Papers

Transformer-based electrocardiogram (ECG) models commonly tokenize waveforms into fixed temporal patches. Though convenient, fixed patching can split heartbeat structures across token boundaries. We study beat-synchronous tokenization as a physiologically grounded alternative, comparing fixed patches with three beat-aligned strategies: resampled beats, adaptive pooled beats, and resampled beats augmented with R–R interval information. Experiments span two settings: 10-second 12-lead diagnostic classification on PTB-XL after MIMIC-IV-ECG masked pretraining, and 60-second single-lead rhythm classification on Icentia11k after patient-level contrastive pretraining. On PTB-XL, resampled beat tokens achieve the highest mean macro Area Under the ROC Curve (AUROC; 0.8945) and nearly match the best fixed-patch macro Area Under the Precision-Recall Curve (AUPRC; 0.7414), reducing average sequence length from 100 to 11.2 tokens. On Icentia11k, beat-synchronous tokenizers obtain comparable AUPRC to fixed patching with better stability across runs. These results suggest morphology-preserving beat tokenization is a compact, competitive alternative to fixed temporal patching.

Speech enhancement (SE) is commonly applied as a preprocessing step in spoken AI pipelines under the assumption that better audio quality improves downstream task performance. Whether SE-induced distortions propagate to downstream LLM task performance remains an open question. We introduce Output Divergence Rate (ODR), which measures how often SE changes an LLM's intent classification relative to clean speech, and benchmark five conditions on 2,974 SLURP clips using Whisper large-v3 and wav2vec2-large cascades. Every condition produces ODR significantly above zero ($p < 0.001$, binomial test). MetricGAN{+} more than doubles ODR versus unenhanced noisy speech (0.318 vs. 0.135) despite improving PESQ, and unmitigated echo reaches an ODR of 0.836 through speaker substitution, a failure WER cannot capture. Audio quality metrics range from near-zero to moderate correlation with ODR (SQUIM-MOS $\rho=-0.068$, PESQ $\rho=-0.467$). The MetricGAN{+} and echo results replicate across ASR architectures, indicating that standard audio quality metrics are insufficient for LLM pipeline quality.

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are the backbone of many critical infrastructure sectors; however, their growing level of connectivity, long lifespan and integration with the Information Technology (IT) environment introduces numerous cybersecurity challenges. The merging of Operational Technology (OT) and IT along with the deployment of Industry 4.0 technologies increases the attack surface of ICS environments, which in turn makes them more vulnerable to advanced cyber threats. Therefore, many researchers have shown interest in the field of cybersecurity of ICS. The topics of intrusion detection, anomaly detection, threat intelligence, attack simulation and resilience assessment of ICS have received much attention. Nevertheless, the development and testing of cybersecurity solutions for ICS remains to be challenging due to the lack of appropriate datasets and experimental environment. The main objective of this paper is to provide the roadmap of existing ICS cybersecurity datasets, testbeds and digital twins. This paper presents various taxonomies along with systematic analysis of architecture, characteristics, capabilities, pros and cons of these tools. The results of the analysis demonstrate the presence of persistent problems such as lack of standardized benchmarking datasets, lack of modern attack scenarios, insufficient number of datasets based on real operational traffic and difficulty in validating artificial intelligence-driven cybersecurity solutions. In addition to summarizing current research on ICS cybersecurity datasets and testbeds, this roadmap provides the identification of research gaps and recommendations on creation of new tools.

Recent work established sufficient and necessary barrier-like conditions for infinite-horizon reach-avoid verification of stochastic discrete-time systems from a single initial state. Whether such a converse characterization extends to a set of initial states, however, remains open. In this paper, we answer this question affirmatively for compact initial sets. We consider a uniform reach-avoid specification requiring the reach-avoid probability to exceed a prescribed threshold for every initial state in a compact set. Under appropriate assumptions, including continuous system transitions, together with a strict uniform probability margin, we extend the pointwise converse characterization to the uniform setting.

Tabla Stroke Transcription (TST) is central to the analysis of rhythmic structure in Hindustani music, yet it remains challenging due to complex and dynamic rhythmic organization and the scarcity of strongly annotated data. Existing approaches largely rely on fully supervised learning with onset-level annotations, which are costly and impractical at scale. This work addresses TST in a weakly supervised setting, using only symbolic stroke sequences without temporal alignment of onsets. We propose a framework that combines a Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC)-based acoustic model with a sequence-level rhythmic language model for rescoring, similar to that used in automatic speech recognition. The acoustic model produces a decoding lattice, which is refined using an Adaptive Dynamic Rhythm Language Model (ADRM) that combines $t\bar{a}la$-conditioned symbolic rhythmic regularities with local stroke dynamics. Moreover, we release a new performance-recorded tabla dataset, named Tabla Improvisation Dataset, along with a complementary synthetic dataset for sequence-level weakly supervised TST. Experiments demonstrate consistent and substantial reductions in stroke error rates with ADRM compared to those with acoustic-only decoding, confirming the benefit of incorporating symbolic rhythmic regularities during lattice rescoring for accurate transcription.

The identification of linear descriptor systems (DAEs) from noise-corrupted data makes two critical assumptions: requirement of an a priori classification of variables into inputs and outputs, and a pre-specified structural assumption with respect to the index of the system. This paper proposes a data-driven methodology for identifying index-0 and index-1 DAEs within an errors-in-variables framework. We extend a subspace-based iterative PCA (SMI-IPCA) approach to the behavioral setting, treating all measured variables as a unified augmented vector to avoid classification bias. This method enables systematic estimation of the noise variances, the number of algebraic and differential output variables, while simultaneously identifying the algebraic constraints and kernel representation of the dynamic system corresponding to its minimal realization order without prior structural knowledge. Simulation studies on index-0 and index-1 systems demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach and its practical applicability.

The emergence of the New Space era has led to a rapidly increasing number of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Consequently, more stringent deorbiting requirements have recently been imposed to avoid the Kessler syndrome in LEO. This has resulted in the proposal of new concepts for space debris removal, including attaching CubeSats to space debris as a promising mitigation strategy. The initial phase of this strategy involves stabilizing and controlling the debris' attitude. This paper proposes an attitude control design for decommissioned satellites using attached CubeSats with staged ion electrospray engines (iESE). The compact design of iESE combined with staging provides increased reliability and mission durations. The large uncertainty in the dynamics of the combined system, i.e. satellite and attached CubeSats, poses a significant challenge to the control design. The approach taken here uses the robust control framework, specifically $\mu$-synthesis, to tackle this challenge. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated on a decommissioned satellite with multiple flexile appendages.

Radio access network (RAN) slicing enables ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) and enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) services to share radio resources, but their requirements create a challenging reliability–throughput tradeoff. URLLC requires low-latency and reliable packet delivery, whereas eMBB targets high sustained throughput. This paper considers downlink URLLC/eMBB RAN slicing and formulates it as a queue-aware long-term eMBB throughput maximization problem subject to URLLC delay-violation, physical resource block (PRB) exclusivity, and slice-budget constraints. To solve this problem, we propose agentic quantum deep reinforcement learning (Agentic-QDRL), a two-time-scale framework that combines agentic slice-level resource control with quantum-enhanced PRB scheduling. At the slow time scale, a perceive–memory–act–reflect (PMAR) controller adapts the resource shares of URLLC and eMBB slices. At the fast time scale, a compact variational quantum circuit (VQC)-based QDRL scheduler performs PRB allocation under the current slice configuration. A feasibility projection and a safety fallback mechanism is further introduced to satisfy scheduling constraints and reduce URLLC deadline violations. Simulation results under different eMBB traffic loads show that Agentic-QDRL improves eMBB throughput, reduces eMBB queue buildup, and maintains URLLC delay reliability compared with classical DRL and heuristic baselines.

Packet loss can severely impair learned video coding because missing latent tokens compromise both spatial reconstruction and temporal prediction. We present ReLViC, a loss-resilient learned video coding framework that jointly addresses latent coding and packet-loss recovery. ReLViC disperses spatially adjacent latent tokens across packets and employs a dual-purpose Transformer to estimate entropy-model parameters during coding and reconstruct missing latent tokens at the receiver. It controls packet dependencies through a periodic-reset packet-context topology parameterized by the segment length, thereby tuning the trade-off between compression efficiency and error-propagation range without retraining. A three-stage progressive training procedure establishes single-frame coding, learns temporal context for entropy modeling, and then optimizes the recovery of masked latent tokens under simulated packet loss. Experiments using burst-loss traces evaluate ReLViC against H.265 protected by Reed–Solomon forward error correction (FEC) and GRACE, a loss-resilient learned video codec. ReLViC delivers more stable reconstruction and outperforms both baselines under severe packet loss.

This data article presents a high-resolution, long-term synthetic electric-vehicle (EV) charging dataset for Trondheim, Norway, spanning February 2020 to December 2030. Empirically grounded in 14 months of historical charging logs from December 2018 to January 2020, the dataset captures session-level behavioral patterns, including delivered energy, plug-in duration, connection schedules, user categorization (private vs. shared), seasonal variations, public-holiday effects, and daily ambient temperature dependencies. To model future electrification dynamics, the synthetic generation pipeline integrates historical session records, calendar and weather features from MET Norway, annual EV-adoption growth multipliers derived from Statistics Norway (SSB) registration trajectories, a daily session-count model, a Conditional Tabular Generative Adversarial Network (CTGAN), seasonal Kernel Density Estimation (KDE), and post-generation physical charger-power feasibility correction. Under a standardized 7.2 kW AC charging constraint, the resulting medium EV-adoption scenario dataset contains 76,993 hourly charging-activity records. The hourly profile is activity-based rather than a complete continuous hourly time series; hours with no allocated EV charging energy are not included. The records provide total hourly charging energy, equivalent average charging power, active session counts, private/shared user load breakdowns, ambient temperature features, and calendar indicators. The dataset provides a validated cold-climate benchmark for distribution-grid impact assessment, transformer-loading analysis, EV charging-demand forecasting, charger-capacity planning, energy-management optimization, and the development of data-driven smart-charging control strategies.

Controllers that guarantee energetic passivity with respect to the pair of external force and velocity realize safe interaction between the mechanical system and its physical environment. However, solely adhering to energetic passivity constraints may impose fundamental limitations on control performance and, in some cases, prevent the successful execution of controlled tasks. In addition, external disturbances from the physical environment can drive the system energy level and states beyond operational regions, thereby undermining task performance and safety. In this paper, we study a robust time-varying semi-passive velocity field control to aim to relax the inherently conservative nature of fully passive control methods in a controlled manner. Specifically, the proposed control method guarantees passivity of the closed-loop system with respect to the force-velocity input-output pair when the energy level exceeds a predefined level, while permitting non-passive behaviors to preserve task performance otherwise. Furthermore, the energy level and the states of the closed-loop system are proved to converge to bounded domains even in the presence of unpredicted disturbances. Additionally, the proposed method also enables constraining power flow between the closed-loop system and its physical environment to enhance safety in the interaction process. Numerical simulation examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Site-specific channel models are essential for wireless digital twins of 6G space–air–ground communication systems. However, 3D maps are difficult to obtain over wide areas, which limits large-area site-specific channel modeling. To address this issue, this paper proposes a remote-sensing-based augmented ray-tracing channel modeling framework. The framework comprises a deterministic RT branch, a measurement-statistical branch, and an RT augmentation branch. To overcome the difficulty of acquiring large-area 3D maps, the deterministic RT branch reconstructs a 3D RT scene from satellite remote-sensing imagery and calibrates its electromagnetic material parameters using measured path loss. To provide the statistical parameters required for RT augmentation, the measurement-statistical branch establishes the marginal distributions and interparameter dependence models of the channel parameters. Specifically, a wideband UAV channel measurement campaign is conducted at 4.60 GHz, and a proposed multipath estimation method estimates the complex amplitudes, delays, and Doppler shifts of the measured multipath. To bridge the gap between RT predictions and measurements, the RT augmentation branch organizes the RT multipath into LoS, LoS-tail, and NLoS components, generates additional short-delay LoS-tail paths, and reallocates the component and path powers according to the measurement-derived statistics while preserving the total RT received power. The validation results show that the proposed framework reduces the path loss RMSE from 5.45 to 4.35 dB and, relative to calibrated RT, decreases the RMS delay spread and normalized Doppler spread RMSEs by 53.03 and 26.48, respectively. The proposed framework provides a site-specific channel modeling approach for 6G space–air–ground digital-twin studies.

Graph-based models have been shown to provide a structured representation for complex multi-domain energy systems but face limitations when edge power flows depend on non-adjacent states or when a single edge carries multiple power-flow types driven by different inputs. This paper proposes two general extensions to address these limitations: a recursive state-to-input feedback scheme that embeds non-adjacent state dependencies into edge inputs without altering the graph structure, and a parallel edge decomposition method that represents composite interactions using sets of single-input edges while preserving energy conservation at the vertices. The extended framework is demonstrated on a lithium-ion battery module consisting of 36 parallel cells, and the resulting model predicts module temperatures with errors below 1{\deg}C. Validation on this electro-thermal battery system demonstrates the effectiveness of the extended framework for multi-domain systems that cannot be represented by previously established graph-based formulations, and indicates its potential for broader application to complex energy systems in control and design studies.

Stochastic programming (SP) is a powerful framework for decision-making under uncertainty, but its practical adoption in industry is often hindered by the difficulty in understanding the causal relationships that drive optimal solutions. In the two-stage SP, strategic first-stage decisions are coupled with operational second-stage recourse decisions. When the number of scenarios under consideration is large, understanding the direct link between the uncertainty realization and optimal recourse strategy becomes computationally and cognitively demanding. Common approaches to improve interpretability include trained classification trees or scenario reduction, replacing the large scenario set with a representative subset. This is often achieved through post-hoc clustering (e.g., k-means) based on uncertainty realizations or optimal recourse decisions. While useful, these methods only provide a statistical approximation of the solution space and may fail to reveal the underlying structural properties of the recourse problem that drive optimal first-stage decisions. This work introduces a novel, deterministic approach to explainability using multiparametric programming (mp) within a Benders decomposition framework. We reformulate the recourse subproblem as a multiparametric linear program, generating an explicit map of Critical Regions (CRs), which are polyhedral partitions of the uncertainty space. This allows us to cluster scenarios analytically rather than statistically. We demonstrate this methodology on a supply chain planning under demand uncertainty. Our results show that 100 stochastic scenarios map to exactly six critical region clusters. This mapping allows us to explain optimal capacity planning decisions as a precise trade-off between specific operational modes, providing a fully transparent interpretation of the stochastic solution.

Distributed Volt–VAR control relies on voltage measurements and is therefore vulnerable to false-data injection. Neighbor corroboration can distinguish an isolated corrupted measurement from a physical disturbance, but coordinated agents can falsely corroborate one another. This paper proposes DynaTrust-VVC, a cyber-resilient multi-agent Volt–VAR framework that assigns each incoming neighbor message a directional trust value based on the consistency between its reported voltage increment and a sensitivity-based prediction from active- and reactive-power changes. Trust falls immediately after a physics mismatch and recovers gradually after sustained consistency. DynaTrust-VVC further uses a physics-adaptive evidence threshold and counterfactual safe-voltage recovery-based mitigation. The proposed method was validated using a nonlinear IEEE 123-bus feeder with minute-resolution residential profiles and 27 matched replicates. DynaTrust-VVC identifies a coordinated three-bus attack one minute after onset in all 27 matched replicates, whereas an otherwise identical configuration with fixed neighbor trust identifies none. The composite resilience index also increases from 0.227 to 0.315, with no statistically significant increase in the benign false-alarm rate.

Spectrum governance requires rules to be translated into machine-executable decisions while preserving incumbent protection, regulatory authority, and an auditable record of why a decision was made. We present SPECTRA-GOV, a Tri-Layer Adaptive Governance Architecture (TLAGA) connecting international treaty coordination, national adaptive licensing, and real-time enforcement. The work builds on the original reference implementation preserved at v0.1.0-paper and adds a post-audit evaluation layer rather than replacing it. V2 introduces controlled spectral-contention scenarios, corrected geodesic-distance calculation, per-operator selective authorization, paired baseline counterfactuals, policy perturbation, regulatory-change analysis, and causal provenance. Across 10,000 scenarios in each of seven contention classes, incumbent protection was 100.00% in the no-contention control, 99.92-99.87% in weak-to-dynamic classes, 99.47% under strong overlap, and 90.00% in the adversarial close-proximity class. In a paired S3 baseline experiment, selective authorization achieved 100% incumbent protection and 89.43% access opportunity, while the population-wide dynamic baseline achieved 99.91% protection and 99.53% access. Identical results for the dynamic-SAS and SPECTRA-GOV selective variants mean selective admission alone is not claimed as an exclusive algorithmic novelty. The contribution is the integration of policy representation, computational enforcement, auditability, provenance. Enforcement timing was measured in-process, with mean latency increasing from 0.028 ms for one operator to 1.682 ms for 500 operators; these are software benchmarks, not field measurements. The results establish a reproducible computational governance prototype and identify remaining questions before operational or regulatory claims can be made.

Massage therapy is helpful for the rehabilitation of various diseases, such as headaches caused by migraines and stress. Existing robotic systems have focused on massage therapy on the torso and limbs, but performing massage motions through suitable actuation on a person's head has been a challenge. In this paper, we present MiBOT, a head-worn massage robot that actuates two soft tactors to produce touch motions mimicking human massage. A key design principle behind MiBOT is its silent actuation, which we achieve through pneumatic artificial muscles in conjunction with a controller loop to respond to contact pressure. We evaluated the effectiveness of MiBOT in a controlled study and assessed subjects' blood pressure and heart rate levels while applying MiBOT. We found that our mechanical system generated positive and conclusive quantitative outcomes that are similar to the human-administered massage, decreasing participants' mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure by 2.8 mmHg and 1.7 mmHg, respectively, as well as calming their heart rate by 8-10% on average.

Enforcing stochastic state constraints over the full prediction horizon in Model Predictive Control (MPC) can be computationally demanding. Here we study stochastic MPC without terminal ingredients in which chance constraints are enforced only over a shorter constraint horizon. Using stochastic relaxed dynamic programming, we derive an explicit upper bound on the average expected closed-loop cost that depends on both prediction and constraint horizons. For linear quadratic problems with affine chance constraints and bounded uniform disturbances, we provide a deterministic reformulation via coordinate transformation and constraint tightening. Simulations illustrate the trade-off between computational effort and performance.

Recent generative music models offer increasingly fine-grained control through text and audio conditioning, yet how faithfully they follow intended emotional cues remains an open question. We address this gap with a unified evaluation pipeline for emotion-following in generated music. Using all 1000 tracks in GTZAN, we extract semantic audio descriptions with DashengLM, an audio captioning model, and estimate source-track valence and arousal with Music2Emotion, a music emotion recognition model. We construct affect-aware text prompts by combining descriptions with top-ranked emotion tags and generate 30-second outputs with three systems, Stable Audio Open, MusicGen, and InspireMusic, evaluating both text- and audio-conditioned generation. To measure emotion-following, we compute valence and arousal on generated audio and compare them with the source tracks using absolute error and Euclidean distance in valence-arousal space. Text-conditioned generation consistently outperforms audio conditioning, with MusicGen (text) and InspireMusic (text) achieving the best performance, while audio-conditioned variants prove less stable. We further find that valence is preserved more reliably than arousal and that emotion-following varies substantially across genres. These findings underscore the importance of evaluating affective controllability directly rather than relying solely on general quality or prompt-relevance metrics.

The continued integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) motivates research into integrated system planning. While existing literature shows that DERs can reduce system costs, it often overlooks customer behaviour, particularly DER adoption driven by cost savings and incentives. System cost allocation can influence these decisions, affecting DER uptake, grid injections, and overall system efficiency. Therefore, integrated system planning should consider both system- and customer-level benefits of DERs. This paper proposes a multi-step framework that combines an integrated planning model with cost allocation and retailer business models. The integrated planning model minimizes total system costs subject to network constraints, while the cost allocation and retailer models capture customer responses to costs and DER opportunities. By coordinating these models, the framework represents how customer behaviour influences planning outcomes. The proposed approach is demonstrated on a 36-bus system, with results showing that incorporating customer decision-making reduces overall system costs, lowers reliance on transmission-connected generation, and supports more realistic system planning.

This paper studies the identification of linearly parameterized nonlinear (LPN) systems. Although LPN systems share the same linear parameterization structure as linear systems, they are more challenging to identify. In particular, previous work has shown, through a counterexample based on a piecewise-affine system, that non-active exploration is generally insufficient for LPN system identification. In this paper, we consider LPN systems with real-analytic feature functions. We show that non-active exploration is sufficient for the identification of this class of systems by establishing non-asymptotic convergence rates of least-squares estimation and set-membership estimation. In addition, we provide counterexamples to show that non-active exploration may not be sufficient for system identification for non-real-analytic systems, even if those systems are infinitely differentiable. We present numerical experiments to further support and validate our theoretical results.

We introduce new notions of controllability and observability for networked linear time-invariant (LTI) systems based on $\sigma$-semistability of quiver representations. Utilizing King's criterion for $\sigma$-semistability, we define a network generalization of the Kalman decomposition for networked LTI systems, which systematically decomposes the local and interconnection dynamics while respecting the underlying network structure. Furthermore, we present efficient algorithms for deciding the proposed controllability and observability of a given networked LTI system and for finding the Kalman-type decomposition. We also show efficient algorithms for deciding the $\sigma$-semistability of representations of acyclic quivers with self-loops if the weight $\sigma$ has the same sign for all vertices with self-loops. Such quiver representations and weights arise from networked LTI systems.

This paper studies the problem of model order selection in stationary noise. Single-threshold detection is sensitive to extreme noise excursions, particularly when the detection threshold is lowered to capture weak deterministic components. To augment single-threshold detection, we propose a differential step-down thresholding algorithm. We use a threshold grid in this algorithm. To overcome the threshold grid misalignment error induced by grid evaluation, we utilize randomized grid dithering. Using extreme value theory, we show the clustering of the noise extrema. The stopping rule of the proposed algorithm detects this clustering and stops the algorithm to prevent false alarms. By analytically bounding the threshold grid misalignment error, we prove that our algorithm achieves asymptotic exact order recovery under the 0-1 loss function. Moreover, the proposed algorithm remains robust even if the detection threshold in the original single-threshold algorithm is lowered or extreme noise excursions occur.

We consider a scenario where a legitimate user (Alice) authenticates itself to an authenticator (Bob) by transmitting orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) pilots, from which the authenticator extracts the Micro-CSI (M-CSI) fingerprint and compares it against a stored reference via a likelihood test (LT)-based test. We introduce a new spoofing attack, where two adversarial devices collude to first jointly estimate the M-CSI fingerprints of Alice and Bob and then construct a forged signal able to break the authentication mechanism with high probability, limited only by noise effects on the estimates. We derive approximate closed-form distributions of the authentication test statistic under both the legitimate and spoofing hypotheses, enabling the derivation of false alarm and misdetection probabilities in closed-form. We then validate our analytical results against M-CSI fingerprints extracted from experimental data. The results reveal that, given sufficient pilot observations or an equivalent noise statistic between Bob and the attackers, the latter can always drive the test statistics to a random classifier, vanishing the security of M-CSI-based authentication.

This paper proposes knowledge-distilled generative beamforming (KDGen-BF) framework for site-specific multi-user beamforming. KDGen-BF generates a multi-user beamforming weights from low-dimensional reference signal received power (RSRP) observations without acquiring instantaneous channel state information (CSI). To address the ambiguity caused by limited RSRP observations and interference coupling, KDGen-BF formulates multi-user beamforming as a conditional generation problem and directly outputs beamforming weights beyond a finite codebook. A diffusion transformer is trained through knowledge-distillation and exponential-moving-average (KD-EMA) guidance, and multi-candidate strategy is used for online deployment. Numerical results on multiple DeepMIMO scenarios demonstrate that: 1) under limited probing budgets, KDGen-BF outperforms all baselines; 2) with larger probing budgets, KDGen-BF achieves performance comparable to exhaustive search over the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) codebook and outperforms all other baselines; and 3) under noisy RSRP observations, KDGen-BF remains robust and outperforms all compared baselines.

While pretrained Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models offer broad generalization capabilities in robotic manipulation tasks, adapting them to real-world environments or handling task shifts often requires substantial additional data and retraining. To address this, we propose Symmetric VLA Distillation (SymVD), a distillation framework that transfers knowledge from a large VLA teacher to a compact student policy by explicitly exploiting geometric symmetries in manipulation tasks, such as rotational and reflectional invariance. SymVD employs an equivariant actor-critic architecture and trains the student using a symmetry-aware objective that aligns with teacher actions under group-invariant properties. We demonstrate that by enforcing the policy to respect equivariance, SymVD reduces redundant exploration across configurations related by group transformations and improves sample efficiency during distillation. To further stabilize and improve distillation, SymVD introduces an adaptive weighting scheme that dynamically balances the distillation objective and reinforcement learning updates based on training progress, enabling robust transfer even when the teacher signal is imperfect or misaligned. Experimental results on robotic manipulation tasks demonstrate that SymVD consistently improves over standard distillation and also outperforms SAC in terms of sample efficiency and generalization to previously unseen symmetric transformations of the environment.

Uncertainty quantification from finite data is central to machine learning, optimization, and automation systems, where decisions must remain reliable under limited samples and test-time distribution shift. Conformal prediction (CP) and distributionally robust optimization (DRO) offer two complementary approaches: CP constructs data-dependent prediction sets with distribution-free finite-sample validity under exchangeability, while DRO optimizes worst-case performance over an ambiguity set around an empirical distribution. We develop a unified probabilistic perspective on CP and DRO by viewing both as ways to turn finite calibration data into a data-dependent quantile estimator that a test score falls below with high probability. From this perspective, CP and DRO correct the empirical quantile along two coordinates of the same family of estimators: CP inflates the quantile level, whereas DRO shifts the quantile value through an ambiguity radius. Both methods provide the same calibration-conditional guarantee for the true distribution, requiring the target coverage to hold with high probability over the calibration sample. Their constructions differ, however: CP uses a closed-form, distribution-free level correction, while DRO uses a value-space correction whose certified radius depends on properties of the unknown distribution and additionally guarantees coverage uniformly over the ambiguity set. This distinction emerges in the tails of the score distribution. Because CP relies on sparse upper-tail order statistics of the calibration samples, its level inflation barely moves the estimator when those samples are dense near the target quantile but overshoots when they are sparse, whereas a well-chosen DRO radius corrects in value space and may avoid this overshoot.

Cross-coupling between the $dq$ coordinates makes the identification of asymmetric grid impedances a challenging problem, particularly near the fundamental frequency where the asymmetric coupling is strongest. Existing schemes usually handle it either by perturbing the two coordinates sequentially, which lengthens the measurement, or by using a time-domain method with a global parametric model whose order must be tuned. This paper develops a single-shot active non-parametric frequency-domain method that avoids both. The equivalent impedance is parameterized by a pair of single-input single-output complex transfer functions. Each spectral line is fitted with a local rational model; the leakage and transient contributions are estimated, so that neither periodic steady-state excitation nor repeated excitation cycles are required. We give the exact finite-time discrete Fourier transform relation for the conjugate-coupled complex-signal model, and analyse the distortion that a stationary-frame filter placed ahead of the Park transform imposes on the identified pair. The method is validated on a controller hardware-in-the-loop platform against an analytically derived small-signal model, for a symmetric grid and for the same grid with an added grid-following converter that renders it asymmetric. Both complex transfer functions and all four real transfer functions of the $dq$ impedance are recovered over a wide band from a single one-second record of a random excitation, at 1 Hz resolution.

The sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks are expected to enable the deep integration of communication, sensing, computing, control, and intelligence in highly dynamic environments. This evolution drives a fundamental transition from conventional passive channel adaptation to proactive channel cognition and reconfiguration, wherein wireless channels are no longer regarded as uncontrollable propagation media but as network resources that can be learned, predicted, and actively reconfigured. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of this emerging paradigm. We first review channel cognition through the channel knowledge map (CKM) as a systematic framework for learning and exploiting channel characteristics across space, time, and frequency domain. The definitions, construction methods, and applications in wireless networks of CKMs are comprehensively reviewed. Building upon channel cognition, we then review channel reconfiguration technologies from two complementary perspectives: transceiver-side reconfiguration enabled by movable antennas (MAs) and environment-side reconfiguration enabled by intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs). For both MA- and IRS-enabled wireless systems, we review their architectures, performance advantages, and key design challenges. Finally, we discuss several promising research directions to inspire further innovations in this burgeoning field.

The paper introduces a successive backstepping observer design for strictly feedforward parabolic PDE-ODE systems, in which the coupling structure determines the order of error stabilization and the corresponding transformations. First, a transformation based on a virtual measurement stabilizes the ODE observer error subsystem, which is most distal from the measurement, while decoupling it from the PDE error state. Second, a Volterra integral transformation is employed to stabilize the PDE error subsystem and to map the overall error dynamics into a cascade of exponentially stable ODE and PDE subsystems. The design is shown to be dual to a recently proposed multi-step state feedback design for parabolic PDE-ODE systems in strict feedback form, thus explaining the structure of the presented observer design.