News & Research

arXiv:2608.21592v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Contact-rich robotic manipulation requires an accurate model of the kinematic relationship between a robot's joints and the task features it senses. This relationship is rarely known exactly: it changes with each tool the robot picks up and shifts, sometimes almost instantaneously, as contact modes change --- especially for multi-fingered hands that make and break contact at points that are not exactly prescribed, as in full-hand grasping. This paper develops an adaptive scheme that estimates that relationship online, using only joint-angle sensing and a wrist-mounted force/torque sensor, with no exteroceptive measurement of the tool tip. We derive a provably stable kinematic update law that identifies the kinematics of an unknown tool from force/torque feedback alone, and prove stability of both the rigid case and the case with a compliance controller as an inner loop. We show that identification is confined to the directions the motion

arXiv:2608.21572v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Consider a typical test of a robot system: one observes a sequence of outcomes concerning some aspect of interest (crash or no crash, tracking error, time to completion), and reports a mean (crash risk, average error, mean time to completion) and, more importantly, an interval guaranteed to contain that mean at a prescribed confidence, referred to as a performance certificate. Given expensive real-world trials, the sample size is therefore small, and the certificate is often loose. Now consider the same procedure, except that before each real outcome is revealed, the operator ``peeks'' at a large bank of simulated results, and places a bet on where the real outcome will land. As the real outcomes settle the bets, the operator gains or loses wealth. One's ``trust'' over simulators also shifts within the portfolio. This paper develops that idea into a sim-to-real betting certificate framework with three contributions: (i) An algorithm that

arXiv:2608.21554v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Heterogeneous multi-robot service systems must assign requests to compatible robots, construct feasible schedules, and adapt as new tasks arrive online. Historical data can help anticipate future demand, but relying too heavily on inaccurate predictions can degrade performance under distribution shifts. We develop a prediction-aware adaptive rollout framework for heterogeneous multi-robot task assignment with scheduled and real-time requests. The problem is formulated as a finite-horizon stochastic dynamic program incorporating robot-task compatibility, ordered service requirements, routing constraints, service windows, and end-of-horizon return requirements. The proposed policy evaluates current assignments using sampled future request scenarios while restricting immediate commitments to requests already observed. To enable online use, the framework combines pruned candidate controls, wait actions, and an interaction-aware base policy fo

arXiv:2608.21550v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Disassembling end-of-life electric vehicle (EV) battery packs is dull and dangerous work, performed almost entirely by humans. We present GOLEM (Generalized Open Library of Embodied Modules), an end-to-end, open-source system architecture for EV battery disassembly with the Unitree H1-2 humanoid robot in which walking, manipulation, dynamic stability, navigation, and spatial memory are independent modules with abstract interfaces, so that methods are easily developed, interchanged, and compared. GOLEM is deployed as a Docker-based ROS 2 abstraction in which MuJoCo and IsaacLab digital twins expose interfaces matching the physical robot. GOLEM's composability and per-module customization enable development and demonstration of humanoid EV battery disassembly, from simulation to reality. GOLEM provides fair comparison between humanoid modules, enabling evaluation as a capability ladder, in which one module is characterized at a time and add

arXiv:2608.21533v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Robotic Fulfillment Centers (FCs) store inventory on shelves (pods) arranged in dense blocks. Retrieving a target pod that is buried deep in a block requires moving obstructing pods out of the way (i.e., digout). Multi-robot planners use parameterized cost functions to control digout behavior, producing a spectrum of strategies: at one extreme, obstructing pods are sent to other blocks (using more robots in travel lanes); at the other, pods are shuffled within the block (avoiding lane congestion but increasing extraction time). Each point on this spectrum has different downstream consequences for floor congestion and throughput. The optimal operating point depends on the specific facility configuration and shifts with operational conditions such as varying station demand and congestion patterns, making offline tuning impractical. We present an adaptive parameter tuning framework based on Extremum Seeking Control (ESC) that continuously ad

arXiv:2608.21420v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Thematic analysis (TA) has long been regarded as an inherently human, reflexive, and interpretive process. However, the extent to which LLM-generated TA is appropriate for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research involving vulnerable populations remains largely unexamined and raises critical questions about validity and ethics, particularly in sensitive research contexts. This paper presents a comparative study of human- and LLM-generated TA in an HRI context with a focus on vulnerable populations. We evaluate both objective and semantic agreement between human- and LLMgenerated themes, and examine whether observed divergences reflect systematic interpretive patterns with ethical significance. Our analysis investigates whether LLM-generated TA risks marginalising or misrepresenting the experiences of vulnerable participants, with implications for researchers employing LLM-assisted TA in HRI.

arXiv:2608.21416v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Embodied artificial intelligence (AI) must be tested in the clinical environments where it will operate, but building realistic, robot-testable settings is costly and difficult to scale. Here we show that routine clinic images can be transformed into operational digital twins for task-based evaluation of embodied AI. Using 39 ophthalmic clinic scenes, we converted single photographs into editable, simulator-ready environments and assessed reconstruction quality, room-scale geometry, mesh grounding, multi-robot feasibility, perturbation sensitivity and closed-loop policy performance. The reconstructed scenes preserved workspace structure, while local editing enabled controlled device reconfiguration. Device meshes, collision proxies and semantic anchors converted visual reconstructions into contact-aware simulation scenes. Across three robot embodiments, shared task targets showed different patterns of reachability and contact feasibility.

arXiv:2608.21410v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Robots are increasingly entering everyday environments where privacy is shaped not only by data practices, but also by spatial, bodily, social, and relational boundaries. Their embodied capabilities allow them to reshape these boundaries through situated action, challenging privacy framings centered on data flows, interface settings, or one-time consent. Prior work has examined robot privacy through sensing, data collection, telepresence, transparency, consent, bystander awareness, and multi-stakeholder governance. Building on this work, we propose embodied boundary privacy as a capability-by-context framing for examining how physically present robots may reshape privacy boundaries in situated interaction. Specifically, this framing organizes privacy risks across seven robot capabilities and five deployment contexts, asking how embodied capabilities enable boundary crossings and how situated contexts shape who is affected, how these cross

arXiv:2608.21407v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Vision-language-action (VLA) models face a crucial tradeoff between their task success rate and the policy-call frequency. Executing a single action per inference ($N=1$) enables accurate robot control but comes at the cost of huge compute time overheads, making real-time implementation infeasible. On the other hand, executing longer action horizons before replanning ($N\gg1$) reduces compute complexity, but inevitably degrades the system's success rate. In order to improve the VLA accuracy-complexity tradeoff, this paper investigates Mamba's selective state-space modeling as an alternative to causal self-attention within the action expert of the popular SmolVLA model, widely used as a reference model for its highly accurate yet low complexity nature. We evaluate both the Mamba- and Transformer-based experts on the widely-adopted LIBERO benchmark suites across three execution horizons $N\!\in\!\{1,25,50\}$, respectively corresponding to h

arXiv:2608.21402v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: World action models (WAMs) jointly denoise future video frames and robot actions, and the video prior is expected to generalize their control. Camera viewpoint change remains one of their hardest perturbation axes. We study a question specific to this model class: when training with same-state cross-view image pairs, on which output coordinates should a consistency loss be imposed? The WAM denoising target mixes view-covariant coordinates, namely the predicted future scene, with view-invariant coordinates, namely the action chunk, future proprioception, and value. We show that consistency applied to the covariant block is provably harmful, shrinking legitimate view-specific content to a fraction $1/(1+4\lambda)$ of its true value, and we verify this shrinkage law in controlled experiments. Selective cross-view consistency (SCVC) therefore constrains only the invariant block, requires no camera labels, extrinsics, depth, or view synthesis

arXiv:2608.21395v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: NoMaD [31] is a learned vision-navigation policy that unifies goal-conditioned navigation and exploration in a single goal-masked diffusion policy. In an unseen environment, however - where neither a goal image nor a topological map is available - it can only explore undirectedly, wandering without global awareness. We present ODG-NoMaD, which gives NoMaD's exploration mode a global sense of where to proceed, without retraining the policy. An overhead depth camera is used once on deployment to build an occupancy map and plan a global path, which is segmented to yield a desired heading; a per-frame traversability map from the robot's onboard depth then refines this into a collision-free direction. The gradient of a cosine direction cost is injected into the final denoising steps, rotating sampled trajectories toward this direction while preserving the multimodality of exploration. In simulated office environments with and without random ob

arXiv:2608.21388v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reliable and continuous human tracking is essential for natural human-robot interaction, particularly for companion robots. However, many existing approaches rely on wearable tags or fixed cameras with limited fields of view, which reduces system flexibility and often causes tracking failures when the target moves outside the sensing range. In this paper, we present a human tracking approach based on a gimbal-mounted camera integrated into a mobile robot. By actively controlling the gimbal mechanism, the camera can dynamically adjust its viewing direction to maintain the target within the field of view, even under substantial relative motion between the robot and the human. Furthermore, a continual learning strategy is applied to the person re-identification (ReID) task to adapt to changes in appearance and environmental conditions during long-term tracking. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system significantly improves

arXiv:2608.21387v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Service robots are increasingly deployed in elderly-care facilities to alleviate caregiver workload and enhance the quality of daily care. However, most existing studies focus on isolated service functions and lack integrated capabilities for continuous companionship, natural interaction, and safety monitoring. In this paper, we present an intelligent companion robot system that unifies active visual human-following, real-time LLM-driven speech interaction for intent understanding and task execution, and VLM-based safety monitoring for fall detection and abnormal posture assessment. The perception layer ensures robust human tracking and uses an active gimbal to maintain the user in view during occlusions or abrupt movements. At the interaction layer, a Large Language Model interprets spoken requests and maps them to robot actions, enabling escorting and semantic navigation. Simultaneously, a VLM-based safety agent continuously analyzes vi

arXiv:2608.21380v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: With the increased adoption of robotic agents operating in human environments by scanning and sharing 3D representations (e.g., for fleet learning, cloud-based planning, or collaborative mapping), collected point clouds reveal not just the objects in a scene but also sensitive spatial context, such as room function or information that occupants never consented to disclose. Traditional point cloud encoders offer no principled control over this: either all is preserved, or none. Hence, we introduce RoboShape, an information theory guided compression head following the frozen {\tt Sonata} encoder. We project voxel-level embeddings using the Donsker-Varadhan formulation of mutual information (MI). Specifically, we maximize the MI between embeddings and object-level understanding while minimizing it for private attributes. RoboShape leads to 87.5\% smaller embeddings that retain 98.7\% of object classification utility while collapsing sensitiv

arXiv:2506.13583v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents often exhibit learning behaviors that are not intuitively interpretable by human observers, which can result in suboptimal feedback in collaborative teaching settings. Yet, how humans perceive and interpret RL agent's learning behavior is largely unknown. In a bottom-up approach with two experiments, this work provides a data-driven understanding of the factors of human observers' understanding of the agent's learning process. A novel, observation-based paradigm to directly assess human inferences about agent learning was developed. In an exploratory interview study (\textit{N}=9), we identify four core themes in human interpretations: Agent Goals, Knowledge, Decision Making, and Learning Mechanisms. A second confirmatory study (\textit{N}=34) applied an expanded version of the paradigm across two tasks (navigation/manipulation) and two RL algorithms (tabular/function approximation). Analyses o