Related papers: Wait, That Feels Familiar: Learning to Extrapolate…
We are interested in the design of autonomous robot behaviors that learn the preferences of users over continued interactions, with the goal of efficiently executing navigation behaviors in a way that the user expects. In this paper, we…
Recent advances in the field of machine learning have led to new ways for mobile robots to acquire advanced navigational capabilities. However, these learning-based methods raise the possibility that learned navigation behaviors may not…
Terrain awareness, i.e., the ability to identify and distinguish different types of terrain, is a critical ability that robots must have to succeed at autonomous off-road navigation. Current approaches that provide robots with this…
Mobile robots should be capable of planning cost-efficient paths for autonomous navigation. Typically, the terrain and robot properties are subject to variations. For instance, properties of the terrain such as friction may vary across…
Existing autonomous robot navigation systems allow robots to move from one point to another in a collision-free manner. However, when facing new environments, these systems generally require re-tuning by expert roboticists with a good…
Preference-based learning aims to align robot task objectives with human values. One of the most common methods to infer human preferences is by pairwise comparisons of robot task trajectories. Traditional comparison-based preference…
When humans control drones, cars, and robots, we often have some preconceived notion of how our inputs should make the system behave. Existing approaches to teleoperation typically assume a one-size-fits-all approach, where the designers…
Autonomous mobile robots deployed in outdoor environments must reason about different types of terrain for both safety (e.g., prefer dirt over mud) and deployer preferences (e.g., prefer dirt path over flower beds). Most existing solutions…
In autonomous robot navigation, terrain cost assignment is typically performed using a semantics-based paradigm in which terrain is first labeled using a pre-trained semantic classifier and costs are then assigned according to a…
Autonomous off-road navigation requires robots to estimate terrain traversability from onboard sensors and plan motion accordingly. Conventional approaches typically rely on sampling-based planners such as MPPI to generate short-term…
In autonomous navigation settings, several quantities can be subject to variations. Terrain properties such as friction coefficients may vary over time depending on the location of the robot. Also, the dynamics of the robot may change due…
We consider the problem of learning preferences over trajectories for mobile manipulators such as personal robots and assembly line robots. The preferences we learn are more intricate than simple geometric constraints on trajectories; they…
We present a visual and inertial-based terrain classification network (VINet) for robotic navigation over different traversable surfaces. We use a novel navigation-based labeling scheme for terrain classification and generalization on…
Robot motion planning often requires finding trajectories that balance different user intents, or preferences. One of these preferences is usually arrival at the goal, while another might be obstacle avoidance. Here, we formalize these, and…
As robots across domains start collaborating with humans in shared environments, algorithms that enable them to reason over human intent are important to achieve safe interplay. In our work, we study human intent through the problem of…
When operating in service of people, robots need to optimize rewards aligned with end-user preferences. Since robots will rely on raw perceptual inputs like RGB images, their rewards will inevitably use visual representations. Recently…
Socially aware robot navigation, where a robot is required to optimize its trajectory to maintain comfortable and compliant spatial interactions with humans in addition to reaching its goal without collisions, is a fundamental yet…
Robots operating in human-shared environments must not only achieve task-level navigation objectives such as safety and efficiency, but also adapt their behavior to human preferences. However, as human preferences are typically expressed in…
Preference learning has long been studied in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in order to adapt robot behavior to specific user needs and desires. Typically, human preferences are modeled as a scalar function; however, such a formulation…
Autonomous navigation in extreme mountainous terrains poses challenges due to the presence of mobility-stressing elements and undulating surfaces, making it particularly difficult compared to conventional off-road driving scenarios. In such…