Papers

This paper presents a control framework for formation tracking and rigidity maintenance in heterogeneous multi-robot systems with nonlinear dynamics under sensing range constraints. Since formation tracking alone does not ensure rigidity maintenance with a limited sensing range, despite rigidity being a prerequisite for establishing and preserving a unique formation, our work integrates both objectives through a single Control Barrier Function (CBF)-like constraint within a quadratic optimization framework. The proposed distributed controller requires only local relative information from neighbors, as verified with simulation case studies.

Oscillator Ising Machines (OIMs) have emerged as promising computational architectures for approximating solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. We derive and analyze the mean-field limit of an OIM model and show that it inherits the gradient flow structure of the finite-dimensional dynamics. We identify conditions under which this mean-field evolution admits an Eulerian formulation as a gradient flow on the Wasserstein space of probability measures and contrast this with a Lagrangian formulation which is always available. This gradient flow structure strongly constrains the long-time dynamics and enables a complete classification of limit solutions and their stability in the totally symmetric case. In particular, all limit solutions are fixed points whose phases cluster into at most four groups, and for almost all parameter values, only binarized fixed points – those with clusters at $0$ and/or $\pi$ – can be stable. Since binarized states are exactly those for which a feasible solution to the original problem can be read out, this shows that feasible solutions can almost always be recovered. We provide tight bounds on the parameter thresholds for which fixed points in this binarized family are stable, thereby identifying the threshold for binarization in this model, and present numerical evidence that the mean-field model correctly predicts behavioral regimes in certain large random networks, including Erdős-Rényi networks. Moreover, this problem provides a case study in the application of mean-field models, gradient flows, and optimal transport to the study of large-scale systems, and we highlight a number of features of this problem which are informative in this respect.

There has been a flurry of activity in the development of robotic systems to localize and track underwater man-made or natural targets based on sparse acoustic data. Compelling examples include the development of surface tracking systems to aid in the navigation of groups of underwater vehicles performing environmental monitoring missions or to study the motion patterns of large underwater fauna. With current technology, the latter case can only be tackled using Time-Difference-of-Arrival (TDoA) techniques. Recent progress in nonlinear state estimation indicates that optimization-based methods may overcome the limitations of classical recursive filtering. However, achieving reliable estimator performance in the case of nonlinear target dynamics and sparse measurements remains a key challenge. In this paper, we study a Moving Horizon Estimation (MHE) approach to TDoA-based underwater target tracking. Through a 2D simulation environment capturing typical marine conditions, we show that the MHE-based estimator maintains reliable tracking in the considered scenarios even when the classical EKF becomes unreliable. The results highlight that multi-step trajectory coupling and physically consistent constraints, which are key advantages of the MHE approach, significantly enhance estimator robustness. It is shown that the MHE approach offers promise as a practical and scalable building block for future multi-agent tracking systems based on TDoA measurements operating in real underwater missions.

Modern power systems and smart grids are often composed of fragmented and heterogeneous data silos, which lack the cohesion needed for effective cross-domain analysis. For this, this paper introduces a universal ontology framework for the operational representation of intelligent cyber-physical power systems via a unified knowledge graph and an ontology capable of cross-domain reasoning. This work focuses on bridging cyber-physical simulators as a stepping stone towards that vision. By establishing a unified semantic middleware grounded in IEC 61970 (CIM) and IEC 62351/61850 standards, this framework integrates disparate cyber and physical simulation environments, illustrated via OMNeT++ and PowerWorld, into a single knowledge graph. Evaluation across three standard power system benchmarks demonstrates sub-linear scaling in both knowledge graph size and construction time. We further validate the framework's efficacy for real-time decision support, achieving millisecond-level query performance across both domains, maintained across six cumulative structural mutations to the knowledge graph. The resulting unified knowledge graph provides a robust, scalable information corpus for autonomous smart grid operations, enabling complex analysis of real-world power systems.

The growing variability of renewable generation increases the need for fast and flexible grid-balancing mechanisms. Existing frameworks for distributed energy resource aggregations (DERAs) rely on short-term forecasts of net demand, making their performance highly sensitive to prediction errors. In this paper we present a forecast-free reinforcement learning (RL) framework for DERA allocation that learns optimal policies directly from operational data. We model the DERA dynamics as a deterministic linear system and the exogenous net load as a feature-based linear Markov process, capturing short-range temporal dependencies without explicit forecasting. We derive a closed-form expression for the optimal policy, which is learned through a least-squares value iteration (LSVI) algorithm using data collected across episodes. The proposed framework preserves the interpretability and constraint satisfaction of DER model while adapting to stochastic demand variations through data-driven updates. Numerical experiments on real California Independent System Operator (CAISO) net-demand data demonstrate that the learned controller achieves high tracking accuracy and stable regulation across heterogeneous DER aggregators without requiring any demand prediction.

Intelligent systems are increasingly deployed in safety-critical settings with black-box controllers, including neural networks. The properties and behaviors of these end-to-end systems can be studied with abstraction-based methods that replace them with simpler finite models. Constructing such abstractions requires balancing the soundness of over-approximating the dynamical system against conservatism, which manifests as spurious or excessive nondeterministic behaviors. Bi-simulation theory provides principled metrics for characterizing these relationships, but does not prescribe how to construct sound abstractions with minimal conservatism. We fill this gap with a smooth simulation surrogate ($S^3$) — a differentiable objective that approximates the reverse simulation metric used to quantify conservatism. Combined with Taylor model-based reachability, $S^3$ enables gradient-based optimization of abstraction parameters while preserving soundness by construction. We evaluate this optimization pipeline on three case studies. Our results show that $S^3$ is strongly correlated with the reverse simulation metric, is computationally faster, and serves as an effective objective for reducing abstraction conservatism.

In this paper, we consider uncertain high-order nonlinear systems performing dynamic tracking tasks under hard actuator constraints, where only the output error is available for measurement, while the system states and the desired trajectory derivatives are unavailable for feedback. We propose a robust output-feedback controller that guarantees adaptive performance specifications in this framework. The proposed scheme employs a novel Prescribed Performance Observer (PPO) with dynamic gains, which enhances estimation accuracy while avoiding large fixed observer gains. In addition, we introduce an adaptive mechanism that dynamically adjusts the output performance specifications according to the actuator limitations, ensuring bounded closed-loop signals. We establish a separation principle showing that the output-feedback scheme recovers the performance of its state-feedback counterpart. Comparative simulations demonstrate accurate tracking and smoother applied control under actuator limitations, uncertainties, and measurement noise.

Auxiliary navigation systems are essential for the robust operation of aerial vehicles, particularly in self-contained frameworks like terrain-referenced navigation. However, challenges such as multimodal likelihoods, highly nonlinear terrain elevations, and unknown prediction biases result in highly multimodal and less predictable posterior distributions, leading to particle filter degeneration. This study addresses the numerical instability and degeneration of the particle filter approach by proposing a sampling strategy tailored to this problem. The approach introduces a Gaussian mixture random forcing mechanism, which nudges particles along terrain slopes and against biases towards the most probable terrain contours. Each mixture is associated with a mode of likelihood, enhancing adaptability to unmodeled terrain features. To further improve effectiveness, auxiliary sampling selectively applies this mixture sampling to probable particles, yielding a less degenerate and evenly weighted particle set. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in reducing weight variance, improving effective sample size. In addition, the approach exhibits strong resilience under deteriorating scenarios, such as severe unknown prediction bias and multimodal measurement noise, ensuring long-term reliable particle filtering.

This paper addresses the challenging problem of output feedback stabilization for nonlinear nonminimum phase (NMP) systems in the presence of parametric uncertainties and external disturbances. The proposed framework integrates three distinct observers: a reduced-order observer for reconstructing the unmeasured states of the internal (zero) dynamics, a high-gain observer for estimating output derivatives, and an observer for estimating the aggregated effect of parametric uncertainties and disturbances. Leveraging these estimates, a sliding mode control law is synthesized to ensure global asymptotic stability of the entire system using only output measurements. The control design requires only partial model knowledge, significantly relaxing the restrictive assumptions common in existing literature. Numerical simulations illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed output-feedback strategy and corroborate the theoretical developments.

The increasing penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) in distribution system necessitates adaptive coordination frameworks. These frameworks must remain optimal during normal operation and resilient under cyber physical disturbances. Existing coordinated control approaches are typically deployed as static architectures with limited ability to adapt when communication degrades, local instability emerges, and operating conditions become spatially heterogeneous. This work addresses the gap by proposing a DER service-independent edge autonomous holonic adaptive coordination framework. In this framework, each DER controller executes its own control actions and transitions among centralized, distributed, decentralized, and local autonomous coordination modes without always relying on static coordination commands from the grid operator. The framework preserves coordination continuity across modes by retaining local controller states while reconfiguring only the coordination topology, information exchange pattern, and fallback action associated with the active DER service. Graceful transitions are enabled through dwell timers, rate limiting, and safety overrides to prevent dynamic instability during mode changes. Volt VAR control is used as a representative distribution automation application to validate the proposed architecture in a cyber-physical Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testbed. The proposed approach is evaluated under diverse cyber-physical event-based scenarios, showing region-confined adaptation under localized disturbance, reduced coordination traffic during coordination switching, and node-confined mitigation under cyber attack through edge anomaly detection and neighbor-corroborated impact estimation.

Industry 5.0 (I5.0) repositions manufacturing around a human-centric vision in which cyber-physical systems must adapt to the worker rather than the other way around. Despite significant advances in worker state monitoring technologies, including markerless computer vision, wearable physiological sensors, and machine-learning-based fatigue and cognitive load estimation, a critical integration gap persists: these monitoring capabilities rarely inform real-time operational decisions, and workers almost never participate in the adaptive processes that affect their tasks and workloads. This paper presents a structured survey of the state-of-the-art across three interconnected dimensions: (1) worker state monitoring in industrial settings, encompassing physical fatigue, cognitive load, and ergonomic risk assessment; (2) human factors integration in Operations Management (OM) models, examining how scheduling, task allocation, and production planning incorporate worker-related objectives; and (3) Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) architectures, analyzing the extent to which worker feedback closes the adaptive decision loop. The survey reveals that while each dimension has matured independently, the integration across them remains largely absent. Based on the reviewed literature, no publicly documented and validated system connects real-time sensor-driven worker state estimation with adaptive OM decisions and worker feedback in a unified closed-loop architecture. This gap is identified as the central challenge for realizing the I5.0 vision, and a five-direction research agenda is proposed.

Multimodal bird's-eye-view (BEV) perception combines LiDAR depth accuracy with dense camera semantics, but its high computational cost and imperfect sensing conditions make real-time deployment challenging. Existing methods largely compress individual detectors and overlook three opportunities: structured sparsity within camera and LiDAR inputs, timing misalignment between modalities, and the fact that many detected objects do not affect the planner's immediate action. We present MM-BEV, a real-time multimodal BEV system guided by a simple principle: compute where and when it matters. MM-BEV divides perception into mandatory work for safety-critical objects within braking distance of the ego vehicle and with short time-to-collision (TTC), and optional work for less urgent regions. It prioritizes mandatory work and reduces or sheds optional work under tight compute budgets. MM-BEV integrates four mechanisms: (1) a criticality-ranked temporal ROI selector based on motion-extrapolated detections from prior frames; (2) sparse, ROI-aware feature extraction using shared-shape camera crops at context-adaptive resolution and ROI-aware LiDAR voxelization; (3) a latency-aware coordinator that adapts LiDAR sweeps, image resolution, and keyframes according to scene dynamics and TTC; and (4) an asynchronous scheduler that decouples sensing from inference and skips stale frames. On nuScenes, MM-BEV reduces inference latency by 1.96x and end-to-end latency by 2.93x, with no loss in geometry-critical recall and only a 0.2 percentage-point drop in safety-critical recall. On a Clearpath Husky A300 equipped with an Ouster-128 LiDAR, BEV cameras, and a Jetson AGX Orin, MM-BEV further reduces mean latency by 2.11x, demonstrating its potential for real-world autonomous systems.

While recent advances in minimax dual control have led to exact solutions for uncertain general linear time-invariant systems as well as (sub)optimal dual controllers, corresponding results for linear positive systems are still lacking. This paper aims to fill this gap and thereby pave the way toward scalable dual control algorithms. We study the general minimax optimal dual control problem for positive linear systems with unknown dynamics and reformulate it as a standard zero-sum dynamic game. By allowing randomized control inputs, we solve the corresponding Bellman equation exactly for the scalar case with sign uncertainty in the input. This yields an implicit dual control policy that is optimal both in terms of cost and $\ell_1$-gain. The optimal dual policy uses exploration in a specific region of the hyperstate space to conduct optimal probing. Outside this exploration regime, the controller reduces to a deterministic certainty equivalence policy, indicating that sufficient information has been obtained to identify the correct input direction. In addition, these results allow us to analyze fundamental limitations of minimax dual control for positive systems and provide a foundation for more general dual control problems for positive systems for future work.

Reasoning segmentation enables vision-language models (VLMs) to translate mission-relevant language requests into pixel-level visual grounding, offering a natural perception interface for embodied agents. However, existing benchmarks largely focus on generic visual scenes and overlook the domain and resource constraints encountered in flood-response platforms. We present FloodReasonBench, a benchmark for VLM reasoning segmentation for embodied flood response at the edge. At its core, FloodReasonBench introduces FloodResponseSeg, a flood-specific reasoning-segmentation dataset constructed from real-world scenes and response-relevant targets. Beyond task accuracy, the benchmark characterizes reasoning-segmentation pipelines under lightweight visual encoding, hierarchical split inference, and compressed intermediate representations. We observe strong partition-dependent accuracy variation in the generic pre-adaptation setting, while the flood-adapted target-workload design space exhibits a substantially more compact accuracy range across partitions. Evaluation on an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier further exposes the tradeoffs among reasoning-segmentation accuracy, edge-side latency, energy, and communication footprint, enabling quality-constrained selection of edge operating points. Together, these results provide a task- and system-level characterization of reasoning segmentation for resource-constrained embodied flood response at the edge.

Battery energy storage systems (BESS) are increasingly used in distribution networks for voltage regulation and demand response, which increases the volume and complexity of operational telemetry available to grid operators. This paper presents an AI-enabled monitoring framework that connects a large language model (LLM) interface with a structured telemetry database for BESS-integrated distribution system analysis. Operator questions are submitted in natural language and translated into validated SQL queries using predefined database schema information and approved KPI views. Retrieved measurements, including bus voltages, state of charge, active power, and reactive power, are evaluated against engineering constraints for voltage limits, BESS operation, and demand response tracking. The framework is validated using hardware-in-the-loop co-simulation data from a BESS-equipped distribution feeder operating under reactive power-based voltage control and price-driven demand response. Case studies show that the framework generates valid database queries, identifies repeated voltage violations, detects reactive power overshoot, and evaluates active-power tracking performance. The results show that LLM-assisted monitoring can connect structured grid telemetry with automated engineering assessment for BESS operation analysis.

This paper develops Admissibility-Preserving Control (APC), a realization-centered safety-critical control framework for strict-feedback systems subject to asymmetric actuator limits, time-varying output constraints, and actuator-rate limitations. APC denotes the overall control architecture, whereas an Admissibility-Preserving Input Realization (APIR) denotes its constraint-realization module. Therein, the APIR dynamically generates the physical plant input while rendering its prescribed asymmetric actuator set forward invariant. In contrast to algebraic clipping and post-design saturation compensation, the actuator limits are embedded directly in a continuously differentiable dynamic realization with user-selectable regularity and interpretable tuning parameters. The APIR is integrated with recursive backstepping by treating the realized plant input as an additional state. The resulting design does not require an input-to-state stability assumption on the uncontrolled plant. Instead, the nonlinear drift terms are compensated recursively, subject to an explicit compatibility condition between the desired motion, the available control authority, and the APIR interior gain. The framework is further extended to time-varying output-safe tracking through a smooth asymmetric logarithmic barrier coordinate and its associated Lyapunov function and to simultaneous actuator-magnitude and rate constraints through a cascaded APIR. Rigorous Lyapunov and invariance analyses establish regional asymptotic tracking, forward invariance of the compatible admissible sets, and boundedness of all closed-loop signals. Numerical studies illustrate asymmetric actuator utilization, output-safety preservation, and magnitude-rate constraint enforcement.

Control barrier functions (CBFs) provide a systematic framework for enforcing safety constraints in nonlinear control systems. However, their implementation typically relies on accurate system models, which can limit their applicability in the presence of significant modeling uncertainties or unknown dynamics. This paper proposes a model-free framework for the computation of recursive control barrier functions based on the ultra-local model approach that leverages online estimation of the unknown system dynamics to construct CBF constraints. This approach does not require an explicit model of the system dynamics and enhances robustness with respect to disturbances and model mismatch. The resulting control architecture enables the enforcement as well as the anticipation of safety constraints for systems with higher relative degree. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is illustrated on the adaptive cruise control benchmark.

This paper analyzes the boundedness and feasibility properties of Advantage-Ranked Group Relative Policy Optimization (A-GRPO), a ranking-augmented, critic-free policy gradient method employing a Transformer-encoder actor for fixed-horizon control with terminal constraints. When feasibility is evaluated only at the final step, the resulting sparse feedback destabilizes critic-based advantage estimation and weakens standard Lagrangian approaches. A trajectory-level ranking mechanism that augments group-relative policy updates by reweighting advantages according to constraint satisfaction is formalized, and three results are established: (i) a scale-adaptive per-timestep normalization bounds advantage variance at every timestep independently, (ii) the ranked advantage strictly separates feasible from violating trajectories under a verifiable ranking-weight condition, biasing the policy gradient toward constraint satisfaction, and (iii) the adaptive dual variables remain bounded and exhibit a drift-balance property that acts as a feedback mechanism for feasibility. These results are validated on a 3,605-step series-hybrid powertrain energy management task with a terminal state-of-charge constraint, where A-GRPO achieves 75.4% mean sustained feasibility with return within 3.7% of the dynamic programming optimum, outperforming a Proximal Policy Optimization with Lagrangian penalties (PPO-Lag) baseline (27.4% sustained), and ablation experiments confirm that both the ranking and Lagrangian components are necessary for this performance.

This paper presents an iterative model predictive control algorithm that stabilizes constrained nonlinear systems without evaluating a single plant derivative. By factoring the exact nonlinear dynamics into a pseudo-linear form using state- and control-dependent coefficients (SCDCs), we replace the standard nonconvex optimization with a sequence of constrained linear-quadratic programs. Refreezing the coefficient matrices along the previously predicted trajectory drives the iteration. Near the origin, we prove this sequence contracts to a unique fixed point. We explicitly bound the number of iterations required to reach any stopping tolerance, and we quantify the distance from the fixed point to a true Karush-Kuhn-Tucker point, showing this optimality gap vanishes quadratically as the state approaches the origin. Inflating the discrete algebraic Riccati equation generates terminal ingredients that guarantee recursive feasibility and asymptotic stability, even when the solver terminates early. We adapt the terminal penalty online, proving it remains uniformly bounded, and we secure output feedback through the block-observable canonical form, which extracts the exact system state directly from past inputs and outputs. Retaining the block-banded structure of the subproblem forces the computational cost to scale linearly with the horizon length $\ell$. This $O(\ell)$ complexity matches the iterative linear quadratic regulator (iLQR) but sharply undercuts the $O(\ell^3)$ scaling of dense sequential quadratic programming (SQP). Numerical studies on a saturated quadrotor, a nonholonomic integrator, and a nonminimum-phase plant illustrate the theoretical bounds and map how the algorithm compares with iLQR, SQP, and linear-parameter-varying MPC.

Replicator dynamics (RD) is a fundamental model in learning in games, connecting evolutionary game theory and online learning. This paper studies payoff-based higher-order variants of RD represented as a cascade interconnection between an integrator in parallel with an auxiliary linear time-invariant (LTI) system and the softmax mapping. We investigate learnability of Nash equilibria under this Nash-stationary learning rule. First, we revisit recent results that establish convergence to Nash Equilibrium whenever the auxiliary LTI system is strictly passive and prove a converse passivity result: if the auxiliary LTI system is not passive, then there exists a static strictly contractive game whose interior Nash equilibrium is unstable under the closed-loop learning dynamics. Second, we show that there exists a class of games with isolated interior Nash equilibria that cannot be locally asymptotically stabilized by any payoff-based higher-order RD whose auxiliary LTI system is asymptotically stable and strictly proper. Finally, we show that if Nash stationarity (i.e., all Nash equilibria are stationary points of the learning dynamics) is relaxed, then generalized exponential RD (Ex-RD) can locally asymptotically stabilize a logit equilibrium for any continuously differentiable game. The stabilized equilibrium can be viewed as an entropy-regularized approximate Nash equilibrium.

Passivity-based control (PBC) is a nonlinear control design framework that has proven adequate for controlling a wide range of systems, especially physical ones. Their main ingredients are physical quantities such as energy and dissipation, making the control design more intuitive and endowing the controllers with a physical interpretation. In contrast to other, mathematically-based nonlinear control approaches, the energy-based viewpoint and physical intuition of PBC often make this strategy more robust and energy efficient. This chapter provides an overview of PBC, revisiting the basic aspects of this powerful nonlinear control framework and the most common PBC approaches.

The passivity-based control (PBC) framework focuses on understanding and modifying the energy storage and dissipation in the system to be controlled. To this end, PBC techniques often proceed in two steps: (i) ensuring that the closed-loop system's energy is minimum at the desired point, and then (ii) forcing the system to dissipate energy until reaching that point. These control methods have proven effective in controlling a wide range of systems, especially physical ones, even when they exhibit highly nonlinear behaviors. This chapter discusses the main aspects of some PBC strategies for nonlinear systems.

The consensus of continuous-time multi-agent systems with unbounded and heterogeneous constant delays is investigated by combining frequency-domain analysis and algebraic graph theory. Several types of signed Laplacians are constructed to characterize consensusability under delays. The core results are established based on the defined delay-embedded signed Laplacian, where a small-delay link creates a cooperative interaction and a possibly unbounded large-delay link creates an antagonistic interaction between the agents. The dividing line between small and large delays is given by $\tau_{ij}=\pi/2\lambda_{\max}(L_0)$, where $\lambda_{\max}(L_0)$ refers to the maximum eigenvalue of the conventional graph Laplacian. It is proved that the consensusability is preserved if the delay-embedded signed Laplacian is positive semi-definite with a simple zero eigenvalue. Moreover, we derived some consensus conditions in terms of the extended effective resistance which measures the overall coupling between two sets of agents. The obtained results provide new insights into the mechanism of delayed consensus from the interplay between the small-delay-induced cooperativeness and large-delay-induced antagonism in the underlying network topology.

Voltage stability margin assessment is essential for the secure operation of renewable-dominated power systems. Conventional continuation-based methods evaluate the margin along predefined load-growth paths with fixed generator partic- ipation, while practical operation allows generators to be redis- patched to alleviate voltage stress and reshape the power-flow trajectory as the system approaches voltage collapse. This paper proposes a path-coupled margin assessment approach that incor- porates corrective generator response into static voltage stability margin assessment. In the proposed approach, the load-growth direction and generator response direction are simultaneously determined at each continuation step, enabling the assessment trajectory to account for generator response while tracing the system toward voltage collapse. The voltage stability margin is then evaluated by the cumulative active load increase along this coupled trajectory. Based on the obtained trajectory and collapse point, a feasible redispatch direction is further derived to improve the margin of the current operating state. The economic cost of voltage stability enhancement is quantified through a marginal stability cost, providing an economic indicator for additional sta- bility support. Case studies on various test systems demonstrate that the proposed framework can effectively capture the impact of corrective generator redispatch on voltage stability assessment, provide effective guidance for margin enhancement, and quantify the cost associated with voltage stability improvement.

Industrial loads account for over 60% of China's electricity consumption and can provide substantial flexibility for renewable-dominated power systems. Their market participation remains limited by complex production constraints, unavailable equipment parameters, and the computational scale of resource coordination. This dissertation addresses these barriers from the perspective of a load aggregator. It reformulates the State Task Network and Resource Task Network as the Linearized State Task Network and continuous Resource Task Network. In a standard grid-interaction case, the reformulation reduces solution time from 24 hours to 30 minutes and supports coordinated optimization of 2,000 industrial users. Production Scheduling Identification combines process knowledge and cost-minimizing behavior with hourly smart-meter data; using 21 training days, it achieves load-model errors of 5.2% and 8.5% for cement and steel-powder cases, compared with 13.4%-19.2% for machine-learning baselines. Data-Driven Dimension Reduction yields errors of 3.6%-10.3% across three industrial cases and replaces 10,208 integer variables with 24-48 continuous variables in the steelmaking case. For market interaction, a joint bidding and power-disaggregation framework uses shadow prices to allocate real-time commands among tens of thousands of resources through millisecond-level arithmetic. In a representative comparison, it reduces interaction costs by 40% while retaining the solution quality of the joint optimization model. These contributions keep detailed industrial process models available for executable scheduling while providing aggregators with compact models for flexibility assessment, portfolio optimization, and electricity-market participation.

This paper proposes a Mamba surrogate model with mixture-of-experts (MoE) routing to represent the transient dynamics of inverter-based resources. A Mamba surrogate model is a predictive machine learning model built on the Mamba architecture. MoE routing uses a router network to assign data-dependent weights to specialized subnetworks (experts). The resulting Mamba–MoE surrogate can perform two tasks: (i) closed-loop simulation and (ii) measurement-window forecasting of inverter transients. A single Mamba backbone with task conditioning and expert routing serves both tasks, replacing two separate specialists. Task-matched objectives fit each prediction form, and an adaptive conformal layer provides prediction intervals for both tasks. For the considered grid-following inverter, the unified surrogate model remains in the same low-error regime as a Mamba specialist pair while using 13% fewer parameters. The prediction intervals achieve 94–96% empirical mean marginal coverage across the two tasks. For transient dynamics—that is, beyond the vicinity of an equilibrium point—our surrogate model with MoE routing yields lower errors across all outputs in both tasks compared to a shared Mamba backbone without expert routing. A controller hardware-in-the-loop simulation validates our results and shows that adapting only the shared output head with limited measured data reduces held-out forecasting error.

Extreme weather leaves power systems exposed to residual outage risk even after physical resilience investments. Parametric insurance can provide pre-agreed contingent liquidity, but its physical value depends on how trigger thresholds and payout levels are designed. This paper proposes a resilience oriented parametric insurance framework that couples a three tier wind-index contract with post-event network restoration. Insurance payout expands the budget available to activate emergency resources, so the contract changes the physical restoration feasible set rather than merely offsetting accounting losses. Trigger thresholds and payout levels are jointly designed to balance actuarial premium, expected post-event system cost, and the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) of scenario energy not supplied (ENS). A response-library method precomputes the restoration mixed-integer linear program for each scenario-payout pair and then evaluates admissible contracts efficiently. On the IEEE RTS-24 with 80 extreme-wind scenarios, the optimized contract reduces expected EENS and CVaR0.90 of ENS by 21.1% and 21.4%, respectively, relative to no insurance, while requiring 48.8% less premium than a fixed parametric contract with comparable resilience. The results show that insurance design should target the nonlinear liquidity-to-resilience response rather than loss compensation alone.

A scuba diver holding constant depth balances on an unstable equilibrium: the gas carried in the suit and buoyancy compensator compresses with depth, so the buoyant force falls as the diver sinks and rises as the diver ascends. We represent the diver as a proportional-derivative controller that regulates this compressible-buoyancy saddle after a finite reaction delay, and we derive the governing delay differential equation from the vertical force balance and the isothermal gas law, reducing it to a damping ratio, two control gains, and a dimensionless delay. The characteristic spectrum, obtained by pseudospectral collocation of the semigroup generator and checked against a direct Newton solution of the characteristic equation, locates the Hopf boundary that separates stable hovering from sustained porpoising; for the baseline diver the critical reaction delay is 3.36 s and the onset period is 28.8 s. The bifurcation is supercritical, and because the saturating force is the quadratic hydrodynamic drag, the limit-cycle amplitude grows in proportion to the delay excess rather than as its square root. The safe-operating envelope shows that runaway ascent is triggered by saturation of the compensator, not by loss of linear stability, so a stable and an unstable diver can share the same escape threshold. As onset is approached, the lag-one autocorrelation and variance rise while the fitted recovery rate falls and matches the spectral abscissa, giving an eigenvalue-exact early warning of the transition.

This paper presents a demand-driven framework for on-demand Urban Air Mobility (UAM) network design that links vertiport siting, fleet simulation, and door-to-door travel-time feasibility. Demand is estimated from commuter and passenger activity data, converted into spatial trip-end points, and clustered using K-means to generate candidate vertiport locations. Candidate networks are screened using range and minimum station-spacing constraints, then evaluated with a discrete-event simulation that models multi-vehicle dispatch, deadhead relocation, battery swaps, and service regularity. Flight time and energy consumption are computed using a point-mass eVTOL performance model. In a Greater Los Angeles case study, the preferred design expands from four stations and four eVTOLs at low demand to sixteen stations and twelve eVTOLs at the highest tested demand level. Results show that larger fleets improve completion time and vehicle-arrival regularity but do not eliminate deadhead flights, indicating that spatial demand imbalance remains an operational burden. The travel-time savings analysis further suggests that UAM is most defensible for longer or congestion-heavy trips where sufficient non-flight time remains after accounting for flight time.

Learned perception models increasingly serve as measurement maps within nonlinear observers. Their state-dependent Jacobians introduce measurement geometry that measurement-value accuracy does not constrain. Even when measurements satisfy standard accuracy criteria, the corresponding one-step Euclidean error operator can be noncontractive. Improving measurement accuracy or retuning the correction strength may leave this observer-level contraction failure unresolved. We derive the exact estimation-error operator and use it to determine whether scalar-gain adjustment can restore contraction or the correction structure must change. The analysis separates three distinct cases: a conservative certificate may be inconclusive, the nominal gain may be exactly noncontractive, or the correction geometry may lie beyond scalar-gain repair. Convexity makes this recovery boundary exactly computable. When scalar recovery remains possible, uncertainty-aware envelopes define a safe projection that changes the nominal gain only when contraction and same-state improvement are certified. Uniform local certification yields exponential error decay and explicit disturbance-dependent bounds. The method uses local composite-Jacobian information or a certified approximation and requires no retraining. Scalar experiments demonstrate certified contraction recovery and improved tracking when the geometry permits. Controlled real-image experiments provide numerical evidence of scalar-unrecoverable contraction loss despite accurate learned measurements