News & Research

arXiv:2609.21122v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Manipulating previously unseen objects remains challenging, as their dynamics depend on latent physical properties, such as friction and mass distribution, that cannot be inferred from perception alone. Prior experience across objects can provide an initial estimate of unseen object dynamics, but this estimate remains uncertain and can degrade further during sim-to-real transfer. Adapting the dynamics through interaction can progressively refine the estimation, however, updating the model may invalidate the planned trajectory. Successful and efficient manipulation therefore requires both rapid dynamics adaptation and a planning strategy that can incorporate this evolution. In this work, we introduce MetaPusher, a meta-learning and adaptive planning framework for nonprehensile manipulation of unseen objects without prior object-specific interactions. A meta-learned dynamics model rapidly adapts from interactions during task execution, whil

arXiv:2609.21114v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Robots carrying out tasks in dark environments need to localize from a single RGB camera, in light so low that the per-pixel signal approaches the sensor's own noise, on a power-constrained onboard computer, in real time. Each of these constraints has matured pipelines, but the intersection does not. Offline low-light reconstruction now recovers structure below -4 dB but is far too slow to run in real time, while the real-time monocular systems a robot can actually carry (DROID-SLAM, DPV-SLAM, etc.) degrade or fail when SNR gets low. We measured how they fail: across the nine lowest darkness levels of our scenes, DROID-SLAM returns a full-length trajectory carrying no information about the camera's motion on all nine, VGGT-SLAM and CUT3R on eight, pi^3 on seven, and DPV-SLAM on four. We present SYS, a monocular pipeline built on a low-light feed-forward pointmap front end with an explicit match gate, which returns three tracked trajectori

arXiv:2609.21107v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: While learning from human motions has enabled highly dynamic humanoid skills such as dancing and martial arts in obstacle-free space, traversal through densely cluttered environments remains underexplored. These spaces are three-dimensional and geometrically constrained, requiring scene-aware locomotion that tightly couples whole-body motion with scene geometry for obstacle avoidance. To address these challenges, we present Moving Through Clutter (MTC), a learning-from-demonstration framework for scene-aware humanoid locomotion. To bypass costly physical scene construction, MTC uses procedurally generated Virtual Reality environments for immersive data collection. To transform these human motions into training-ready humanoid motions, we propose a scene-aware motion retargeting algorithm that converts human demonstrations into humanoid trajectories while strictly enforcing robot-scene clearance to guarantee collision-free traversal. These

arXiv:2609.21100v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Learning in robotic games is constrained not only by strategic information but also by what the body can still execute. We study this coupling in a hierarchical humanoid-quadruped penalty system in which game-level self-play policies command fixed soccer whole-body controllers (S-WBCs). The humanoid shooting skill is initialized from self-collected motion-capture data, whereas the quadruped saving skill is learned by reinforcement learning. We introduce dynamics-induced commitment mapping (DIC-Map), a body-grounded analysis that estimates continuation capability, identifies the first persistent loss of a terminal alternative, and tests whether the remaining interaction admits a reduced zero-sum game. For symmetric terminal alternatives, the reduced game yields a closed-form bound on optimal strategy concentration determined by the responder's value of deferring. We further show that, when the responder acts through an estimator, equal res

arXiv:2609.21099v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Coaxial rotor drones have generated considerable interest because of energy efficiency and small size, but they are afflicted with inherent underactuation for roll and pitch control, although systems like swashplates have circumvented this limitation at the cost of greater mechanical complexity. This work presents a novel coaxial drone supplemented by a two-degreesof-freedom pendulum mechanism for active thrust vectoring that offers a less mechanically complicated alternative. We develop a comprehensive Lagrangian dynamic model that does not ignore the inertial contributions of all the components, including body, servo arms, and motor assembly. A Linear Quadratic Regulator(LQR) is designed based on the linearized dynamics around the hover equilibrium. High-fidelity simulations taking actuator dynamics and sensor noise into account validate the proposed architecture. An Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) blends GPS, barometer, and IMU estimates

arXiv:2609.21059v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Plant growth and agricultural production form the foundation of a country's sustainable development and directly impact human livelihoods. Recent advances in frontier artificial intelligence have enabled scientific agriculture with strong potential to improve crop productivity. In this paper, we identify the importance and inherent complexity of plant shade simulation, as shading is a critical factor influencing plant growth. To advance this field and promote broader societal benefits, we focus on two main contributions. First, we introduce a comprehensive plant growth and shade dataset covering four plant species, including soybean, tomato, sugarbeet, and strawberry. The dataset includes top-down viewpoints with a supplementary light along a circular trajectory, casting dynamic shadows across multiple growth stages and diverse observation complexities. Second, we propose generative shade simulation based on diffusion models, enabling rea

arXiv:2609.21045v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Collecting real-world robot data for dexterous manipulation is costly and time-consuming. While high-fidelity physics simulators enable scalable data synthesis and policy learning, constructing deployment-ready digital twins manually remains labor-intensive, and residual visual, geometric, and dynamics gaps hinder reliable sim-to-real transfer. We present DEXTERA, an automated real-to-sim-to-real framework that transforms a single RGB image into deployable policies for dexterous manipulation across four unified stages: (1) single-image scene factorization into a static Gaussian background and interactive rigid or articulated assets with VLM-inferred physical parameters; (2) metric scene global alignment, object canonicalization, and morphology-balanced robot calibration; (3) scalable simulator task primitive construction, VR teleoperation, and object-centric trajectory synthesis; and (4) a shared multimodal policy interface supporting bot

arXiv:2609.21026v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Localizing a radio-frequency (RF) transmitter from received signals often requires a model of the environment to predict how obstacles block and reflect the signal. In many robotic applications, however, only a partial map is available, particularly when a robot localizes the source while exploring with simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). We study single-snapshot transmitter localization on such partially explored maps and compare two approaches that output a posterior over transmitter locations. The first extends a digital-twin method, which ray-traces every candidate location, to partial maps by treating unexplored space as free and training on mixed map coverage. The second, MAPLE-RF, encodes estimated path angles of arrival and signal-to-noise ratios as grid channels aligned with map knownness, occupancy, and line-of-sight visibility, and a U-Net scores all candidate positions in one pass without simulating propagation at in

arXiv:2609.21024v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper extends an existing algorithm for the first-order derivatives of rigid-body dynamics to the case of closed-chain kinematic systems modeled using constraint embed- ding. Many standard dynamics algorithms apply to both open- chain and constraint-embedded models, but existing efficient derivative methods assume joint velocity effects are locally config- uration invariant. We remove this assumption and derive adapted algorithms that extend dynamics derivatives to more general joint types, including those arising in constraint-embedded closed- chain models. Our results compare conventional pin-joint robot models with more complete actuation models that capture local closed chains. We show that the additional terms introduced by these generalizations have low computational impact when mod- eling actuation kinematics alone, but can incur higher cost when additional rigid bodies, such as motor rotors, are included in the actuation chai

arXiv:2609.21022v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models have shown strong generalization in robotic manipulation by combining semantic knowledge from pretrained vision-language models with expressive action-generation policies. Diffusion-based action generators are particularly effective for modeling temporally coherent action chunks, but these chunks are typically executed open-loop after inference. This limits responsiveness when objects move, contacts change, or the scene evolves during execution. We propose VLA-Feedback, a two-timescale architecture that combines low-frequency diffusion planning with high-frequency visual feedback. Rather than fully denoising an action chunk before execution, VLA-Feedback retains its final denoising step as a lightweight feedback interface, allowing each action to be corrected using the latest observation before it is executed. This design preserves the expressiveness of the diffusion planner while enabling real-time act

arXiv:2609.21015v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Improvements to Visual-Inertial Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (VI-SLAM) for low-cost autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are critical for transitioning advanced marine robotics from specialized labs to broader research and hobbyist applications. While high-end AUVs typically rely on expensive sensor suites - such as Doppler Velocity Logs (DVLs) and Ultra-Short Baseline (USBL) systems - this work demonstrates that robust, high-quality navigation is achievable using a sub-$10, 000(USD) platform equipped only with inexpensive consumer-grade sensors. By leveraging a similarly priced, open-source AUV, we evaluate the performance of stereo cameras, Micro-electromechanical System (MEMS)-based IMUs, and depth sensors in a fully unconstrained 6-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) underwater environment. We analyze the efficacy of off-the-shelf SLAM packages and propose optimizations for sensor fusion to mitigate the visual and physical challenges

arXiv:2609.21008v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Temporary obstacles that may block a robot's planned route create a sequential navigation problem: a robot must decide whether to wait for a blockage to clear, reroute, or acquire more information about the obstacle before acting. We formulate graph navigation among temporary obstacles as a partially observable semi-Markov decision process and introduce SPARROW, a belief-space planner built on Partially Observable Monte Carlo Planning (POMCP). SPARROW searches over traversal, observation, and finite-duration waiting actions while maintaining a particle belief over latent obstacle classes and clearance times. Class-conditioned survival models are learned online from both clearance observations and right-censored encounters where the robot reroutes before clearance is observed. A generative model simulates obstacle arrivals and clearances as each action unfolds, so the planner can account for blockages that may occur along alternative route

arXiv:2609.21005v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The rapid proliferation of unauthorized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has created a growing need for robust, jamming-resistant counter-UAV systems for perimeter defense. This paper presents \textbf{SCOUT} (Spatial Computation for Optimized UAV Tracking), a ROS-integrated onboard perception and control framework for real-time aerial defense against incoming UAVs. SCOUT performs visual detection, target association, track filtering, and control command generation directly onboard the defender UAV, without relying on external sensing infrastructure or ground-station computation. To provide stable control inputs, the perception pipeline combines TensorRT-accelerated drone detection with ByteTrack-based association and a lightweight track-retention state machine. The state machine rejects abrupt target jumps and maintains short-term target continuity during temporary detection degradation, reducing unstable control responses caused by false

arXiv:2609.21000v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Spinning frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radars have been gaining popularity in autonomous vehicle perception on account of their robustness to adverse weather conditions and 360{\deg} field of view. Recently, scanning radars have also been shown capable of generating per-azimuth Doppler velocity. In this paper, we investigate whether these Doppler velocity measurements improve spinning radar vehicle detection and tracking performance. For detection, we estimate the ego motion and use it to undo the Doppler range distortion of the radar image before passing it to a network. For tracking, we propose a new way to estimate a per-vehicle velocity and use it as a prior for the tracker's motion model. Since Doppler-enabled spinning radar data is not available in any dataset with ground-truth dynamic object labels, our first contribution is an automatic labelling pipeline that uses an ensemble of fine-tuned off-the-shelf lidar detecto

arXiv:2609.20983v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Terrain assessment is a critical capability for off-road mobile robots, enabling safe and reliable navigation through unstructured and geometrically complex environments. Conventional geometry-based terrain assessment is fast to compute but often overly conservative in unstructured environments. We present PIVOT: a Physically Informed Vision-Language Off-Road Traversability navigation system that augments conventional geometry-based planning with vision-language-model (VLM)-based semantic reasoning for field robots. To physically ground this assessment, we quantify how strongly the VLM's predicted traversal energy cost, robot vibration, and wheel slip correlate with real-world measurements and introduce a unified traversability score that weights each modality by its prediction-measurement correlation. For efficiency, we design a two-level navigation architecture that retains geometry-based planning as the nominal mode and invokes semanti