Related papers: Wait, That Feels Familiar: Learning to Extrapolate…

Terrain adaptation is an essential capability for a ground robot to effectively traverse unstructured off-road terrain in real-world field environments such as forests. However, the expected robot behaviors generated by terrain adaptation…

We present TerraPN, a novel method that learns the surface properties (traction, bumpiness, deformability, etc.) of complex outdoor terrains directly from robot-terrain interactions through self-supervised learning, and uses it for…

In preference-based Reinforcement Learning (RL), obtaining a large number of preference labels are both time-consuming and costly. Furthermore, the queried human preferences cannot be utilized for the new tasks. In this paper, we propose…

We study active preference learning as a framework for intuitively specifying the behaviour of autonomous robots. In active preference learning, a user chooses the preferred behaviour from a set of alternatives, from which the robot learns…

Identifying the physical properties of the surrounding environment is essential for robotic locomotion and navigation to deal with non-geometric hazards, such as slippery and deformable terrains. It would be of great benefit for robots to…

As a robot's operational environment and tasks to perform within it grow in complexity, the explicit specification and balancing of optimization objectives to achieve a preferred behavior profile moves increasingly farther out of reach.…

While current autonomous navigation systems allow robots to successfully drive themselves from one point to another in specific environments, they typically require extensive manual parameter re-tuning by human robotics experts in order to…

Animals in nature combine multiple modalities, such as sight and feel, to perceive terrain and develop an understanding of how to walk on uneven terrain in a stable manner. Similarly, legged robots need to develop their ability to stably…

Understanding human perceptions of robot performance is crucial for designing socially intelligent robots that can adapt to human expectations. Current approaches often rely on surveys, which can disrupt ongoing human-robot interactions. As…

Aerial outdoor semantic navigation requires robots to explore large, unstructured environments to locate target objects. Recent advances in semantic navigation have demonstrated open-set object-goal navigation in indoor settings, but these…

A variety of autonomous navigation algorithms exist that allow robots to move around in a safe and fast manner. However, many of these algorithms require parameter re-tuning when facing new environments. In this paper, we propose PTDRL, a…

Preference-aligned robot navigation in human environments is typically achieved through learning-based approaches, utilizing user feedback or demonstrations for personalization. However, personal preferences are subject to change and might…

Navigation is one of the most heavily studied problems in robotics, and is conventionally approached as a geometric mapping and planning problem. However, real-world navigation presents a complex set of physical challenges that defies…

Mutual adaptation can significantly enhance overall task performance in human-robot co-transportation by integrating both the robot's and human's understanding of the environment. While human modeling helps capture humans' subjective…

Humanoid robots are engineered to navigate terrains akin to those encountered by humans, which necessitates human-like locomotion and perceptual abilities. Currently, the most reliable controllers for humanoid motion rely exclusively on…

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…

We investigate a learning decision support system for vehicle routing, where the routing engine learns implicit preferences that human planners have when manually creating route plans (or routings). The goal is to use these learned…

Classical navigation systems typically operate using a fixed set of hand-picked parameters (e.g. maximum speed, sampling rate, inflation radius, etc.) and require heavy expert re-tuning in order to work in new environments. To mitigate this…

Autonomous mobile robots operating in remote, unstructured environments must adapt to new, unpredictable terrains that can change rapidly during operation. In such scenarios, a critical challenge becomes estimating the robot's dynamics on…

A robot navigating an outdoor environment with no prior knowledge of the space must rely on its local sensing to perceive its surroundings and plan. This can come in the form of a local metric map or local policy with some fixed horizon.…