Applied and Computational Engineering

Open access

Print ISSN: 2755-2721

Online ISSN: 2755-273X

About ACE

The proceedings series Applied and Computational Engineering (ACE) is an international peer-reviewed open access series that publishes conference proceedings from various methodological and disciplinary perspectives concerning engineering and technology. ACE is published irregularly. The series contributes to the development of computing sectors by providing an open platform for sharing and discussion. The series publishes articles that are research-oriented and welcomes theoretical and applicational studies. Proceedings that are suitable for publication in the ACE cover domains on various perspectives of computing and engineering.

Aims & scope of ACE are:
·Computing
·Machine Learning
·Electrical Engineering & Signal Processing
·Applied Physics & Mechanical Engineering
·Chemical & Environmental Engineering
·Materials Science and Engineering

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Editors View full editorial board

Anil Fernando
University of Strathclyde
United Kingdom
Editor-in-Chief
anil.fernando@strath.ac.uk
Yilun Shang
Northumbria University
United Kingdom
Associate Editor
yilun.shang@northumbria.ac.uk
Ella Haig
University of Portsmouth
Portsmouth, UK
Associate Editor
ella.haig@port.ac.uk
Moayad Aloqaily
Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence
The United Arab Emirates
Associate Editor
moayad.aloqaily@mbzuai.ac.ae

Latest articles View all articles

Research Article
Published on 22 September 2026 DOI: 10.54254/2755-2721/2026.37153
Peiyu Qian

Damaged sensor data, often caused by noise interference and data loss, impairs the decision-making accuracy of Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) traffic signal control models. This paper takes RobustLight (ICML 2025) as the core case and analyzes it from a data science perspective. We introduce DRL-based traffic signal control and diffusion model principles, then examine RobustLight's dual-process framework, DSI algorithm, Denoise and Repaint modules, and its non-Markov loss design. Experiments on Jinan, Hangzhou and New York datasets under four adversarial attacks and sensor damage show that RobustLight achieves up to 50.43% improvement in state recovery, with ATT reduced by up to 42%. Finally, we discuss real-world challenges including anomaly-detection dependency, inference latency, and cross-domain generalization.

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Qian,P. (2026). A Case Study on the Robustness of Traffic Signal Control from a Data Science Perspective: The RobustLight Diffusion Reinforcement Learning Framework. Applied and Computational Engineering,272,17-24.
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Research Article
Published on 22 September 2026 DOI: 10.54254/2755-2721/2026.37150
Shiming Song

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) are not widely used in high-risk decision-making because they have black-box nature. This paper investigates three visualization methods, Gradient-weighted class activation mapping (Grad-CAM), Score-weighted visual explanations for convolutional neural networks (Score-CAM), and Local interpretable model-agnostic explanations (LIME), across classification, detection, and medical imaging tasks. Theoretically, Grad-CAM relies on gradient backpropagation to weight feature maps. This offers computational efficiency but suffers from gradient instability and coarse spatial resolution. Score-CAM replaces gradients with forward pass confidence scores. This enhances robustness and spatial alignment at the cost of linearly increasing inference overhead. LIME is a model agnostic surrogate. It provides flexible local explanations but is inherently sensitive to perturbation sampling and hyperparameter choices, leading to poor reproducibility. Grad-CAM performs best in dermatologist agreement and localization accuracy. Score-CAM show superior spatial alignment in pneumonia detection with gradient free robustness. LIME shows flexibility but suffers from instability and hyperparameter sensitivity. The differences are obvious: Grad-CAM is good at interpretability, Score-CAM is good at robustness with computational cost, and LIME is good at model agnostic applicability. Based on these differences, these three visualization tools can be selected for real-world tasks.

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Song,S. (2026). Visual Explanation Methods for CNNs: Grad-CAM, Score-CAM and LIME. Applied and Computational Engineering,272,10-16.
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Research Article
Published on 22 September 2026 DOI: 10.54254/2755-2721/2026.37195
Qingxuan Guo

Robotic laparoscopic surgery is moving from conventional teleoperation toward greater autonomy. Previous studies usually only examined individual parts of this transition. The technologies enabling autonomous laparoscopic surgery are less often discussed as one integrated system. This review examines the system through three components: hardware infrastructure, environmental perception, and decision-making. The hardware discussion covers instrument actuation, vision and force sensing, and various robotic platforms. The perception section follows proprioceptive, visual and force data as they are converted into a unified representation of the surgical state. It focuses on 3D scene reconstruction, instrument segmentation, workflow recognition, and multimodal fusion. The decision and control section discusses classical control and data-driven methods, especially the hierarchical imitation learning and reinforcement learning for long-horizon surgical tasks. The review concludes with the main barriers to clinical translation, including the sim-to-real gap, deformable tissue modeling, and safety and regulatory requirements. These areas together show how embodied intelligence may influence future autonomous surgery in the operating room.

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Guo,Q. (2026). Levels of Autonomy in Robot-Assisted Laparoscopic Surgery: Current Capabilities and Evolutionary Pathways. Applied and Computational Engineering,272,1-9.
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Research Article
Published on 22 September 2026 DOI: 10.54254/2755-2721/2026.37278
Huaikun Chen

Supercapacitors, combining high power density and long cycle lifetime, have attracted great attention in recent years. Particularly for applications that require both energy and fast power response, such as frequency regulation in power systems, rail transit, and high-power pulse application, supercapacitors are promising candidate energy storages. Transition metal oxides, with their high theoretical specific capacitance, are the most widely studied pseudocapacitive materials for SCs. Three most studied metal-oxide electrode materials including RuO 2 , MnO 2 , and NiCo 2 O 4 are introduced. Despite RuO 2 is always treated as the benchmark material with metal-level conductivity, it is unfortunately expensive and rare. MnO 2 , however, is environmentally friendly and relatively cheap, yet suffers from poor conductivity and Mn dissolution problem. NiCo 2 O 4 with relatively excellent conductivity among transition metal oxides exhibits special pseudocapacitive behaviors under certain nanostructures and test conditions. The above three materials manifest the trade-off among cost, electrical conductivity, cycling stability, and high mass loading performance, and none of them shows overwhelming advantages in all items. Similar problems, poor conductivity, insufficient cycling stability, and poor high mass loading performance have been shared by metal-oxide electrode materials. Constructing conductive network has become a commonly used method to improve the performance of metal-oxide electrodes. Constructing porous structures is also a widely used approach to overcome the above challenges in metal oxides. A qualitative comparison of the three materials is also provided. Finally, future work should continue to improve conductivity, enhance cycling stability, and maintain fast charge transport at commercially relevant electrode loadings.

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Chen,H. (2026). Transition-Metal Oxide Pseudocapacitive Electrodes for Supercapacitors: Mechanisms, Design Rules, and Practical Constraints. Applied and Computational Engineering,271,98-104.
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Volumes View all volumes

Volume 272September 2026

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Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Machine Learning and Automation

Conference website: https://2026.confmla.org/

Conference date: 16 November 2026

ISBN: 978-1-80915-022-6(Print)/978-1-80915-023-3(Online)

Editor: Hisham AbouGrad

Volume 271September 2026

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Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Functional Materials and Civil Engineering

Conference website: https://2026.conffmce.org/

Conference date: 9 October 2026

ISBN: 978-1-80915-012-7(Print)/978-1-80915-013-4(Online)

Editor: Anil Fernando

Volume 270September 2026

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Proceedings of CONF-CDS 2026 Symposium: Computer Vision-Based Multimodal Cognitive Load Estimation for Adaptive Media Communication

Conference website: https://2026.confcds.org/

Conference date: 14 August 2026

ISBN: 978-1-80915-002-8(Print)/978-1-80915-003-5(Online)

Editor: Anil Fernando , Marwan Omar

Volume 269September 2026

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Proceedings of CONF-MCEE 2027 Symposium: Advanced Nanomaterials and 2D Materials: Synthesis, Modeling, and Applications

Conference website: https://2027.confmcee.org/

Conference date: 29 January 2027

ISBN: 978-1-80590-984-2(Print)/978-1-80590-985-9(Online)

Editor: Nayla Munawar

Indexing

The published articles will be submitted to following databases below: