Related papers: Learning to navigate efficiently and precisely in …
Visual navigation by mobile robots is classically tackled through SLAM plus optimal planning, and more recently through end-to-end training of policies implemented as deep networks. While the former are often limited to waypoint planning,…
The research field of Embodied AI has witnessed substantial progress in visual navigation and exploration thanks to powerful simulating platforms and the availability of 3D data of indoor and photorealistic environments. These two factors…
Progress in Embodied AI has made it possible for end-to-end-trained agents to navigate in photo-realistic environments with high-level reasoning and zero-shot or language-conditioned behavior, but benchmarks are still dominated by…
Navigation and manipulation are core capabilities in Embodied AI, yet training agents with these capabilities in the real world faces high costs and time complexity. Therefore, sim-to-real transfer has emerged as a key approach, yet the…
If we want to train robots in simulation before deploying them in reality, it seems natural and almost self-evident to presume that reducing the sim2real gap involves creating simulators of increasing fidelity (since reality is what it is).…
Navigating complex indoor environments requires a deep understanding of the space the robotic agent is acting into to correctly inform the navigation process of the agent towards the goal location. In recent learning-based navigation…
We study the challenging problem of releasing a robot in a previously unseen environment, and having it follow unconstrained natural language navigation instructions. Recent work on the task of Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) has…
Recent work has presented embodied agents that can navigate to point-goal targets in novel indoor environments with near-perfect accuracy. However, these agents are equipped with idealized sensors for localization and take deterministic…
Visual navigation models based on deep learning can learn effective policies when trained on large amounts of visual observations through reinforcement learning. Unfortunately, collecting the required experience in the real world requires…
Sim-to-real gap has long posed a significant challenge for robot learning in simulation, preventing the deployment of learned models in the real world. Previous work has primarily focused on domain randomization and system identification to…
Does progress in simulation translate to progress on robots? If one method outperforms another in simulation, how likely is that trend to hold in reality on a robot? We examine this question for embodied PointGoal navigation, developing…
Simulation can and should play a critical role in the development and testing of algorithms for autonomous agents. What might reduce its impact is the ``sim2real'' gap -- the algorithm response differs between operation in simulated versus…
Vision guided navigation requires processing complex visual information to inform task-orientated decisions. Applications include autonomous robots, self-driving cars, and assistive vision for humans. A key element is the extraction and…
Reliable autonomous navigation across the unstructured terrains of distant planetary surfaces is a critical enabler for future space exploration. However, the deployment of learning-based controllers is hindered by the inherent sim-to-real…
We present Habitat, a platform for research in embodied artificial intelligence (AI). Habitat enables training embodied agents (virtual robots) in highly efficient photorealistic 3D simulation. Specifically, Habitat consists of: (i)…
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) docking in dynamic and uncertain environments is a critical challenge for underwater robotics. Reinforcement learning is a promising method for developing robust controllers, but the disparity between…
Simulations are attractive environments for training agents as they provide an abundant source of data and alleviate certain safety concerns during the training process. But the behaviours developed by agents in simulation are often…
Semantic navigation is necessary to deploy mobile robots in uncontrolled environments like our homes, schools, and hospitals. Many learning-based approaches have been proposed in response to the lack of semantic understanding of the…
It is fundamental for personal robots to reliably navigate to a specified goal. To study this task, PointGoal navigation has been introduced in simulated Embodied AI environments. Recent advances solve this PointGoal navigation task with…
We introduce ROS-X-Habitat, a software interface that bridges the AI Habitat platform for embodied learning-based agents with other robotics resources via ROS. This interface not only offers standardized communication protocols between…