There are no explicit equations for the cerebellum traditionally also has access to a desired state ds (in particular, one can consider this a and forward DNI, respectively; L denotes the loss function. In addition, the inverse model of the of a motor area and sensory area, respectively; CB,CF denotes the computation of backward DNI Notation is largely consistent with section 2 of the main text: hm,hs denotes the hidden activity properties of the inverse model of the cerebellum can be set against those of forward DNI (red). Controller Neocortex Main model Cerebellum Synthesiser Forward Model Backward DNIInverse Model Forward DNI be summarised in table S1. In general, the likeness in formulation between DNI and the cerebellar internal model hypothesis can backward DNI where the main model is an motor-associated RNN. In fact, it was recently suggested that the cerebellum out that though the temporal case of forward DNI was not originally considered in [5], there remain learns to mimic the forward computations which then take place in the neocortex.

In this paper we have focused on the backward (or feedback) DNI, but there is another interesting paradigm between two neural networks dubbed "forward" DNI. Here we describe this variant of the model and below its link to the cerebellum. The difference to backward DNI is that now the synthesiser predicts forward activity, not backward. Though more nuanced, the goal of forward DNI as presented in [5] is also to hasten learning. As an example, suppose we have a feedforward network as the main model and equip a backward synthesiser (one which predicts same layer error gradients) at each layer as well as a forward synthesiser which projects from the original network input x onto each layer.

We study online learning for optimal allocation when the resource to be allocated is time. An agent receives task proposals sequentially according to a Poisson process and can either accept or reject a proposed task. If she accepts the proposal, she is busy for the duration of the task and obtains a reward that depends on the task duration. If she rejects it, she remains on hold until a new task proposal arrives. We study the regret incurred by the agent first when she knows her reward function but does not know the distribution of the task duration, and then when she does not know her reward function, either. Faster rates are finally obtained by adding structural assumptions on the distribution of rides or on the reward function. This natural setting bears similarities with contextual (one-armed) bandits, but with the crucial difference that the normalized reward associated to a context depends on the whole distribution of contexts.

AI agents are increasingly deployed to automate complex enterprise workflows, yet evidence of their effectiveness in identity governance is limited. We report results from the first randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluating an AI agent for Conditional Access (CA) policy management in Microsoft Entra. The agent assists with four high-value tasks: policy merging, Zero-Trust baseline gap detection, phased rollout planning, and user-policy alignment. In a production-grade environment, 162 identity administrators were randomly assigned to a control group (no agent) or treatment group (agent-assisted) and asked to perform these tasks. Agent access produced substantial gains: accuracy improved by 48% and task completion time decreased by 43% while holding accuracy constant. The largest benefits emerged on cognitively demanding tasks such as baseline gap detection. These findings demonstrate that purpose-built AI agents can significantly enhance both speed and accuracy in identity administration.

The Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP) is a classical scheduling problem that has received significant attention due to of its numerous applications in industry. However, in practice, task durations are subject to uncertainty that must be considered in order to propose resilient scheduling. In this paper, we address the RCPSP variant with uncertain tasks duration (modeled using known probabilities) and aim to minimize the overall expected project duration. Our objective is to produce a baseline schedule that can be reused multiple times in an industrial setting regardless of the actual duration scenario. We leverage Graph Neural Networks in conjunction with Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) to develop an effective policy for task scheduling. This policy operates similarly to a priority dispatch rule and is paired with a Serial Schedule Generation Scheme to produce a schedule. Our empirical evaluation on standard benchmarks demonstrates the approach's superiority in terms of performance and its ability to generalize. The developed framework, Wheatley, is made publicly available online to facilitate further research and reproducibility.

Modern manufacturing systems must meet hard delivery deadlines while coping with stochastic task durations caused by process noise, equipment variability, and human intervention. Traditional deterministic schedules break down when reality deviates from nominal plans, triggering costly last-minute repairs. This thesis combines offline constraint-programming (CP) optimisation with online temporal-network execution to create schedules that remain feasible under worst-case uncertainty. First, we build a CP model of the flexible job-shop with per-job deadline tasks and insert an optimal buffer $Δ^*$ to obtain a fully pro-active baseline. We then translate the resulting plan into a Simple Temporal Network with Uncertainty (STNU) and verify dynamic controllability, which guarantees that a real-time dispatcher can retime activities for every bounded duration realisation without violating resource or deadline constraints. Extensive Monte-Carlo simulations on the open Kacem~1--4 benchmark suite show that our hybrid approach eliminates 100\% of deadline violations observed in state-of-the-art meta-heuristic schedules, while adding only 3--5\% makespan overhead. Scalability experiments confirm that CP solve-times and STNU checks remain sub-second on medium-size instances. The work demonstrates how temporal-network reasoning can bridge the gap between proactive buffering and dynamic robustness, moving industry a step closer to truly digital, self-correcting factories.

Small talk can foster rapport building in human-human teamwork; yet how non-anthropomorphic robots, such as collaborative manipulators commonly used in industry, may capitalize on these social communications remains unclear. This work investigates how robot-initiated small talk influences task performance, rapport, and interaction dynamics in human-robot collaboration. We developed an autonomous robot system that assists a human in an assembly task while initiating and engaging in small talk. A user study ($N = 58$) was conducted in which participants worked with either a functional robot, which engaged in only task-oriented speech, or a social robot, which also initiated small talk. Our study found that participants in the social condition reported significantly higher levels of rapport with the robot. Moreover, all participants in the social condition responded to the robot's small talk attempts; 59% initiated questions to the robot, and 73% engaged in lingering conversations after requesting the final task item. Although active working times were similar across conditions, participants in the social condition recorded longer task durations than those in the functional condition. We discuss the design and implications of robot small talk in shaping human-robot collaboration.

We study online learning for optimal allocation when the resource to be allocated is time. An agent receives task proposals sequentially according to a Poisson process and can either accept or reject a proposed task. If she accepts the proposal, she is busy for the duration of the task and obtains a reward that depends on the task duration. If she rejects it, she remains on hold until a new task proposal arrives. We study the regret incurred by the agent first when she knows her reward function but does not know the distribution of the task duration, and then when she does not know her reward function, either.

Assembly processes involving humans and robots are challenging scenarios because the individual activities and access to shared workspace have to be coordinated. Fixed robot programs leave no room to diverge from a fixed protocol. Working on such a process can be stressful for the user and lead to ineffective behavior or failure. We propose a novel approach of online constraint-based scheduling in a reactive execution control framework facilitating behavior trees called CoBOS. This allows the robot to adapt to uncertain events such as delayed activity completions and activity selection (by the human). The user will experience less stress as the robotic coworkers adapt their behavior to best complement the human-selected activities to complete the common task. In addition to the improved working conditions, our algorithm leads to increased efficiency, even in highly uncertain scenarios. We evaluate our algorithm using a probabilistic simulation study with 56000 experiments. We outperform all baselines by a margin of 4-10%. Initial real robot experiments using a Franka Emika Panda robot and human tracking based on HTC Vive VR gloves look promising.

We consider how to transfer knowledge from previous tasks (MDPs) to a current task in long-lived and bounded agents that must solve a sequence of tasks over a finite lifetime. A novel aspect of our transfer approach is that we reuse reward functions. While this may seem counterintuitive, we build on the insight of recent work on the optimal rewards problem that guiding an agent's behavior with reward functions other than the task-specifying reward function can help overcome computational bounds of the agent. Specifically, we use good guidance reward functions learned on previous tasks in the sequence to incrementally train a reward mapping function that maps task-specifying reward functions into good initial guidance reward functions for subsequent tasks. We demonstrate that our approach can substantially improve the agent's performance relative to other approaches, including an approach that transfers policies.