Related papers: ProNav: Proprioceptive Traversability Estimation f…
Accurate traversability estimation is essential for safe and effective navigation of outdoor robots operating in complex environments. This paper introduces a novel experience-based method that allows robots to autonomously learn which…
Being able to estimate the traversability of the area surrounding a mobile robot is a fundamental task in the design of a navigation algorithm. However, the task is often complex, since it requires evaluating distances from obstacles, type…
Legged robot navigation in unstructured and slippery terrains depends heavily on the ability to accurately identify the quality of contact between the robot's feet and the ground. Contact state estimation is regarded as a challenging…
The outdoor navigation capabilities of ground robots have improved significantly in recent years, opening up new potential applications in a variety of settings. Cost-based representations of the environment are frequently used in the path…
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…
Muddy terrains present significant challenges for terrestrial robots, as subtle changes in composition and water content can lead to large variations in substrate strength and force responses, causing the robot to slip or get stuck. This…
Effective robot navigation in unseen environments is a challenging task that requires precise control actions at high frequencies. Recent advances have framed it as an image-goal-conditioned control problem, where the robot generates…
Safe and high-speed navigation is a key enabling capability for real world deployment of robotic systems. A significant limitation of existing approaches is the computational bottleneck associated with explicit mapping and the limited field…
In a typical path planning pipeline for a ground robot, we build a map (e.g., an occupancy grid) of the environment as the robot moves around. While navigating indoors, a ground robot's knowledge about the environment may be limited due to…
Dynamic locomotion of legged robots is a critical yet challenging topic in expanding the operational range of mobile robots. It requires precise planning when possible footholds are sparse, robustness against uncertainties and disturbances,…
Understanding how humans leverage prior knowledge to navigate unseen environments while making exploratory decisions is essential for developing autonomous robots with similar abilities. In this work, we propose ForesightNav, a novel…
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 propose Wild Visual Navigation (WVN), an…
We present ProxEmo, a novel end-to-end emotion prediction algorithm for socially aware robot navigation among pedestrians. Our approach predicts the perceived emotions of a pedestrian from walking gaits, which is then used for…
We propose a novel method for autonomous legged robot navigation in densely vegetated environments with a variety of pliable/traversable and non-pliable/untraversable vegetation. We present a novel few-shot learning classifier that can be…
In this study, we address the off-road traversability estimation problem, that predicts areas where a robot can navigate in off-road environments. An off-road environment is an unstructured environment comprising a combination of…
Entanglements like vines and branches in natural settings or cords and pipes in human spaces prevent mobile robots from accessing many environments. Legged robots should be effective in these settings, and more so than wheeled or tracked…
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…
Accurate traversability estimation using an online dense terrain map is crucial for safe navigation in challenging environments like construction and disaster areas. However, traversability estimation for legged robots on rough terrains…
The exceptional mobility and long endurance of air-ground robots are raising interest in their usage to navigate complex environments (e.g., forests and large buildings). However, such environments often contain occluded and unknown…
Mobile robots operating in unknown urban environments encounter a wide range of complex terrains to which they must adapt their planned trajectory for safe and efficient navigation. Most existing approaches utilize supervised learning to…