KAN-Therm: A Lightweight Battery Thermal Model Using Kolmogorov-Arnold Network
Pith reviewed 2026-05-18 18:33 UTC · model grok-4.3
The pith
Kolmogorov-Arnold networks estimate battery core temperature with lower memory use and faster run times than standard neural networks or tree models.
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
Core claim
KAN-therm applies a Kolmogorov-Arnold network to estimate the core temperature of a cylindrical battery cell and reports lower memory overhead together with shorter estimation times than state-of-the-art neural-network and tree-based models, thereby demonstrating suitability for direct use on resource-constrained physical battery management systems.
What carries the argument
Kolmogorov-Arnold network whose edges carry learnable nonlinear activation functions, allowing the model to capture thermal complexity in a lean parameter set rather than through wide layers of fixed activations.
If this is right
- Real-time core-temperature estimates become feasible inside the same microcontroller that runs cell balancing and state-of-charge calculations.
- Continuous thermal oversight can be added to packs that previously could not afford the compute load of high-fidelity models.
- Model size remains small enough to store and execute separate instances for each cell in a large pack without memory overflow.
Where Pith is reading between the lines
- The same lean structure could be tested on prismatic or pouch cells to see whether the memory advantage persists across form factors.
- Coupling the network outputs with a simple energy-balance equation might reduce the amount of labeled data required for training.
- Deployment on actual BMS hardware under wide temperature ranges would reveal whether the reported speed and size gains hold outside the laboratory data set.
Load-bearing premise
The learnable nonlinear activation functions can represent the battery's thermal dynamics at the accuracy needed for safety use while keeping the overall model smaller and quicker than alternative approaches.
What would settle it
Run KAN-therm on a fresh set of measured voltage, current, and surface-temperature traces from a cylindrical cell under varied charge-discharge profiles and check whether core-temperature prediction error stays below a chosen safety threshold while memory footprint and inference latency remain lower than the compared neural-network and tree baselines.
Figures
read the original abstract
A battery management system (BMS) relies on real-time estimation of battery temperature distribution in battery cells to ensure safe and optimal operation of Lithium-ion batteries. However, physical BMS often suffers from memory and computational resource limitations required by high-fidelity models. Temperature estimation of batteries for safety-critical systems using physics-based models on physical BMS can potentially become challenging due to their higher computational time. In contrast, neural network-based approaches offer faster estimation but require greater memory overhead. To address these challenges, we propose Kolmogorov-Arnold network (KAN) based thermal model, KAN-therm, to estimate the core temperature of a cylindrical battery. Unlike traditional neural network architectures, KAN uses learnable nonlinear activation functions that can effectively capture system complexity using relatively lean models. We have compared the memory overhead and estimation time of our model with state-of-the-art neural network and tree-based models to demonstrate the applicability and potential scalability of KAN-therm on a physical BMS.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The manuscript proposes KAN-Therm, a Kolmogorov-Arnold Network (KAN) based lightweight model to estimate the core temperature of cylindrical lithium-ion batteries. It argues that KAN's learnable nonlinear activation functions enable leaner models that capture thermal dynamics with lower memory overhead and faster estimation times than state-of-the-art neural network and tree-based approaches, addressing the resource constraints of physical battery management systems (BMS).
Significance. If the efficiency and accuracy claims are substantiated under conditions representative of embedded hardware, the work could provide a practical contribution to real-time thermal estimation in BMS, bridging the gap between computationally heavy physics-based models and memory-intensive neural networks. The application of KAN to battery thermal modeling is a novel angle that may encourage further exploration of spline-based networks in control and estimation tasks for energy systems.
major comments (1)
- [§4, Table 2] §4 (Experimental Results), Table 2: The reported memory overhead and estimation time comparisons with NN and tree-based baselines are central to the applicability claim for physical BMS, yet the manuscript does not specify whether these metrics were obtained on resource-constrained microcontrollers (limited RAM, no GPU, fixed-point arithmetic) or on desktop CPUs/GPUs. Without hardware-specific benchmarks matching the target deployment, the claimed advantage for overcoming BMS memory/compute limits remains unverified and load-bearing for the central contribution.
minor comments (3)
- [Abstract] Abstract: The summary of results would be strengthened by including at least one quantitative accuracy metric (e.g., RMSE or MAE on core temperature) alongside the efficiency claims.
- [§3] §3 (Model Description): The mapping from battery inputs (current, voltage, ambient temperature) to KAN inputs and the choice of grid size or spline order could be clarified to aid reproducibility.
- [Figure 3] Figure 3: The caption and axis labels for the temperature estimation plots should explicitly state the test conditions and error scale to improve clarity.
Simulated Author's Rebuttal
We thank the referee for the constructive comment on the experimental evaluation. We address the major point below.
read point-by-point responses
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Referee: [§4, Table 2] §4 (Experimental Results), Table 2: The reported memory overhead and estimation time comparisons with NN and tree-based baselines are central to the applicability claim for physical BMS, yet the manuscript does not specify whether these metrics were obtained on resource-constrained microcontrollers (limited RAM, no GPU, fixed-point arithmetic) or on desktop CPUs/GPUs. Without hardware-specific benchmarks matching the target deployment, the claimed advantage for overcoming BMS memory/compute limits remains unverified and load-bearing for the central contribution.
Authors: We thank the referee for highlighting this important clarification. The memory overhead and estimation time values in Table 2 were measured on a standard desktop CPU (Intel Core i7, Python 3.10 with NumPy/PyTorch, no GPU or fixed-point optimizations). We agree that the manuscript should explicitly state the evaluation platform. In the revised version we will add this detail to Section 4 and include a short discussion noting that, while the reported figures do not replicate a microcontroller environment, the relative reductions versus the NN and tree-based baselines on identical hardware still indicate lower resource demands. Direct embedded benchmarks on target BMS hardware would strengthen the deployment claim but lie outside the scope of the present study. revision: yes
Circularity Check
No circularity: direct empirical application of KAN to battery data
full rationale
The paper presents KAN-therm as a straightforward supervised application of the existing Kolmogorov-Arnold Network architecture to predict cylindrical battery core temperature from input features. All reported results consist of empirical comparisons of accuracy, memory overhead, and estimation time against external baselines (neural networks and tree-based models). No equations, parameters, or claims are shown to reduce by construction to self-fitted quantities, self-citations, or renamed inputs. The derivation chain is therefore self-contained through standard training and benchmarking on held-out data.
Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger
Lean theorems connected to this paper
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IndisputableMonolith/Cost/FunctionalEquation.leanwashburn_uniqueness_aczel unclear?
unclearRelation between the paper passage and the cited Recognition theorem.
We propose Kolmogorov-Arnold network (KAN) based thermal model, KAN-therm, to estimate the core temperature of a cylindrical battery... learnable nonlinear activation functions that can effectively capture system complexity using relatively lean models.
-
IndisputableMonolith/Foundation/AlphaCoordinateFixation.leanJ_uniquely_calibrated_via_higher_derivative unclear?
unclearRelation between the paper passage and the cited Recognition theorem.
The total number of parameters in KAN network is given by O(PL l=1 Wl²(G+k))... loss function ℓtotal = ℓpred + λ(ν1 Σ |Θl|1 + ν2 Σ S(Θl))
What do these tags mean?
- matches
- The paper's claim is directly supported by a theorem in the formal canon.
- supports
- The theorem supports part of the paper's argument, but the paper may add assumptions or extra steps.
- extends
- The paper goes beyond the formal theorem; the theorem is a base layer rather than the whole result.
- uses
- The paper appears to rely on the theorem as machinery.
- contradicts
- The paper's claim conflicts with a theorem or certificate in the canon.
- unclear
- Pith found a possible connection, but the passage is too broad, indirect, or ambiguous to say the theorem truly supports the claim.
Forward citations
Cited by 1 Pith paper
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A Practitioner's Guide to Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks
A systematic review of Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks that maps their relation to Kolmogorov superposition theory, MLPs, and kernels, examines basis-function design choices, summarizes performance advances, and supplies a...
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