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.

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.