Nanotechnology is an area that can be applied in all fields of science and nanomaterials, such as Carbon Nanotubes (CNT), have been the subject of studies in order to reduce costs, time for experiments and development. CNTs have diverse applications because they are highly rigid, have high strength, and have low density. Because of this, the evaluation of the properties of carbon nanotubes and identification of their coordinates are important fields of research for science. Many real problems predictions, including those on carbon nanotubes, are Multi-Target Regression (MTR) tasks, where multiple continuous target variables are predicted. Machine learning techniques are well suited to address these types of problem. However, the literature reports approaches composed of complex models, which are manually configured and do not present any level of explainability. The goal of this work is to use an Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) technique, for which 10 classic machine learning algorithms are available. The proposal, named OurAlg, uses ensemble learning and AutoML to choose an ensemble of algorithms and their hyperparameters to handle MTR problems. Three CNT data sets were used in the experiments, with 3 and 4 targets, to predict the coordinates and properties of the carbon nanotubes. We also tested our approach on a set of 18 real-world data sets, with different numbers of targets, to evaluate its performance. In addition, an explainable artificial intelligence method was applied to CNT problems. Statistical tests were used and the OurAlg algorithm was compared favorably with classical algorithms and also with the literature.
Oliveira et al. (2026) studied this question.