Measuring and reducing surgical staff stress in a realistic operating room setting using EDA monitoring and smart hearing protection

BackgroundStress is a critical factor in the operating room (OR) and affects both the performance and well-being of surgical staff. Measuring and mitigating this stress

Bioethical considerations in deploying mobile mental health apps in LMIC settings: insights from the MITHRA pilot study in rural India

IntroductionIn India, untreated depression among women contributes significantly to morbidity and mortality, underscoring an urgent need for accessible and ethically grounded mental health interventions. Mobile

Mechanistic Decoding of Cognitive Constructs in LLMs

arXiv:2604.14593v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: While Large Language Models (LLMs) demonstrate increasingly sophisticated affective capabilities, the internal mechanisms by which they process complex emotions remain

ClimateCause: Complex and Implicit Causal Structures in Climate Reports

arXiv:2604.14856v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Understanding climate change requires reasoning over complex causal networks. Yet, existing causal discovery datasets predominantly capture explicit, direct causal relations.

Theory of Mind in Action: The Instruction Inference Task in Dynamic Human-Agent Collaboration

arXiv:2507.02935v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Successful human-agent teaming relies on an agent being able to understand instructions given by a (human) principal. In many cases,

ECM Contracts: Contract-Aware, Versioned, and Governable Capability Interfaces for Embodied Agents

April 16, 2026

arXiv:2604.13097v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Embodied agents increasingly rely on modular capabilities that can be installed, upgraded, composed, and governed at runtime. Prior work has introduced embodied capability modules (ECMs) as reusable units of embodied functionality, and recent research has explored their runtime governance and controlled evolution. However, a key systems question remains unresolved: how can ECMs be composed and released as a stable software ecosystem rather than as ad hoc skill bundles?
We present ECM Contracts, a contract-based interface model for embodied capability modules. Unlike conventional software interfaces that specify only input and output types, ECM Contracts encode six dimensions essential for embodied execution: functional signature, behavioral assumptions, resource requirements, permission boundaries, recovery semantics, and version compatibility. Based on this model, we introduce a compatibility framework for ECM installation, composition, and upgrade, enabling static and pre-deployment checks for type mismatches, dependency conflicts, policy violations, resource contention, and recovery incompatibilities.
We further propose a release discipline for embodied capabilities, including version-aware compatibility classes, deprecation rules, migration constraints, and policy-sensitive upgrade checks. We implement a prototype ECM registry, resolver, and contract checker, and evaluate the approach on modular embodied tasks in a robotics runtime setting. Results show that contract-aware composition substantially reduces unsafe or invalid module combinations, and that contract-guided release checks improve upgrade safety and rollback readiness compared with schema-only or ad hoc baselines.
Our findings suggest that stable embodied software ecosystems require more than modular packaging: they require explicit contracts that connect capability composition, governance, and evolution.

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