Hybrid Gaussian Process Regression with Temporal Feature Extraction for Partially Interpretable Remaining Useful Life Interval Prediction in Aeroengine Prognostics

The estimation of Remaining Useful Life (RUL) plays a pivotal role in intelligent manufacturing systems and Industry 4.0 technologies. While recent advancements have improved RUL prediction, many models still face interpretability and compelling uncertainty modeling challenges. This paper introduces a modified Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) model for RUL interval prediction, tailored for the complexities of manufacturing process development. The modified GPR predicts confidence intervals by learning from historical data and addresses uncertainty modeling in a more structured way. The approach effectively captures intricate time-series patterns and dynamic behaviors inherent in modern manufacturing systems by coupling GPR with deep adaptive learning-enhanced AI process models. Moreover, the model evaluates feature significance to ensure more transparent decision-making, which is crucial for optimizing manufacturing processes. This comprehensive approach supports more accurate RUL predictions and provides transparent, interpretable insights into uncertainty, contributing to robust process development and management.

Improving Generalization in Visual Reinforcement Learning via Conflict-aware Gradient Agreement Augmentation

Learning a policy with great generalization to unseen environments remains challenging but critical in visual reinforcement learning. Despite the success of augmentation combination in the supervised learning generalization, naively applying it to visual RL algorithms may damage the training efficiency, suffering from serve performance degradation. In this paper, we first conduct qualitative analysis and illuminate the main causes: (i) high-variance gradient magnitudes and (ii) gradient conflicts existed in various augmentation methods. To alleviate these issues, we propose a general policy gradient optimization framework, named Conflict-aware Gradient Agreement Augmentation (CG2A), and better integrate augmentation combination into visual RL algorithms to address the generalization bias. In particular, CG2A develops a Gradient Agreement Solver to adaptively balance the varying gradient magnitudes, and introduces a Soft Gradient Surgery strategy to alleviate the gradient conflicts. Extensive experiments demonstrate that CG2A significantly improves the generalization performance and sample efficiency of visual RL algorithms.