Related papers: ViNL: Visual Navigation and Locomotion Over Obstac…
Parkour poses a significant challenge for legged robots, requiring navigation through complex environments with agility and precision based on limited sensory inputs. In this work, we introduce a novel method for training end-to-end visual…
An elusive goal in navigation research is to build an intelligent agent that can understand multimodal instructions including natural language and image, and perform useful navigation. To achieve this, we study a widely useful category of…
Hexapod robots are potentially suitable for carrying out tasks in cluttered environments since they are stable, compact, and light weight. They also have multi-joint legs and variable height bodies that make them good candidates for tasks…
Service robots in human-centered environments such as hospitals, office buildings, and long-term care homes need to navigate while adhering to social norms to ensure the safety and comfortability of the people they are sharing the space…
Zero-shot object navigation is a challenging task for home-assistance robots. This task emphasizes visual grounding, commonsense inference and locomotion abilities, where the first two are inherent in foundation models. But for the…
Robotic collaborative carrying could greatly benefit human activities like warehouse and construction site management. However, coordinating the simultaneous motion of multiple robots represents a significant challenge. Existing works…
While Vision-Language Models (VLMs) are set to transform robotic navigation, existing methods often underutilize their reasoning capabilities. To unlock the full potential of VLMs in robotics, we shift their role from passive observers to…
Quadrupedal robots have demonstrated remarkable agility and robustness in traversing complex terrains. However, they struggle with dynamic object interactions, where contact must be precisely sensed and controlled. To bridge this gap, we…
To proactively navigate and traverse various terrains, active use of visual perception becomes indispensable. We aim to investigate the feasibility and performance of using sparse visual observations to achieve perceptual locomotion over a…
Autonomous robots must navigate reliably in unknown environments even under compromised exteroceptive perception, or perception failures. Such failures often occur when harsh environments lead to degraded sensing, or when the perception…
Visual target navigation in unknown environments is a crucial problem in robotics. Despite extensive investigation of classical and learning-based approaches in the past, robots lack common-sense knowledge about household objects and…
We present a novel autonomous robot navigation algorithm for outdoor environments that is capable of handling diverse terrain traversability conditions. Our approach, VLM-GroNav, uses vision-language models (VLMs) and integrates them with…
Legged robot locomotion on sand slopes is challenging due to the complex dynamics of granular media and how the lack of solid surfaces can hinder locomotion. A promising strategy, inspired by ghost crabs and other organisms in nature, is to…
Visual target navigation is a critical capability for autonomous robots operating in unknown environments, particularly in human-robot interaction scenarios. While classical and learning-based methods have shown promise, most existing…
Quadruped robots demonstrate exceptional potential for navigating complex terrain in critical applications such as search and rescue missions and infrastructure inspection However autonomous traversal of confined 3D environments including…
This paper presents a safety-critical locomotion control framework for quadrupedal robots. Our goal is to enable quadrupedal robots to safely navigate in cluttered environments. To tackle this, we introduce exponential Discrete Control…
Autonomous robotic exploration of unknown and hazardous environments, a long-standing challenge, can be significantly improved by leveraging the advanced reasoning of Vision-Language Models (VLMs). We introduce a novel exploration pipeline…
Humans can flexibly interpret and compose different goal specifications, such as language instructions, spatial coordinates, or visual references, when navigating to a destination. In contrast, most existing robotic navigation policies are…
Natural environments such as forests and grasslands are challenging for robotic navigation because of the false perception of rigid obstacles from high grass, twigs, or bushes. In this work, we present Wild Visual Navigation (WVN), an…
Vision-Language Models (VLMs) have shown remarkable progress in Vision-Language Navigation (VLN), offering new possibilities for navigation decision-making that could benefit both robotic platforms and human users. However, real-world…