Nachrichten & Forschung

arXiv:2608.28570v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Identifying the underlying dynamics and 3D geometry of deformable linear objects (DLOs), such as cables, ropes, and hoses, is essential for accurate robotic manipulation, but remains challenging due to their high-dimensional configuration spaces and diverse behaviors arising from varying material properties. Existing methods often rely on multi-stage pipelines and auxiliary depth inputs, which are prone to errors under dynamic interactions, while their high-dimensional state representations make model-based control computationally expensive. In this paper, we introduce ChainSplat, a physics-inspired framework that jointly learns the 3D geometry, appearance, kinematics, and dynamics of DLOs solely from multi-view RGB videos. ChainSplat represents a DLO as an open-chain structure of rigid links connected by revolute joints, yielding an analytic, screw-theoretic model with a compact state representation parameterized by joint configurations.

arXiv:2608.28435v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Many robotic tasks are temporally extended and demand precise specifications of subgoals, constraints, and their temporal ordering. Yet human operators typically communicate such tasks in natural language, which is inherently ambiguous, underspecified, and context dependent. Translating human instructions into formal task specifications, such as Linear Temporal Logic (LTL), is therefore essential for verifiable and safe robotic execution. Existing LLM-based translators attempt to bridge this gap through open-ended reasoning or post-hoc constraint enforcement, but the former may violate domain constraints, whereas the latter can disrupt the reasoning needed for novel instructions. This paper proposes Self-Constrained Reasoning (SCR), a framework that mitigates this trade-off by internalizing structural knowledge into the model's decision-making process rather than imposing it as an external filter. By combining a structural constraint repr

arXiv:2608.28409v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multi-robot systems are well-positioned for exploration in hazardous environments, but effective deployment requires deciding not only where robots should gather information, but also how risk should be distributed across heterogeneous team members. This paper develops a game-theoretic framework for cooperative risk-aware exploration based on ecologically inspired altruistic behavior. Each robot selects a finite-horizon trajectory to maximize information gain while penalizing redundant exploration and expected hazard exposure. Heterogeneity is introduced through agent-specific value parameters for encoding altruistic coupling, which is modeled through relatedness weights inspired by Hamilton's rule. We introduce a game-theoretic structure for trajectory planning that defines a Social Nash Equilibrium, which modifies the utility of agent actions according to agent relatedness. This utility shaping causes agents to internalize the effect of

arXiv:2608.28305v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Industrial panel operation is knowledge-intensive and safety-critical. Beyond control recognition and action generation, execution must satisfy constraints in operation manuals and safety regulations. While foundation-model-based planners show strong semantic capability, they typically lack computable, localizable, and reproducible mechanisms for violation detection and repair. To address this, we propose PanelShield, a verifiable closed-loop safety planning framework for manual-guided industrial panel operation. The framework generates parameterized action primitive sequences from task-relevant manual evidence and applies dual formal verification with LTL and a Safety FSM to enforce cross-step temporal correctness and local transition legality. When violations occur, it outputs a structured counterexample with the earliest violating step and cause, enabling targeted repair and re-verification. We build a multi-level long-horizon planning

arXiv:2608.28300v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Robotic industrial panel operation requires not only accurate control localization but also compliance with operating procedures, safety rules, and device-state constraints distributed across heterogeneous manuals. This study presents MaCoPlanner, a task-planning framework built on knowledge compiled from equipment manuals that converts equipment manuals into a typed intermediate representation, retrieves task- and state-relevant evidence, and uses it to support plan generation. Before actuation, candidate plans are symbolically rolled out and checked against procedural and state-transition constraints; detected violations are localized and returned for targeted repair, while unresolved plans are rejected. A separate execution interface grounds verified symbolic actions to physical controls and updates the device state. Under an independent evaluation oracle, MaCoPlanner achieves a final violation rate of 2.7%, and 26.3% of the runs in th

arXiv:2608.28270v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We present a real-time semantic navigation framework for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) focused on improving time efficiency in the Object Goal Navigation (ObjectNav) task. Central to our approach is a Large Language Model (LLM) that interprets user-provided natural language instructions and performs semantic reasoning over detected objects and spatial context to prioritize high-probability search regions. The system combines real-time object detection, 3D spatial mapping, and polynomial spline interpolation for smooth and feasible UAV trajectory planning. Unlike prior methods that rely on offline reasoning or simulator-constrained action spaces, our framework can operate in real time, continuously updating semantic relevance based on new observations. Experiments in both simulated and real-world settings demonstrate reductions in mission duration while maintaining high search accuracy, underscoring the effectiveness of LLM-guided reason

arXiv:2608.28246v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Robotic sorting of recyclable waste is challenging due to the deformable and geometrically inconsistent nature of target objects. We present a training-free suction grasping system for sorting deformed aseptic beverage cartons, decoupling target identification from grasp-point selection. An open-vocabulary vision-language model detects cartons from a text prompt, SAM2 refines each detection into an instance mask, and a geometric scoring method selects the suction point by combining surface flatness with normal alignment. Three geometric methods are compared: k-nearest-neighbour PCA, Sobel cross-product, and RANSAC plane fitting. Evaluated on a real robot across three deformation levels and 35 cluttered scenes, single-object grasp success reaches 88.2% and end-to-end retrieval in clutter is 72.6%.

arXiv:2608.28214v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Estimating environmental states with multi-robot systems becomes particularly challenging when robots are equipped with uncalibrated and therefore heterogeneous sensors, whose nonlinear and inconsistent responses prevent reliable information fusion. In this paper, we propose a distributed probabilistic framework for source localization tasks that enables calibration-free estimation in the presence of sensor heterogeneity. The key idea is that each robot independently estimates a local belief using a rank-based feature that captures the relative evolution of observations and is invariant to sensor scaling and nonlinearities. These local beliefs are then fused through a product of experts formulation to obtain a consistent global estimate across the team. To further improve the efficiency of team coordination, we introduce an informative region allocation and path planning strategy that reduces redundant exploration while balancing explorat

arXiv:2608.28213v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: People read a humanoid robot's motion in social settings not only for the action performed but for the affect conveyed. Motion carrying that affect has so far been generated for human avatars, where style is taken from a reference clip or an emotion word, neither of which can be quantitatively parameterized. We present PAMoR, which turns affect into a measured control parameter: a valence-arousal (V-A) coordinate computed natively on robot kinematics. It is obtained in closed form from postural expansion and movement energy, and these measurements serve directly as generation conditions, with no human annotation. An action prior and two affect priors, trained in a shared latent space, are composed at each denoising step: the action prior fixes what is performed, the affect priors modulate how. Whole-body motion rolls out autoregressively on a 29-DoF Unitree G1 in real time, with action and affect both editable. Generated motion tracks the

arXiv:2608.28175v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Bin-picking is a cornerstone of modern manufacturing, yet achieving complete bin clearance without manual intervention remains a critical challenge. While model-based methods provide high precision, they frequently suffer from deadlocks when predefined grasps are occluded or perception fails. Labor-intensive fine-tuning of grasp points is commonly required to reach a satisfactory performance for new parts. Model-free algorithms offer a more flexible alternative with "out-of-the-box" versatility but lack the reliability and repeatability required for production. Unlike existing work, which treats the two techniques in isolation, we propose a fourtiered hierarchical hybrid approach to combine the best of both worlds. A model-based pipeline serves as a robust backbone, while a model-free "exploration agent" resolves deadlock situations and discovers new grasp points. This is supported by an online self-learning mechanism that uses gripper-st

arXiv:2608.28154v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: People naturally chat while collaborating and share personal information (i.e., self-disclose) to build rapport and maintain social connections. As robots are increasingly developed to work with people, the effective use of these social behaviors to enhance engagement and support teamwork becomes ever more important. While prior work has shown that robot-initiated small talk can benefit human-robot collaboration, less is known about how best to design such small talk. In this work, we explore how self-disclosure may be designed to support small talk within a human-robot team---especially when the robot is an industrial manipulator that lacks anthropomorphic cues and performs physical work. We first developed an LLM-driven manipulator capable of partaking in small talk, adopting either a low-disclosure or high-disclosure strategy. We then conducted a user study (N = 50) to investigate how self-disclosure in small talk influences human-robo

arXiv:2608.28140v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Non-prehensile manipulation offers versatile skills for moving and rearranging heavy or bulky objects, particularly when combined with a mobile manipulation platform. However, both model-based and model-free approaches struggle with the complex hybrid dynamics and the sparsity of the contact in these tasks. To address these challenges, we propose a contact-guided exploration strategy implemented within a Multi-Critic Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework. A dedicated exploration critic is trained with a dense contact-seeking reward that guides the end-effector toward meaningful contact points; its influence is progressively decayed to recover a task-optimal policy. We obtain candidate interaction points from a general-purpose grasping algorithm, enabling the exploration mechanism to generalise across various object geometries. We evaluate the approach on multiple tasks, including box pushing, chair transportation, and a dishwasher opening

arXiv:2608.28108v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Vision-Language-Action models (VLAs) allow users to specify manipulation tasks in natural language, but distinguishing a target or placement goal among objects of the same category or similar appearance requires detailed expressions that VLAs may not use reliably. We propose DeicticVLA, which canonicalizes Language Instruction (LI), Vision-Language Instruction (VLI), and Visual Instruction (VI) into a text prompt and deictic masks through text-prompt completion and deictic gesture grounding, enabling a single pretrained VLA to handle all three instruction modes. With a shared backbone, demonstrations, and matched training steps, we compare two RGB visual prompting methods, two separate-channel mask prompting methods, and three training strategies in simulation. Under two-stage training, the four prompting methods achieve high in-distribution success but differ in their ability to use deictic masks in unseen layouts. Across methods, traini

arXiv:2608.28090v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Humanoid robots with quasi-direct-drive actuators continuously generate joint torque while standing, whereas seated humans delegate weight support to chairs during desk work. As a first step toward seated loco-manipulation, we study omnidirectional seated locomotion on a passive mobile chair, requiring unfixed pelvis-seat contact and intermittent foot-floor propulsion of the robot-chair system. We extend a standard standing velocity-tracking environment with a passive-chair model, seated-state rewards, critic-only chair observations, and task-tailored contact settings. The policy is learned without motion-imitation rewards; its actor uses only proprioception and velocity commands, without contact sensing or chair states. In random-command evaluation, the policies tracked omnidirectional commands through nearly all 20-s rollouts, and the best seated policies could outperform the Standing policy in velocity tracking. Across four training se

arXiv:2608.28075v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Foundation-model (FM) based task and motion planning (TAMP) methods typically assume that the full scene is known before planning. In long-horizon manipulation, however, relevant objects may initially be hidden and only become observable as the robot interacts with the environment. We introduce Robust-TAMP, a task and motion planning framework that first decides whether a discovery needs a replan. If replanning is needed, the robot executes unaffected actions while the FM synthesizes corrective actions. These actions are inserted into the existing plan based on urgency, either executed immediately or deferred while preserving the remaining plan. We evaluate Robust-TAMP on 14 MuJoCo environments with hidden objects, blocked placements, articulated containers, and multi-step tasks, and on five real-world settings. Our proposed method completes 92.1% of simulated tasks, outperforming four baseline comparison architectures by 47.1 percent