Papers

A code world model accepted by a sampling gate can be exactly right on everything the gate can see and arbitrarily wrong beyond it. We characterize what a certified model can know, and what its errors can cost, when the omission is an annular freeze mode enclosing an unreachable interior. The gate quotient makes the question precise: acceptance-with-certainty determines the model exactly on the reachable query set; beyond reach is gauge. On a minimal ring instrument we prove the extreme case (a wrong-topology filled-disc artifact unfalsifiable by any sampling gate and bitwise harmless at play) and measure, with LLM synthesis across three model families, how one knob (a channel of width gamma) walks the same artifact through three regimes: unfalsifiable-and-harmless, falsifiable-and-costly, and instantly falsified. Three principles organize the empirics. First, danger is topology relative to reach: a channel the planner can use collapses the blind model's exploitation (play cost 1.09 to ~0 over a knee at gamma ~ 0.1), while a hidden channel with the same first Betti number keeps it at full strength (1.12). Second, repair is parameter-bound and sensor-bound: no family recovers the region from outside evidence; from inside, models pose the right topology but cannot pin its parameters, and the posed topology tracks the guiding persistent-homology summary's wrong beta_1 (a sensor with a measured geometric resolution limit), not the truth. Third, mitigation must match the error's dimension and direction: point fences fail against the one-dimensional boundary, a dimension-matched persisted fence collapses exploitation to a two-lesson transient (0.999 to 0.058), and the dual freedom certificate collapses the invented-mode failure symmetrically (1.769 to 0.029). In n dimensions the shell makes misidentification near-certain while the danger stays fully exploitable: the two axes are independent.

This paper studies how an adversary can execute a power system frequency attack by choosing the most effective subset of inverter-based resources (IBRs) as malicious control nodes. During the attack, the adversary controls the attacking devices to destabilize a group of designated target generators. The attack is designed by introducing an unstable oscillatory mode whose eigenvector has large components at the target generators and small components at the compromised IBRs. We formalize the optimal attacker selection problem and present an equivalent mixed-integer quadratically constrained program (MIQCP). To address this combinatorial nonconvex problem, we develop two heuristic algorithms by introducing a ranking metric. The attack process is demonstrated on a modified WSCC 179-bus system, with results verified through nonlinear dynamic simulations. We show that the proposed heuristics find optimal attacking sets in a majority of evaluated scenarios while significantly reducing the required computational time. Scenarios from the ACTIVSg500 system are used to further support our results. Finally, we discuss how selecting different eigenvalues, targets, and numbers of compromised devices impact the attack's severity.

The open radio access network (O-RAN) is evolving toward agentic operation, where large language model (LLM)-driven xApps/rApps generate control proposals under operator intents. However, such proposals may be conflicting, infeasible, or hallucinated, and no existing system jointly provides proposal-independent safety, priority-aware reconciliation, and traceable feedback. To this end, we propose a provably safe arbiter, namely xTRUCE, in the near-real-time (Near-RT) RAN intelligent controller for mitigating multi-xApp conflicts in gNB control. We first develop a structured xApp proposal interface and a three-layer constraint hierarchy that places physical limits and operator-defined rules above relaxable performance targets, alongside a dual-timescale control action space. A two-stage arbitration mechanism then minimizes target shortfalls in the operator-priority order to finalize safe E2 actions within the Near-RT latency budget, while returning conflict certificates to xApps and the operator for renegotiation. Finally, we implement xTRUCE in a multi-cell O-RAN use case, and evaluate its multi-process prototype through simulations with live API-backed LLM xApps and over-the-air experiments on OpenAirInterface/FlexRIC-based O-RAN stacks. Results show that xTRUCE ensures gNB control safety with $100\%$ protected services despite severe proposal hallucinations, achieves priority-consistent performance satisfaction under overload, efficiently guides LLM intent renegotiation via certificates, and keeps a delay-safe E2 control loop.

Quantum sensors are specified by a headline sensitivity, yet applications also demand accuracy and reliability. The dominant limiter of one metric is often known, but no method resolves how interacting mechanisms combine into a signed, per-mechanism budget for each metric. We introduce a framework that computes a sensor's sensitivity, accuracy, and robustness from one open-system simulation and attributes each to its limiting mechanism. For a nitrogen-vacancy diamond ensemble the attribution inverts across metrics: dephasing limits sensitivity, the thermal ground-state shift limits accuracy, and optical leakage limits robustness. At identical sensitivity the recovered-field bias spans $8$ to $1500$\,nT, so tuning to sensitivity alone can miss the accuracy target by two orders of magnitude. The same modeling transfers to a cesium optically pumped magnetometer recording a human magnetocardiogram. As a digital twin, it predicts the gain from addressing each limiter, so sensors can be designed to the required metrics.

Cloud robotics relies on the timely uplink of high-volume sensing streams, yet dynamic environments continually shift the feasible combinations of trajectories, active-robot count, and per-robot QoS. Because existing approaches formulate trajectory planning (TP) and radio resource management (RRM) as a single fixed optimization problem, they cannot reconfigure these coupled decisions as conditions evolve, resulting in transient QoS violations. However, evolving operator intents change which quantities-such as the active-robot count and per-robot QoS-are fixed, optimized, or relaxed. Furthermore, the computational cost of evaluating trajectory-dependent wireless conflicts has made it difficult to build large-scale Digital-Twin-in-the-Loop (DITL) testbeds responsive enough for such dynamic orchestration. We present LUCID, an LLM-agent–orchestrated, uplink-aware cloud-robotics pipeline that moves TP–RRM from solving a fixed formulation to dynamically orchestrating optimization problem schemas within a DITL environment. Driven by the operator's high-level intent, LUCID treats the TP–RRM formulation as a bounded template whose variables, objectives, and constraints are dynamically configured, while SimBridge enables repeated ray-tracing evaluation by converting large-scale robotics scenes into wireless-ready DTs. By integrating collision-free path planning with a spectral-radius RRM validator, LUCID identifies wireless bottlenecks and restructures the problem schema on the fly to efficiently find the verified feasible state. Experiments confirm that LUCID robustly adapts to changing intents, active-robot counts, and scenes, while a multimodal surrogate model, FastConfigNet, reduces planning latency.

An operator–theoretic formulation is developed for the synthesis of parameter-dependent controllers and observers for the Vlasov–Maxwell system. The linearized dynamics are modeled as a non-autonomous evolution system whose generators depend on measurable plasma quantities. Well-posedness of the associated evolution family is established together with uniform growth bounds. Parameter-dependent Lyapunov operators yield operator differential LMIs ensuring uniform exponential stability and observer convergence. An $H_\infty$ extension provides disturbance attenuation conditions consistent with the intrinsic energy structure of the coupled Vlasov–Maxwell equations. Galerkin projections lead to finite-dimensional LMIs consistent with the operator inequalities, enabling reliable numerical synthesis while preserving the analytical structure of the original model. Numerical results on a reduced Vlasov–Maxwell benchmark confirm the predicted convergence properties.

This paper proposes a scalable framework for voltage-stability dataset generation. Voltage-stability-constrained planning increasingly relies on machine-learning surrogates but training them requires large datasets labelled by continuation power flow (CPF) results, which is computationally costly. To address this, this paper proposes a framework that uses hierarchical clustering on boundary-proximity indicators to reduce the number of required CPF evaluations. The proposed approach combines (i) uniform sampling of feasible operating space using Hit-and-Run Markov Chain Monte Carlo, (ii) structured stress directions via maximin Latin hypercube sampling (LHS), (iii) sensitivity-guided perturbations to target weak buses, and (iv) clustering-based representative CPF labelling that reconstructs the voltage stability margins of unlabelled operating points from representative cluster medoids. Results on the IEEE 39-bus system show that the proposed framework significantly reduces CPF evaluations by 95.45% while preserving high accuracy and boundary fidelity for both regression and classification tasks. The reduced surrogates remain structurally consistent with their full-CPF dataset counterparts, demonstrating the suitability and scalability of the proposed approach for operation and planning optimization.

Voltage security assessment in power systems with high renewable energy source (RES) penetration requires analyzing many operating conditions to capture variability and uncertainty, but simulating a full year of operating points is computationally costly - motivating the selection of representative operating points (ROPs). Most existing methods cluster demand and generation profiles, but similarity in these profiles does not guarantee similarity in voltage behavior, since reactive power limits, voltage-control actions, and nonlinear network interactions shape voltage response in ways that cannot be inferred from power profile patterns. This paper proposes an unsupervised learning framework that selects ROPs based on the system's actual voltage response: each operating point is represented by system-wide voltage-risk indices from AC power-flow solutions, Principal Component Analysis reduces dimensionality, and Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering with Ward linkage identifies representative voltage regimes. A comprehensive set of evaluation criteria then measures how well the selected ROPs reproduce the full year's voltage-security characteristics under normal and contingency conditions. On the IEEE Voltage Test System under very high RES penetration, the framework reduces the annual operating point set by 99.66 percent while reproducing full-year voltage behavior with 98.3 percent reconstruction accuracy in steady state and 93.4 percent in post-contingency response, outperforming existing injection-space clustering and heuristic sampling.

Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband, represented by Starlink, is making high-resolution video streaming feasible beyond fixed terrestrial coverage. However, Starlink access links change across time and regions, exposing adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming to shifting throughput tails, latency, volatility, and handover conditions. Existing ABR controllers are usually designed, tuned, or trained for specific network conditions, making it difficult to handle newly exposed hard Starlink profiles. This paper proposes SafeLink-Agent, an agentic maintenance framework for ABR controllers over dynamic Starlink networks. SafeLink-Agent summarizes exposed failures and uses a large language model (LLM)-based agentic patch proposer to generate candidate patches, while replay verification determines whether each patch can be safely committed. The framework supports both rule-based controllers and learned controllers under the same maintenance workflow. Experiments on real Starlink networks show that SafeLink-Agent reduces the severe-session ratio of RobustMPC from 2.60% to 0.40% and reduces cumulative severe sessions from 45 to 7 in rolling maintenance. For learned controllers, verified adaptive auditing lowers the average severe-session ratio from 39.01% to 9.79%. These results demonstrate that agentic maintenance can improve ABR robustness under dynamic Starlink access conditions.

This paper investigates the distributed optimal consensus control problem of constrained heterogeneous multi-agent systems within a model predictive control (MPC) scheme. Both the control input sequence and the dynamically feasible consensus equilibrium are optimized simultaneously within the proposed MPC framework to improve consensus performance, yielding a coupled constrained optimization problem at each prediction time. A distributed primal–dual algorithm is developed to solve the resulting optimization problem, and locally verifiable conditions are derived to guarantee its convergence. Furthermore, sufficient terminal conditions are established for the proposed MPC framework to guarantee the recursive feasibility and asymptotic consensus of the closed-loop heterogeneous multi-agent systems. Finally, numerical simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Certain defense systems are, by nature, deployed in a civilian environment in order to serve a defensive function for that environment. However, the risk involved with their deployment and operation poses a challenge for the public acceptance of these systems. Compared to safety engineering for civilian systems, the risk constellation is quite different. While reducing risk of safety-critical systems is generally desirable, defense systems are required to produce intended mission effects, which may include harm to an attacking target. In both cases, not all risk can be eliminated. The complex risk constellation of defense systems has implications for the systems' designs. We compare the concepts of risk in existing standards from both the civilian and the military domains. An extended constellation of risks needs to be considered, including risk caused by external threats to security. By including this risk constellation in public communication about defense systems, we aim to stimulate a productive debate.

Adjustable-set robust model predictive control (MPC) characterizes a state-dependent maximum disturbance radius, which can be interpreted as a certified robustness reserve. Existing methods primarily focus on optimizing and propagating this reserve under in-set disturbances. This letter investigates how much reserve remains after a finite out-of-set disturbance without immediately re-solving the full optimization problem. To this end, we propose a two-sided reserve-depletion envelope formed by independent primal and dual correction hierarchies, which supply monotone lower and upper bounds, respectively. The envelope remains valid across active-set changes, has an online-computable width, and contracts monotonically under subspace expansion. Leveraging its finite-step exactness, we present a basis-first adaptive algorithm that operates in an anytime manner: every completed reduced solve returns a valid certificate, enabling early termination once a prescribed tolerance is reached. Across the tested cases, numerical studies report no certificate violations and median speedups of up to 4.97x over warm-started full re-optimization at a 2% certificate-width tolerance.

In integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) enabled 6G unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm networks, the widely adopted imitation-based conformity cooperation mechanism can be exploited by Byzantine attackers to fabricate false consensus, causing the effective error probability of normal UAVs to evolve dynamically and far exceed their inherent sensing errors, which invalidates conventional fusion methods built on the independence assumption. This paper proposes a conformity-aware Byzantine-resilient fusion framework that couples evolutionary game theory with maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation. First, the strategy updates of normal UAVs are characterized by bounded-rational opinion dynamics, and the evolution dynamics of the misinformation ratio together with its evolutionarily stable state (ESS) are derived under death birth updating. Three theoretical results are then established: under heterogeneous per-node sensing errors, the zeroth-order ESS depends on the error distribution only through its mean; a closed-form first-order weak-selection correction to the ESS is obtained, together with an exact mean-field fixed point valid for arbitrary selection intensity; and it is revealed that swarm level misinformation can overwhelm the majority if and only if the attack probability exceeds one half, with this threshold independent of both the sensing error and the malicious ratio. Embedding the predicted error dynamics into a per-node MAP rule, the resulting fusion mechanism achieves nearly 100% situation-inference accuracy under different network topologies, attack intensities, network scales, and sensing-error distributions, and maintains accuracy above 99% under +-20% parameter mismatch. In contrast, majority voting, reputation weighting, and independent fusion collapse completely once the majority-flip threshold is crossed.

For cooperative perception in the internet of vehicles, this paper proposes a generative adversarial network-based semantic communication framework to address the efficiency and fidelity bottlenecks of traditional communication systems in visual data transmission under limited bandwidth and dynamic channel conditions. At the transmitter, the framework adopts a pyramid attention network to extract semantic label maps and introduces a semantic priority preservation mechanism. It assigns differentiated weights to distinct semantic categories based on driving safety, guiding bit allocation and loss function design. At the receiver, an image reconstruction module integrating a coarse to-fine multi-resolution generator and multi-scale discriminator is designed. Combined with the temporal consistency branch, spatial pyramid pooling and class-aware convolutional layers, it achieves high-fidelity reconstruction of high-quality images from corrupted semantic labels. The model is trained with combined adversarial, feature matching and perceptual losses, effectively improving semantic consistency and visual realism of generated images. Experimental results on the Cityscapes dataset show that the proposed method outperforms existing counterparts in both semantic segmentation accuracy and reconstructed image quality, and maintains stable reconstruction performance under AWGN and Rayleigh channels.

Battery health prognostics is a core function in battery management systems (BMSs), yet long-horizon health forecasting from BMS signals remains challenging due to operating-condition dependency and sensor noise. In this paper, we propose PhyMamba, a two-stage physics-modulated Mamba framework that integrates electrochemical aging into sequence modelling. PhyMamba does not require explicit identification of internal aging parameters, which often relies on intrusive measurements. In stage-1, a lightweight Mamba encoder first processes BMS signals and produces a latent representation that is transformed via an aging parameterization module, into physics-informed aging features. In stage-2, a customized Mamba forecasting backbone performs multi-cycle prediction, where physics is tightly integrated to regulate the model's internal temporal updates toward degradation-consistent evolution. Experiments on three public datasets under multiple forecast horizons show that PhyMamba achieves the best aggregated performance, with an overall mean error reduction of 31.8% compared with a diverse range of baselines. PhyMamba also offers an optimized accuracy-efficiency trade-off, which supports practical deployment for robust battery health prognostics.

Backup control barrier functions (bCBFs) enforce safety for input-constrained nonlinear systems using a pre-certified backup set and controller, but their performance depends strongly on this prescribed pair. This letter develops a constructive method for synthesizing a less conservative backup pair via finite horizon sum-of-squares (SOS) backward reachability. Starting from an initial backup set, we compute an SOS-certified finite horizon backward reachable set and controller that satisfy safety and input constraints while steering trajectories to the original backup set. We then provide conditions under which this certified set becomes a valid backup set for a piecewise backup controller. The resulting backup pair is integrated into the bCBF framework to certify larger safe sets.

Design-rule integration (DRI) remains a major bottleneck for scalable (Constraint Programming with SAT) CP-SAT-based standard cell synthesis and rapid technology enablement at advanced nodes. It still depends heavily on manual effort and domain expertise. Moreover, existing low-level rule encodings are not expressive enough for emerging constraints such as cut-based rules under multi-patterning technology. This paper presents AutoDRI, a multi-agent framework for automated design-rule integration in standard cell synthesis. AutoDRI combines a geometric semantic library, a standardized conflict-set encoding, a constructive multicolor-cut modeling method, and a feedback-driven multi-agent flow to bridge the semantic gap between natural-language design rules and executable CP-SAT constraints. In the reported experiments, AutoDRI achieves near-perfect rule-integration correctness across 41 cell benchmarks under 10+ complex rules, including colored cut-mask spacing rules, reaching 33/33 correct integrations with Gemini-3-pro and 32/33 with GPT-5.4, while maintaining runtime comparable to manual hard-coding and passing KLayout DRC and Cadence LVS.

Coordination is a desirable feature in multi-agent systems, ranging from robotic swarms to socioeconomic networks. This paper is concerned with promoting coordination among heterogeneous agents, e.g., machines and humans, interacting in a stag-hunt game. In our model the agents exhibit bounded rationality at different levels, which leads to uncertainty and a propensity for errors during learning and decision-making processes. This paper addresses the problem of designing a network topology that maximizes a global metric of coordination under such constraints. While optimizing over the discrete space of finite graphs is generally computationally intractable, we employ a mean-field approach to lift the problem into the space of graphons. Within this framework, we analyze agents following a logit learning dynamics. Using calculus of variations, we show that for systems with a bimodal rationality profile, it suffices to search for optimal graphons in the ensemble of stochastic block models. We then propose a water-filling algorithm to find a locally optimal graphon. Finite graphs can then be sampled from the optimized graphon, bypassing the inherent combinatorial complexities of discrete graph optimization.

This paper studies multistatic measurement fusion when a target lies within the Tx–Rx (Transmitter-Receiver) baseline ambiguity zone, with particular emphasis on configurations involving two closely spaced stationary Tx–Rx pairs. Such configurations provide overlapping detectable regions and extend the effective detection range compared with sparsely spaced multistatic systems. However, in this region, the accuracy of range and bearing measurements degrades rapidly, and Doppler measurements often remain the only reliable information source. As a result, target trajectory estimation becomes highly challenging, with observability being marginal or even completely lost. To address this problem, the observability of target trajectories is analyzed under various conditions, enabling system designers to assess system performance in advance. A Doppler-only measurement fusion approach is then developed, employing a multiple-initial-point Maximum Likelihood (ML) nonlinear estimator for initial state estimation, followed by dynamic state updates using an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Simulation results are presented and shown to be consistent with the observability analysis.

Short-term load forecasting (STLF) provides essential information for numerous applications in modern power systems. However, accurate STLF often relies on fine-grained smart-meter data from distributed users, raising increasing concerns about data privacy. Federated learning (FL) has therefore emerged as a promising privacy-preserving paradigm for STLF. Nevertheless, this paper reveals structured heterogeneity in clients' load data. Specifically, clients exhibit different responses to exogenous factors and distinct temporal load profiles, which can degrade forecasting performance in FL. To mitigate these issues, this paper studies the role of model initialization in federated STLF, and proposes two initialization strategies from global and local perspectives. For global model initialization, when auxiliary public load data are available, a pretrained initialization strategy is developed to initialize the global model before federated training, thereby reducing client drift during the training process. For local model initialization, we propose SLIAvg, a sequential local initialization strategy that promotes a more consistent training process by allowing participating clients to start from progressively adapted models within each communication round. Since the proposed strategies only modify the initialization process, they are compatible with most existing FL frameworks and privacy-enhancing techniques. Experiments on real smart-meter data with two representative forecasting architectures demonstrate that the proposed strategies effectively improve forecasting performance, as evidenced by reduced client drift, improved convergence behavior, and lower forecasting errors.

We describe the design of a custom crowbar circuit that quickly removes power when a programmable current threshold is exceeded. This protects devices from permanent damage during single event latchup/burnout tests.

Parrilo's cones $\Kc{n}{r}$ form a nested sequence of semidefinite-representable inner approximations of the copositive cone $\COP_n$. For $n=5$ their union is all of $\COP_5$, yet no single level attains it, and whether consecutive levels actually differ had remained open beyond the classical first step. No explicit matrix in $\Kc{n}{t}\setminus\Kc{n}{t-1}$ had, to our knowledge, been published for any $t\ge2$ and $n\ge5$. We settle the first three cases. Explicit rational matrices, obtained from diagonal scalings of the Horn matrix shifted along a positive interior direction, lie in $\Kc{5}{2}\setminus\Kc{5}{1}$, in $\Kc{5}{3}\setminus\Kc{5}{2}$, and in $\Kc{5}{4}\setminus\Kc{5}{3}$, giving three consecutive strict inclusions $\Kc{5}{1}\subsetneq\Kc{5}{2}\subsetneq\Kc{5}{3}\subsetneq\Kc{5}{4}$. Each is certified by an exact rational Gram matrix and an exact rational dual moment functional, re-verified by a standalone program in integer arithmetic. The separations are robust. One fixed certificate pair covers an interval of shifts of width exceeding $3\cdot10^{-3}$, and $\Kc{5}{2}\setminus\Kc{5}{1}$ has nonempty interior. Combining a scaling theorem of Dickinson, Dür, Gijben and Hildebrand with the completeness theorem of Schweighofer and Vargas shows further that strict adjacent inclusions recur at arbitrarily large levels. All separators were located by one threshold device: the least shift $\eps_r(M)$ carrying $M$ into $\Kc{5}{r}$ along an interior direction is nonincreasing in $r$, and each strict drop between levels marks a window of separators.

We study contraction properties of non-stationary continuous-time mean-field games (MFGs) under discounting and entropy regularization. The state of the representative agent evolves according to a controlled continuous-time Markov chain, and both the state and action spaces are finite. In contrast to the undiscounted case, we show that, under a sufficiently large discount rate, finite-horizon MFGs admit a horizon-independent contraction condition, which also coincides with the corresponding infinite-horizon non-stationary contraction condition. As a byproduct, we obtain an explicit convergence rate between finite- and infinite-horizon mean-field equilibria. For each finite horizon, we further derive a refined contraction criterion from the spectral radius of a positive operator that majorizes the propagation of policy errors, and show that its large-horizon limit agrees with the horizon-independent contraction factor. Finally, we provide an explicit error bound between discounted and undiscounted finite-horizon regularized equilibria.

Generalized disjunctive programming (GDP) expresses mixed discrete-continuous decisions through Boolean indicators and disjunctions, and can be systematically solved via a library of methods proposed in the literature. The recent InfiniteGDP abstraction lifts this modeling layer to continuous domains such as time, space, and uncertainty, but only the big-M and hull reformulations, the two endpoints of the relaxation spectrum, have been generalized to the infinite setting. This work closes this gap by generalizing four other GDP solution methods to infinite-dimensional optimization: the multiple big-M reformulation, P-split reformulation, cutting plane reformulation, and the logic-based outer approximation algorithm. It further proposes MBM-GP, a novel Gaussian-process variant of multiple big-M that learns the big-M function over the infinite domain from a small subset of the subproblem solves. Moreover, these approaches are implemented in the Julia package InfiniteDisjunctiveProgramming.jl. The methods are benchmarked on case studies arising in dynamic and stochastic optimization. The results demonstrate how the generalized solution methods can outperform big-M and hull, with MBM-GP retaining the tightness of multiple big-M at a fraction of its reformulation cost.

A spacecraft closing on a target from three hundred kilometres to contact flies one guidance law across five orders of magnitude of range, and a controller that is provably safe at close range can lose that guarantee completely at long range while continuing to fly as though nothing were wrong. This paper derives the range at which the guarantee lapses and uses it as a design rule. The bound compares the prediction model's own linearisation error against the disturbance set the controller was built to reject, and needs only the sampling period, the orbit and that disturbance bound, so it can be evaluated before any simulation. On a Mars Sample Return approach it disqualifies the homing phase, where most of the propellant is spent, and clears the other two. Re-posing the disqualified phase in relative orbital elements restores the guarantee; re-posing a phase the rule already clears, in a frame two orders of magnitude more accurate, changes propellant by under a tenth of one per cent, and it is that second prediction that makes the rule falsifiable rather than descriptive. The constraint tightening also ties the prediction horizon to feasibility, so the horizon search limit becomes a mission parameter rather than a solver setting. Against a reimplementation of a published benchmark that reproduces its propellant to within one per cent, over five hundred dispersed Monte Carlo transfers per case on matched seeds, the controller saves 29% of the propellant on a circular target orbit and 40% on an eccentric one, docking inside the 0.20 m capture requirement on essentially every draw at a median miss near 5 cm. Two results run the other way: the saving is bought with time of flight and computation, and it comes from what the guarantee demanded of the terminal condition rather than from better disturbance rejection. Recursive feasibility and asymptotic stability are not claimed.

Hamilton-Jacobi reachability (HJR) is an important framework in safe control theory. HJR provides theoretical tools and numerical methods to obtain value-functions for tasks involving target-reaching and obstacle-avoidance. A recent work proposed an algebraic framework to scale to complex, composite tasks via decomposing the value functions of the composite tasks into value functions for the fundamental tasks traditionally studied in HJR, all in the one-player setting. Many of these decomposition results, however, do not directly translate to the two-player setting. In this technical note, we nevertheless show that one of the previous work's key results for analyzing various tasks involving reaching multiple targets while obeying constraints still holds in the two-player setting, so long as a critical monotonicity assumption is satisfied. In particular, we detail the analogous result and its proof (which structurally differs from the one-player case), we show via a counter-example what can go wrong if this monotonicity assumption is not satisfied, and we show how the analysis of a variety of tasks can be performed using this result. Such tasks include sequential and any-order multi-target-reaching tasks under constraints. We note that, whereas the prior work considered discrete-time, infinite-horizon tasks, which are more standard in reinforcement learning, we here consider continuous-time, finite-horizon tasks, which are more standard in HJR.

Generation and discovery are different problems. A generative model trained on valid artifacts reproduces a distribution, whereas discovery must produce artifacts that lie outside the observed corpus, satisfy hard structural constraints, and improve on established designs under evaluation that the model cannot influence. We introduce a diffusion-based discovery framework. Unlike conventional generative models that sample from learned distributions, it learns transition operators that transform existing artifacts into new candidates. Controlled partial re-noising followed by denoising defines a diffusion mutation kernel, a learned transition distribution that preserves the structural regularities of feasible designs while moving between regions of the design space. The learned model supplies feasibility structure only, and all correctness and performance judgments remain with external engineering tools. Intermediate diffusion trajectories are additionally monitored under a conformal risk budget so that unpromising candidates are discarded before expensive evaluation. We evaluate the framework on three electronic design spaces, an environment that supplies rigorous non-differentiable evaluators in the form of simulation, formal equivalence checking, and industrial physical implementation. The framework discovers 32-bit prefix adders that are formally verified equivalent to addition over all 2^64 input pairs and reduce delay by 17% and area by 18% relative to Kogge-Stone under a placed-and-timed flow; seven independently re-simulated amplifier topologies absent from the training corpus, spanning gains of 21.9-66.1 dB and bandwidths of 72.9 kHz-207 MHz; and macro placements on held-out netlists reaching 0.68x wirelength of an industrial placer.

This paper studies competitive one-step-ahead control of Friedkin-Johnsen networks with overlapping player influence. The one-step interaction is an exact potential game with a unique Nash equilibrium obtained from a symmetric positive-definite system. Sequential best-response sweeps converge for every frozen network state, parallel sweeps obey an exact Jacobi condition (and always converge with two players), and one-sweep implementations require an augmented state-action stability test. For marginal networks, a signed left-right damping condition is sufficient for exact-equilibrium stability and becomes a sharp first-order instability test when its sign is reversed. A resolvent identity clarifies the feedback geometry, while a control-aware centrality identifies the goal conflicts that matter most. We characterize attainable equilibria under unconstrained, convex, and sparse goal restrictions and give a closed form for the same-state welfare loss caused by competition. Numerical examples verify the stability thresholds, geometry, and welfare predictions.

This study evaluates the effectiveness of remote human-robot interaction using virtual reality for leaf inspection and soil moisture assessment in a greenhouse environment. The robotic system comprised an unmanned ground vehicle and a robotic manipulator equipped with cameras, governed by kinematic models for navigation and manipulator control. Fourteen distinct plants were inspected across two experiments utilizing VR teleoperation, guided by a set of pre-specified research questions and hypotheses. In the leaf inspection experiments, cycle completion times varied from 3.3 to 8.0 s, and plant-based disease detection was achieved up to 88% accuracy; diseased-spot detection improved numerically in the second experiment, though this change was not statistically significant (p=0.378). For soil moisture assessment, the experiments achieved successful determination of watering needs in up to 64.3% of plants (9 of 14), with consistent success observed for plants 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, and 13; however, this improvement was likewise not statistically significant (p=0.50). A post hoc analysis instead revealed that soil moisture assessment reliability was strongly and significantly predicted by plant canopy morphology (p<0.01): plants with broad, single-leaf canopies reached 100% success by the second experiment, versus only 16.7% for dense, compound canopies. A secondary analysis showed operators became measurably faster at attempting dense-canopy plants without a corresponding gain in success, indicating that camera occlusion, not operator skill or effort, is the dominant limiting factor. These findings show occlusion imposes a sensing limitation rather than a control or training deficiency, and that adapting camera viewpoint and sensing strategy to canopy density is needed to improve the system's accuracy and robustness.

Power grid state estimation relies on sensor measurements that are increasingly vulnerable to adversarial corruption in cyberphysical environments, potentially leading to significant deviations in system observations. This motivates the need to identify critical measurement nodes whose compromise results in the most severe system-level impact. However, existing node criticality methods primarily rely on structural or steady-state analyses and do not explicitly account for adversarial effects on system behavior. To address this gap, this paper proposes an adversarially informed framework for identifying critical measurement nodes in linearized power systems. Within this framework, a structured attack generation mechanism is developed to construct stealthy and effective false data injection attacks (FDIAs) against an H-infinity resilient state estimator. Node criticality is then evaluated using coalition-based marginal contributions of compromised sensor subsets, estimated via permutation sampling over a prescribed set of admissible nodes, with the resulting importance scores mapped to the corresponding physical buses. Simulation results on the IEEE 14-bus system show that adversarially identified nodes induce larger deviations in frequency, voltage angle, and net power compared to randomly selected nodes, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed framework.