Research
Frontier robotics research: arXiv cs.RO papers, embodied AI, VLA models, manipulation, navigation and learning systems.
Frontier robotics research: arXiv cs.RO papers, embodied AI, VLA models, manipulation, navigation and learning systems.
Latest in Research
6273 storiesTransferable Tool-Tissue Contact Detection from Stereo Depth in Robot-Assisted Surgery
arXiv:2608.18270v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reliable tool--tissue contact detection can support interaction-aware control and downstream force estimation in…
GAPL: Grounded Action-effect Policy Learning for LLM-Based Trajectory Planning
arXiv:2608.18254v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Trajectory planning for autonomous driving requires both high-level reasoning and precise low-level control. Lar…
Scheduling and Routing with Degradation-Triggered Job Arrivals: An Application to Forest Firefighting with an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Fleet
arXiv:2608.18140v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We define an intertwined scheduling and routing problem where new jobs appear due to the degradation of the exis…
Lambda-Hold Control: Human-Like Movement Emerges from a Minimal Task Reward in Predictive Musculoskeletal Simulation
arXiv:2608.17030v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The massive overactuation in the human musculoskeletal system makes it challenging to train musculoskeletal mode…
Terrain-Aware Local Path Planning with Global DEM Data Integration for Autonomous UGV Navigation
arXiv:2608.17038v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Autonomous navigation in complex outdoor terrains presents critical challenges for unmanned ground vehicles (UGV…
PDDL-ART: Autonomous Symbolic Abstraction From Demonstration For Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation Using Vision-Language Models
arXiv:2608.17146v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Symbolic planning with PDDL offers a principled framework for long-horizon robot manipulation, but constructing …
Robust Brachiation on a Life-Sized Dual-Arm Robot Using Waypoint-Guided Reinforcement Learning
arXiv:2608.17320v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Brachiation is a form of locomotion in which primates move primarily using their arms, enabling traversal in env…
UniReflex: Plug-and-Play Force Control for Pretrained Generative Policies via Fast-Slow Reflex
arXiv:2608.17432v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Generative imitation learning policies excel at trajectory planning but lack closed-loop force regulation, while…
Reuse Before You Retrieve: Diagnosing Headroom and Complementarity for Test-Time Augmentation of Embodied Multimodal Policies
arXiv:2608.17484v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Frozen vision-language-action (VLA) policies are increasingly improved at test time by sampling additional polic…
Calibrated Predictive Safety for Heterogeneous Robots: An Action-Conditioned JEPA Framework with Model-Based Safety Shields
arXiv:2608.17496v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Vision-language-action policies generalize broadly but provide no execution-time guarantees; classical model-bas…
HODAgent: Towards On-Demand, Responsive Humanoids for Physical World Human Interaction
arXiv:2608.17584v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We propose HODAgent, a System-2 embodied agent for humanoid robots in service settings, addressing situated inte…
Collective Ranking of Environmental Signals through Gaussian Belief Propagation in a Patrolling Robot Swarm
arXiv:2608.17690v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multi-robot patrolling requires a team to visit all areas of an environment at regular intervals, typically mini…
Dijkstra as an Oracle for Online Stochastic Shortest Path Navigation with Provable Guarantees
arXiv:2608.17703v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Mobile robots that operate in side by side with humans and critical facilities must reach their goals at low cos…
Effector-Centric NMPC of Tiltable-Multirotors for Offset-Free Omnidirectional Aerial Manipulation
arXiv:2608.17819v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Aerial manipulation extends robotic operations to previously inaccessible aerial environments. Unlike arm-equipp…
ControlledShifts: Towards Standardizing Robustness Evaluation in Trajectory Prediction Under Distribution Shifts
arXiv:2608.17882v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Trajectory prediction is central to safety in autonomous driving, yet learning-based predictors tend to degrade …
PRISM: Precision and contact-rich Real-world Industrial Skill dataset with Multimodal sensing
arXiv:2608.17962v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent progress in robotic learning has been fueled by large-scale datasets collected in everyday environments. …
If, Then, Otherwise: Diagnosing Conditional Branching in Vision-Language Navigation
arXiv:2608.17318v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Vision-language navigation agents are often evaluated on their ability to follow route-like instructions towar…
Optimal control of a swimming robot based on Purcell's microswimmer model
arXiv:2608.17455v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Purcell's swimmer is a well-known planar model of a swimming microorganism, governed by low Reynolds number hy…
Communication Reduction via Semantic-Based Encoding in DMPC Using LSTMs
arXiv:2608.17592v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The communication demands of distributed model prediction control (DMPC) can overwhelm even advanced wireless …
Thinking in a Low-Resource Language: What SFT Builds, What RL Fixes, What Accuracy Cannot See
arXiv:2608.17744v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Take three frontier mixture-of-experts models (Alibaba, OpenAI, NVIDIA; 3.6-4.0B active parameters each) and f…
A Theoretical Framework for Parallel Lifelong MAPF Using Group Decentralized Planning
arXiv:2608.17928v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In the Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding (L-MAPF) problem, agents must repeatedly move from one destination to…
LoopVLA: Learning Sufficiency in Recurrent Refinement for Vision-Language-Action Models
arXiv:2605.09948v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Current Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models typically treat the deepest representation of a vision-lan…
Towards Unified World Models for Visual Navigation via Memory-Augmented Planning and Foresight
arXiv:2510.08713v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Enabling embodied agents to imagine future states is essential for robust and generalizable visual nav…
Efficient Dynamic Shielding for Parametric Safety Specifications
arXiv:2505.22104v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Shielding has emerged as a promising approach for ensuring safety of AI-controlled autonomous systems.…
HA-VLN 2.0: An Open Benchmark and Leaderboard for Human-Aware Navigation in Discrete and Continuous Environments with Dynamic Multi-Human Interactions
arXiv:2503.14229v5 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) has been studied mainly in either discrete or continuous spaces, …
EXPO-FT: Sample-Efficient Reinforcement Learning Finetuning for Vision-Language-Action Models
arXiv:2605.25477v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The ability to efficiently and reliably learn new tasks has been a foundational challenge in robotics. Visio…
KAN We Flow? Advancing Robotic Manipulation with 3D Flow Matching via KAN & RWKV
arXiv:2602.01115v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Diffusion-based visuomotor policies excel at modeling action distributions but are inference-inefficient, si…
PROBE: Manipulation-Grounded Visual Question Answering with VLM Agents
arXiv:2608.17129v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Vision-language Models (VLMs) excel at 2D grounding, spatial reasoning and agentic tool-based planning in stat…
Multi-Observer Vehicle Localization Case Study with Roadside Radar and Connected Vehicle Sensing
arXiv:2608.16966v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In modern intelligent transportation systems, it is essential to accurately estimate vehicle positions, especi…
Jetson-ORB-SLAM3: Accuracy-Preserving GPU Implementation for Edge Computing Devices
arXiv:2608.17874v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Visual-inertial SLAM on low-power edge platforms is constrained by the cost of dense feature extraction and loop…