Don't Act Blindly: Robust GUI Automation via Action-Effect Verification and Self-Correction

Autonomous GUI agents based on vision-language models (VLMs) often assume deterministic environment responses, generating actions without verifying whether previous operations succeeded. In real-world settings with network latency, rendering delays, and system interruptions, this assumption leads to undetected action failures, repetitive ineffective behaviors, and catastrophic error accumulation. Moreover, learning robust recovery strategies is challenging due to the high cost of online interaction and the lack of real-time feedback in offline datasets.We propose VeriGUI (Verification-driven GUI Agent), which explicitly models action outcomes and recovery under noisy environments. VeriGUI introduces a Thinking--Verification--Action--Expectation (TVAE) framework to detect failures and guide corrective reasoning, and a two-stage training pipeline that combines Robust SFT with synthetic failure trajectories and GRPO with asymmetric verification rewards. We further construct a Robustness Benchmark based on AndroidControl to evaluate failure recognition and correction. Experiments show that VeriGUI significantly reduces failure loops and improves recovery success while maintaining competitive standard task performance.

MTLSI-Net: A Linear Semantic Interaction Network for Parameter-Efficient Multi-Task Dense Prediction

Multi-task dense prediction aims to perform multiple pixel-level tasks simultaneously. However, capturing global cross-task interactions remains non-trivial due to the quadratic complexity of standard self-attention on high-resolution features. To address this limitation, we propose a Multi-Task Linear Semantic Interaction Network (MTLSI-Net), which facilitates cross-task interaction through linear attention. Specifically, MTLSI-Net incorporates three key components: a Multi-Task Multi-scale Query Linear Fusion Block, which captures cross-task dependencies across multiple scales with linear complexity using a shared global context matrix; a Semantic Token Distiller that compresses redundant features into compact semantic tokens, distilling essential cross-task knowledge; and a Cross-Window Integrated attention Block that injects global semantics into local features via a dual-branch architecture, preserving both global consistency and spatial precision. These components collectively enable the network to capture comprehensive cross-task interactions at linear complexity with reduced parameters. Extensive experiments on NYUDv2 and PASCAL-Context demonstrate that MTLSI-Net achieves state-of-the-art performance, validating its effectiveness and efficiency in multi-task learning.

PDA: Text-Augmented Defense Framework for Robust Vision-Language Models against Adversarial Image Attacks

Vision-language models (VLMs) are vulnerable to adversarial image perturbations. Existing works based on adversarial training against task-specific adversarial examples are computationally expensive and often fail to generalize to unseen attack types. To address these limitations, we introduce Paraphrase-Decomposition-Aggregation (PDA), a training-free defense framework that leverages text augmentation to enhance VLM robustness under diverse adversarial image attacks. PDA performs prompt paraphrasing, question decomposition, and consistency aggregation entirely at test time, thus requiring no modification on the underlying models. To balance robustness and efficiency, we instantiate PDA as invariants that reduce the inference cost while retaining most of its robustness gains. Experiments on multiple VLM architectures and benchmarks for visual question answering, classification, and captioning show that PDA achieves consistent robustness gains against various adversarial perturbations while maintaining competitive clean accuracy, establishing a generic, strong and practical defense framework for VLMs during inference.

Learnable Instance Attention Filtering for Adaptive Detector Distillation

As deep vision models grow increasingly complex to achieve higher performance, deployment efficiency has become a critical concern. Knowledge distillation (KD) mitigates this issue by transferring knowledge from large teacher models to compact student models. While many feature-based KD methods rely on spatial filtering to guide distillation, they typically treat all object instances uniformly, ignoring instance-level variability. Moreover, existing attention filtering mechanisms are typically heuristic or teacher-driven, rather than learned with the student. To address these limitations, we propose Learnable Instance Attention Filtering for Adaptive Detector Distillation (LIAF-KD), a novel framework that introduces learnable instance selectors to dynamically evaluate and reweight instance importance during distillation. Notably, the student contributes to this process based on its evolving learning state. Experiments on the KITTI and COCO datasets demonstrate consistent improvements, with a 2% gain on a GFL ResNet-50 student without added complexity, outperforming state-of-the-art methods.

From Natural Language to Executable Option Strategies via Large Language Models

Large Language Models (LLMs) excel at general code generation, yet translating natural-language trading intents into correct option strategies remains challenging. Real-world option design requires reasoning over massive, multi-dimensional option chain data with strict constraints, which often overwhelms direct generation methods. We introduce the Option Query Language (OQL), a domain-specific intermediate representation that abstracts option markets into high-level primitives under grammatical rules, enabling LLMs to function as reliable semantic parsers rather than free-form programmers. OQL queries are then validated and executed deterministically by an engine to instantiate executable strategies. We also present a new dataset for this task and demonstrate that our neuro-symbolic pipeline significantly improves execution accuracy and logical consistency over direct baselines.

Not All Directions Matter: Toward Structured and Task-Aware Low-Rank Adaptation

Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) has become a cornerstone of parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT). Yet, its efficacy is hampered by two fundamental limitations: semantic drift, by treating all update directions with equal importance, and structural incoherence, from adapting layers independently, resulting in suboptimal, uncoordinated updates. To remedy these, we propose StructLoRA, a framework that addresses both limitations through a principled, dual-component design: (1) an Information Bottleneck-guided filter that prunes task-irrelevant directions to mitigate semantic drift, and (2) a lightweight, training-only graph-based coordinator that enforces inter-layer consistency to resolve structural incoherence. Extensive experiments across large language model , vision language model, and vision model (including LLaMA, LLaVA, and ViT) demonstrate that StructLoRA consistently establishes a new state-of-the-art, outperforming not only vanilla LoRA but also advanced dynamic rank allocation and sparsity-based methods. Notably, the benefits are particularly pronounced in challenging low-rank and low-data regimes. Crucially, since our proposed modules operate only during training, StructLoRA enhances performance with zero additional inference cost, advancing the focus of PEFT -- from mere parameter compression to a more holistic optimization of information quality and structural integrity.

Cutting the Cord: System Architecture for Low-Cost, GPU-Accelerated Bimanual Mobile Manipulation

We present a bimanual mobile manipulator built on the open-source XLeRobot with integrated onboard compute for less than \$1300. Key contributions include: (1) optimized mechanical design maximizing stiffness-to-weight ratio, (2) a Tri-Bus power topology isolating compute from motor-induced voltage transients, and (3) embedded autonomy using NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano for untethered operation. The platform enables teleoperation, autonomous SLAM navigation, and vision-based manipulation without external dependencies, providing a low-cost alternative for research and education in robotics and robot learning.

When Does Multimodal Learning Help in Healthcare? A Benchmark on EHR and Chest X-Ray Fusion

Machine learning holds promise for advancing clinical decision support, yet it remains unclear when multimodal learning truly helps in practice, particularly under modality missingness and fairness constraints. In this work, we conduct a systematic benchmark of multimodal fusion between Electronic Health Records (EHR) and chest X-rays (CXR) on standardized cohorts from MIMIC-IV and MIMIC-CXR, aiming to answer four fundamental questions: when multimodal fusion improves clinical prediction, how different fusion strategies compare, how robust existing methods are to missing modalities, and whether multimodal models achieve algorithmic fairness. Our study reveals several key insights. Multimodal fusion improves performance when modalities are complete, with gains concentrating in diseases that require complementary information from both EHR and CXR. While cross-modal learning mechanisms capture clinically meaningful dependencies beyond simple concatenation, the rich temporal structure of EHR introduces strong modality imbalance that architectural complexity alone cannot overcome. Under realistic missingness, multimodal benefits rapidly degrade unless models are explicitly designed to handle incomplete inputs. Moreover, multimodal fusion does not inherently improve fairness, with subgroup disparities mainly arising from unequal sensitivity across demographic groups. To support reproducible and extensible evaluation, we further release a flexible benchmarking toolkit that enables plug-and-play integration of new models and datasets. Together, this work provides actionable guidance on when multimodal learning helps, when it fails, and why, laying the foundation for developing clinically deployable multimodal systems that are both effective and reliable. The open-source toolkit can be found at https://github.com/jakeykj/CareBench.

RuleSmith: Multi-Agent LLMs for Automated Game Balancing

Game balancing is a longstanding challenge requiring repeated playtesting, expert intuition, and extensive manual tuning. We introduce RuleSmith, the first framework that achieves automated game balancing by leveraging the reasoning capabilities of multi-agent LLMs. It couples a game engine, multi-agent LLMs self-play, and Bayesian optimization operating over a multi-dimensional rule space. As a proof of concept, we instantiate RuleSmith on CivMini, a simplified civilization-style game containing heterogeneous factions, economy systems, production rules, and combat mechanics, all governed by tunable parameters. LLM agents interpret textual rulebooks and game states to generate actions, to conduct fast evaluation of balance metrics such as win-rate disparities. To search the parameter landscape efficiently, we integrate Bayesian optimization with acquisition-based adaptive sampling and discrete projection: promising candidates receive more evaluation games for accurate assessment, while exploratory candidates receive fewer games for efficient exploration. Experiments show that RuleSmith converges to highly balanced configurations and provides interpretable rule adjustments that can be directly applied to downstream game systems. Our results illustrate that LLM simulation can serve as a powerful surrogate for automating design and balancing in complex multi-agent environments.

Dispersion Loss Counteracts Embedding Condensation and Improves Generalization in Small Language Models

Large language models (LLMs) achieve remarkable performance through ever-increasing parameter counts, but scaling incurs steep computational costs. To better understand LLM scaling, we study representational differences between LLMs and their smaller counterparts, with the goal of replicating the representational qualities of larger models in the smaller models. We observe a geometric phenomenon which we term $\textbf{embedding condensation}$, where token embeddings collapse into a narrow cone-like subspace in some language models. Through systematic analyses across multiple Transformer families, we show that small models such as $\texttt{GPT2}$ and $\texttt{Qwen3-0.6B}$ exhibit severe condensation, whereas the larger models such as $\texttt{GPT2-xl}$ and $\texttt{Qwen3-32B}$ are more resistant to this phenomenon. Additional observations show that embedding condensation is not reliably mitigated by knowledge distillation from larger models. To fight against it, we formulate a dispersion loss that explicitly encourages embedding dispersion during training. Experiments demonstrate that it mitigates condensation, recovers dispersion patterns seen in larger models, and yields performance gains across 10 benchmarks. We believe this work offers a principled path toward improving smaller Transformers without additional parameters.