arXiv_RO
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A Mode-Unified, Continuous, and Biomimetic Control Strategy of a Robotic Lower Limb Prosthesis
2026-10-13 20:48:46Hanjun Kim, Sixu Zhou, John Shim, Xinyuan Guo, Kinsey R. Herrin, Aaron J. YoungAbstract
Existing biomimetic lower-limb prosthesis controllers are commonly designed for discrete locomotion modes, requiring separate parameterizations for level walking, ramps, and stairs. We present a mode-unified prosthesis control framework that represents knee and ankle biomechanics continuously as functions of terrain slope and gait phase across those locomotion conditions. Locally optimized ascent and descent polynomial models were unified using radial basis function (RBF) interpolation, preserving the accuracy of the partitioned models while outperforming a global polynomial representation. The resulting biomechanics were transformed into continuous and slope-dependent impedance parameters and implemented within a single finite-state-machine (FSM) controller using bilateral sensing for gait-state estimation. Experiments with 10 individuals with transfemoral amputation demonstrated terrain-adaptive locomotion from level walking through ramps and stairs up to 35 degrees, including 13 degree ramp and 15 degree stair conditions absent from the underlying able-bodied (AB) dataset. Experimental results reproduced the principal slope-dependent biomechanical trends predicted by the unified model, with high agreement for knee-related measures (r-square = 0.82 - 0.99) and ankle kinematics (r-square= 0.78 - 0.96). These findings demonstrated that unified biomechanical parameterization enables a prosthesis control architecture across diverse terrain conditions while preserving key features of AB biomechanics without requiring independently tuned impedance parameter sets for each locomotion mode.
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19183
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FACT: A Multimodal Force-Action-Track Foundation Model for Human-to-Robot Dexterity
2026-10-13 20:21:52Zhi Cao, Yining Hong, Jiaolong Yang, Yejin Choi, Li Fei-Fei, Jiajun Wu, Huang HuangAbstract
Human demonstrations offer a scalable alternative to costly robot data collection for dexterous manipulation, but most human datasets lack force measurements. Dexterous manipulation requires not only visual and proprioceptive understanding but also the ability to anticipate and regulate interaction forces. To scale force-aware human-robot co-training, we introduce EgoForce, a large-scale human tactile dataset capturing force-rich manipulation experience, and combine it with robot demonstrations for pretraining. We present FACT, a robot foundation model that cascades from prospective visual planning to force-aware refinement for dexterous manipulation. FACT comprises two jointly trained components. A Track-Guided Coarse Planner jointly predicts actions, future video, and visual tracks. Future video and visual tracks also provide a shared task representation that facilitates cross-embodiment knowledge transfer and coarse action generation. Building on this coarse plan, a Force-Action Joint Refiner jointly predicts future force and refines the coarse action, allowing anticipated force and action to shape each other during refinement. We evaluate the model on ten tasks requiring fine-grained coordination and force feedback, including tool use, musical instruments, and precision laboratory procedures. Using as few as 10 robot trajectories with 90 human trajectories for fine-tuning, FACT outperforms both baselines, with success-rate gains of up to 60 percentage points over T-Rex. Ablations show that force supervision in human pretraining data is crucial for downstream robot performance after fine-tuning, while visual track prediction and training with future-force prediction improve dexterous execution. Experiments varying the human-robot data ratio during fine-tuning further suggest that FACT learns from human demonstrations nearly as effectively as from robot demonstrations.
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19155
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Post-Training, Finetuning, and Steering:A Field Guide for Curating Training Data
2026-10-13 20:10:34Maria Attarian, Yifan Ruan, Claas Voelcker, Chenyang Cao, Amy Zhang, Peter Stone, Nicholas Rhinehart, Igor GilitschenskiAbstract
While Vision-Language-Action models have enabled impressive cross-task transfer in zero-shot settings, \emph{adaptation} methods are often necessary to achieve consistent performance on novel tasks. However, even though a wealth of methods for adaptation have been proposed, it is unclear how to choose the best method based on available trajectories. We close this gap by studying the impact of the adaptation method under a variety of common data scenarios: on- and off-policy data, offline vs online adaptation, and whether the data contains optimal or suboptimal trajectories. Our evaluation spans simulated tasks in the LIBERO suite and real tasks on a Franka platform. In the offline data regime, critic-based steering approaches outperform supervised finetuning when failure data is available. However, offline RL techniques for training critic functions fail to outperform simpler Monte-Carlo-based approaches. Finally, in the online setting, critic-based steering is significantly more sample efficient compared to policy-gradient-based finetuning methods, but has a lower performance ceiling than full finetuning.
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19143
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Collective Learning for Unified Robotic Manipulation via Predictive Dynamics Adaptation
2026-10-13 20:09:00Shaocheng Liu, Yuan Meng, Zhenshan Bing, Alois KnollAbstract
Learning a collective policy for state-based Cartesian manipulation across diverse robotic embodiments presents a fundamental challenge due to embodiment-dependent transition dynamics. Collective learning aggregates multi-robot experience to discover shared task structure, yet naive aggregation can average incompatible action modes when different embodiments realize the same Cartesian command through different transition behavior. This leads to strategy ambiguity and performance collapse on dynamically outlying embodiments. To address this, we propose PACE, a two-stage collective learning framework that separates shared task-space intent from embodiment-dependent transition dynamics. The first stage employs a representation layer pre-trained on offline trajectories to extract task-level context from collective data. The second stage introduces a decision layer equipped with a predictive dynamics adapter. By forcing the latent state to predict future transitions, this adapter acts as a latent regularizer that grounds the policy in the transition behavior of the executing robot while preserving real-time inference without online planning. Evaluations across simulated embodiments demonstrate that our method prevents performance collapse on distinct robots. It achieves over 93\% overall success and 89\% on dynamically out-of-distribution zero-shot simulated robots, outperforming the Transformer behavior cloning (82\%) and diffusion policy baselines (66\%). Physical KUKA deployment further validates the feasibility of the full state-based pipeline under zero-shot sim-to-real transfer.
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19141
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Learning in Orbit: Onboard Training and Closed-Loop Attitude Control with a Thermal Segmentation Model on a Spacecraft
2026-10-13 19:57:06Elena Sorina Lupu, Hannah Grauer, Phaedrus Leeds, Nikhil Ranganathan, Connor Lee, Sulekha Kishore, Cailyn Smith, Shon Cortes, Brian Hardy, Benjamen Bycroft, Darren W. Rowen, Soon-Jo ChungAbstract
Deep space missions increasingly require spacecraft capable of autonomously operating in environments with communication delays and bandwidth limitations. A key enabler of such autonomy is the ability to run learning-based algorithms directly onboard. In this work, we present a flight deployment on a 6U CubeSat that demonstrates (1) onboard training and inference of a thermal segmentation model on an NVIDIA Jetson TX2 NX GPU in space and (2) closed-loop attitude control using the segmentation model on a real-time, thermal image feed to track the Moon. In addition to this demonstration, we implement ROS 2 Foxy as a data transport middleware and integrate an open-source file system that provides strong data integrity guarantees and self-healing features. Over the course of approximately one year, we performed 12 experiments on the spacecraft, advancing the state of the art in autonomous spacecraft systems by showing how modern learning-based pipelines, commercially available hardware, and open-source software can operate reliably under the compute and environmental constraints of Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19122
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Benchmarking 3D Reconstruction for Under-Ice Robotic Perception in Arctic Environments
2026-10-13 19:34:55Kl\'ara Orb\'an, Ashwin Nedungadi, Ana-\c{S}tefania Kog\u{a}lniceanu, Bianca-Marcela Sava, Bastian Cieply, Raul-Alexandru Simon, Kuderna-Iulian Ben\c{t}a, Stefan L\"udtkeAbstract
As the Arctic transitions toward a seasonally ice-free state, capturing the complex morphology of submerged sea ice is crucial for advancing models of ocean-ice-atmosphere heat exchange and monitoring under-ice habitats. Currently, sub-surface ice mapping is predominantly achieved through acoustic sensors such as multibeam sonar. While sonar provides robust large-scale geometry, it lacks spectral and high-resolution textural information required to record fine morphological features - a critical limitation in under-ice environments, where sparse visual features and degraded sensing conditions challenge the capture of detailed structural and optical surface properties. We present a benchmark for vision-based under-ice 3D reconstruction using real-world data from the MOSAiC expedition and synthetic data generated in an Unreal Engine-based underwater robotics simulator. The benchmark evaluates Structure-From-Motion (SfM) and monocular depth estimation, with quantitative comparison enabled through cross-modal registration to upward-looking multibeam sonar.
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19097
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DiffGIPC: Differentiable Mixed-Coordinate Contact Dynamics on GPU
2026-10-13 19:29:49Kemeng Huang, Bowen Ren, Xinyu Lu, Minchen Li, Taku komuraAbstract
Contact-rich inverse problems require efficient gradients and reliable enforcement of non-penetration. Existing differentiable methods provide fast simulation and rigid-deformable coupling, but contact treatments based on penalties or velocity-level constraints can permit penetration or positional drift. Incremental Potential Contact (IPC) maintains non-penetration through geometric barriers and {continuous collision detection (CCD)}. However, repeated forward and backward evaluations remain costly in full-space finite-element (FEM) implementations, particularly when nearly rigid components retain many vertex {degrees of freedom (DoFs)}. We present DiffGIPC, a GPU-accelerated differentiable IPC framework for optimizing interacting deformable and nearly rigid bodies. Our affine-body derivatives enable {rest-shape} design, initial-state optimization, and articulated control while retaining only twelve motion DoFs per affine body. These gradients account for how changes in geometry, placement, and actuation affect other objects through collision and friction. We preserve these interactions in one coupled FEM-affine adjoint system per frame, reducing the backward-system size without discarding the dependencies that drive the inverse problem. GPU-optimized backward computation further reduces the cost of repeated gradient evaluations. A reusable PyTorch interface connects supported physical parameters to user-defined parameter maps and losses across design, identification, motion, placement, and articulated control. Experiments demonstrate peak speedups over DiffIPC of approximately 150.0x with full-space FEM and 4133.3x with affine bodies for combined forward simulation and backward differentiation.
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19091
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DexMimic: A Generalist Dexterous Hand-Object Tracking Policy via Value-Guided Reset Allocation
2026-10-13 19:29:33Zhexi Luo, Zhixuan Xu, Rui Yang, Zeyu Xiao, Yiwen Hou, Lin ShaoAbstract
Achieving human-like dexterous manipulation remains a central challenge in robotics. Learning from human hand-object interaction (HOI) datasets offers a promising pathway to diverse dexterous skills, yet existing physics-based approaches train specialist policies for individual trajectories, thereby limiting skill reuse at scale. We introduce DexMimic, a generalist dexterous hand-object tracking policy jointly trained across diverse HOI trajectories. Efficient joint training requires allocating each rollout to both an undertrained phase and a starting state that supports continued tracking. DexMimic realizes this insight through Value-Guided Reset Allocation, which adapts the initialization distribution online to prioritize difficult phases and select reset states with higher expected tracking returns. We further introduce a benchmark spanning training, fine-tuning, and generalization. Experiments show improved tracking success and training efficiency, faster fine-tuning, and the potential for zero-shot generalization to unseen trajectories and objects; larger training sets further improve efficiency and generalization. Finally, we validate DexMimic on a real-world dexterous manipulation platform.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19089
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Receding-Horizon Next-Best-View Planning for Highly Occluded Target Perception
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Robotic systems that must acquire information about a specific target often face severe occlusion from sur- rounding structures or from the target itself, such that a single camera viewpoint provides only partial information. Active perception must therefore select viewpoints that progressively reveal unobserved regions. However, conventional local next- best-view (NBV) methods typically select viewpoints according to their immediate utility, which can overlook views that provide limited information initially but enable more informative obser- vations from subsequent viewpoints. We formulated local target perception as a short-horizon sequential view-planning problem and proposed a Receding-Horizon Next-Best-View (RH-NBV) planner that evaluates candidate sequences of future viewpoints rather than isolated views. RH-NBV is evaluated on a UR5e manipulator with an eye-in-hand RGB-D camera in simulation as well as on physical robot against a gradient-based NBV planner, and random search, using a coffee mug and Stanford bunny under controlled occlusion and a tomato plant with natural self-occlusion. Under heavy occlusion, RH-NBV achieves substantially higher target information recovery, reaching 63.8% ROI coverage versus 34.2% and 85.5% occluded-surface recall versus 7.4% for the single-step NBV baselines on the most occluded mug configuration. A controlled horizon ablation shows that this improvement arises from multi-step reasoning rather than additional computation. RH-NBV provides the greatest benefit for strongly occluded targets, while myopic NBV remains competitive and substantially cheaper when visibility is less constrained.
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19082
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Tread: A Visuo-Inertial Framework for Terrain and Locomotion Context-Aware Gait-Phase and Speed Estimation in Wearable Robotics
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A wearable assistive robot must continuously estimate terrain, locomotion mode, gait phase, and walking speed. These quantities are commonly addressed by separate, terrain-specific models, with datasets rarely collected under a common protocol. This paper presents a visuo-inertial framework that connects these estimates through a causal pipeline using a chest-mounted camera and four lower-limb inertial measurement units (IMUs). Anticipatory Terrain Perception (ATP) classifies incoming terrain with 96.3% accuracy and anticipates terrain transitions by 1.46 s on average. Terrain-Aware Locomotion Mode Identification (TALMI) achieves 93.7% and 98.8% accuracy for its level-ground and stairs experts respectively, with mean transition latencies being below 200 ms. The relevant TALMI posterior is retained as a Probabilistic Locomotion Context (PLC) vector and provided to a shared Gait Kinematic Encoder (GKE), which supports 50-Hz bilateral gait-phase estimation and 2-Hz walking-speed estimation. Leave-one-subject-out evaluation yields gait-phase RMSEs of 1.75%, 2.97%, and 4.55% for level walking, stair ascent, and stair descent respectively while estimating speed over 3.5-5.5 km/h with a RMSE of 0.218 km/h. All inertial sensing based models use sensor-fused Euler angles as input rather than raw accelerometer and gyroscope signals, reducing dependence on sensor mounting variation.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19067
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Contact-UAN: Unsupervised Actuator Networks as a Residual World Model for Humanoid Control
2026-10-13 18:00:52Nolan Fey, Khai Nguyen, Yash Prabhu, Gabriel B. Margolis, Pulkit AgrawalAbstract
Humanoid policies trained in simulation can transfer qualitatively to hardware while failing to transfer the force interactions learned during training, compromising torque efficiency, load regulation, and robustness to impacts. This failure can arise from actuator sim-to-real gaps because forces depend on actuator torques. We introduce Contact-UAN, a residual world model that preserves a simulator's physics priors while correcting actuator dynamics to align simulated rollouts with recorded hardware rollouts. For humanoid motion with contact, this requires contact-consistent replay: if hardware playback in simulation begins with misaligned contact wrenches, the residual model learns to correct reset artifacts rather than actuator discrepancies. Using only onboard proprioception, Contact-UAN infers the simulator-side stance-foot pose needed to initialize replay with consistent contact forces. We show that a UAN trained on 6.5 minutes of real-world walking data generalizes to tasks that benefit from accurate force and impulse regulation and produces policies that transfer seamlessly to the real world, yielding 20% lower running torque, 43% lower force-tracking error, extreme compliance, accurate impedance control, and dynamic, robust jumps.
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.18991
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All-St3R SLAM: Real-time RGB Dynamic SLAM with Pixel-wise Motion Masking
2026-10-12 04:04:33Yewon Kim, Paul Hongsuck Seo, Sang Chul AhnAbstract
SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) is a core technology in autonomous systems that enables them to estimate their own position and build a map of unknown environments simultaneously. SLAM systems in dynamic environments are of great practical importance. However, existing dynamic SLAM approaches still have several limitations like over-removal and high computational costs. To address these limitations, we propose a real-time RGB Dynamic SLAM framework that precisely removes moving objects at the pixel level without relying on predefined labels or segmentation models. Our system combines pixel motion predicted by ego-motion using DUSt3R with point tracking from All-Tracker, removing only actually moving pixels by analyzing discrepancies between the two motion sources. Unlike object-level masking methods, our approach eliminates only currently moving regions, allowing temporarily static parts to be utilized for tracking. Operating at approximately 10 FPS, the system achieves real-time performance on standard 30 FPS video streams by subsampling every 3 frames. Relying solely on RGB inputs, this significantly improves upon state-of-the-art dense dynamic SLAM approaches (0.5-3 FPS), presenting a highly practical solution.
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.16143
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Noise Space Learning for VLA Adaptation
2026-10-09 17:58:50Junjie Lu, Chuheng Zhang, Yucen Wang, Yuhua Jiang, Xinyao Qin, Min Xu, Li ZhaoAbstract
Pretrained vision-language-action (VLA) models encode broad manipulation priors, yet adapting them to specific tasks requires balancing limited robot interaction, computational resources, and safety constraints. Noise space learning (NSL) adapts flow-matching-based VLAs by learning a context-conditioned distribution over noise while keeping the pretrained VLA fixed. Building on prior noise-steering methods, we formulate NSL as an interface for VLA adaptation that accommodates different learning algorithms and instantiate it with PPO, SAC, and AWR. Theoretically, we provide an information-theoretic analysis of how NSL enables efficient adaptation. Empirically, we study these NSL algorithms on LIBERO, RoboTwin, and four real-robot manipulation tasks under interaction, computation, and execution constraints. Across these settings, we develop a suite of effective NSL variants and derive practical recommendations for choosing among them under different resource and deployment regimes.
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13943
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BT-Agent: Deploying Onboard Robot Agents with Behavior Trees and Multi-Fidelity Evaluation
2026-10-09 17:08:45Fabio H\"ubel, Adam Lilja, Yue Yin, Siming He, Claire Tomlin, Shankar Sastry, Jonas Frey, Marco PavoneAbstract
Deploying language-model agents onboard mobile robots requires task reasoning and responsive execution within limited compute and memory. We propose BT-Agent, an onboard architecture combining LLM-driven task decisions with predefined behavior-tree (BT) skills. These skills enforce execution conditions and return structured failure feedback. We demonstrate fully onboard operation with a 9B model on a quadruped across five task categories. Intervention tests show that local checks stop ongoing navigation without waiting for another model decision, while the agent remains active to retry or report constraints. To compare agent designs efficiently, we introduce a 161-task multi-fidelity benchmark, evaluated in text on all tasks and in Habitat on 39. Text supports 10.9$\times$ higher evaluation throughput, while simulation reveals how perception and motion failures change task outcomes. BT-Agent's largest success gains over the strongest Act/ReAct baseline occur at 4B and 9B: approximately 10 and 5 percentage points. Ablations identify structured tool calls and informative failure feedback as the most useful components.
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13862
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HorizonNav: Geometry-Guided Video Diffusion for Anticipatory 3D Robot Navigation
2026-10-09 16:57:08Hajira Amjad, Valerii Serpiva, Viacheslav Liubimov, Didar Seyidov, Dzmitry TsetserukouAbstract
We present HorizonNav, a video diffusion-based framework for anticipatory robot navigation that transforms a single RGB image and a text prompt into a geometrically aligned representation of plausible surrounding 3D space. Given the initial observation and a textual description of the reconstruction objective, a vision-language model, guided by designed instructions, interprets the scene and constructs structured prompts for a video diffusion model. The resulting video sequence provides plausible future observations of the environment, which are subsequently processed using monocular ORB-SLAM3 for camera pose estimation and Video Depth Anything for dense depth prediction. Our central contribution is a geometry-guided depth alignment stage that combines the estimated camera poses with triangulated visual landmarks to constrain dense depth predictions across multiple views. This alignment improves the geometric consistency of the reconstructed 3D environment, addressing inconsistencies that temporal coherence of the generated video alone cannot resolve. The experimental evaluation of navigation in imagined 3D environment shows that across a 19-scene horizon study, planning-feasible scenes increase from 13/19 at P20 to 15/19 at P81, while successful RRT trials increase from 62/90 to 75/90. In a separate corridor study, 6 of 25 evaluable generated-camera trajectories violate the reconstructed collision constraints; RRT planner recovers feasible alternatives in 5 of those 6 cases. A larger archive contains 58 usable reconstructions from 67 attempted cases, of which 36 support a downstream plan and 22 do not, exposing reconstruction and free-space failure modes rather than hiding them without lidar. Across 15 corridor reconstructions, the mean reconstruction error is approximately 0.30 m at matched structural landmarks.
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13849
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Mapless, Stabilizing, and Anti-Stuck Flipper Control for Articulated Tracked Robots
2026-10-09 16:48:23Valent\'yn \v{C}\'ihala, Pavel Sarga, Martin Pecka, Tom\'a\v{s} Svoboda, Karel ZimmermannAbstract
Nearly every autonomous or semi-autonomous flipper controller assumes access to an elevation map of the terrain under and in front of the robot. The terrain beneath the chassis is occluded in the sensors, so the map is remembered through odometry integration, whose drift corrupts it. We present Stabilizing Anti-Stuck (SAS), a mapless controller that combines a stabilization term for body roll and pitch with an anti-stuck term that frees the robot when it gets stuck. As input, SAS uses the IMU, the flipper joint angles, and a motion cue that only tells whether the robot is moving. The cue is computed over a short window and never accumulated, so SAS does not inherit the odometry-integration drift that corrupts the map. We deploy SAS on a tracked robot with four flippers and evaluate it against manual teleoperation and prior flipper controllers in a large comparison, both in simulation and on a real obstacle. In simulation and on the real robot, SAS achieves traversal quality comparable to state-of-the-art map-based controllers. On a log hidden in tall grass, invisible to the LiDAR, the best map-based controller gets stuck while SAS traverses the hidden obstacle without a problem.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13838
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When LiDAR Fades, Radar Takes Over: LiDAR Reliability-Aware Adaptive Localization Under Airborne Obscurants
2026-10-09 16:04:41Moumita Mukherjee, Avijit Banerjee, Anton Koval, George NikolakopouloAbstract
LiDAR-inertial odometry (LIO) is widely used for real-time localization and mapping, but its reliability can degrade substantially in subterranean environments affected by smoke, dust, and other airborne obscurants, whereas radar remains comparatively robust. This article presents a one-class temporal learning framework for LiDAR degradation detection and reliability-aware localization under such conditions. A broad set of degradation-sensitive cues, including spatial, cross-modal, geometric/motion, intensity, and measurement-recency features, is evaluated to characterize changes in LiDAR sensing quality. Their temporal evolution is modelled over sliding windows using an LSTM autoencoder trained exclusively on nominal operation, enabling deviations from healthy sensor behaviour to be detected without requiring labelled degradation data. The resulting LiDAR reliability estimate governs adaptive selection between LIO and radar inertial odometry (RIO), retaining LIO during reliable sensing and transferring localization authority to RIO when degradation is detected. The framework is evaluated using real-world ground robot data collected in GNSS-denied subterranean tunnels under nominal and dense-smoke conditions. Experimental results demonstrate degradation detection, adaptive modality switching, and continued localization output under severe LiDAR degradation. A feature family ablation study further shows that a reduced feature representation can improve degradation-aware localization performance in the evaluated dense-smoke scenarios, highlighting the importance of feature parsimony in one-class sensor degradation detection. The code will be released as open source to support reproducibility and further research.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13788
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MARGoS: A Configuration-Driven Platform for Reproducible MARL Experiments in ARGoS
2026-10-09 15:55:16Tom Philipp Backert, Mohammad D. Soorati, Javad GhofraniAbstract
Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) has become a prominent research direction, particularly within collective robotics, where the ARGoS simulator is widely used to study emergent swarm behavior. Yet despite this growth, systematic support for reuse and reproducibility in MARL-based swarm robotics remains limited and insufficiently standardized: a single experiment is assembled from manually aligned simulator files, training scripts, configuration values, paths, seeds, and environment details, so reuse and reproduction stay fragile even within one research group. To address this gap, we introduce MARGoS, a lightweight, configuration-driven platform developed in this project that elevates these experiment-defining inputs to first-class, platform-managed artifacts. MARGoS enables reproducible experimentation through configuration hashing, end-to-end seed propagation, frozen (immutable) configurations, structured logging, environment fingerprinting, and exportable experiment bundles that facilitate sharing, replay, and verification of results across machines and over time. A five-dimension evaluation (architecture, efficiency, reproducibility, usability, and collaboration) supports our claim that managing experiment variation as a platform responsibility makes ARGoS+MARL experiments easier to reuse, reproduce, and hand off. Our code is available at this https URL.
Abstract (translated)
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13772
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SmolWAM: A Latent World-Action Model for Robotic Manipulation on Edge Devices
2026-10-09 15:34:33Timi Owolabi, Hikmah Olawore, Frances Adelakun, Ayotomiwa OyewumiAbstract
World-action models (WAMs) predict a robot's actions together with the observations those actions will produce. However, the strongest models rely on video diffusion transformers that are far too computationally expensive for resource-constrained edge devices. We present SmolWAM, a latent WAM that we derive from the 2B-parameter Cosmos Policy by keeping its pretrained trunk and rebuilding its inference interface: single-frame visual latents, cached text features that preserve the trunk's attention sinks, 12 of 28 transformer blocks, and 1,008 tokens from which actions and future visual latents are read out in one rectified-flow step. Trained in 3.6 GPU-hours, SmolWAM succeeds in 95.5% of 400 LIBERO episodes at 57 ms and 2.3 TFLOP per 16-action chunk with 2.4 GiB of GPU memory, 11x faster than its teacher with 18.5x fewer FLOPs and 3.2x less memory, and its world head still forecasts scene motion.
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13740
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Towards a Unified Taxonomy of Agricultural Harvesting Technologies: Linking Physical Interaction, Automation, and Selectivity
2026-10-09 14:52:52Renato Cristiano Torres, Fabiano Mariath D Oliveira, Claudio Gottschalg DuqueAbstract
Harvesting technologies have evolved from conventional mechanized systems based on bulk mechanical interaction toward increasingly automated and robotic systems capable of perception, decision-making, and localized actuation. This evolution has also created a classification problem, as harvesting systems are commonly described according to crop type, mechanical removal principle, sensing technology, robotic architecture, or degree of automation, making direct comparison difficult. This paper proposes a unified taxonomy for agricultural harvesting technologies based on two primary classification axes: the physical principle governing plant-machine interaction and the level of automation incorporated into the harvesting process. Selectivity is treated as an emergent functional attribute that expresses the biological and spatial scale at which perception and decision-making influence physical actuation. Conventional mechanized methods, including cutting, pulling, vibration, impact, brushing, pneumatic action, and combined systems, are analyzed together with semi-automated and robotic harvesting approaches. The analysis shows that increasing automation does not necessarily result in greater selectivity. A qualitative transition occurs when perception and decision-making directly influence product-level actuation, shifting harvesting from distributed or bulk interaction toward localized and selective manipulation. The proposed framework provides a common conceptual basis for positioning and comparing mechanized, automated, and robotic harvesting technologies. By separating the physical mechanism of product removal from the automation level and resulting selectivity, the taxonomy clarifies technological boundaries, identifies intermediate configurations, and supports the analysis and development of future harvesting systems.
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URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13688
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