VLM-in-the-Loop: A Plug-In Quality Assurance Module for ECG Digitization Pipelines

ECG digitization could unlock billions of archived clinical records, yet existing methods collapse on real-world images despite strong benchmark numbers. We introduce \textbf{VLM-in-the-Loop}, a plug-in quality assurance module that wraps any digitization backend with closed-loop VLM feedback via a standardized interface, requiring no modification to the underlying digitizer. The core mechanism is \textbf{tool grounding}: anchoring VLM assessment in quantitative evidence from domain-specific signal analysis tools. In a controlled ablation on 200 records with paired ground truth, tool grounding raises verdict consistency from 71\% to 89\% and doubles fidelity separation ($Δ$PCC 0.03 $\rightarrow$ 0.08), with the effect replicating across three VLMs (Claude Opus~4, GPT-4o, Gemini~2.5 Pro), confirming a pattern-level rather than model-specific gain. Deployed across four backends, the module improves every one: 29.4\% of borderline leads improved on our pipeline; 41.2\% of failed limb leads recovered on ECG-Digitiser; valid leads per image doubled on Open-ECG-Digitizer (2.5 $\rightarrow$ 5.8). On 428 real clinical HCM images, the integrated system reaches 98.0\% Excellent quality. Both the plug-in architecture and tool-grounding mechanism are domain-parametric, suggesting broader applicability wherever quality criteria are objectively measurable.

Behavioral Score Diffusion: Model-Free Trajectory Planning via Kernel-Based Score Estimation from Data

Diffusion-based trajectory optimization has emerged as a powerful planning paradigm, but existing methods require either learned score networks trained on large datasets or analytical dynamics models for score computation. We introduce \emph{Behavioral Score Diffusion} (BSD), a training-free and model-free trajectory planner that computes the diffusion score function directly from a library of trajectory data via kernel-weighted estimation. At each denoising step, BSD retrieves relevant trajectories using a triple-kernel weighting scheme -- diffusion proximity, state context, and goal relevance -- and computes a Nadaraya-Watson estimate of the denoised trajectory. The diffusion noise schedule naturally controls kernel bandwidths, creating a multi-scale nonparametric regression: broad averaging of global behavioral patterns at high noise, fine-grained local interpolation at low noise. This coarse-to-fine structure handles nonlinear dynamics without linearization or parametric assumptions. Safety is preserved by applying shielded rollout on kernel-estimated state trajectories, identical to existing model-based approaches. We evaluate BSD on four robotic systems of increasing complexity (3D--6D state spaces) in a parking scenario. BSD with fixed bandwidth achieves 98.5\% of the model-based baseline's average reward across systems while requiring no dynamics model, using only 1{,}000 pre-collected trajectories. BSD substantially outperforms nearest-neighbor retrieval (18--63\% improvement), confirming that the diffusion denoising mechanism is essential for effective data-driven planning.

Gradient-Based Data Valuation Improves Curriculum Learning for Game-Theoretic Motion Planning

We demonstrate that gradient-based data valuation produces curriculum orderings that significantly outperform metadata-based heuristics for training game-theoretic motion planners. Specifically, we apply TracIn gradient-similarity scoring to GameFormer on the nuPlan benchmark and construct a curriculum that weights training scenarios by their estimated contribution to validation loss reduction. Across three random seeds, the TracIn-weighted curriculum achieves a mean planning ADE of $1.704\pm0.029$\,m, significantly outperforming the metadata-based interaction-difficulty curriculum ($1.822\pm0.014$\,m; paired $t$-test $p=0.021$, Cohen's $d_z=3.88$) while exhibiting lower variance than the uniform baseline ($1.772\pm0.134$\,m). Our analysis reveals that TracIn scores and scenario metadata are nearly orthogonal (Spearman $ρ=-0.014$), indicating that gradient-based valuation captures training dynamics invisible to hand-crafted features. We further show that gradient-based curriculum weighting succeeds where hard data selection fails: TracIn-curated 20\% subsets degrade performance by $2\times$, whereas full-data curriculum weighting with the same scores yields the best results. These findings establish gradient-based data valuation as a practical tool for improving sample efficiency in game-theoretic planning.

Reducing Oracle Feedback with Vision-Language Embeddings for Preference-Based RL

Preference-based reinforcement learning can learn effective reward functions from comparisons, but its scalability is constrained by the high cost of oracle feedback. Lightweight vision-language embedding (VLE) models provide a cheaper alternative, but their noisy outputs limit their effectiveness as standalone reward generators. To address this challenge, we propose ROVED, a hybrid framework that combines VLE-based supervision with targeted oracle feedback. Our method uses the VLE to generate segment-level preferences and defers to an oracle only for samples with high uncertainty, identified through a filtering mechanism. In addition, we introduce a parameter-efficient fine-tuning method that adapts the VLE with the obtained oracle feedback in order to improve the model over time in a synergistic fashion. This ensures the retention of the scalability of embeddings and the accuracy of oracles, while avoiding their inefficiencies. Across multiple robotic manipulation tasks, ROVED matches or surpasses prior preference-based methods while reducing oracle queries by up to 80%. Remarkably, the adapted VLE generalizes across tasks, yielding cumulative annotation savings of up to 90%, highlighting the practicality of combining scalable embeddings with precise oracle supervision for preference-based RL.

Progressive Prompt-Guided Cross-Modal Reasoning for Referring Image Segmentation

Referring image segmentation aims to localize and segment a target object in an image based on a free-form referring expression. The core challenge lies in effectively bridging linguistic descriptions with object-level visual representations, especially when referring expressions involve detailed attributes and complex inter-object relationships. Existing methods either rely on cross-modal alignment or employ Semantic Segmentation Prompts, but they often lack explicit reasoning mechanisms for grounding language descriptions to target regions in the image. To address these limitations, we propose PPCR, a Progressive Prompt-guided Cross-modal Reasoning framework for referring image segmentation. PPCR explicitly structures the reasoning process as a Semantic Understanding-Spatial Grounding-Instance Segmentation pipeline. Specifically, PPCR first employs multimodal large language models (MLLMs) to generate Semantic Segmentation Prompt that capture key semantic cues of the target object. Based on this semantic context, Spatial Segmentation Prompt are further generated to reason about object location and spatial extent, enabling a progressive transition from semantic understanding to spatial grounding. The Semantic and Spatial Segmentation prompts are then jointly integrated into the segmentation module to guide accurate target localization and segmentation. Extensive experiments on standard referring image segmentation benchmarks demonstrate that PPCR consistently outperforms existing methods. The code will be publicly released to facilitate reproducibility.

Drive My Way: Preference Alignment of Vision-Language-Action Model for Personalized Driving

Human driving behavior is inherently personal, which is shaped by long-term habits and influenced by short-term intentions. Individuals differ in how they accelerate, brake, merge, yield, and overtake across diverse situations. However, existing end-to-end autonomous driving systems either optimize for generic objectives or rely on fixed driving modes, lacking the ability to adapt to individual preferences or interpret natural language intent. To address this gap, we propose Drive My Way (DMW), a personalized Vision-Language-Action (VLA) driving framework that aligns with users' long-term driving habits and adapts to real-time user instructions. DMW learns a user embedding from our personalized driving dataset collected across multiple real drivers and conditions the policy on this embedding during planning, while natural language instructions provide additional short-term guidance. Closed-loop evaluation on the Bench2Drive benchmark demonstrates that DMW improves style instruction adaptation, and user studies show that its generated behaviors are recognizable as each driver's own style, highlighting personalization as a key capability for human-centered autonomous driving. Our data and code are available at https://dmw-cvpr.github.io/.

Fleet-Level Battery-Health-Aware Scheduling for Autonomous Mobile Robots

Autonomous mobile robot fleets must coordinate task allocation and charging under limited shared resources, yet most battery aware planning methods address only a single robot. This paper extends degradation cost aware task planning to a multi robot setting by jointly optimizing task assignment, service sequencing, optional charging decisions, charging mode selection, and charger access while balancing degradation across the fleet. The formulation relies on reduced form degradation proxies grounded in the empirical battery aging literature, capturing both charging mode dependent wear and idle state of charge dependent aging; the bilinear idle aging term is linearized through a disaggregated piecewise McCormick formulation. Tight big M values derived from instance data strengthen the LP relaxation. To manage scalability, we propose a hierarchical matheuristic in which a fleet level master problem coordinates assignments, routes, and charger usage, while robot level subproblems whose integer part decomposes into trivially small independent partition selection problems compute route conditioned degradation schedules. Systematic experiments compare the proposed method against three baselines: a rule based nearest available dispatcher, an energy aware formulation that enforces battery feasibility without modeling degradation, and a charger unaware formulation that accounts for degradation but ignores shared charger capacity limits.

Auction-Based Task Allocation with Energy-Conscientious Trajectory Optimization for AMR Fleets

This paper presents a hierarchical two-stage framework for multi-robot task allocation and trajectory optimization in asymmetric task spaces: (1) a sequential auction allocates tasks using closed-form bid functions, and (2) each robot independently solves an optimal control problem for energy-minimal trajectories with a physics-based battery model, followed by a collision avoidance refinement step using pairwise proximity penalties. Event-triggered warm-start rescheduling with bounded trigger frequency handles robot faults, priority arrivals, and energy deviations. Across 505 scenarios with 2-20 robots and up to 100 tasks on three factory layouts, both energy- and distance-based auction variants achieve 11.8% average energy savings over nearest-task allocation, with rescheduling latency under 10 ms. The central finding is that bid-metric performance is regime-dependent: in uniform workspaces, distance bids outperform energy bids by 3.5% (p < 0.05, Wilcoxon) because a 15.7% closed-form approximation error degrades bid ranking accuracy to 87%; however, when workspace friction heterogeneity is sufficient (r < 0.85 energy-distance correlation), a zone-aware energy bid outperforms distance bids by 2-2.4%. These results provide practitioner guidance: use distance bids in near-uniform terrain and energy-aware bids when friction variation is significant.

NavTrust: Benchmarking Trustworthiness for Embodied Navigation

There are two major categories of embodied navigation: Vision-Language Navigation (VLN), where agents navigate by following natural language instructions; and Object-Goal Navigation (OGN), where agents navigate to a specified target object. However, existing work primarily evaluates model performance under nominal conditions, overlooking the potential corruptions that arise in real-world settings. To address this gap, we present NavTrust, a unified benchmark that systematically corrupts input modalities, including RGB, depth, and instructions, in realistic scenarios and evaluates their impact on navigation performance. To our best knowledge, NavTrust is the first benchmark that exposes embodied navigation agents to diverse RGB-Depth corruptions and instruction variations in a unified framework. Our extensive evaluation of seven state-of-the-art approaches reveals substantial performance degradation under realistic corruptions, which highlights critical robustness gaps and provides a roadmap toward more trustworthy embodied navigation systems. Furthermore, we systematically evaluate four distinct mitigation strategies to enhance robustness against RGB-Depth and instructions corruptions. Our base models include Uni-NaVid and ETPNav. We deployed them on a real mobile robot and observed improved robustness to corruptions. The project website is: https://navtrust.github.io.

Multi-Grained Vision-Language Alignment for Domain Generalized Person Re-Identification

Domain Generalized person Re-identification (DG Re-ID) is a challenging task, where models are trained on source domains but tested on unseen target domains. Although previous pure vision-based models have achieved significant progress, the performance remains further improved. Recently, Vision-Language Models (VLMs) present outstanding generalization capabilities in various visual applications. However, directly adapting a VLM to Re-ID shows limited generalization improvement. This is because the VLM only produces with global features that are insensitive to ID nuances. To tacle this problem, we propose a CLIP-based multi-grained vision-language alignment framework in this work. Specifically, several multi-grained prompts are introduced in language modality to describe different body parts and align with their counterparts in vision modality. To obtain fine-grained visual information, an adaptively masked multi-head self-attention module is employed to precisely extract specific part features. To train the proposed module, an MLLM-based visual grounding expert is employed to automatically generate pseudo labels of body parts for supervision. Extensive experiments conducted on both single- and multi-source generalization protocols demonstrate the superior performance of our approach. The implementation code will be released at https://github.com/RikoLi/MUVA.