arXiv AI
Sep 23

SE(3) Neural Potential Fields for 6-DoF Trajectory Planning Directly from Images Without Explicit 3D Reconstruction

The paper introduces SE(3) neural potential fields that learn collision‑free 6‑DoF trajectory planning directly from posed RGB images, eliminating the need for explicit 3D reconstruction. By supervising the field with a navigation function based on geodesic distances to the grasp, the method avoids the classic pitfalls of artificial potential fields, achieving near‑goal convergence within 3 cm from any start and producing collision‑free paths on a UR10 robot. Experiments on two tabletop scenes show significant improvements in clearance, reduced arm‑link contacts, and a 90 % grasp success rate, while planning time drops from over a minute to about 2 seconds compared to RRT* on a reconstructed scene.

By Jeffrey Eiyike, Masoud Ataei, Elvis Gyaase, Vikas Dhiman
arXiv AI
Jul 21

Learning Adaptive Safety Margins for Visual Navigation

arXiv:2607. 18200v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Robots in cluttered indoor spaces often fail not because they cannot generate collision-free paths, but because a fixed safety margin is mis-calibrated: conservative margins cause detours and timeouts, while permissive margins lead to near-boundary shortcuts under perception bias.

By Junyi Hu, Shuaihang Yuan, Geeta Chandra Raju Bethala, Anthony Tzes, Yi Fang
arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 25

Learning to Navigate with Minimal Parameters: Decomposing Visual Navigation Through Closed-Form Geometric Interfaces

The paper introduces a compact visual navigation system that decomposes the task into three analytically‑computed geometric interfaces and three small learned modules: an egress predictor, a navigation predictor, and an endpoint‑pinned residual diffusion generator. Only 0.58 M of the 23 M parameters are trained on 44 k frames, achieving competitive success rates and the lowest collision rate among evaluated methods across 6 060 point‑goal episodes in 60 environments. The design allows further parameter reduction by replacing the frozen image encoder with a 0.54 M MobileNetV2, supports zero‑shot deployment on a Jetson Orin Nano UGV, and enables transparent failure analysis under sensor corruption.

By Edward Beng Wai Tan, Siew-Kei Lam