在过去的十年中，我们看到了工业数据，计算能力的巨大改善以及机器学习的重大理论进步。这为在大规模非线性监控和控制问题上使用现代机器学习工具提供了机会。本文对过程行业的应用进行了对最新结果的调查。

元学习是机器学习的一个分支，旨在将相关任务分布的数据合成以有效地解决新的数据。在过程控制中，许多系统具有相似且充分理解的动力学，这表明可以通过元学习创建可推广的控制器是可行的。在这项工作中，我们制定了一种元加强学习（META-RL）控制策略，该策略利用已知的离线信息进行培训，例如模型结构。对模型参数的分布而不是单个模型，对元RL代理进行了训练，从而使代理能够自动适应过程动力学的变化，同时保持性能。一个关键的设计元素是能够在培训期间离线利用基于模型的信息，同时保持与新环境交互的无模型策略结构。我们以前的工作已经证明了如何将这种方法应用于调整比例综合控制器以控制一阶过程的与工业相关的问题。在这项工作中，我们简要地重新引入了我们的方法，并证明了如何将其扩展到比例综合衍生的控制器和二阶系统。

元学习是机器学习的一个分支，它训练神经网络模型以合成各种数据，以快速解决新问题。在过程控制中，许多系统具有相似且充分理解的动力学，这表明可以通过元学习创建可推广的控制器是可行的。在这项工作中，我们制定了一种元加强学习（META-RL）控制策略，该策略可用于调整比例的整体控制器。我们的Meta-RL代理具有复发结构，该结构累积了“上下文”，以通过闭环中的隐藏状态变量学习系统的动力学。该体系结构使代理能够自动适应过程动力学的变化。在此处报告的测试中，对元RL代理完全离线训练了一阶和时间延迟系统，并从相同的训练过程动力学分布中得出的新型系统产生了出色的效果。一个关键的设计元素是能够在模拟环境中训练期间离线利用基于模型的信息，同时保持无模型的策略结构，以与真实过程动态不确定性的新过程进行交互。元学习是一种构建样品有效智能控制器的有前途的方法。

深度加强学习（RL）是一种优化驱动的框架，用于生产一般动力系统的控制策略，而无明确依赖过程模型。仿真报告了良好的结果。在这里，我们展示了在真实物理系统上实现了艺术深度RL算法状态的挑战。方面包括软件与现有硬件之间的相互作用;实验设计和样品效率;培训受输入限制;和算法和控制法的解释性。在我们的方法中，我们的方法是使用PID控制器作为培训RL策略。除了简单性之外，这种方法还具有多种吸引力功能：无需将额外的硬件添加到控制系统中，因为PID控制器可以通过标准可编程逻辑控制器轻松实现;控制法可以在参数空间的“安全”区域中很容易初始化;最终产品 - 一个调整良好的PID控制器 - 有一种形式，从业者可以充分推理和部署。

The recent increase in public and academic interest in preserving biodiversity has led to the growth of the field of conservation technology. This field involves designing and constructing tools that utilize technology to aid in the conservation of wildlife. In this article, we will use case studies to demonstrate the importance of designing conservation tools with human-wildlife interaction in mind and provide a framework for creating successful tools. These case studies include a range of complexities, from simple cat collars to machine learning and game theory methodologies. Our goal is to introduce and inform current and future researchers in the field of conservation technology and provide references for educating the next generation of conservation technologists. Conservation technology not only has the potential to benefit biodiversity but also has broader impacts on fields such as sustainability and environmental protection. By using innovative technologies to address conservation challenges, we can find more effective and efficient solutions to protect and preserve our planet's resources.

A Digital Twin (DT) is a simulation of a physical system that provides information to make decisions that add economic, social or commercial value. The behaviour of a physical system changes over time, a DT must therefore be continually updated with data from the physical systems to reflect its changing behaviour. For resource-constrained systems, updating a DT is non-trivial because of challenges such as on-board learning and the off-board data transfer. This paper presents a framework for updating data-driven DTs of resource-constrained systems geared towards system health monitoring. The proposed solution consists of: (1) an on-board system running a light-weight DT allowing the prioritisation and parsimonious transfer of data generated by the physical system; and (2) off-board robust updating of the DT and detection of anomalous behaviours. Two case studies are considered using a production gas turbine engine system to demonstrate the digital representation accuracy for real-world, time-varying physical systems.

We consider infinite horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) with fast-slow structure, meaning that certain parts of the state space move "fast" (and in a sense, are more influential) while other parts transition more "slowly." Such structure is common in real-world problems where sequential decisions need to be made at high frequencies, yet information that varies at a slower timescale also influences the optimal policy. Examples include: (1) service allocation for a multi-class queue with (slowly varying) stochastic costs, (2) a restless multi-armed bandit with an environmental state, and (3) energy demand response, where both day-ahead and real-time prices play a role in the firm's revenue. Models that fully capture these problems often result in MDPs with large state spaces and large effective time horizons (due to frequent decisions), rendering them computationally intractable. We propose an approximate dynamic programming algorithmic framework based on the idea of "freezing" the slow states, solving a set of simpler finite-horizon MDPs (the lower-level MDPs), and applying value iteration (VI) to an auxiliary MDP that transitions on a slower timescale (the upper-level MDP). We also extend the technique to a function approximation setting, where a feature-based linear architecture is used. On the theoretical side, we analyze the regret incurred by each variant of our frozen-state approach. Finally, we give empirical evidence that the frozen-state approach generates effective policies using just a fraction of the computational cost, while illustrating that simply omitting slow states from the decision modeling is often not a viable heuristic.

While the capabilities of autonomous systems have been steadily improving in recent years, these systems still struggle to rapidly explore previously unknown environments without the aid of GPS-assisted navigation. The DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge aimed to fast track the development of autonomous exploration systems by evaluating their performance in real-world underground search-and-rescue scenarios. Subterranean environments present a plethora of challenges for robotic systems, such as limited communications, complex topology, visually-degraded sensing, and harsh terrain. The presented solution enables long-term autonomy with minimal human supervision by combining a powerful and independent single-agent autonomy stack, with higher level mission management operating over a flexible mesh network. The autonomy suite deployed on quadruped and wheeled robots was fully independent, freeing the human supervision to loosely supervise the mission and make high-impact strategic decisions. We also discuss lessons learned from fielding our system at the SubT Final Event, relating to vehicle versatility, system adaptability, and re-configurable communications.

Machine learning is the dominant approach to artificial intelligence, through which computers learn from data and experience. In the framework of supervised learning, for a computer to learn from data accurately and efficiently, some auxiliary information about the data distribution and target function should be provided to it through the learning model. This notion of auxiliary information relates to the concept of regularization in statistical learning theory. A common feature among real-world datasets is that data domains are multiscale and target functions are well-behaved and smooth. In this paper, we propose a learning model that exploits this multiscale data structure and discuss its statistical and computational benefits. The hierarchical learning model is inspired by the logical and progressive easy-to-hard learning mechanism of human beings and has interpretable levels. The model apportions computational resources according to the complexity of data instances and target functions. This property can have multiple benefits, including higher inference speed and computational savings in training a model for many users or when training is interrupted. We provide a statistical analysis of the learning mechanism using multiscale entropies and show that it can yield significantly stronger guarantees than uniform convergence bounds.

Implicit Neural Representations (INR) have recently shown to be powerful tool for high-quality video compression. However, existing works are limiting as they do not explicitly exploit the temporal redundancy in videos, leading to a long encoding time. Additionally, these methods have fixed architectures which do not scale to longer videos or higher resolutions. To address these issues, we propose NIRVANA, which treats videos as groups of frames and fits separate networks to each group performing patch-wise prediction. This design shares computation within each group, in the spatial and temporal dimensions, resulting in reduced encoding time of the video. The video representation is modeled autoregressively, with networks fit on a current group initialized using weights from the previous group's model. To further enhance efficiency, we perform quantization of the network parameters during training, requiring no post-hoc pruning or quantization. When compared with previous works on the benchmark UVG dataset, NIRVANA improves encoding quality from 37.36 to 37.70 (in terms of PSNR) and the encoding speed by 12X, while maintaining the same compression rate. In contrast to prior video INR works which struggle with larger resolution and longer videos, we show that our algorithm is highly flexible and scales naturally due to its patch-wise and autoregressive designs. Moreover, our method achieves variable bitrate compression by adapting to videos with varying inter-frame motion. NIRVANA achieves 6X decoding speed and scales well with more GPUs, making it practical for various deployment scenarios.