The adoption of AI-powered computer vision in industry is often constrained by the need to balance operational utility with worker privacy. Building on our previously proposed privacy-preserving framework, this paper presents its first comprehensive validation on real-world data collected directly by industrial partners in active production environments. We evaluate the framework across three representative use cases: woodworking production monitoring, human-aware AGV navigation, and multi-camera ergonomic risk assessment. The approach employs learned visual transformations that obscure sensitive or task-irrelevant information while retaining features essential for task performance. Through both quantitative evaluation of the privacy-utility trade-off and qualitative feedback from industrial partners, we assess the framework's effectiveness, deployment feasibility, and trust implications. Results demonstrate that task-specific obfuscation enables effective monitoring with reduced privacy risks, establishing the framework's readiness for real-world adoption and providing cross-domain recommendations for responsible, human-centric AI deployment in industry.

According to the European Union's Habitat Directive, habitat monitoring plays a critical role in response to the escalating problems posed by biodiversity loss and environmental degradation. Scree habitats, hosting unique and often endangered species, face severe threats from climate change due to their high-altitude nature. Traditionally, their monitoring has required highly skilled scientists to conduct extensive fieldwork in remote, potentially hazardous locations, making the process resource-intensive and time-consuming. This paper presents a novel approach for scree habitat monitoring using a legged robot to assist botanists in data collection and species identification. Specifically, we deployed the ANYmal C robot in the Italian Alpine bio-region in two field campaigns spanning two years and leveraged deep learning to detect and classify key plant species of interest. Our results demonstrate that agile legged robots can navigate challenging terrains and increase the frequency and efficiency of scree monitoring. When paired with traditional phytosociological surveys performed by botanists, this robotics-assisted protocol not only streamlines field operations but also enhances data acquisition, storage, and usage. The outcomes of this research contribute to the evolving landscape of robotics in environmental science, paving the way for a more comprehensive and sustainable approach to habitat monitoring and preservation.

The challenges of ongoing war in Sudan highlight the need for rapid monitoring and analysis of such conflicts. Advances in deep learning and readily available satellite remote sensing imagery allow for near real-time monitoring. This paper uses 4-band imagery from Planet Labs with a deep learning model to show that fire damage in armed conflicts can be monitored with minimal delay. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach using five case studies in Sudan. We show that, compared to a baseline, the automated method captures the active fires and charred areas more accurately. Our results indicate that using 8-band imagery or time series of such imagery only result in marginal gains. Keywords: 1. Introduction The ongoing armed conflict in Sudan began in April 2023.

Abstract--The deployment of autonomous AI agents in Internet of Things (IoT) energy systems requires decision-making mechanisms that remain robust, efficient, and trustworthy under real-time constraints and imperfect monitoring. While reinforcement learning enables adaptive prosumer behaviors, ensuring economic consistency and preventing strategic manipulation remain open challenges, particularly when sensing noise or partial observability degrades the operator's ability to verify actions. This paper introduces a trust-enforcement framework for IoT energy trading that combines an α-approximate Vick-rey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) double auction with an immediate one-shot penalty. Unlike reputation-or history-based approaches, the proposed mechanism restores truthful reporting within a single round, even when allocation accuracy is approximate and monitoring is noisy. We theoretically characterize the incentive gap induced by approximation and derive a penalty threshold that guarantees truthful bidding under bounded sensing errors. T o evaluate learning-enabled prosumers, we embed the mechanism into a multi-agent reinforcement learning environment reflecting stochastic generation, dynamic loads, and heterogeneous trading opportunities. Experiments show that improved allocation accuracy consistently reduces deviation incentives, the required penalty matches analytical predictions, and learned bidding behaviors remain stable and interpretable despite imperfect monitoring. These results demonstrate that lightweight penalty designs can reliably align strategic IoT agents with socially efficient energy-trading outcomes. The rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) has created large-scale networks of heterogeneous sensors, distributed devices, and autonomous software agents that must jointly perceive, reason, and act in dynamic cyber-physical environments. X. Shao and R. Shimizu are with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Information Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, Toyohashi, Aichi 441-8580, Japan (e-mail: xun.shao@tut.jp).

In the pursuit of sustainable manufacturing, ultra-short pulse laser micromachining stands out as a promising solution while also offering high-precision and qualitative laser processing. However, unlocking the full potential of ultra-short pulse lasers requires an optimized monitoring system capable of early detection of defective workpieces, regardless of the preprocessing technique employed. While advances in machine learning can help predict process quality features, the complexity of monitoring data necessitates reducing both model size and data dimensionality to enable real-time analysis. To address these challenges, this paper introduces a machine learning framework designed to enhance surface quality assessment across diverse preprocessing techniques. To facilitate real-time laser processing monitoring, our solution aims to optimize the computational requirements of the machine learning model. Experimental results show that the proposed model not only outperforms the generalizability achieved by previous works across diverse preprocess-ing techniques but also significantly reduces the computational requirements for training. Through these advancements, we aim to establish the baseline for a more sustainable manufacturing process.

Open-vocabulary mobile manipulation (OVMM) requires robots to follow language instructions, navigate, and manipulate while updating their world representation under dynamic environmental changes. However, most prior approaches update their world representation only at discrete update points such as navigation targets, waypoints, or the end of an action step, leaving robots blind between updates and causing cascading failures: overlooked objects, late error detection, and delayed replanning. To address this limitation, we propose BINDER (Bridging INstant and DEliberative Reasoning), a dual process framework that decouples strategic planning from continuous environment monitoring. Specifically, BINDER integrates a Deliberative Response Module (DRM, a multimodal LLM for task planning) with an Instant Response Module (IRM, a VideoLLM for continuous monitoring). The two modules play complementary roles: the DRM performs strategic planning with structured 3D scene updates and guides what the IRM attends to, while the IRM analyzes video streams to update memory, correct ongoing actions, and trigger replanning when necessary. Through this bidirectional coordination, the modules address the trade off between maintaining awareness and avoiding costly updates, enabling robust adaptation under dynamic conditions. Evaluated in three real world environments with dynamic object placement, BINDER achieves substantially higher success and efficiency than SoTA baselines, demonstrating its effectiveness for real world deployment.

Abstract--This paper introduces HGNN(O), an AutoML GNN hypermodel framework for outcome prediction on event-sequence data. Building on our earlier work on graph convolutional network hypermodels, HGNN(O) extends four architectures--One Level, Two Level, Two Level Pseudo Embedding, and Two Level Embedding--across six canonical GNN operators. A self-tuning mechanism based on Bayesian optimization with pruning and early stopping enables efficient adaptation over architectures and hyperparameters without manual configuration. Empirical evaluation on both balanced and imbalanced event logs shows that HGNN(O) achieves accuracy exceeding 0.98 on the Traffic Fines dataset and weighted F1 scores up to 0.86 on the Patients dataset without explicit imbalance handling. These results demonstrate that the proposed AutoML-GNN approach provides a robust and generalizable benchmark for outcome prediction in complex event-sequence data.

Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-MS) is a cornerstone in biomolecular analysis, offering precise identification of pathogens through unique mass spectral signatures. Yet, its reliance on labor-intensive sample preparation and multi-shot spectral averaging restricts its use to laboratory settings, rendering it impractical for real-time environmental monitoring. These limitations are especially pronounced in emerging aerosol MALDI-MS systems, where autonomous sampling generates noisy spectra for unknown aerosol analytes, requiring single-shot detection for effective analysis. Addressing these challenges, we propose the Mass Spectral Dictionary-Guided Transformer (MS-DGFormer): a data-driven framework that redefines spectral analysis by directly processing raw, minimally prepared mass spectral data. MS-DGFormer leverages a transformer architecture, designed to capture the long-range dependencies inherent in these time-series spectra. To enhance feature extraction, we introduce a novel dictionary encoder that integrates denoised spectral information derived from Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), enabling the model to discern critical biomolecular patterns from single-shot spectra with robust performance. This innovation provides a system to achieve superior pathogen identification from aerosol samples, facilitating autonomous, real-time analysis in field conditions. By eliminating the need for extensive preprocessing, our method unlocks the potential for portable, deployable MALDI-MS platforms, revolutionizing environmental pathogen detection and rapid response to biological threats.

The integration of advanced robotics in nuclear power plants (NPPs) presents a transformative opportunity to enhance safety, efficiency, and environmental monitoring in high-stakes environments. Our paper introduces the Optimus-Q robot, a sophisticated system designed to autonomously monitor air quality and detect contamination while leveraging adaptive learning techniques and secure quantum communication. Equipped with advanced infrared sensors, the Optimus-Q robot continuously streams real-time environmental data to predict hazardous gas emissions, including carbon dioxide (CO$_2$), carbon monoxide (CO), and methane (CH$_4$). Utilizing a federated learning approach, the robot collaborates with other systems across various NPPs to improve its predictive capabilities without compromising data privacy. Additionally, the implementation of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) ensures secure data transmission, safeguarding sensitive operational information. Our methodology combines systematic navigation patterns with machine learning algorithms to facilitate efficient coverage of designated areas, thereby optimizing contamination monitoring processes. Through simulations and real-world experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the Optimus-Q robot in enhancing operational safety and responsiveness in nuclear facilities. This research underscores the potential of integrating robotics, machine learning, and quantum technologies to revolutionize monitoring systems in hazardous environments.