This follow-up work tests the feasibility of the neuro-inspired self-supervised learning framework for trajectory planning that leverages forward and inverse models as the internal supervisory mechanism in an environment that contains an obstacle, and demonstrates the tendency of the planner to exploit the learning signal provided by the forward and inverse models.
Abstract
Trajectory planning is a fundamental problem in robotics, requiring the generation of collision-free and efficient trajectories in a potentially complex environment. While sampling-based planners remain the dominant approach, they are often computationally expensive, particularly in high-dimensional spaces and obstacle-rich environments. Methods based on model learning offer a promising alternative, enabling efficient planning through a bounded number of forward passes through a neural trajectory planner, but commonly suffer from low sample efficiency or limited generalisation due to their reliance on exploration or expert demonstrations. This follow-up work tests our neuro-inspired self-supervised learning framework for trajectory planning that leverages forward and inverse models as the internal supervisory mechanism in an environment that contains an obstacle. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the approach while revealing a tendency of our planner to exploit the learning signal provided by the forward and inverse models. To address this issue, additional training regimes and mitigation strategies are proposed and evaluated.
This paper proposes a nested kino-dynamic framework for rapid feasibility checking and dynamically consistent trajectory generation given a candidate contact sequence and shows that the generated trajectories can be tracked using a reinforcement learning (RL)-based controller and are of sufficiently high quality for execution in real-world loco-manipulation scenarios.
Michal Ciebielski, Shafeef Omar, Aaron M. Johnson et al.· 0 citations
Robot path planning is a fundamental problem in robotics enabling autonomous robots to navigate safely, efficiently and naturally from a start position to a target position. In real robotic systems, path planning is not only about finding a collision-free path, but also about generating motions that satisfy the robot's physical, sensory, and task constraints. In this essay, the main robot path planning methods, including graph search, artificial potential field methods, sampling-based planning, local obstacle avoidance, and trajectory optimization are reviewed. Their respective strengths, limitations, and applicable scenarios are examined, with particular attention to how these approaches address issues such as computational complexity, environmental structure, and real-time responsiveness. It also addresses present day issues such as uncertainty, dynamic environments, computational efficiency and physical feasibility, emphasizing that no single method is sufficient for all robotic applications. Practical systems increasingly rely on hierarchical integration to balance global navigation with local reactivity. Finally, the essay argues that the future of robot path planning will be dominated by hybrid systems that combine global planning, local replanning, optimization, and learning-based prediction, enabling robots to operate more safely, intelligently, and adaptively in complex real-world environments.
Chanyu Wang· Theoretical and Natural Scie...· 0 citations
Over the past decade, autonomous robotic systems have been increasingly deployed in applications such as surveying, search and rescue, and last-mile delivery. These applications require robots to generate safe and efficient motion plans in large, complex, and obstacle-dense environments, often under limited onboard computing resources. However, conventional planning methods commonly rely on finite-dimensional trajectory parameterization or increasingly long prediction horizons, leading to rapidly growing computational costs, particularly in multi-robot scenarios. This paper presents a novel variation-based iterative-learning planning (VIP) framework for efficient motion planning of both single robots and robotic swarms. Instead of optimizing a large number of discrete trajectory variables, VIP directly updates the planning command as a continuous function in an infinite-dimensional function space. The same variation-based update can be implemented in a model-in-the-loop manner for offline planning or in a robot-in-the-loop manner between online physical executions. By avoiding the computational burden associated with horizon expansion and high-dimensional trajectory discretization, VIP maintains a per-iteration computational complexity of $\mathcal{O}(n)$, where $n$ denotes the number of spatial discretization points. Extensive simulations and real-world experiments demonstrate that the proposed framework can efficiently generate and iteratively improve motion plans for different planning objectives, robotic platforms, and swarm configurations, highlighting its effectiveness, computational efficiency, and scalability as a general planning methodology.
Shuli Lv, Pengda Mao, Chen Min et al.· 0 citations
This work introduces Model-Based Diffusion Optimal Control (MDOC), a model-based diffusion planner that efficiently produces dynamically feasible trajectories without relying on data, and shows that MDOC's safety mechanism naturally scales to multi-robot planning settings through Conflict-Based Search.
Hyper-redundant robots are essential for navigation in highly constrained environments, yet their high-dimensional kinematics impose a severe computational burden on real-time motion planning. While optimization-based methods ensure tracking precision, their high computational latency makes them unsuitable for online feedback loops; conversely, geometric heuristics offer speed but lack kinematic fidelity. To resolve this efficiency-accuracy trade-off, we present an imitation learning framework tailored for path-following tasks. First, to address the instability of expert data generation caused by non-differentiable minimax objectives, we propose a refined Soft-Maximum formulation that produces smooth, kinetically consistent demonstrations. Second, we mitigate the covariate shift inherent in Behavior Cloning (BC) through a two-stage noise-injection curriculum, enabling the agent to learn robust recovery policies entirely offline without requiring an interactive expert. Finally, we design a structured policy network that effectively fuses high-dimensional path descriptors with low-dimensional proprioceptive states. Extensive simulations demonstrate that our approach achieves optimization-level accuracy with inference speeds comparable to geometric heuristics, validating its efficacy for high-precision inspection tasks.
Nailong Bu, Ningyuan Luo, Chao-yuan Liu et al.· 2026 IEEE/ASME International...· 0 citations