maps, they often rely on 2D representations and greedy strategies or require additional training or modules with high computation load, limiting performance in complex environments and real applications. We propose WTRP-Searcher, a novel framework that formulates ZSON as a Weighted Traveling Repairman Problem (WTRP), minimizing the weighted waiting time of viewpoints. Using a Vision-Language Model (VLM), we score viewpoints based on object-description similarity, projected onto a 2D map with depth information. An open-vocabulary detector identifies targets, dynamically updating goals, while a 3D embedding feature map enhances spatial awareness and environmental recall. WTRP-Searcher outperforms existing methods, offering efficient global planning and improved performance in complex ZSON tasks. Code and more demos will be avaliable on https://github.com/lrm20011/WTRP_Searcher.

Chris Stanford, Ph.D. Novateur Research Solutions 20110 Ashbrook Place, STE 170, Ashburn, VA 20147 cstanford@novateur.ai Submission Date: October 8, 2024 Liao, Liu, Kuai, Ma, He, Cao, Stanford, and Ma 3 ABSTRACT Understanding human mobility patterns is crucial for urban planning, transportation management, and public health. This study tackles two primary challenges in the field: the reliance on trajectory data, which often fails to capture the semantic interdependencies of activities, and the inherent incompleteness of real-world trajectory data. We have developed a model that reconstructs and learns human mobility patterns by focusing on semantic activity chains. We introduce a semisupervised iterative transfer learning algorithm to adapt models to diverse geographical contexts and address data scarcity. Our model is validated using comprehensive datasets from the United States, where it effectively reconstructs activity chains and generates high-quality synthetic mobility data, achieving a low Jensen-Shannon Divergence (JSD) value of 0.001, indicating a close similarity between synthetic and real data. Additionally, sparse GPS data from Egypt is used to evaluate the transfer learning algorithm, demonstrating successful adaptation of US mobility patterns to Egyptian contexts, achieving a 64% of increase in similarity, i.e., a JSD reduction from 0.09 to 0.03. This mobility reconstruction model and the associated transfer learning algorithm show significant potential for global human mobility modeling studies, enabling policymakers and researchers to design more effective and culturally tailored transportation solutions. Keywords: Human Mobility Patterns Modeling, Transfer Learning, Semi-Supervised Learning, Synthetic Mobility Data Liao, Liu, Kuai, Ma, He, Cao, Stanford, and Ma 4 INTRODUCTION Understanding human mobility patterns has become increasingly crucial in various fields, including urban planning, transportation management (1, 2), and public health (3). As urbanization accelerates and population mobility increases, the ability to accurately comprehend and predict human activity patterns has gained paramount importance. This knowledge not only aids in optimizing urban resource allocation but also provides essential insights for the development of smart cities.

Hospitals, due to their complexity and unique requirements, play a pivotal role in global energy consumption patterns. This study conducted a comprehensive literature review, utilizing the PRISMA framework, of articles that employed machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques for predicting energy consumption in hospital buildings. Of the 1884 publications identified, 17 were found to address this specific domain and have been thoroughly reviewed to establish the state-of-the-art and identify gaps where future research is needed. This review revealed a diverse range of data inputs influencing energy prediction, with occupancy and meteorological data emerging as significant predictors. However, many studies failed to delve deep into the implications of their data choices, and gaps were evident regarding the understanding of time dynamics, operational status, and preprocessing methods. Machine learning, especially deep learning models like ANNs, have shown potential in this domain, yet they come with challenges, including interpretability and computational demands. The findings underscore the immense potential of AI in optimizing hospital energy consumption but also highlight the need for more comprehensive and granular research. Key areas for future research include the optimization of ANN approaches, new optimization and data integration techniques, the integration of real-time data into Intelligent Energy Management Systems, and increasing focus on long-term energy forecasting.

Federated learning (FL) demonstrates its advantages in integrating distributed infrastructure, communication, computing and learning in a privacy-preserving manner. However, the robustness and capabilities of existing FL methods are challenged by limited and dynamic data and conditions, complexities including heterogeneities and uncertainties, and analytical explainability. Bayesian federated learning (BFL) has emerged as a promising approach to address these issues. This survey presents a critical overview of BFL, including its basic concepts, its relations to Bayesian learning in the context of FL, and a taxonomy of BFL from both Bayesian and federated perspectives. We categorize and discuss client- and server-side and FL-based BFL methods and their pros and cons. The limitations of the existing BFL methods and the future directions of BFL research further address the intricate requirements of real-life FL applications.

A new gradient-based optimization approach by automatically scheduling the learning rate has been proposed recently, which is called Binary Forward Exploration (BFE). The Adaptive version of BFE has also been discussed thereafter. In this paper, the improved algorithms based on them will be investigated, in order to optimize the efficiency and robustness of the new methodology. This improved approach provides a new perspective to scheduling the update of learning rate and will be compared with the stochastic gradient descent, aka SGD algorithm with momentum or Nesterov momentum and the most successful adaptive learning rate algorithm e.g. Adam. The goal of this method does not aim to beat others but provide a different viewpoint to optimize the gradient descent process. This approach combines the advantages of the first-order and second-order optimizations in the aspects of speed and efficiency.

Were you unable to attend Transform 2022? Check out all of the summit sessions in our on-demand library now! There definitely have been easier years than 2022 for trying to start a business. Compared to larger firms, smaller companies have a harder time absorbing shocks like inflation changes, supply chain disruptions, and changing demographics in the workplace. We see evidence that investors are starting to prefer to see proof of profits, rather than growth, an anathema to the startup founders of only a few years ago.

Even after implementing process orchestration software, many key processes in companies are still manual. Because many of these processes directly impact the velocity and cost-efficiency of the business, some leadership teams are leveraging robotic process automation, intelligent process automation and other specialized artificial intelligence-based solutions to help. To reap the potential benefits of such solutions, however, I believe it is time for the rise of the CAO: chief automation officer. Sure, vice president-level automation jobs are available, and you might even be wondering, "Isn't this the CIO's job or the CDO's?" While both positions deal with tech and the position of chief digital officer was created to bring in new digital solutions, in my experience, neither role is focused on the strategy of automation.