DAWN (Denoising and Alignment in World models for Noise-robustness) is a perception framework that builds noise robustness directly into a world model for vision-based legged locomotion. It achieves this by feeding noisy depth to the encoder while reconstructing clean depth, and by using contrastive learning to align latent states of noisy and clean depth. The method requires no manual filter tuning, incurs no extra inference cost, and enables zero‑shot quadruped parkour on a Unitree Go1, successfully traversing stairs, gaps, and steps from raw depth observations.
By Yohan Choi, Min-Jun Kim, Jin-Sung Kim, Yong-Jae Kim, Youn-Hee Han
DAVIO is a dense monocular‑inertial SLAM system that leverages a single multi‑view depth model (Depth Anything 3) for both initialization and mapping. It starts up quickly by solving a feature‑free linear system from a five‑image window and IMU pre‑integration, then uses a VIO filter whose metric poses condition the depth model during tracking. The system corrects residual scale along viewing rays, preserves metric baselines, and refines the map with a gravity‑preserving sub‑map graph, achieving earlier start‑up, lower localization error, and more accurate dense maps than state‑of‑the‑art feed‑forward mappers on both EuRoC and building‑scale ORI datasets.
By Jaafar Mahmoud, Arthur Movsesyan, Mikhail Iumanov, Sergey Kolyubin
arXiv:2607. 13579v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Enabling quadrupedal robots to traverse complex terrains-from rugged outdoor environments to urban landscapes-requires seamless integration of multiple motor skills, smooth transitions between gaits, and high-speed perceptive locomotion using only onboard sensors.
By Jun-Gill Kang, Jaehyun Park, Tae-Gyu Song, Joon-Ha Kim, Seungwoo Hong, Hae-Won Park
arXiv:2607. 07370v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In embodied intelligence systems, the motion controller serves as the critical bridge between semantic reasoning and physical execution.
By Xufeng Zhao, Fuzhi Yang, Jianhui Chen, Li Gao, Zhang Meng, Jie Gao, Yao Zheng, Wenyu Liu, Menglin Yang, Minqi Gu, Yaru Zhao, Honglin Han, Shihui Su, Zixiao Tang, Liu Liu, Mu Xu, Yang Cai, Wenbin Tang
DefVINS is a visual‑inertial odometry pipeline tailored for deformable scenes, breaking the rigidity assumption of traditional VIO. It decomposes the odometry state into a rigid, IMU‑anchored component and a non‑rigid scene warp using an embedded deformation graph. The authors also introduce VIMandala, the first real‑world benchmark with ground‑truth camera poses for deformable VIO, and extend the synthetic Drunkard’s benchmark with inertial data, demonstrating that DefVINS outperforms both rigid and non‑rigid baselines.
By Samuel Cerezo, Javier Civera
arXiv:2606. 15896v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Learning-based quadrupedal locomotion typically relies on complex reward formulations that entangle task specification, operational limits, gait preference, and terrain adaptation within a single optimization objective.
By Loukas Kordos, Leonard T. Franz, Simon Rappenecker, Oliver Hausdoerfer, Angela P. Schoellig, Pavel Kolev, Georg Martius
The paper introduces a minimalist visual-inertial odometry system that uses only four downward-facing photodiodes with optical Gabor masks and an IMU to estimate motion for differential-drive robots. By jointly optimizing mask parameters and a Temporal Convolutional Network in a physically-grounded simulator, the model decodes speed from the photodiode signals and combines it with IMU angular speed to produce a continuous planar trajectory. Experiments on a prototype robot across indoor and outdoor terrains show that the system closely follows reference trajectories without real-world fine-tuning.
By Francesco Pasti, Jeremy Klotz, Nicola Bellotto, Shree K. Nayar
The paper introduces CalfVO, a monocular visual odometry system that operates without camera intrinsics, test‑time optimization, bundle adjustment, or loop closure. Using a transformer, it predicts relative poses with separate rotation and translation confidences over overlapping image windows, then aggregates these predictions via a confidence‑weighted module to produce a single trajectory. CalfVO achieves the highest accuracy among calibration‑free methods across five benchmarks and runs at 53 FPS, outperforming all baselines.
By Vladimir Yugay, Duy-Kien Nguyen, Theo Gevers, Cees G. M. Snoek, Martin R. Oswald
The paper introduces a reliability-regulated trajectory optimization framework for progressive COLMAP‑free 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS). It uses a self‑supervised bidirectional cycle‑consistency mechanism to control camera trajectory estimation through forward motion propagation and retrospective trajectory correction, thereby reducing error compounding without external priors. Experiments on Tanks and Temples and CO3D‑V2 demonstrate improved camera trajectory accuracy and novel‑view rendering quality compared to existing unposed baselines.
By Zijian Wu, Jinliang Wang, Zidian Lin, Ying Song, Ziqian Lu, Hanjie Ma, Zhen Ye, Mingfeng Jiang
arXiv:2609.17387v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Real-time dense SLAM is a core capability for robotics applications that require robust localization and high- quality mapping in dynamic or fast-chang...
By Yongqi Mao, Hao Shi, Yufan Zhang, Zhonghua Yi, Xiangfei Guo, Kaiwei Wang
arXiv:2608.23290v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Accurate visual localization on robotic and wearable platforms remains challenging in dense urban environments. Existing methodologies typically rely o...
By Antoni Valls, Jordi Sanchez-Riera
CGS‑SLAM is a hybrid decentralized/centralized SLAM system that enables multi‑agent 3D Gaussian Splatting reconstruction using only RGB images and inertial data. Each agent locally tracks motion with inertial priors, builds a scaled map via a monocular depth estimator, and shares keyframe encodings to facilitate dynamic keyframing and submap alignment. A central server then aligns submaps with a view‑alignment model, keeping communication costs low while achieving competitive tracking, higher rendering quality, and accurate submap alignment in GNSS‑denied environments.
By Jean-Daniel de Ambrogi, Aladine Chetouani, Vincent Nguyen, Aur\'elien Chateigner