Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) systems have become indispensable for modern manufacturing operations, enabling optimized resource allocation and production efficiency in increasingly complex and dynamic environments. While algorithms for solving abstracted scheduling problems have been extensively investigated, the critical prerequisite of specifying manufacturing requirements into formal constraints remains manual and labor-intensive. Although recent advances of generative models, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), show promise in automating constraint specification from heterogeneous raw manufacturing data, their direct application faces challenges due to natural language ambiguity, non-deterministic outputs, and limited domain-specific knowledge. This paper presents a constraint-centric architecture that regulates LLMs to perform reliable automated constraint specification for production scheduling. The architecture defines a hierarchical structural space organized across three levels, implemented through domain-specific representation to ensure precision and reliability while maintaining flexibility. Furthermore, an automated production scenario adaptation algorithm is designed and deployed to efficiently customize the architecture for specific manufacturing configurations. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach successfully balances the generative capabilities of LLMs with the reliability requirements of manufacturing systems, significantly outperforming pure LLM-based approaches in constraint specification tasks.

Adept manipulation of articulated objects is essential for robots to operate successfully in human environments. Such manipulation requires both effectiveness—reliable operation despite uncertain object structures—and efficiency—swift execution with minimal redundant steps and smooth trajectories. Existing approaches struggle to achieve both objectives simultaneously: methods relying on predefined kinematic models lack robustness when encountering structural variations, while the tactile-informed approach achieves robust manipulation but sacrifices efficiency through reactive, step-by-step execute-and-recover cycles. To address this challenge, this paper introduces TacMan-Turbo, a proactive tactile control framework that unifies the cycles into a continuous control loop. Our key insight is to interpret tactile signals temporally in addition to spatially: instead of treating contact deviations merely as instantaneous error signals requiring immediate compensation, we analyze sequential tactile observations to reveal local kinematic information. This temporal perspective enables our controller to predict future object states and proactively modulate manipulation velocities, eliminating the previous execute-and-recover cycle. In evaluations across 200 diverse simulated articulated objects and real-world experiments, our approach maintains a near-perfect performance while significantly enhancing time efficiency, action efficiency, and trajectory smoothness (all p-values < 0.0001). These results demonstrate that tactile feedback serves a dual purpose: providing not only spatial error signals for reactive control but also critical temporal structural information that enables proactive prediction and control. By enabling robots to manipulate articulated objects both reliably and efficiently, this work advances robot capabilities for seamless operation in dynamic, human-centric environments.

Self-driving laboratories have begun to replace human experimenters in performing single experimental skills or predetermined experimental protocols. However, as the pace of idea iteration in scientific research has been intensified by Artificial Intelligence, the demand for rapid design of new protocols for new discoveries become evident. Efforts to automate protocol design have been initiated, but the capabilities of knowledge-based machine designers, such as Large Language Models, have not been fully elicited, probably for the absence of a systematic representation of experimental knowledge, as opposed to isolated, flatten pieces of information. To tackle this issue, we propose a multi-faceted, multi-scale representation, where instance actions, generalized operations, and product flow models are hierarchically encapsulated using Domain-Specific Languages. We further develop a data-driven algorithm based on non-parametric modeling that autonomously customizes these representations for specific domains. The proposed representation is equipped with various machine designers to manage protocol design tasks, including planning, modification, and adjustment. The results demonstrate that the proposed method could effectively complement Large Language Models in the protocol design process, serving as an auxiliary module in the realm of machine-assisted scientific exploration.

Industrial designers have long sought a natural and intuitive way to achieve the targeted control of prototype models---using simple natural language instructions to configure and adjust the models seamlessly according to their intentions, without relying on complex modeling commands. While Large Language Models have shown promise in this area, their potential for controlling prototype models through language remains partially underutilized. This limitation stems from gaps between designers' languages and modeling languages, including mismatch in abstraction levels, fluctuation in semantic precision, and divergence in lexical scopes. To bridge these gaps, we propose an interface architecture that serves as a medium between the two languages. Grounded in design principles derived from a systematic investigation of fast prototyping practices, we devise the interface's operational mechanism and develop an algorithm for its automated domain specification. Both machine-based evaluations and human studies on fast prototyping across various product design domains demonstrate the interface's potential to function as an auxiliary module for Large Language Models, enabling precise and effective targeted control of prototype models.

Inspired by neuronal diversity in the biological neural system, a plethora of studies proposed to design novel types of artificial neurons and introduce neuronal diversity into artificial neural networks. Recently proposed quadratic neuron, which replaces the inner-product operation in conventional neurons with a quadratic one, have achieved great success in many essential tasks. Despite the promising results of quadratic neurons, there is still an unresolved issue: Is the superior performance of quadratic networks simply due to the increased parameters or due to the intrinsic expressive capability? Without clarifying this issue, the performance of quadratic networks is always suspicious. Additionally, resolving this issue is reduced to finding killer applications of quadratic networks. In this paper, with theoretical and empirical studies, we show that quadratic networks enjoy parametric efficiency, thereby confirming that the superior performance of quadratic networks is due to the intrinsic expressive capability. This intrinsic expressive ability comes from that quadratic neurons can easily represent nonlinear interaction, while it is hard for conventional neurons. Theoretically, we derive the approximation efficiency of quadratic networks over conventional ones in terms of real space and manifolds. Moreover, from the perspective of the Barron space, we demonstrate that there exists a functional space whose functions can be approximated by quadratic networks in a dimension-free error, but the approximation error of conventional networks is dependent on dimensions. Empirically, experimental results on synthetic data, classic benchmarks, and real-world applications show that quadratic models broadly enjoy parametric efficiency, and the gain of efficiency depends on the task.

Integrating robots into human-centric environments such as homes, necessitates advanced manipulation skills as robotic devices will need to engage with articulated objects such as doors and drawers. Key challenges in robotic manipulation of articulated objects are the unpredictability and diversity of these objects' internal structures, which render models based on object kinematics priors, both explicit and implicit, and inadequate. Their reliability is significantly diminished by pre-interaction ambiguities, imperfect structural parameters, encounters with unknown objects, and unforeseen disturbances. Here, we present aprior-freestrategy, Tac-Man, focusing on maintaining stable robot-object contact during manipulation. Without relying on object priors, Tac-Man leverages tactile feedback to enable robots to proficiently handle a variety of articulated objects, including those with complex joints, even when influenced by unexpected disturbances. Demonstrated in both real-world experiments and extensive simulations, it consistently achieves near-perfect success in dynamic and varied settings, outperforming existing methods. Our results indicate that tactile sensing alone suffices for managing diverse articulated objects, offering greater robustness and generalization than prior-based approaches. This underscores the importance of detailed contact modeling in complex manipulation tasks, especially with articulated objects. Advancements in tactile-informed approaches significantly expand the scope of robotic applications in human-centric environments, particularly where accurate models are difficult to obtain.

Yu-Zhe Shi, Haofei Hou, Zhangqian Bi, Fanxu Meng, Xiang Wei, Lecheng Ruan, Qining Wang. Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). 2024.

Recent development in Artificial Intelligence (AI) models has propelled their application in scientific discovery, but the validation and exploration of these discoveries require subsequent empirical experimentation. The concept of self-driving laboratories promises to automate and thus boost the experimental process following AI-driven discoveries. However, the transition of experimental protocols, originally crafted for human comprehension, into formats interpretable by machines presents significant challenges, which, within the context of specific expert domain, encompass the necessity for structured as opposed to natural language, the imperative for explicit rather than tacit knowledge, and the preservation of causality and consistency throughout protocol steps. Presently, the task of protocol translation predominantly requires the manual and labor-intensive involvement of domain experts and information technology specialists, rendering the process time-intensive. To address these issues, we propose a framework that automates the protocol translation process through a three-stage workflow, which incrementally constructs Protocol Dependence Graphs (PDGs) that approach structured on the syntax level, completed on the semantics level, and linked on the execution level. Quantitative and qualitative evaluations have demonstrated its performance at par with that of human experts, underscoring its potential to significantly expedite and democratize the process of scientific discovery by elevating the automation capabilities within self-driving laboratories.

Wearable robotic devices interact with human by applying assistive force in parallel with muscle-tendon systems. Designing actuations in mimicking the natural activation patterns of human muscles is a promising way to optimize the performance of wearable robots. In this paper, we propose a bio-inspired cable-driven actuation system capable of providing anisometric contractions (including concentric and eccentric contraction) assistance or nearly acting as a transparent device in an efficient manner. A novel clutch-spring mechanism is employed to accomplish switches between assistive modes and the transparent mode. Corresponding control strategies coordinating with the mechanical design were presented and described in detail. Multiple evaluations were conducted on a test bench to characterize the system performance. The closed-loop bandwidth of the system running concentric assistance control was 18.2 Hz. The R-squared values of linear fitting under eccentric assistance control were above 0.99. The engagement time of the proposed clutch was about 90 ms. Applying the actuation to an ankle exoskeleton, multiple walking experiments with electromyography measurement were performed on five subjects to show its application potential in existing wearable robots. Experimental results revealed that the proposed design could reduce soleus muscle activity by 27.32% compared with normal walking. This study highlights the importance of functional bionic design in human-assistance-related devices and introduces a general actuation system that could be directly applied to existing cable-driven wearable robots.

Estimation of center of mass (CoM) and center of pressure (CoP) is critical for lower limb exoskeletons, prostheses, and legged robots. To meet the demand in these fields, this study presents a novel CoM and CoP estimation method for human walking through a wearable visual odometry (VO) device. This method is named VO-based estimation of CoM and CoP (VOECC). The methodology of VOECC is that the VO provides CoM trajectory estimation and the inherent walking dynamics model is exploited as prior knowledge for CoP trajectory estimation during human walking. Gait cycle is estimated based on the frequency analysis of the CoM trajectory, which is cropped into segments. Each segment mainly includes a half gait cycle. The segments are designed to be sliding to mitigate the disturbance of double-stance phase. For each segment, a quadratic programming (QP) problem is formulated to fit the CoM measurement with the theoretical walking dynamics model. The solution to this QP problem is an optimal gait parameters estimation, including CoP. Based on this solution, the human walking model with the CoM trajectory and CoP excursion is reconstructed. VOECC is evaluated experimentally where human walks on level ground and upstairs with VO device attached in front of the chest. The ground truth of CoM and CoP position is directly measured by the motion capture system and fully instrumented treadmill, respectively, and compared with the VOECC results. The proposed method is demonstrated to be effective in terms of wearable and extensible functionalities compared with the existing methods. Root-mean-squared errors between the CoP measured by fully instrumented treadmill and the CoP estimated by VOECC are evaluated and compared. This method has the potential to be extensible in lower limb rehabilitation, prosthetic, and legged locomotion fields.Note to Practitioners—This article addresses the problem of estimating center of mass (CoM) and center of pressure (CoP) trajectories using a minimum number of wearable sensors and reliable algorithms during human daily walking. Estimation of CoM and CoP trajectories is critical for lower limb exoskeletons, prostheses, and legged robots. In this study, a novel method named VO-based estimation of CoM and CoP (VOECC) is presented that utilizes a walking model as prior knowledge and integrates it with visual odometry data, which estimates the trajectory of the wearable visual device. Compared with the inertia measurement unit (IMU)-based method, VOECC only uses one wearable visual device and thus significantly reduces the cost and system complexity. In addition, the VOECC outperforms the motion capture system and force plate since it is not limited to space constraints and has the potential to be applicable for daily life locomotion tasks. VOECC is wearable and untethered and therefore can be directly amounted on lower limb exoskeletons, prostheses, and legged robots. In the experiments, motion capture system and force plates are used to measure CoM and CoP as ground truth to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed VOECC. Practical limitations include failure from fast turning and synchronization of multichannel sensors. These limitations will be addressed as our future research directions.