arXiv Machine Learning

Bayesian Optimization for Learning Nonlinear MPC in Autonomous Agent Navigation

arXiv:2606. 14763v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Real-time autonomous navigation in dynamic, unknown environments remains a fundamental challenge for mobile robotics.

arXiv AI
Sep 17

Language-Guided Terrain-Adaptive Neural MPC for Autonomous Traversal of Articulated Tracked Robots

The paper introduces ASTRIL-MPC, a language‑guided neural model predictive control framework that enables articulated tracked robots to navigate complex, contact‑rich urban environments such as stairwells and cluttered interiors. By combining a learned kinematics model that predicts short‑horizon state changes, an optimization‑based planner with multi‑objective costs, and a large language model that safely updates control weights, the system achieves up to 71% better traversal quality than non‑adaptive NMPC and 67% better than a PPO baseline, while eliminating collision impacts during descent. Real‑robot trials over four indoor obstacles confirm the method’s transferability to physical contact‑rich traversal.

By Zhenfeng Gan, Yanbo Chen, Lirong Che, Yongyi Ma, Rongkai Zhu, Xueqian Wang
arXiv Machine Learning
1d ago

Training-Free Diffusion Planning with Analytical Local Scores

The paper presents a training-free diffusion-based motion planner that replaces learned global trajectory scores with analytical local scores derived from obstacle, smoothness, velocity, and inter-agent feasibility terms. By reconstructing trajectory scores through local interactions between neighboring waypoints and nearby constraints, the method decomposes the denoising process while preserving the optimization structure of classical trajectory methods. Experiments demonstrate that this approach generates smooth, feasible trajectories for large multi-agent tasks in complex environments quickly, outperforming learning-based and optimization baselines without requiring training data.

By Michael Y. Fatemi, Jinhao Liang, Ferdinando Fioretto
arXiv AI
Aug 18

LAPF: LLM-Agent-Based Path Finder Using the UAVScenes Dataset

arXiv:2608. 15175v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly deployed for autonomous navigation in complex outdoor environments, where dynamic conditions and mission requirements require intelligent adaptive decision-making.

By Yousef Emami, Mohammadhossein Homaei, Hao Zhou, Miguel Guti\'errez Gait\'an, Atefeh Hajijamali Arani, Rui Zhang
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 28

Diffusion Policies for Short-Horizon Planning in Robot Crowd Navigation

The paper introduces Planning Diffusion Policy Optimization (PDPO), an offline‑to‑online reinforcement‑learning framework that employs a diffusion policy to produce short‑horizon action chunks for robot crowd navigation. PDPO is pretrained on collision‑avoidance demonstrations and fine‑tuned online with PPO, generating five‑step action sequences applied in a receding‑horizon manner. The authors also identify a benchmark artifact where agents can leave the valid domain without explicit boundary constraints, and they mitigate this by treating boundary violations as collisions, leading to improved success rates over strong baselines.

By Wendong Li, Jochen Garcke
arXiv AI
Jun 3

AirDreamer: Generalist Drone Navigation with World Models

arXiv:2606. 03252v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Navigating a drone in unseen and cluttered environments requires reliable generalization to unseen scene layouts and understanding of environmental structure relative to the robot's capabilities.

By Zian Liu, Andong Yang, Chunkai Yang, Ruidong An, Chao Gao, Guyue Zhou