Papers

Generative models have shown strong potential for positron emission tomography (PET) image reconstruction. Although diffusion model-based reconstruction methods have demonstrated promising performance, they often require many reverse sampling steps with data-consistency updates incorporated into the sampling process. Flow matching offers an attractive alternative because it can directly estimate clean images from intermediate states, allowing data-consistency refinement to be separated from flow propagation. In this work, we proposed flow matching-based PET image reconstruction methods. We first established PET-FlowDPS by incorporating Poisson likelihood guidance with an expectation-maximization (EM)-based preconditioner into the FlowDPS framework. We then proposed a model-based PET reconstruction method that used a pretrained flow matching model as a prior, in which the flow-based prior, PET data refinement, and stochastic propagation were interpreted within an approximate Bayesian framework. Experimental results using [$^{\text{18}}\text{F}$]FDG brain PET datasets showed that the proposed method achieved better bias-variance trade-offs across different dose levels compared with other reference methods. These results demonstrated the potential of flow matching as a generative prior for quantitative PET image reconstruction.

The demand for higher speeds in intra-data center interconnects will eventually require high-order pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) combined with soft-decision (SD) forward error correction (FEC). The laser relative intensity noise (RIN) is an important noise impairment that limits the performance of high-speed intensity-modulation (IM) and direct-detection (DD) systems, as it induces a channel with signal-dependent noise. In this paper, we show that an accurate calculation of the log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) is critical for the performance of the SD-FEC decoder in RIN-dominated IM-DD systems. First, we show that assuming signal-independent additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) statistics to compute LLRs results in a significant penalty in performance. As an alternative, we propose a low-complexity piecewise linear approximation of the exact LLRs of Gray-coded PAM-4 and PAM-8 for the RIN-dominated IM-DD channel. We show using the generalized mutual information that our approximation results in no performance loss versus using exact LLRs, unlike the AWGN-like assumption. Furthermore, we validate the analysis with bit error rate (BER) performance of SD decoding. We show that our approximation matches the BERs achieved using exact LLRs. Therefore, our approximation avoids a BER error floor penalty of up to 7.2 times using an extended Hamming code with PAM-4, and up to 2.41 dB of optical modulation amplitude penalty using high-code-rate low-density parity-check codes with PAM-8 for the same target BER.

Backstepping control provides local stability guarantees for nonlinear Saint-Venant systems, but its regulation performance may degrade when the system operates far from the nominal equilibrium. This letter proposes a backstepping-guided soft actor-critic (SAC) controller framework that incorporates model-based control knowledge into reinforcement learning (RL). The nominal backstepping control law is first learned by deep operator network (DeepONet) and embedded into the actor and critic networks as prior informed feature representations. The learned prior is further combined with the SAC policy to generate the final control input, while a transfer-learning strategy preserves the useful backstepping knowledge during adaptation to the nonlinear dynamics. Simulation results on the Sambre River model demonstrate that the proposed method improves learning efficiency and maintains effective regulation over larger initial deviations than backstepping control.

The term "dual control" refers to the dual objective of simultaneously balancing exploration and exploitation. Problems of this kind have been studied for nearly a century. This paper is devoted to theory and methodology relevant for optimal control of linear time-invariant systems whose parameters are initially unknown and must be learned by active probing. We review the main ideas underlying four major research directions: Multi-armed bandits, self-tuning regulators, regret rate minimizing controllers, and minimax optimal dual controllers. The first three have a long history and rich literature, whereas the fourth provides a promising framework for robust dual control.

In movable antenna (MA) systems, antenna movement induces Doppler frequency shifts that are conventionally treated as an impairment requiring mitigation. In this paper, we propose Velocity Index Modulation for Movable Antennas (VIM-MA), which reframes this Doppler effect as an additional information-bearing degree of freedom. The transmitter selects the antenna movement velocity from a pre-designed discrete codebook, so that the resulting Doppler shift conveys extra index bits beyond those carried by the conventional modulation symbol. Codebook design is formulated as a spectral efficiency maximization over the velocity spacing $\delta$ and codebook size $N_v$, subject to an average-information Cramér–Rao-type bound (AIF-CRB) on velocity estimation accuracy, a physical track length constraint, and a spatial channel decorrelation constraint. A logarithmic change of variables renders the problem convex and yields a closed-form solution. We further establish that the peak codebook velocity equals $D_{\max}/T_s$, and that the decorrelation-limited spacing always lies below the Rayleigh Doppler resolution, so that VIM-MA is intrinsically a super-resolution scheme. A covariance-matched detector is derived that requires neither per-path angle knowledge nor channel state information. Simulation results show that the decorrelation-limited codebook, which carries five index bits over a $10\lambda$ aperture, is attainable only with oracle angle knowledge, whereas the channel-state-free detector is limited to three bits but reaches that payload approximately $10$~dB earlier than position-domain indexing charged a realistic pilot budget.

We study bilateral teleoperation between nonlinear, multi-DOF robotic manipulators in the presence of constant communication delays. Unlike classical wave-transformation architectures that transmit a coordinating force, we consider the case where the environmental force is reflected to the master side to enhance teleoperation transparency. Since direct contact force feedback might destabilize the closed-loop system, we first develop a passivity-shortage characterization for the Euler–Lagrange remote system using a linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach. An upper strictly passive communication law is then employed to compensate for the computed passivity shortage so that the closed-loop stability under delays as well as position and force synchronization are preserved under appropriate conditions. Simulations with nonlinear 2-DOF robotic manipulators in different settings illustrate our approach.

The energy performance of road vehicles has traditionally been evaluated using driving cycles, in which a prescribed speed profile is tracked either in simulation or by a physical vehicle. Recent research has proposed an alternative framework based on operating conditions, where the driving environment is described in terms of factors such as road topography, legal speed limits, traffic, and weather, rather than by an explicit speed profile. This paper addresses the complementary problem of driver modeling, necessary to translate the operating conditions to a speed profile. A simple driver model designed to be compatible with the operating-condition framework and evaluates its ability to reproduce realistic driving behavior is investigated. Validation of the model is done through a controlled driving-simulator study vehicle log files collected during real-world operation and are used to identify the model parameters and assess the model's predictive performance. The results suggest that this simple model can be efficient in reproducing major effects of driver behavior, while further research is required to fully assess its validity.

Harmonic interactions have become a defining dynamic stability phenomenon in converter-based power systems (CBPSs). However, a formalization of the notion of harmonic stability in the context of nonlinear dynamical systems is not available thus far. In this paper, we propose a definition of harmonic stability formulated as a combination of two standard stability notions, namely, bounded-input bounded-output (BIBO) and internal stability properties with respect to any nominal periodic trajectory. Moreover, we rigorously show that the local harmonic stability of any nominal periodic trajectory of nonlinear CBPSs is implied by the stability properties of its linear time-periodic (LTP) approximation. In addition, to enable computationally tractable stability assessment, we develop a framework based on harmonic state-space (HSS) representations of LTP models. In particular, we provide time-invariant linear matrix inequality (LMI) conditions to certify harmonic stability. The proposed methodology is illustrated on a grid-following converter system, where the HSS-based analysis numerically confirms harmonic stability around the periodic operating trajectory.

Advances in speech synthesis have made deepfake audio highly realistic. Earlier studies reported 70-80% human detection accuracy, but relied primarily on older synthesizers. We compare human detection for three selected voice synthesis tools released in 2019, 2022, and 2024 with 82 IT professionals, and benchmark humans against six pretrained detectors on the same material. For fully synthetic speech (full spoofs), the F1 score drops from about 90% for RTVC and YourTTS to 48% for ElevenLabs, although listeners were explicitly warned that deepfakes were present. For partial spoofing, where only one sentence of an utterance is altered, strict accuracy falls to 9%, and listeners classify the synthetic sentence as bona fide 77% of the time. Humans and detectors fail in complementary ways, and neither reliably localizes short manipulations. Additionally, listeners increasingly mislabel bona fide speech as fake, eroding trust in unmanipulated audio. These findings show that human perception alone is unreliable for the selected modern and partial-spoof conditions and motivate procedural verification, provenance, watermarking, and segment-level detection.

The accuracy and noise immunity of GNSS receivers are largely determined by the performance of their tracking modules. To optimize performance, designers should take into account several key issues: the choice of integration intervals, the time delay (spacing) between the early and late correlator channels, and the parameters of tracking loop filters. This article presents the results of an analysis of these important practical aspects. The obtained results display some ways of improv-ing the parameters of transient processes, which occur in tracking modules. The study was conducted on an experimental navigation receiver, processing GPS L1 signals. Experimental data were obtained using the simulation software package, developed by the authors, Xilinx environment Vivado, as well as the processing of recordings of real navigation signals obtained in full-scale tests.

This paper presents a Bayesian control framework that integrates spike-based dynamics with probabilistic inference for adaptive control. Bayesian inference is widely regarded as a core computational principle of brain function, providing a normative framework for perception, decision-making, and learning under uncertainty. By combining a biologically inspired spiking neural model with Bayesian inference principles, we propose a brain-like control algorithm capable of operating in uncertain environments. We use the mountain car parking problem as a benchmark with non-linear dynamics. Our results demonstrate that the proposed controller can successfully update states in real time and generate goal-directed action plans through spike-driven dynamics. The results highlight the proposed model's potential as a bridge between computational neuroscience and probabilistic control theory.

Bayesian state estimation for discrete-time nonlinear stochastic systems is considered in the presence of measurement outliers. Building on a fixed-structure Gaussian mixture filtering framework, this paper proposes a robust measurement-update variant in which the predictive density structure is determined by an offline decomposition of the transition density into axis-aligned Gaussian components. This construction maintains the Gaussian mixture structure as deterministic and tunable via the chosen decomposition fidelity. Measurement components affected by outliers are modeled using a Student's-t distribution, and the corresponding update of each Gaussian mixture component is approximated by a variational Bayes procedure. The resulting filter is evaluated in a three-dimensional tracking scenario with range and bearing measurements, where the bearing channel is affected by outliers, modeled as heavy-tailed noise.

Radio frequency (RF) fingerprinting authenticates wireless devices from hardware-induced I/Q impairments, typically with deep learning feature extractors that are accurate but opaque, limiting their use in security critical settings. We propose Polar Monotonic Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (Polar MKAN), a block partitioned monotonic encoder on polar inputs in which each latent dimension depends exclusively on magnitude or phase, yielding channel separation and monotone responses by construction. On a synthetic gain and carrier frequency offset (CFO) benchmark, Polar MKAN reaches 57.2 percent DCI Disentanglement versus at most 12.9 percent for unpartitioned baselines. We further evaluate the detection accuracy trade off on real data and the sensitivity to blind CFO compensation.

This document describes the application of a first order linearised nonlinear repeated measurements approach to the analysis of battery cell ageing profiles generated under controlled conditions in a laboratory. The primary advantage of the model is it reflects the obvious structure in the data. Consequently, it is a two-component of variance model: variation within ageing profiles (measurement noise) and variation among ageing profiles (test-to-test or cell-to-cell) variation. Novel regularised iterative generalised least squares parameter identification schemes, with optimal hyper-parameter re-estimation, are used to identify the hierarchical nonlinear model. The training data comprised $SoH$ profiles for 10 cells aged at various constant discharge and charge current cycles at a fixed chamber environmental temperature of 25 [$^\circ$C]. Each cell $SoH$ profile is modelled using a simple power law expression, whereas the variation in ageing parameters is modelled using a single knot cubic B-spline. $SoH$ is accurately predicted to $\pm 0.191\%$ for $SOH \in [0,20]$.

We present the first multi-subcarrier massive multi-user (MU) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) data detector reported in the open literature. By exploiting the channel's beamspace sparsity and frequency-domain (FD) correlation, we achieve up to 3x area and power reduction. Our design supports U=8 user equipments and B=64 basestation antennas, computes soft outputs for QPSK to 256-QAM, and processes 16 subcarriers in parallel. The fabricated 22FDX ASIC has a core cell area of 1.3mm$^2$, consumes 286mW, and delivers a throughput of 7.3Gbps at 0.8V core voltage, achieving best-in-class energy efficiency of 39pJ/b.

Self-supervised learning (SSL) has driven substantial progress in audio representation learning, though existing methods have increasingly relied on elaborate pre-training recipes to reach competitive performance. A markedly different pre-training philosophy underpins the most influential progress in language modeling and, more recently, in visual representation learning: rather than train encoders as static feature extractors, models are trained to predict the next element, a discrete token or a continuous embedding, from the preceding context. Autoregressive prediction thereby provides a unified pre-training interface that transfers across modalities, compelling the model to learn the underlying data distribution. We ask whether such a simple causal paradigm can yield strong audio learners, given that audio's temporal structure makes autoregressive prediction of patch embeddings a natural fit. We introduce NAPE (Next-Audio-Patch-Embedding prediction), a self-supervised framework in which a causal Transformer predicts each next patch embedding of a log-mel spectrogram from the previous ones, using causal masking and stop-gradient as its sole training signal. The design is intentionally minimalist, avoiding reconstruction decoders, acoustic tokenizers, student-teacher setups, and auxiliary regularization losses. Across six audio and speech benchmarks, NAPE achieves state-of-the-art fine-tuning performance on several tasks, scales consistently across encoder sizes, and yields strong linear-probing results. NAPE also produces structured attention patterns without explicit supervision.

Resilience has emerged as a fundamental capability for future wireless systems operating in dynamic and uncertain environments. Although resilience has attracted growing attention across academia, industry, and standardization, its conceptual scope, enabling mechanisms, and realization techniques remain fragmented. This paper presents a systematic framework of resilience in wireless systems from a trustworthiness perspective. We first formalize the concept of resilience and distinguish it from related uncertainty-aware terminologies, including reliability, robustness, adaptability, survivability, and recoverability. We then establish a hierarchical framework that organizes resilience into capability dimensions and enabling mechanisms, and that quantifies resilience through different technical aspects. We further use physical links and unmanned aerial vehicle networks as representative wireless scenarios to demonstrate how resilience can be systematically realized through the joint design of architectures, operations, and algorithms. Finally, we examine the fundamental trade-offs in resilience engineering: Improving resilience generally incurs costs in resource efficiency, nominal performance, information acquisition, implementation complexity, and latency.

This paper proposes a new technique for computer simulation of linear filters. It allows simulating continuous-time linear filters based on the spectral method for analyzing linear control systems. Applying the spectral method implies that the input and output signals are represented by ordered sets of expansion coefficients in a chosen basis, and the filter itself is specified by a two-dimensional nonstationary transfer function. The described technique is tested on Bessel, Papoulis, and Legendre filters of various orders. For each filter, the corresponding two-dimensional nonstationary transfer function, i.e., the matrix of the linear transformation relating expansion coefficients of the input and output signals, is obtained.

Full-waveform inversion (FWI) is a promising strategy for quantitative musculoskeletal ultrasound computed tomography (USCT), but bone-related scattering, attenuation, and signal degradation make it highly sensitive to the accuracy of the initial acoustic-property distributions and prone to cycle skipping. First-arrival traveltimes provide important kinematic information for initial-model construction, yet conventional trace-wise picking is unreliable when arrivals are weak, spatially heterogeneous, or buried in system noise. We propose a learning-assisted reconstruction pipeline that combines segmentation-based first-arrival extraction with hybrid full-waveform inversion (HFWI), which incorporates Rytov-approximation-based traveltime information together with waveform fitting during the early inversion stage. A lightweight 2D U-Net treats the first-arrival trajectory across receiver channels as a first-break segmentation target and exploits its spatial continuity rather than processing each trace independently. To address both limited manual annotations and the simulation-to-real gap, the network is pretrained on task-specific simulations augmented with real system-noise recordings, followed by stage-wise training with progressively increased signal degradation and decoder-only fine-tuning using limited weakly labeled experimental data. The method is evaluated on in vitro phantom, ex vivo bovine-limb, and in vivo human-thigh datasets. Compared with conventional STA/LTA picking, the proposed network yields more spatially coherent first-arrival trajectories, lower mean extraction errors, and processes a full-matrix-capture dataset within seconds. When integrated into HFWI, the extracted arrivals improve initial-model construction and lead to stable subsequent FWI reconstructions, including challenging cases with estimated local first-arrival SNRs below 3 dB.

We compare gradient-based inverse design with structured random search for dielectric-loaded microwave cavities using an in-house JAX-based differentiable FDTD solver. The benchmark fixes material fraction, filtered density representation, initialization, band-energy objective, and measured selection wall time. Each selected design is evaluated in a separate 8000-step FDTD simulation. Across four target bands, three prescribed material fractions, and six seeds, gradient optimization achieves a higher in-band spectral-energy fraction in all 72 paired comparisons. The mean paired improvement is 0.356, with a 95 percent paired bootstrap interval of 0.339-0.374 and an exact two-sided sign-flip p value of 0.03125. Gradient, cavity-mode, CFL, material-fraction, and raw-output integrity checks pass before inference. Under matched material and computational budgets, the results support an advantage for gradient-based optimization in this cavity-design benchmark.

Automation operates safety-critical processes inside their design envelope and leaves abnormal situations to human operators. Mismanagement of these situations is a leading contributor to process-safety incidents and a hindrance to achieving autonomy. Here we show that a general-purpose large reasoning model, with no task-specific training and only the information available to an operator, manages abnormal situations at run time through a bounded, programmatically verified action interface. Across 39 abnormal situations and operating-point changes on a plant-wide industrial benchmark process, the reasoning model maintained the plant within all hard constraints in all 39, while basic regulatory control failed in 15. It matched the plant's expert-engineered advanced control and diagnosed the root-cause fault in 15 of 15 safety-critical situations. Three independently developed models spanning a thirty-fold cost range exceeded the baseline. In a fully auditable evaluation, these results demonstrate run-time abnormal situation management without a human in the loop.

State-Space Models (SSMs), particularly Mamba, offer linear-time complexity for long-range dependencies, making them attractive for medical imaging with limited annotated data. However, adapting these sequential models to 2D images through unconstrained state evolution causes representational drift, the dynamic hidden state progressively loses fidelity to local image features. We introduce Energy-Mamba, integrating SSM dynamics with physics-informed constraints via a learnable potential energy function that quantifies compatibility between evolving states and static local features. Our Energy-Mamba Block introduces a gradient-based forcing term, computed dynamically via automatic differentiation, that pulls states toward low-energy configurations maintaining local visual fidelity. This formulation mirrors Hamiltonian dynamics: kinetic energy (SSM scan) plus potential energy (our constraint function) govern state trajectories. This architectural prior enables learning implicit constraints for robust, faithful representations, crucial in medical imaging where fine-grained local detail drives accurate diagnosis. Evaluated on four datasets (retinal OCT, chest X-ray, microscopy, abdominal CT), Energy-Mamba achieves state-of-the-art classification performance with significantly fewer parameters, demonstrating that physics-informed grounding can enhance both efficiency and representational quality in medical vision tasks.

Trustworthy multimodal fusion in clinical settings requires handling incomplete and heterogeneous modality subsets across institutions, where privacy constraints prohibit centralized data sharing. Federated learning (FL) mitigates data-sharing constraints but suffers from client-specific missing modalities, where institutions possess incomplete multimodal subsets, degrading fusion quality and segmentation performance. While FL and weak supervision have been studied separately, their joint use with image-level labels under heterogeneous missing modalities remains unaddressed. We propose MOSAIC, the first modality-agnostic federated framework for weakly supervised binary tumor segmentation under client-specific missing modalities. We introduce a client-specific modality-alignment module that fuses available channels into a shared latent space without prior knowledge of modality identity, a spectral prototype alignment loss that reconciles cross-client distribution shift using compact non-invertible frequency-domain statistics, and a dedicated federated refinement network that denoises the resulting CAM pseudo-labels into accurate masks, breaking the accuracy ceiling of weak supervision. Experiments on three multi-institutional brain tumor benchmarks (FeTS2022, BraTS-MEN, and BraTS-SSA) demonstrate significant improvements over all image, box, and point-supervised baselines, approaching fully supervised accuracy using only image-level labels and reaching 0.84 Dice on FeTS2022. Dynamic new client addition enables previously unseen institutions to join an already-trained federation within 0.01-0.04 Dice without retraining. Code is available at https://github.com/Tarun2201/MOSAIC.

The integration of inverter-based renewable energy sources into electric grids challenges conventional power system protection. Machine learning-based solutions can address these challenges by utilizing available data in modern smart grids. However, the lack of open datasets prevents reproducibility and fair comparisons between different approaches and their results, which hinders further progress. Therefore, this paper presents EvEMTBench, a synthetic dataset of faults and events generated using electromagnetic transient simulations. The physical plausibility of the power system simulation is ensured by validating the simulation parameters against established literature and providing comprehensive documentation of the simulation procedure. The dataset is designed for training, fine-tuning, and benchmarking machine learning models by providing synchronized point-on-wave voltage and current measurements at 9600 Hz across a diverse set of topologies and voltage levels. The inclusion of a wide range of fault and operating events allows the utilization of EvEMTBench for different tasks like incipient fault detection, fault localization, or event detection.

Fast and accurate segmentation of Acute Ischemic Stroke (AIS) lesions is essential for stroke prognosis and treatment planning. Non-contrast CT (NCCT), the first-line imaging modality for diagnosing ischemic infarcts, exhibits subtle infarct contrast, making manual delineation slow and labor-intensive. Motivated by this, and by the clinical practice of comparing brain hemispheres to localize infarcts, we propose a two-stage, nnU-Net-compatible 3D segmentation method. The first stage corrects head tilt to align each scan to its true anatomical mid-sagittal plane; the second applies a novel Asymmetric Feature Extraction (AsymFeX) module, comparing each voxel to its true contralateral counterpart within a local 3 x 3 x 3 neighborhood via cross-hemispheric attention, feature disparity estimation, and dual-scale gating to capture both large and small infarcts. On AISD, our method achieves 0.6796 Dice, 23.53 mm HD95, and 7.69 mL AVD, significantly outperforming existing state-of-the-art methods, with clinically relevant volumetric analysis at the 70 mL thrombolysis-eligibility threshold. Proof-of-concept evaluation on ATLAS v2.1 and ISLES'24 demonstrates that the same symmetry-driven design generalizes across imaging modalities and stroke time points without architectural changes, further supported by an uncertainty analysis assessing reliability under clinical deployment. Code is publicly available at https://github.com/biomedia-lab/AIS-detection.

This paper proposes a controller design method for shaping the controllability Gramian into a desired form to design the effect from exogenous inputs to the system state. Using the Bures–Wasserstein distance, we formulate the shaping problem as the minimization of the distance between the system Gramian and a desired Gramian, and the objective function is shown to be strictly convex on the set of symmetric positive definite matrices. In addition, by deriving a semidefinite programming formulation via a linear matrix inequality (LMI), computational efficiency is improved and additional LMI constraints can be incorporated. When the exogenous input is modeled as Gaussian white noise, the proposed framework is closely related to $H_2$ control, which can be interpreted as a special case of optimal transport. Numerical examples demonstrate anisotropic controllability design for a guidance robot and verify the ability to impose additional directional constraints through LMIs. The numerical examples also confirm that the proposed method approaches $H_2$ control as the desired Gramian tends to zero.

Distance relays detect faults on transmission lines from local voltage and current measurements. In this paper, we characterize the set of time-domain measurements a distance relay can observe during a fault as a reachable set. We define corresponding fault tests in terms of set-based state estimation. This allows us to model the full network as an RLC circuit with voltage and current sources. In general, computing reachable sets and set-based state estimates is intractable. For each fault type, we construct a reduced-order, two-dimensional model in terms of the apparent voltage and current seen by the relay. This makes all computations efficient, aligns with standard quantities in distance protection, and allows us to define instantaneous fault tests in terms of unsolved differential equations.

This paper proposes a differentially private federated learning (FL) framework built upon an FL algorithm with semantic feature reconstruction (FedSFR) for training semantic communication modules for image transmission. By allowing clients with unfavorable uplink capacity to transmit low-dimensional semantic feature vectors extracted from locally trained joint source-channel coding (JSCC) encoders, FedSFR enhances communication efficiency and training stability under heterogeneous wireless conditions. To protect client privacy, we incorporate the oneshot Laplace mechanism and theoretically demonstrate that feature-based transmission achieves strictly stronger differential privacy (DP) guarantees than gradient-based transmission under an identical communication budget. In addition, a model selection mechanism is introduced to alleviate performance degradation caused by privacy-preserving perturbations. Experimental results on multiple datasets show that the proposed DP-aided FedSFR outperforms DP-enabled FedAvg in training stability and image reconstruction quality in heterogeneous wireless systems.

The transportation community seeks to use calibration methods for highway traffic microsimulation. This is a response to the time-consuming and subjective nature of traditional manual calibration, as well as the growing prevalence of data for calibration. This work argues that this "automatic" calibration is largely an illusion. A significant - and unquantified - amount of bespoke manual work is hidden behind these methods. This illusion inhibits a core component of scientific advancement: objective comparison against a shared standard. This impedes evaluation, undermines reproducibility, and fragments research. To address this gap, this paper introduces a comprehensive benchmark designed to simultaneously expose the calibration illusion for highway microsimulation and provide a common ruler. The results across a range of scenarios present a new baseline for what the algorithms can achieve without bespoke tuning, revealing the research gap that remains and providing a tool to advance a cumulative science of calibration. Additional experiments provide insights into the source of calibration errors that arise in large-scale highway calibration relative to the simplified settings under which methods are commonly developed.

Accurate and stable torque rendering is essential for safe and perceptive human–machine interaction. Magnetorheological fluid (MRF)-based actuators offer a compact and rapidly controllable solution for haptic feedback, but their practical implementation requires reliable fluid sealing, low-hysteresis excitation, accurate torque control, and stable long-duration operation. This article presents an integrated MRF haptic system featuring a compact magnetically self-sealed rotary actuator, low-hysteresis PWM operation, high-fidelity model-based torque rendering, and stable performance during long-time operation. Magnetostatic simulation guides the arrangement of magnetic and nonmagnetic materials to focus flux in the multidisk torque and permanent-magnet sealing regions, enabling a maximum 600 N$\cdot$mm/A output. Experiments show that higher PWM frequencies reduce hysteresis and improve repeatability. At 10 kHz, the response is represented by a nonlinear model that varies with the direction and speed of torque change. The real-time controller combines feedforward, hysteresis compensation, PI feedback, and sliding-mode correction. Compared with PID, it reduces square-wave overshoot, undershoot, and steady-state RMSE by 77.4%, 61.9%, and 68.3%, respectively. It tracks sinusoidal and biomechanics-model-based references, and a 1.5-h test shows only a 2.5 $^\circ$C rise near the coil with no clear tracking loss. This high-fidelity torque rendering will fundamentally transform human–robot collaboration by making interactions safer, more efficient, and more intuitive.