Nachrichten & Forschung

arXiv:2610.15157v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Efficient perception is a prerequisite for the small, low-power devices targeted by robotics, mixed reality, autonomous driving, and drone applications, all of which rely on Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) to estimate their motion within their surroundings. Learning-based SLAM systems achieve state-of-the-art accuracy but are demanding in compute, whereas classical geometry-based methods retain a strong efficiency advantage with little to no loss in accuracy. In this work we present RootSLAM, a fully-featured visual-inertial SLAM system for multi-camera setups built on Basalt. RootSLAM achieves accuracy competitive with the state of the art while running up to 20 times faster, facilitating the deployment of perception systems in resource constrained environments. We adapt the square-root bundle adjustment formulation from structure from motion into the multi-camera visual-inertial SLAM setting through a novel reformulation th

arXiv:2610.15122v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Ensuring the safety of autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) operating in underground mines is challenging due to the vast and uncertain Operational Design Domain (ODD). Traditional validation approaches, such as random testing, often result in inefficient situation coverage, allocating computational resources to low-risk scenarios while failing to expose critical edge cases. Building on prior work in risk-prioritized Situation Coverage, this paper investigates whether Fuzzy Logic-based risk estimation effectively correlates with real system failures. To this end, we conduct a mutation testing study within our SCALOFT simulation framework. A fixed set of software mutants is systematically injected and evaluated under two testing strategies: (i) uniformly random situation generation and (ii) Fuzzy-Guided risk-prioritized situation generation. Experimental results show that the Fuzzy-Guided approach achieves a higher mutation score and

arXiv:2610.15073v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Physical flexibility plays a significant role not only in human motions but also in robot motions. For example, a humanoid robot with passive and flexible elements, which can be regarded as a rigid--soft hybrid-link system, has the advantages of storing energy and mitigating impact in a dynamic motion. However, the motion design and control of a hybrid-link system are challenging to achieve and have only been discussed in the literature. In this study, we propose the framework of inverse kinematics and compliance optimization-based control for a hybrid-link humanoid system that represents the continuous deformation of a flexible structure using the piece-wise constant strain (PCS) model. The proposed method was validated using forward dynamics simulations for standing, jumping, and walking motions. Then, we built an experimental setup using a biped humanoid robot with leaf-spring type prosthesis leg, in which the prosthesis deformation wa

arXiv:2610.15001v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multi-robot systems that combine the complementary capabilities of specialised platforms are critical for complex missions in challenging, inaccessible environments. Current deployments assign an operator or operator team to each robot, with collaboration relying on operator-to-operator communication to manually coordinate heterogeneous platforms with incompatible interfaces. This operator-dependent approach increases cognitive load and limits scalability across robots from different manufacturers. This study designs and evaluates a shared-visualisation collaborative teleoperation interface to improve operator coordination, situational awareness, and the task performance in multi-operator, multi-robot systems. A comparative user study with 16 participants compared three teleoperation conditions: co-located operators with a shared interface, remote operators with a shared interface, and co-located operators with individual interfaces. Part

arXiv:2610.14951v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Feed-forward geometric foundation models (GFMs) directly predict dense geometry and camera poses from batches of images. Emerging visual SLAM methods chain together consecutive GFM batches to form dense point cloud maps. A core challenge is how to address the ambiguous geometric scale of GFM predictions: independent predictions are locally consistent up-to-scale but not constrained by any direct physical measurements. Models trained on data with known scale improve the consistency of GFM reconstructions but again do not directly measure it. Consequently, trajectories and 3D reconstructions from GFM-enabled SLAM methods inherit this issue. Motivated by parallels with classical visual-inertial odometry, we introduce FoundationVIO which integrates inertial sensing with GFM predictions to recover metric scale reconstruction using a factor-graph based approach. We demonstrate odometry estimates competitive with classical state-of-the-art VIO m

arXiv:2610.14936v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Diffusion policies are increasingly used in robotic control and manipulation, vision-language-action models, and world-model-based agents. Their ability to represent multimodal action distributions offers rich opportunities for exploration in reinforcement learning (RL). However, optimizing diffusion policies with RL can reduce the behavioral diversity and further limit their exploration capability. In RL post-training, directly fine-tuning a pretrained policy may also disrupt its acquired capabilities, while action-space residuals may lack the expressive power for multimodal exploration. Together, these issues reveal a common challenge across online and offline-to-online diffusion RL: improving task performance while retaining the behavioral diversity and capabilities needed for continued adaptation. We introduce CFG-Policy, a unified, plug-and-play framework that separates exploration and exploitation into two generative policies and co

arXiv:2610.14926v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multi-finger hands contact objects at different times, so a global close command can overload early-contact fingers while others are still moving. Dense tactile arrays address this problem but add hardware, calibration, bandwidth, and computation. We present an edge-native pipeline that uses only built-in joint-angle and pre-use-calibrated actuator-load feedback to recognize the grasped object and predict an independent Stop event for each finger. Four samples and their first differences form a 4-by-20 contact-evolution window. At its core is a heterogeneous dual-expert architecture, termed DualExpert, that assigns complementary tasks to a Temporal Convolutional Network (TCN) and a Finger Graph Filter Network (FGFN). The TCN models short-term contact evolution and supplies all five Stop probabilities, while the FGFN encodes finger topology and contributes only to object classification. Fixed 0.7/0.3 class-probability fusion reaches 93.78\

arXiv:2610.14917v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Robust motion planning and control for manipulators is the problem of guaranteeing safe execution and collision-free motion under disturbances. The Kinodynamic Motion Planning via Funnel Control (KDF) is a recently proposed planner that comes with robustness guarantees and is particularly attractive for collision-free control as it guarantees closed-loop evolution inside a funnel, i.e., a collision-free region around a nominal trajectory. Despite its attractive theoretical properties, the current approach for computing funnels is computationally demanding, which limits its expressiveness and performance. We address its current limitations by proposing a novel funnel planning and control solution. Our key tool to enable this is a neural Signed Configuration Distance Function (nSCDF) which allows us to estimate collision-free balls and gradients in a computationally efficient way. We use the nSCDF in our planner to compute a nominal traject

arXiv:2610.14911v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multi-human cooperative object manipulation is a highly challenging topic in humanoid control. While existing methods can handle simple collaborative carrying tasks, they struggle with role-dependent, long-horizon, and sequential cooperative manipulation. To address this issue, we propose a hierarchical commander-executor framework that enables multiple agents to accomplish complex collaborative tasks in distinct ways. Specifically, a commander combines instructions and scene information for joint semantic and geometric planning. It then decomposes the task into role-specific subtasks and generates shared object-centric coordination plans, specifying execution timing, target positions, and manipulation actions for each agent. Conditioned on the commander's high-level strategy and each agent's local observations, the executor learns a low-level physics-based policy through a solo-to-cooperative curriculum to realize coordinated human-objec

arXiv:2610.14896v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Humanoid Behavior Foundation Models (BFMs) can execute impressive motions, but downstream applications such as loco-manipulation demand high whole-body positional accuracy. Existing BFMs suffer from a systematic command-execution gap, where executed motions deviate from desired ones. We show that additional test-time compute can improve execution without retraining the BFM. First, we introduce Test-Time Command Optimization (TTCO), which adapts the input command to the specific BFM to produce an executed trajectory closer to the desired motion. TTCO finds such commands by sampling-based optimization through closed-loop simulations of the BFM and robot dynamics. Across three BFMs on the AMASS dataset, TTCO reduces mean global body-position error by 79-84% in simulation. Second, we analyze test-time compute scaling and derive an approximate compute-optimal strategy that can sustain performance gains as the compute budget increases. Third, T

arXiv:2610.14889v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Bilateral teleoperation with force feedback is becoming increasingly important, and the quality of external-torque estimation is critical to this process. However, manufacturer-provided disturbance-torque estimates on commercial robotic arms are often inaccurate, while the use of end-effector force/torque sensors adds cost and payload. We propose LETS, a physics-guided learning approach that assigns rigid-body dynamics to recursive Newton-Euler inverse dynamics and reserves learning for only the robot-specific residual. LETS uses only the robot's URDF model and joint feedback, deliberately excluding control commands and thereby decoupling external-torque estimation from control-command inputs. It trains on 12 minutes of free-motion data in under one minute, without requiring a dedicated end-effector six-axis force/torque sensor. In bilateral teleoperation, LETS achieves real-time external-torque estimation that enables stable force feedba

arXiv:2610.14864v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Action chunking improves temporal coherence in visuomotor imitation learning by jointly predicting sequences of future actions. However, many existing policies regenerate entire action chunks even when errors are localized, potentially replacing otherwise valid predictions. We introduce Contextual Masked Action Policy (CMAP), a visuomotor policy that refines continuous action chunks through history-conditioned local regeneration. Specifically, CMAP introduces a history-conditioned action tape that combines executed commands with masked future positions to produce coarse action predictions and per-step uncertainty scores. An uncertainty-guided span regeneration mechanism then selects a high-uncertainty contiguous span and reconstructs it using the executed history and retained future predictions as context. By jointly reconstructing neighboring actions, CMAP models local temporal dependencies while preserving all predictions outside the se

arXiv:2610.14854v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Contact-rich manipulation poses a stage-dependent sensory conflict: vision and proprioception are essential for localization and approach, when force is largely uninformative and potentially distracting, whereas force becomes critical after contact, when irrelevant visual details and correlated robot states may become shortcuts. We propose DEFT-VLA (Dual-Expert Force-specialized Training for Vision-Language-Action Manipulation), which retains the task-adapted base expert for vision-dominated non-contact behavior and introduces a force-aware contact expert for critical contact stages, localizing force-conditioned adaptation to where it is needed. We further introduce a contact-localized force-attending curriculum that applies force-attending post-training only to the contact expert, progressively restoring vision and masking state tokens to suppress shortcuts. Real-robot experiments on pipette tip attachment, bimanual pipette aspiration, a

arXiv:2610.14848v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Synthesizing believable 4D hand-object grasping sequences is important for character animation, extended reality, and embodied agents. Grasping requires a hand to approach, contact, and lift or manipulate an object coherently. Existing synthesis methods often model only the final static grasp or rely on additional conditions, such as language, target grasps, or object trajectories, to specify the interaction. We instead study the underconstrained problem of generating a complete grasping motion from a single initial hand-object state. Our framework decouples hand-motion generation from object-motion recovery. Given an object point cloud in the initial wrist frame and the initial parameterized hand configuration, conditional flow matching predicts a sequence-level contact map and a hand pose at each normalized sequence time. This time-indexed formulation avoids the error accumulation of autoregressive rollout while representing the complet

arXiv:2610.14840v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We present a learning-based framework that enables a full-scale bipedal humanoid to sprint at over 7 m/s with motion-prior-guided gait and perform aggressive cornering at high speed with a pronounced trunk lean of up to $25^\circ$. Achieving this combination is challenging: above approximately 4 m/s, periodic foot impacts induce severe, high-frequency yaw-rate oscillations intrinsic to high-speed gaits. This high-frequency temporal structure corrupts the history of proprioceptive feedback that flat-MLP policies rely on, while rendering conventional yaw-rate tracking rewards counterproductive, as they fight against the robot's natural oscillatory dynamics. Moreover, a single style prior shared across skills cannot tell which skill is commanded and inherently compromises the low-speed skill fidelity. To overcome these limitations, we adopt a causal multi-head attention (MHA) module to explicitly model the high-frequency temporal feedback. I