23 accepted papers
We present a computational framework for simulating filaments interacting with rigid bodies through contact. Filaments are challenging to simulate due to their codimensionality, i.e., they are one-dimensional structures embedded in three-dimensional space. Existing methods often assume that filament…
While gradient-based methods can efficiently optimize trajectories and controllers by exploiting physical priors and differentiable simulators, contact-rich manipulation remains challenging due to discontinuous and vanishing gradients arising from hybrid contact dynamics. Recent methods smooth the d…
We present an inverse dynamic game-based algorithm to learn parametric constraints from a given dataset of local Nash equilibrium interactions between multiple agents. Specifically, we introduce mixed-integer linear programs (MILP) encoding the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions of the interacting
We present a method for formal safety verification of learning-based generative motion planners. Generative motion planners (GMPs) offer advantages over traditional planners, but verifying the safety and dynamic feasibility of their outputs is difficult since neural network verification (NNV) tools …
Inference-time LLM alignment methods, particularly activation steering, offer an alternative to fine-tuning by directly modifying internal activations during generation. Existing methods, however, often rely on non-anticipative interventions that ignore how perturbations propagate through transforme…
Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models inherit strong priors from pretrained Vision-Language Models (VLMs), but naive fine-tuning often disrupts these representations and harms generalization. Existing fixes -- freezing modules or applying uniform regularization -- either overconstrain adaptation or ig
This paper explores traversability estimation for robot navigation. A key bottleneck in traversability estimation lies in efficiently achieving reliable and robust predictions while accurately encoding both geometric and semantic information across diverse environments. We introduce Navigation via M…
Neural network (NN) dynamics models and control policies achieve strong performance in robotics, but providing sound guarantees under uncertainty is difficult, especially when the NNs are components within the closed-loop system. Existing reachability tools offer formal over-approximations, yet are …
We address the challenge of enabling bipedal robots to traverse rough terrain by developing probabilistically safe planning and control strategies that ensure dynamic feasibility and centroidal robustness under terrain uncertainty. Specifically, we propose a high-level Model Predictive Control (MPC)…
We propose a system-level synthesis (SLS) framework for robust dynamic games with nonlinear dynamics corrupted by state-dependent additive noise, and nonlinear agent-specific and shared constraints. Each agent designs a nominal trajectory and a causal affine error feedback law to minimize their own …
We present GPU-SLS, a GPU-parallelized framework for provably safe, robust nonlinear model predictive control (MPC) that scales to high-dimensional uncertain robotic systems and long planning horizons. Our method jointly optimizes an inequality-constrained, dynamically-feasible nominal trajectory, a…
We study nonlinear output-feedback control from high-resolution RGB images and provide robust constraint satisfaction guarantees despite partial observability, sensor noise, and nonlinear dynamics. To enable scalability while retaining guarantees, we propose: (i) a learned low-dimensional observatio…
We propose a method for improving the prediction accuracy of learned robot dynamics models on out-of-distribution (OOD) states. We achieve this by leveraging two key sources of structure often present in robot dynamics: 1) sparsity, i.e., some components of the state may not affect the dynamics, and…
To make robots accessible to a broad audience, it is critical to endow them with the ability to take universal modes of communication, like commands given in natural language, and extract a concrete desired task specification, defined using a formal language like linear temporal logic (LTL). In this…
Gradient-based methods enable efficient search capabilities in high dimensions. However, in order to apply them effectively in offline optimization paradigms such as offline Reinforcement Learning (RL) or Imitation Learning (IL), we require a more careful consideration of how uncertainty estimation…
We present a method for providing statistical guarantees on runtime safety and goal reachability for integrated planning and control of a class of systems with unknown nonlinear stochastic underactuated dynamics. Specifically, given a dynamics dataset, our method jointly learns a mean dynamics model…
We wish to make the following corrections and clarifications to our manuscript [1]. For a version of the manuscript that has these changes integrated into the text, please see [2]. •In [1], the method is claimed to provide safety guarantees with probability $\rho$; this probability should instead be
We propose a method for learning constraints represented as Gaussian processes (GPs) from locally-optimal demonstrations. Our approach uses the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) optimality conditions to determine where on the demonstrations the constraint is tight, and a scaling of the constraint gradient at
We present a method for feedback motion planning of systems with unknown dynamics which provides probabilistic guarantees on safety, reachability, and goal stability. To find a domain in which a learned control-affine approximation of the true dynamics can be trusted, we estimate the Lipschitz const
We present a method for learning to perform multi-stage tasks from demonstrations by learning the logical structure and atomic propositions of a consistent linear temporal logic (LTL) formula. The learner is given successful but potentially suboptimal demonstrations, where the demonstrator is optimi…
We present an algorithm for learning parametric constraints from locally-optimal demonstrations, where the cost function being optimized is uncertain to the learner. Our method uses the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) optimality conditions of the demonstrations within a mixed integer linear program (MILP)
We present a method for learning to satisfy uncertain constraints from demonstrations. Our method uses robust optimization to obtain a belief over the potentially infinite set of possible constraints consistent with the demonstrations, and then uses this belief to plan trajectories that trade off pe
We present a scalable algorithm for learning parametric constraints in high dimensions from safe expert demonstrations. To reduce the ill-posedness of the constraint recovery problem, our method uses hit-and-run sampling to generate lower cost, and thus unsafe, trajectories. Both safe and unsafe tra