A Dual-Stream Physics-Augmented Unsupervised Architecture for Runtime Embedded Vehicle Health Monitoring

Runtime quantification of vehicle operational intensity is essential for predictive maintenance and condition monitoring in commercial and heavy-duty fleets. Traditional metrics like mileage fail to capture mechanical burden, while unsupervised deep learning models detect statistical anomalies, typically transient surface shocks, but often conflate statistical stability with mechanical rest. We identify this as a critical blind spot: high-load steady states, such as hill climbing with heavy payloads, appear statistically normal yet impose significant drivetrain fatigue. To resolve this, we propose a Dual-Stream Architecture that fuses unsupervised learning for surface anomaly detection with macroscopic physics proxies for cumulative load estimation. This approach leverages low-frequency sensor data to generate a multi-dimensional health vector, distinguishing between dynamic hazards and sustained mechanical effort. Validated on a RISC-V embedded platform, the architecture demonstrates low computational overhead, enabling comprehensive, edge-based health monitoring on resource-constrained ECUs without the latency or bandwidth costs of cloud-based monitoring.

Empirical Stability Analysis of Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks in Hard-Constrained Recurrent Physics-Informed Discovery

We investigate the integration of Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs) into hard-constrained recurrent physics-informed architectures (HRPINN) to evaluate the fidelity of learned residual manifolds in oscillatory systems. Motivated by the Kolmogorov-Arnold representation theorem and preliminary gray-box results, we hypothesized that KANs would enable efficient recovery of unknown terms compared to MLPs. Through initial sensitivity analysis on configuration sensitivity, parameter scale, and training paradigm, we found that while small KANs are competitive on univariate polynomial residuals (Duffing), they exhibit severe hyperparameter fragility, instability in deeper configurations, and consistent failure on multiplicative terms (Van der Pol), generally outperformed by standard MLPs. These empirical challenges highlight limitations of the additive inductive bias in the original KAN formulation for state coupling and provide preliminary empirical evidence of inductive bias limitations for future hybrid modeling.

Supervised Metric Regularization Through Alternating Optimization for Multi-Regime Physics-Informed Neural Networks

Standard Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) often face challenges when modeling parameterized dynamical systems with sharp regime transitions, such as bifurcations. In these scenarios, the continuous mapping from parameters to solutions can result in spectral bias or "mode collapse", where the network averages distinct physical behaviors. We propose a Topology-Aware PINN (TAPINN) that aims to mitigate this challenge by structuring the latent space via Supervised Metric Regularization. Unlike standard parametric PINNs that map physical parameters directly to solutions, our method conditions the solver on a latent state optimized to reflect the metric-based separation between regimes, showing ~49% lower physics residual (0.082 vs. 0.160). We train this architecture using a phase-based Alternating Optimization (AO) schedule to manage gradient conflicts between the metric and physics objectives. Preliminary experiments on the Duffing Oscillator demonstrate that while standard baselines suffer from spectral bias and high-capacity Hypernetworks overfit (memorizing data while violating physics), our approach achieves stable convergence with 2.18x lower gradient variance than a multi-output Sobolev Error baseline, and 5x fewer parameters than a hypernetwork-based alternative.

White-Box Neural Ensemble for Vehicular Plasticity: Quantifying the Efficiency Cost of Symbolic Auditability in Adaptive NMPC

We present a white-box adaptive NMPC architecture that resolves vehicular plasticity (adaptation to varying operating regimes without retraining) by arbitrating among frozen, regime-specific neural specialists using a Modular Sovereignty paradigm. The ensemble dynamics are maintained as a fully traversable symbolic graph in CasADi, enabling maximal runtime auditability. Synchronous simulation validates rapid adaptation (~7.3 ms) and near-ideal tracking fidelity under compound regime shifts (friction, mass, drag) where non-adaptive baselines fail. Empirical benchmarking quantifies the transparency cost: symbolic graph maintenance increases solver latency by 72-102X versus compiled parametric physics models, establishing the efficiency price of strict white-box implementation.