FreqSpaNet: Frequency and Spatial Learning of SFPF for Physical Layer Hardware Integrity Detection
FreqSpaNet learns spatio-frequency polarization fingerprints to detect unauthorized wireless hardware replacement, reaching 96.31% mean AUROC across seven replacement scenarios.
FreqSpaNet is a representation learning network for open-set hardware anomaly detection using spatio-frequency polarization fingerprints (SFPFs), which capture device-dependent responses across frequencies and directions. A frequency branch models local variations among neighboring frequencies while a geometry-aware spatial branch models directional relationships via angular information, combined through adaptive fusion and complementary pretraining. It achieves a mean AUROC of 96.31%, 9.05 points above the baseline, and is verified under seven hardware replacement scenarios.
gr-PHYSEC: Real-time Channel-based Key Generation for Physical Layer Secure Wireless Communications
gr-PHYSEC GNU Radio module derives symmetric encryption keys from wireless channel randomness using a neural network, validated on robotic platforms with ADALM-Pluto SDRs.
The paper introduces gr-PHYSEC, a GNU Radio out-of-tree module for real-time physical-layer key generation that derives symmetric keys from the wireless channel's inherent randomness instead of pre-shared secrets. A trained neural network extracts channel features between trusted parties during probe exchanges; features are quantized into binary keys, reconciled via Reed-Solomon encoding, and secured with SHA-512 hashing before direct use for encryption. Real-world experiments at the FAU CAAI connected robotics testbed using ADALM Pluto software-defined radios and NVIDIA Jetson Orin demonstrated low key disagreement rates and NIST-verified randomness. Source code is publicly available on GitHub.
Agent as Policy for Robotic Manipulation
Agent as Policy lets a general-purpose agent drive a physical robot via runtime reasoning and program generation, reaching 100% success on manipulation tasks.
The paper introduces Agent as Policy (AGP), which puts task planning and execution for a physical robot under a general-purpose agent's control with no task-specific or environment-specific training. The agent interprets visual evidence, writes executable programs, issues motion commands, and revises actions based on physical outcomes. AGP was evaluated on real-world manipulation tasks including assembly from human videos, block construction from goal images, die reorientation, targeted throwing, and bimanual towel folding. It achieved success rates of 100%, 100%, and 80% on three block construction configurations.
SynthGait-19K: A Physically Grounded Synthetic Video Dataset for Gait Parameter Estimation
Researchers release SynthGait-19K, a synthetic video dataset with 19,272 walking videos for training gait parameter estimation models.
SynthGait-19K is a physically grounded synthetic video dataset built from 6,427 MoCap sequences of 437 subjects, yielding 19,272 walking videos with SMPL motion and annotations for six gait parameters. The authors introduce Gait2Vid, a pipeline that unifies heterogeneous MoCap recordings and synthesizes RGB videos under controllable viewpoints, validating gait events against force-platform measurements. Using the dataset they benchmark direct RGB, pose-based, biomechanical, and human-mesh-recovery approaches, and introduce GaitXFormer as a direct RGB reference model. Findings show synthetic supervision transfers to real video, while spatial gait parameters are more sensitive to visual domain shift.
I Think the Military Commissary Freezers Were Hacked
Refrigeration failures at six-plus US military commissaries prompt speculation of a cyber attack on DeCA's remote monitoring systems; Pentagon acknowledges possible disruption.
The author documents near-simultaneous freezer and refrigeration failures at confirmed installations including Fort Huachuca, F.E. Warren AFB, Fort Irwin and Travis AFB on August 26-27, with freezers entering defrost mode that heated and spoiled food. DeCA's Remote Monitoring Control System controls defrost across roughly 182 locations, and an unverified comment attributed the Fort Huachuca failure to a network issue. Stars and Stripes and Military Times independently reported the multi-base failures, and the Pentagon acknowledged a 'possible refrigeration disruption,' though no evidence of hacking has been confirmed.