A Multi-Agent Framework for Code-Guided, Modular, and Verifiable Automated Machine Learning

Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) has revolutionized the development of data-driven solutions; however, traditional frameworks often function as "black boxes", lacking the flexibility and transparency required for complex, real-world engineering tasks. Recent Large Language Model (LLM)-based agents have shifted toward code-driven approaches. However, they frequently suffer from hallucinated logic and logic entanglement, where monolithic code generation leads to unrecoverable runtime failures. In this paper, we present iML, a novel multi-agent framework designed to shift AutoML from black-box prompting to a code-guided, modular, and verifiable architectural paradigm. iML introduces three main ideas: (1) Code-Guided Planning, which synthesizes a strategic blueprint grounded in autonomous empirical profiling to eliminate hallucination; (2) Code-Modular Implementation, which decouples preprocessing and modeling into specialized components governed by strict interface contracts; and (3) Code-Verifiable Integration, which enforces physical feasibility through dynamic contract verification and iterative self-correction. We evaluate iML across MLE-BENCH and the newly introduced iML-BENCH, comprising a diverse range of real-world Kaggle competitions. The experimental results show iML's superiority over state-of-the-art agents, achieving a valid submission rate of 85% and a competitive medal rate of 45% on MLE-BENCH, with an average standardized performance score (APS) of 0.77. On iML-BENCH, iML significantly outperforms the other approaches by 38%-163% in APS. Furthermore, iML maintains a robust 70% success rate even under stripped task descriptions, effectively filling information gaps through empirical profiling. These results highlight iML's potential to bridge the gap between stochastic generation and reliable engineering, marking a meaningful step toward truly AutoML.

Unsupervised Learning for Detection of Rare Driving Scenarios

The detection of rare and hazardous driving scenarios is a critical challenge for ensuring the safety and reliability of autonomous systems. This research explores an unsupervised learning framework for detecting rare and extreme driving scenarios using naturalistic driving data (NDD). We leverage the recently proposed Deep Isolation Forest (DIF), an anomaly detection algorithm that combines neural network-based feature representations with Isolation Forests (IFs), to identify non-linear and complex anomalies. Data from perception modules, capturing vehicle dynamics and environmental conditions, is preprocessed into structured statistical features extracted from sliding windows. The framework incorporates t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) for dimensionality reduction and visualization, enabling better interpretability of detected anomalies. Evaluation is conducted using a proxy ground truth, combining quantitative metrics with qualitative video frame inspection. Our results demonstrate that the proposed approach effectively identifies rare and hazardous driving scenarios, providing a scalable solution for anomaly detection in autonomous driving systems. Given the study's methodology, it was unavoidable to depend on proxy ground truth and manually defined feature combinations, which do not encompass the full range of real-world driving anomalies or their nuanced contextual dependencies.