arXiv_RO
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Belief-Space Planning with Planner-Conditioned Estimator Error under Intermittent Observations
Abstract
Belief-space planners with separately designed or off-the-shelf estimators may have access to state-relevant information the estimator does not observe. Consequently, even an estimator that minimizes mean-squared error under its own information can have a nonzero error mean when conditioned on planner information. When future corrections are intermittent and stochastic, differences between accepted and rejected error means introduce additional uncertainty terms to correction events that zero-mean assumptions ignore. In this paper, we propose a belief-space planning approach that predicts, propagates, and penalizes planner-conditioned estimator error along evaluated trajectories. A planner-conditioned estimator-error model combines affine error dynamics with a moment recursion that preserves stochastically-induced correction uncertainty. We describe a method by which to predict estimator error dynamics within specified operating regimes and incorporate predicted error moments into a task-weighted quadratic risk objective. We evaluate the approach in simulation for a tilt-rotor VTOL landing on a ship deck using receding-horizon planning. We find that conditioning on planner information reduced error-prediction loss for a command-blind EKF by 13.4% relative to a planner-ignorant model, with strongly regime and horizon-dependent forecasting abilities. In a small set of 16 paired closed-loop trials, the planner lowered the median terminal task gauge from 1.60 to 0.99, and predicted estimator error beyond 2s within a factor of 1.3, versus a 5.7-fold underprediction by covariance-only planning.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09207
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RoboIRS: Inference-Time Internal Representation Steering for Generalist Robot Policies
2026-10-06 22:46:58Jiuzhou Lei, Chang Liu, Dayou Li, Zhiyuan Zhang, Xiao Liang, Yu She, Zhiwen Fan, Minghui ZhengAbstract
Vision-language-action (VLA) and world-action models (WAMs) often degrade under out-of-distribution task variations despite retaining partial task capability. To recover such capability, we propose RoboIRS, an inference-time internal representation steering method that uses successful and failed rollouts to train linear classifiers, select outcome-relevant intervention locations, and derive task-specific steering directions without updating policy parameters. On 15 simulation tasks with a frozen $\pi 0.5$ policy, RoboIRS improves the average success rate from 44.4% to 66.2%, outperforming alternative inference-time intervention baselines while adding little inference time. We further validate RoboIRS on real-robot manipulation using the same $\pi 0.5$ policy and demonstrate its applicability to a world-action model Cosmos Policy, where the average success rate improves from 35.4% to 55.4%. These results show that directly steering internal robot-policy representations can improve the performance of robot policies at inference time. Project website is available at this https URL.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.04681
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Embedded Evaluation of Task Admission Coalescing in Decentralized Multi-Robot Systems
Abstract
Multi-robot task allocators in dynamic missions commonly admit newly released tasks immediately, potentially invoking allocation for each new arrival. We evaluate task-admission coalescing as a mechanism for controlling allocator processor work while accounting for target-service latency, using CBAA, ACBBA, PI, and HIPC as a representative MRTA suite. The study comprises a 3,000-mission AGX Orin campaign with measured computation delay, 3,000 paired zero-compute missions, and a 96-mission Pololu 3pi+ RP2040 allocator hardware-in-the-loop campaign. Immediate (Eager) admission is compared with thresholds of two, four, and eight tasks and a four-task policy with a 10-s waiting bound across three arrival rates. Across the AGX experiments, coalescing reduces both allocator calls and processor work in 31 of 48 evaluated conditions, although the magnitude of the saving varies by allocator. The principal cost appears under sparse arrivals, where four-task batching increases online-target mean latency by 20.08-23.57 s, predominantly through admission waiting. Bounded admission reduces mean work in ten of twelve allocator-load conditions, including a 19.35% reduction with a 1.40-s mean latency increase for high-arrival HIPC. RP2040 experiments show that this tradeoff can become more favorable as processor constraints tighten. Across four matched medium-arrival HIPC scenarios, Count b=4 reduces mean RP2040 work by 59.85% and service latency by 39.47%, while the corresponding AGX cases increase latency by 27.69%. These results show that the usefulness of task-admission coalescing depends on arrival intensity, allocator-specific behavior, and the relative cost of computation on the execution platform.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09187
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CAP: Codebook-Aligned Prediction for Tokenized Robot Policies
2026-10-06 22:28:45Haoran Chen, Jingtian Ji, Samuel Wheeler, Kaylene Caswell Stocking, Matthew WalterAbstract
Action tokenization converts continuous robot actions into discrete symbols that can be modeled autoregressively. However, existing tokenizer-based policies typically ignore the tokenizer's learned latent code structure: after tokenization, the policy treats tokens as unrelated class indices and learns a new classifier from scratch. We show that this discarded structure is valuable. We introduce Codebook-Aligned Prediction (CAP), a method that directly reuses the tokenizer's code vectors as policy class prototypes while leaving the tokenizer and policy backbone otherwise unchanged. Across four quantizer families, three simulation benchmarks, and two real-robot tasks, CAP consistently improves task success over standard token classification heads while holding the tokenizer (and therefore its reconstruction quality) fixed. Our analysis further shows that these gains are not explained by higher token accuracy or changes in the policy head alone. Instead, reusing the tokenizer codebook provides the policy with valuable information about the tokenizer's learned latent structure across tokens, making token prediction errors more benign in action space and improving the representations learned by the policy backbone. These results suggest that action tokenizers learn useful action-aware latent structure beyond discrete targets that should be preserved when training downstream policies.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09178
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Beyond Reconstruction: What Matters in Action Tokenization for Robot Policies?
2026-10-06 22:12:53Haoran Chen, Jingtian Ji, Samuel Wheeler, Kaylene Caswell Stocking, Matthew WalterAbstract
Autoregressive action-token policies such as vision-language-action models require action tokenizers to translate discrete token sequences into precise control actions in continuous space. Many action tokenizers learn the mapping between tokens and actions via a reconstruction objective. However, as we show through extensive analysis, sufficiently accurate action reconstruction is only one part of what makes a downstream robot policy successful. It is also critical that the policy is able to predict the right tokens for new observations, and that unseen policy token predictions still decode into reasonable actions. These properties are downstream of tokenizer training and are not directly incentivized by a reconstruction objective alone. In this work, we introduce Predictable and Robust Action Tokenization (ProAct), a tokenizer training method that strategically augments reconstruction with the goal of improving downstream predictability and robustness. ProAct is policy-agnostic and uses only action datasets for training. Across the Robomimic, LIBERO, and RoboTwin benchmarks and a diverse set of tokenizer architectures, ProAct improves rollout success by an average of 11.3 percentage points. These improvements also translate to vision-language-action policies and real-world robotic manipulation, yielding average gains of 21.8 and 36.7 percentage points, respectively. These results suggest that effective action tokenization should be designed as a policy interface that balances fidelity, predictability, and robustness, rather than as a reconstruction problem alone.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09170
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geodex: A Library for Motion Planning on Riemannian Manifolds
2026-10-06 22:08:57Phone Thiha Kyaw, Ben Wei, Sepehr Samavi, Miguel Angel Rogel Garcia, Jonathan KellyAbstract
Planning motions that respect the intrinsic geometry of a robot's configuration space, including its curvature and a configuration-dependent notion of cost, yields shorter, lower-energy, and more natural trajectories than planning under the ambient flat metric. Existing libraries for optimization on manifolds provide rich geometric primitives but do not plan around obstacles. While general-purpose motion planning libraries support many state spaces and custom distance functions, they do not yet treat a configuration-dependent Riemannian metric as the geometry that drives distance, interpolation, and geodesics. We present geodex, an open-source C++20 library with Python bindings. The library exposes the manifold, its Riemannian metric, the retraction, and the sampler as independent, interchangeable components through a single sampling-based motion planning interface. The same planner runs unchanged on canonical spaces $\mathbb{R}^n$, $\mathbb{T}^n$, $\mathbb{S}^n$, matrix Lie groups such as $SO(2)$, $SE(2)$, $SO(3)$, and $SE(3)$, products of these spaces, and articulated-robot configuration spaces, each equipped with a user-defined Riemannian metric. We make geodex publicly available with documentation, tests, and a reproducible benchmark suite.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09165
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Demonstration-Calibrated Port-Hamiltonian Retuning for Manipulation Policies
2026-10-06 21:49:34Yulong Yang, Fan Wu, Christine Allen-Blanchette, Amit ChakrabortyAbstract
Diffusion and VLA policies for manipulation are often deployed through downstream impedance controllers. The stiffness and damping gains of these controllers affect task success, yet are commonly inherited from data collection rather than selected for the deployed policy. Although empirical gain sweeps can improve performance, they require repeated evaluation rollouts. We introduce PHRetune, an offline method that derives controller gains for a frozen policy without evaluation rollouts or gain search. Our approach learns a port-Hamiltonian model from demonstrations to estimate the effort and energy associated with the policy's predicted actions. The policy is applied to recorded demonstration observations, and its predictions are assessed against demonstration-derived effort and energy budgets. From this comparison, we derive a single gain scale in closed form, adjusting the downstream controller while preserving the policy and its action representation. The gains are fixed before evaluation, without requiring a prior manipulator model, task rewards, policy retraining, or additional runtime computation. Across LIBERO suites, PHRetune improves Diffusion Policy success by up to 9.4 percentage points, with the derived gains achieving the highest observed success rates in empirical gain sweeps. On all four real-world manipulation tasks, PHRetuned Diffusion Policy outperforms the nominal policy, alternative gain-tuning methods, and a policy-retraining baseline. The same procedure improves success with SmolVLA and OpenVLA-OFT on every task, while reducing acceleration and jerk for both VLA backbones.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.05755
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A Unified Kinematic Representation Enables Reusable Biological Joint Moment Estimation
2026-10-06 21:48:02Jinwoo Hwang, Ilseung Park, Changseob Song, Vu Phan, Eni Halilaj, Inseung KangAbstract
Objective: Data-driven models that estimate physiological states, particularly biological joint moments, are widely used in exoskeleton control. However, these estimators are often coupled to device-specific sensor configurations, limiting controller transfer and the use of open-source biomechanics datasets. Methods: We proposed joint kinematics as an intermediate representation that decouples hardware-specific sensing from downstream biological joint moment estimation. A joint-moment estimator using joint angles and angular velocities was trained exclusively on open-source biomechanics data and evaluated using kinematics from a hip exoskeleton, knee exoskeleton, and inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor suite during level-ground, ramp-ascent, and ramp-descent walking. Results: The estimator achieved an root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.17 Nm/kg and coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.79 using hip exoskeleton kinematics, 0.19 Nm/kg and 0.62 using knee exoskeleton kinematics, and 0.15 Nm/kg and 0.85 using kinematics derived from IMUs across bilateral hip, knee, and ankle joints. Conclusion: Joint kinematics enabled an estimator trained only on open-source data to operate across distinct wearable platforms. Significance: This framework may reduce target-device data collection and support transferable biological joint moment estimation for exoskeleton control and wearable biomechanics.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09150
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World Models Dream of Success: Diagnosing and Repairing Failure Insensitivity in Robot World Models
2026-10-06 21:26:19Jiuyi Xu, Xiao Hu, Meida Chen, Peng Gao, Yang Ye, Yangming ShiAbstract
Robot world models support policy evaluation, planning, and synthetic data generation, but these applications require predictions that distinguish successful actions from failures. Across four released checkpoints from two architecture families, we observe weak sensitivity to action changes and success-like predictions on verified failures. Although recent work incorporates failures into model training, which data can repair released checkpoints without changing their architecture or training objective still remains underexplored. To this end, we introduce CureWM, which constructs alternative actions from successful demonstrations across a severity grid, verifies their outcomes through execution in simulation or on hardware, and fine-tunes released models on the resulting failures and surviving successes alongside nominal demonstrations. This construction provides controlled action contrasts from shared starting contexts. On 484 held-out LIBERO failure counterfactuals, optimism falls from 80\% after fine-tuning on the official data to 30--43\% across four independently fine-tuned CureWM models (38\% mean). In two separate evaluations on a physical robot arm, failure predictions scored as success-like by a latent-distance diagnostic decrease from 90\% after fine-tuning on successful demonstrations alone to 33\% with CureWM. With failure counts per task, successful replay data, and training budget matched, counterfactual failures yield a success--failure value gap of 0.124, compared with 0.014 for freshly collected on-policy failures. These findings support execution-verified counterfactual replay for post-hoc repair and show why reduced optimism must be evaluated alongside success--failure discrimination. Code is available at this https URL.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09134
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FlashNeRD: Performance-First Contact-Rich Neural Robot Dynamics
2026-10-06 21:23:24Mohammadmehdi Ataei, Mohammad Amin Nabian, Jie Xu, Miles Macklin, Yashraj Narang, Eric Heiden, Octi Zhang, Yunrong Guo, Ruben D'Sa, Oliver Hennigh, Gavriel State, Sanjay ChoudhryAbstract
Compared with analytical physics, learned dynamics models promise robot simulation that is faster, inherently differentiable, and easily adaptable to real data. Neural Robot Dynamics (NeRD) pursues this by keeping collision detection analytical and replacing a simulator's numerical dynamics for the robot with a learned model. Three limitations remain. NeRD offers little speedup over the simulator it learned from, accepts contact only at predefined points, and has no two-way coupling with objects it manipulates. FlashNeRD removes all three with a parallel streaming architecture that makes each prediction faster and more accurate, an encoder that accepts contacts wherever they occur, and two-way coupling with objects simulated by analytical solvers. Experiments across five robots show faster and more accurate dynamics, faster policy learning, and faster inference-time planning. Across three robots, FlashNeRD's dynamics model is up to $55\times$ faster than an optimized NeRD and more accurate over long rollouts. This speedup extends to policy learning, where PPO trains an ANYmal locomotion policy in 34 seconds, $3.8\times$ faster than the analytical simulator and $2.7\times$ faster than an optimized NeRD. With DIAL-MPC, a sampling-based MPC method, the robot climbs all six test platforms where fixed-contact NeRD manages one, at approximately half the analytical simulator's planning time. Cube-reorientation policies trained with FlashNeRD complete within 2% of the simulator-trained policy's target count.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09130
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Workhorse: Learning Robust Whole-Body Humanoid Loco-Manipulation from Human Data
2026-10-06 21:06:56Songbo Hu, Qiayuan Liao, Yufeng Chi, Kevin Zakka, Yakun Sophia Shao, Pieter Abbeel, Koushil SreenathAbstract
Humanoid robots still struggle to plan contact-rich whole-body manipulation from egocentric RGB and proprioception. Workhorse learns such manipulation from robot-free human demonstrations. A visual planner predicts five-link targets: the poses of the torso, both wrists, and both feet. A reinforcement-learning whole-body tracker follows them on the robot. Both policies train separately on the same recorded human poses, without retargeting. We augment the training data of each policy to imitate the errors that the other makes at deployment. On a real Unitree G1, Workhorse sorts boxes with its hands and a kick, catches a thrown box, and topples and climbs a suitcase. During box sorting, we show recoveries after a person pushes the robot or takes the box away. In a simulated copy of the demonstration room, the system completes box sorting in 77% of episodes, and in 64% under 40 N.s pushes. With both policies retrained from the same demonstrations, a simulated second humanoid completes box sorting in 83% of episodes without pushes.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09117
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On the complexity of the single-move labeled token routing problem
2026-10-06 20:29:35Nicolas Bousquet, Remy El Sabeh, Amer E. Mouawad, Naomi NishimuraAbstract
In neutral-atom quantum computers, atoms are moved to target positions along paths of empty positions, and a target position may be reserved for one species of atom. Motivated by this task, we introduce Single-Move Labeled Token Routing: every source and every target vertex of a graph is assigned a set of labels, and tokens occupy the sources. A solution consists of a matching that assigns each source to a compatible target (one whose label set intersects its own), a route for each matched pair, and a movement order in which, when a token is moved, its route contains no other token. The problem is known to be polynomial-time solvable when every source is compatible with every target, and $\mathsf{NP}$-complete on grid graphs when each source is compatible with exactly one target. We prove that the latter case remains $\mathsf{NP}$-complete on grids and on planar graphs of maximum degree four even when some solution has pairwise edge-disjoint routes. On trees, the problem is known to be $\mathsf{NP}$-complete even for maximum degree three. We study trees through the solution edge multiplicity, the largest number of routes of a solution sharing an edge, and the candidate edge multiplicity, the largest number of compatible pairs whose paths share an edge. We prove that on trees of maximum degree three, the problem is $\mathsf{W}[1]$-hard parameterized by a bound on the solution edge multiplicity, even when a movement order is given, and that on trees of unbounded degree, it is $\mathsf{NP}$-complete even when the candidate edge multiplicity is at most eight. We show that on trees the problem is fixed-parameter tractable parameterized by the maximum degree together with the candidate edge multiplicity, and also by the candidate vertex multiplicity, the same count at vertices. Unless $\mathsf{P}=\mathsf{NP}$, neither the maximum degree nor the candidate edge multiplicity can be omitted.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09084
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MimicX: Policy-in-the-Loop Supervision Refinement for Video-Driven Humanoid Motion Tracking
2026-10-06 20:05:40Shuaijun Liu, Chenglong Zhang, Xuhao Liu, Feiyang You, Yifan Liao, Shuyang Hao, Chaozhe Zhang, Chengyu Wu, Zhen Sun, Ningxin SuAbstract
Human videos provide rich motion targets for humanoid learning, yet visually plausible references can still produce persistent failures under physics-based execution. These failures reveal where training supervision should change. We present MimicX, a policy-in-the-loop framework that uses execution feedback to refine video-driven humanoid motion tracking. Starting from reconstructed and retargeted motion, MimicX localizes difficult transitions and affected body regions, then jointly adapts tracking objectives and the reset curriculum for policy continuation. Repeated rollout verification selects execution-priority improvements subject to tracking guards. Across four core video tasks, MimicX consistently improves tracking accuracy and Robust Execution Horizon relative to the Fixed Reference baseline. Task-averaged results show a 25.7% reduction in body-tracking error and a 255.6% increase in execution horizon. Additional video, motion-reference, and collision-scene studies evaluate the method beyond the core tasks, while MimicX-HLoop accelerates feedback through heterogeneous execution. Overall, MimicX turns policy failure into actionable supervision for deciding what to refine and which refinement to retain.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09055
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Shared-Roadmap Generation and Evaluator for Multi-Agent Path Planning Using Heterogeneous Graph Neural Network
2026-10-06 19:33:51Brandon Ho, Nikola Rogers, Seung-Kyum ChoiAbstract
Multi-agent path planning (MAPP) in continuous environments often relies on roadmaps to balance safety and search efficiency. However, traditional roadmap generation methods, such as lattice grids or standard sampling-based approaches, frequently face a trade-off between graph density and the likelihood of finding feasible, high-quality solutions. In this paper, we propose a scalable heterogeneous Graph Neural Network (GNN) framework for the automated generation and evaluation of shared multi-agent roadmaps. Our model covers the representation of waypoints, agent locations, and task locations as distinct nodes in a heterogeneous graph, allowing it to reason over global connectivity and inter-agent interactions. By training on occupation density maps aggregated and collected from expert solver trajectories, the GNN learns to identify critical points of interest and prune redundant nodes and edges. This process produces a compact, coordination-aware roadmap that is invariant to task permutations and is reusable for multi-agent pick and delivery tasks. Experimental results demonstrate that our framework can reduce planning effort and can potentially find better solutions, reaching at least 40% reduction in runtime and in graph size for dense roadmaps.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09034
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PhysEvo: Astra Can Act, Let It
2026-10-06 18:54:15Wenqing Tian, Zeyu Zhang, Zhaocheng Liu, Fengwei Liu, Qiang Liu, Liang WangAbstract
Astra can act, yet reliable manipulation depends on the system through which it observes and controls the world. We introduce PhysEvo, a framework for physical recursive self-improvement (RSI) around a single frozen model. A task agent executes robot tasks; a meta-agent uses the resulting trajectories to diagnose failures, revise tools and skills, and test corrections. The meta-agent can also improve its own diagnostic tools, so retained revisions support both later action and later self-improvement. This process develops joint-level control, evidence-seeking observation, and reusable manipulation skills without model-weight updates or a separately trained action policy. Across 42 RoboDojo tasks, held-out-layout evaluation of retained task-specific deployment versions yields a five-dimension average score of 68.14/100 and 62.00% success, compared with 47.17% for RoboDawn's one-shot Astra agent, the strongest published reference in our comparison. On eight manipulation tasks challenging direct Astra, PhysEvo achieves 55.00% success, compared with 1.25% for the direct-Astra reference. Deploying the simulation-evolved harness on AgileX PiPER and continuing skill revision yields 90.60/100 average score and 84.00% success across 25 trials on five real-world tasks. PhysEvo turns the consequences of action into persistent, testable changes to how a frozen model acts and improves.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08995
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LASER: Latent Space Adjoint Matching for Support-Constrained Entropy-Regularized Offline RL
2026-10-06 18:47:21Songyuan Zhang, Oswin So, Eric Yang Yu, Matthew Cleaveland, Peter Crowley-Dolen, Chuchu FanAbstract
While offline reinforcement learning (RL) enables policy optimization from static datasets without costly online interaction, it remains bottlenecked by the risk of executing out-of-distribution (OOD) actions. Recent approaches mitigate this by learning a behavior-cloning policy through flow matching and then performing RL within its constrained latent space. However, naively optimizing the latent policy can easily cause the policy to collapse into a brittle mode or exploit sharp artifacts of the learned critic. In this work, we find that entropy regularization is essential in latent-space RL for addressing these challenges. We introduce LASER, a novel offline RL algorithm that applies latent-space adjoint matching to achieve entropy-regularized latent-space RL with expressive flow policies while avoiding backpropagation through time. Through comprehensive experiments on 40 challenging OGBench tasks with varying dataset qualities, we show that LASER achieves state-of-the-art performance. Notably, LASER uses fixed method-specific hyperparameters across all tasks and outperforms the evaluated baselines, including those with task- and dataset-specific tuning, which highlights the robust applicability of LASER. Project website: this https URL.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08989
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FlightMagNav: An Open Dataset and Probabilistic Map Learning and Validation Framework for Outdoor Magnetic Field-Based Positioning
Abstract
Magnetic field-based positioning is a resilient positioning technology that requires no external infrastructure and is hard to jam at scale. To facilitate research on magnetic field-based positioning for aerial platforms operating close to the Earth's surface, an open dataset is presented with measurements collected using an unmanned aerial vehicle carrying two optically pumped magnetometers, a type of quantum magnetometer, and a global navigation satellite system-aided inertial navigation system. The dataset includes measurements for both magnetic-field map learning and validation. Along with the dataset, a probabilistic framework for magnetic-field map learning and validation is presented and used to illustrate how the dataset may be used. Finally, we outline research directions that may be explored using the dataset.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08982
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HULK: Learning Whole-Body Forceful Loco-Manipulation for Humanoids
2026-10-06 18:33:11An Dang, Arturo Flores Alvarez, Yu-Ming Chen, Conor Mc Gartoll, Helen Sun, Aaron Ames, Nima Fazeli, Manikantan NambiAbstract
Humanoid loco-manipulation of large, heavy objects demands forceful interaction across the entire body. However, such payloads shift a humanoid's center of mass and impose sustained loads across the upper body, challenging balance and command tracking. We present HULK, a whole-body control framework for forceful loco-manipulation. Using model predictive control (MPC) to guide reinforcement learning with predictions of the loaded dynamics, we train two teachers: one tracks arm motions under wrist forces, and the other locomotes while holding large objects against the body. A capture-point control barrier function augments the wrist-force teacher during training to improve balance under load. We distill both teachers into a single policy. Evaluation spans simulation and the Unitree G1. In simulation, the teacher with the barrier function achieves the lowest forward and lateral velocity tracking errors at 10 kg per arm among evaluated controllers and reduces aggregate divergent component of motion (DCM) excursion magnitude by 35.7% relative to MPC-guided reinforcement learning alone. Our wrist-force teacher withstands torso push disturbances of up to 130 N.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08970
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Toward Evidence-Driven Human-Agent-Robot Teaming for Earth-Independent Anomaly Triage
2026-10-06 18:03:09Ignacio G Lopez-Francos, Alexis Gallagher, Samira ShalalAbstract
Deep-space crews cannot rely on real-time ground support for urgent off-nominal events. Initial alerts may underdetermine cause, while discriminating evidence may reside in crew observations or at locations that are unsafe, costly, or unavailable for crew inspection. We present an evidence-driven architecture for human-agent-robot teaming in Earth-independent anomaly triage. Agentic AI is treated as a stateful coordinator over bounded, inspectable services rather than as a fully autonomous vehicle controller. A triage state manager maintains hypotheses, evidence provenance, uncertainty, operational context, and tool status; a crew-facing embodied agent elicits observations and explains assessment changes; and a mobile robot acquires targeted, localized evidence. Typed interfaces separate dialogue and orchestration from monitoring, robot command, context retrieval, and safety-critical control. Two scenarios illustrate the architecture: a crewed deep-space mission based on an actual ISS ammonia false alarm, where suspected contamination restricts crew access, and a power-interface anomaly at a crewed lunar base, where robotic inspection distinguishes a local connector fault from other causes ambiguous in remote telemetry. Our main contribution is an authority-bounded closed evidence-loop architecture, exercised in a hardware-in-the-loop integration prototype using Reachy Mini and an Innate MARS mobile robot.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08933
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QF3: Fast Flow RL with Filtered Q-Gradients
2026-10-06 17:59:34Chung Min Kim, Brent Yi, David McAllister, Hongsuk Choi, Himanshu Gaurav Singh, Jinkun Cao, Ken Goldberg, Pieter Abbeel, Carmelo Sferrazza, Angjoo KanazawaAbstract
Flow policies have become a standard policy class for learning robot behaviors from demonstrations, but reinforcement learning is still critical for improving pre-trained flow policies or learning them from scratch through interaction. We introduce QF3 (Fast Flow RL with Filtered Q-Gradients), an online off-policy RL algorithm that trains a flow policy with flow matching plus the critic's action gradient, backpropagated through a one-step prediction of the flow's output. To keep updates where the critic and this prediction are reliable, QF3 applies the critic gradient only to action dimensions that stay near the replay action. To our knowledge, QF3 is the first off-policy flow RL method to train humanoid locomotion policies from scratch and transfer them zero-shot to hardware. Paired with a high-throughput off-policy training recipe, it trains humanoid locomotion and motion-tracking policies with a 10x wall-clock speedup over FPO++, a recent on-policy flow RL method. We further apply QF3 to fine-tune pretrained flow-based manipulation policies on both ABC-Sim and Robomimic tasks. These results suggest that QF3 can both learn robot policies from scratch and refine those acquired from demonstrations. Website: this https URL
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08789
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