Research
Frontier robotics research: arXiv cs.RO papers, embodied AI, VLA models, manipulation, navigation and learning systems.
Frontier robotics research: arXiv cs.RO papers, embodied AI, VLA models, manipulation, navigation and learning systems.
Latest in Research
4787 storiesOpenRC: An Open-Source Robotic Colonoscopy Framework for Multimodal Data Acquisition and Autonomy Research
arXiv:2604.03781v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Colorectal cancer screening critically depends on colonoscopy, yet existing platforms offer limited support …
Attention from Action, for Action: Emergent Visual Bottlenecks for Policy Learning
arXiv:2608.13422v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Visual bottlenecks that focus policy inputs on regions of interest (ROIs) can improve data-efficient visuomotor …
AMR-Pose: An Active LED Marker-Based Relative Pose Estimation Framework With Probabilistic Switching PnP for Cooperative AUVs
arXiv:2608.12866v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reliable relative pose estimation between autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) is critical for cooperative ocea…
Mobile manipulators and humanoids: The future of robotics
Humanoid robotics and software startups have emerged weekly for the past year, capturing media attention and billions of dollars in investment. While some human…
Energy-Aware Wind-Resilient Routing for Truck-Assisted Multi-UAV Delivery under Wind Uncertainty
arXiv:2608.11641v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Energy feasibility under wind uncertainty is a critical safety issue for low-altitude air-ground delivery. In …
Towards Tighter Convex Relaxation of Mixed-Integer Programs: Leveraging Logic Network Flow for Task and Motion Planning
arXiv:2509.24235v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: This paper proposes an optimization-based task and motion planning framework, named "Logic Network Flow," th…
Robotic Manipulation is Vision-to-Geometry Mapping: Vision-Geometry Backbones over Language and Video Models
arXiv:2604.12908v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: At its core, robotic manipulation is a problem of vision-to-geometry mapping ($f(v) \rightarrow G$). Physica…
TMRL: Diffusion Timestep-Modulated Pretraining Enables Exploration for Efficient Policy Finetuning
arXiv:2605.12236v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Fine-tuning pre-trained robot policies with reinforcement learning (RL) often inherits the bottlenecks intro…
Decoupled Quadratic Kalman Filter for Elliptical Extended Object Tracking with Log-normal Axis Modeling
arXiv:2512.14426v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Extended object tracking involves estimating both the physical extent and kinematic parameters of a ta…
Inverse-dynamics observer design for a linear single-track vehicle model with distributed tire dynamics
arXiv:2603.07499v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Accurate estimation of the vehicle's sideslip angle and tire forces is essential for enhancing safety …
Early Warning Signals for OpenVLA Failure under Visual Distribution Shift
arXiv:2606.29699v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Vision Language Action models combine perception, language grounding, and control in a single policy, but thei…
Top-down Traffic Scenario Generation via Joint Initial-Goal Diffusion and Trajectory Infilling
arXiv:2608.11407v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Robust traffic simulators are crucial for developing and testing autonomous vehicles to reduce the costly, labor…
From Self-Normal-Positioning to Omni-Directional Tracking: Real-Time Surface Modeling Enabled Probe Tilt Control for Robotic Ultrasound Imaging
arXiv:2608.11409v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Ultrasound (US) provides real-time, radiation-free imaging, but the image quality depends strongly on how the pr…
Locomotion Variability and User Experience in Smart Wheelchair Human-Robot Interaction
arXiv:2608.11417v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Human movement is inherently variable, with variability structured according to task relevance: movements are ty…
Koopman Representation of Nonlinear Virtual Environments in Kinesthetic Haptic Systems
arXiv:2608.11461v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Rendering haptic feedback with nonlinear virtual environments (VEs) is important in many applications that requi…
Repurposing RGB-based Foundation Model for Depth Estimation on Thermal Images Using Hierarchical Supervision
arXiv:2608.11564v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Depth estimation from thermal images is highly valuable for robotic applications in adverse conditions, such a…
Towards the Harness of Embodied Agents
arXiv:2608.11246v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The success of coding agents has established the harness as a paradigm: what an agent achieves depends not on …
LiDAR-based 3D Change Detection at City Scale
arXiv:2510.21112v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: High-definition 3D city maps enable city planning and change detection, which is essential for municip…
Utilizing Inpainting for Keypoint Detection for Vision-Based Control of Robotic Manipulators
arXiv:2604.13309v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We present a novel visual servoing framework for controlling a robotic manipulator in configuration space us…
RLinf-VLA: A Unified and Efficient Framework for Reinforcement Learning of Vision-Language-Action Models
arXiv:2510.06710v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Recent studies have demonstrated the potential of reinforcement learning (RL) to improve the task performanc…
FEWT: Frequency-Enhanced Wavelet-based Transformer for Multimodal Wheeled Bimanual Manipulation
arXiv:2509.11109v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Embodied intelligence bridges the physical world and information spaces, with robots demonstrating immense p…
First-order friction models with bristle dynamics: lumped and distributed formulations
arXiv:2602.09429v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Dynamic models, particularly rate-dependent models, have proven effective in capturing the key phenome…
RoboHarness: A Memory-Augmented Policy Harness for Vision-Language-Action Model Robustness via In-Context Adaptation
arXiv:2603.24060v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Despite the promise of Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models as generalist robotic controllers, their robustne…
A Generalized Theory of Load Distribution in Redundantly-actuated Robotic Systems
arXiv:2603.11431v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: This paper presents a generalized theory which describes how applied loads are distributed within rigid bodi…
UniGround: Universal 3D Visual Grounding via Training-Free Scene Parsing
arXiv:2603.08131v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: 3D Visual Grounding (3DVG) localizes objects from natural-language descriptions in 3D scenes and is fundamen…
Keep the Future, Drop the Rollout: RIFT for World Action Models
arXiv:2608.11521v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: World action models (WAMs) condition robot actions on predicted futures, but iterative video rollout increases d…
IoT-Enabled Autonomous Maritime Navigation in Smart Ports: A Curriculum-Guided Shared Policy Learning Framework
arXiv:2608.11597v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As smart port infrastructures increasingly rely on autonomous maritime devices enabled by the Internet of Things…
ContactIPM: A Structure-Exploiting Interior-Point Solver for Contact-Implicit Trajectory Optimization
arXiv:2608.11731v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Contact-implicit trajectory optimization avoids prescribing contact sequences, but yields mathematical programs …
RoadWeaver: Large-Scale Lane-Level HD Map Generation from Scratch for Autonomous Driving Simulation
arXiv:2608.11580v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Autonomous driving simulation requires diverse and scalable lane-level HD maps to support long-horizon evaluatio…
Video2Track: From Real-World Interaction Videos to Steerable Adversarial Closed-Track Testing for Automated Driving Systems
arXiv:2608.11592v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Closed-track testing plays a fundamental role in the verification and validation of automated driving systems (A…