Haoyuan Deng;Yudong Lin;Yuanjiang Xue;Haoyang Du;Qianzhun Wang;Boyang Zhou;Zhenyu Wu;Ziwei Wang
{"title":"E2HiL: Entropy-Guided Sample Selection for Efficient Real-World Human-in-the-Loop Reinforcement Learning","authors":"Haoyuan Deng;Yudong Lin;Yuanjiang Xue;Haoyang Du;Qianzhun Wang;Boyang Zhou;Zhenyu Wu;Ziwei Wang","doi":"10.1109/LRA.2026.3693577","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2026.3693577","url":null,"abstract":"Human-in-the-loop guidance has emerged as an effective approach for accelerating online reinforcement learning (RL) in real-world manipulation. However, existing human-in-the-loop RL (HiL-RL) frameworks often suffer from low sample efficiency, requiring substantial human interventions to achieve convergence and thereby leading to high labor costs. To address this, we propose a sample-efficient real-world human-in-the-loop RL framework named <monospace><b>E2HiL</b></monospace>, which requires fewer human interventions by actively selecting informative samples. Specifically, stable reduction of policy entropy enables improved trade-off between exploration and exploitation with higher sample efficiency. We first build influence functions of different samples on the policy entropy, which is efficiently estimated by the covariance of action probabilities and soft advantages of policies. Then we select samples with moderate values of influence functions, where shortcut samples that induce sharp entropy drops and noisy samples with negligible effect are pruned. Extensive experiments across 10 real-world manipulation tasks, spanning multiple embodiments and learning frameworks, demonstrate that <monospace><b>E2HiL</b></monospace> improves success rates by 24.9% while reducing human interventions by 9.3% compared to state-of-the-art HiL-RL baselines. These results validate its effectiveness as a policy- and embodiment-agnostic plug-and-play module for efficient real-world RL.","PeriodicalId":13241,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters","volume":"11 7","pages":"8084-8091"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148509048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Robust by Co-Design: CAD-to-Control Evolutionary Optimization of Jet-Powered Humanoids","authors":"Punith Reddy Vanteddu;Davide Gorbani;Antonello Paolino;Giuseppe L’Erario;Hosameldin Awadalla Omer Mohamed;Fabio Bergonti;Daniele Pucci","doi":"10.1109/LRA.2026.3692069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2026.3692069","url":null,"abstract":"This letter presents a co-design and optimization framework for improving robustness in an aerial humanoid equipped with variable turbine configurations. The approach integrates CAD-based modeling, domain randomization, and multi-objective evolutionary optimization to jointly explore turbine placement, jetpack geometry, and controller gains under uncertainty. We generate a family of candidate robot models using Uniform Latin Hypercube sampling and perturb nominal inertial properties and turbine thrust estimation parameters to emulate modeling and actuation uncertainty encountered in practice. We evaluate robustness through randomized assessments of trajectory-tracking and fuel-consumption objectives using an adapted NSGA-II algorithm that incorporates fairness-aware seed selection and multi-seed performance aggregation. Across these stochastic evaluations, the framework identifies design–controller pairs that maintain stable flight behavior while balancing energy efficiency. As all evaluated configurations are derived from CAD-generated models, the resulting solutions ensure physical consistency and manufacturability, providing a structured foundation for robustness-driven co-design of jet-powered aerial humanoid systems.","PeriodicalId":13241,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters","volume":"11 7","pages":"7796-7803"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148509279","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A High-Speed Omnidirectional Ceiling Mobile Robot Using a Synchronized Crawler-Hanging Mechanism","authors":"Hiroto Hasegawa;Ryota Yokomura;Rui Fukui","doi":"10.1109/LRA.2026.3699154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2026.3699154","url":null,"abstract":"We present a ceiling mobile robot capable of high-speed transport with versatile routing. Based on the crawler-hanging mechanism proposed in previous work, the robot introduces several key improvements. First, we enhanced hanging stability during high-speed travel by synchronizing the ceiling-hanging motion with the crawler's rotation via guide mechanisms. This approach achieved reliable operation at 1.35 m/s, a 35% improvement over earlier designs. Additionally, a position correction method utilizing claw insertion into ceiling holes effectively corrected <inline-formula><tex-math>$pm$</tex-math></inline-formula>2 mm positional errors per hanging action, ensuring accurate alignment during travel. Second, we developed a direction-changing mechanism for static ceiling panels by relocating rolling mechanisms from turntables to the robot itself. This design enabled turning at 45 deg/s with a 60 kg payload and sideway movement at 0.2 m/s, enhancing routing versatility. These advancements improve ceiling robot mobility and expand the applicability of ceiling transport systems for industrial and logistics environments.","PeriodicalId":13241,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters","volume":"11 7","pages":"8872-8879"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11543207","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148442757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"SA4Depth: Consistent Pose-Depth Scale Alignment for Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation","authors":"Changxuan Li;Nadine Berner;Nassir Navab;Federico Tombari;Stefano Gasperini","doi":"10.1109/LRA.2026.3699248","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2026.3699248","url":null,"abstract":"Self-supervised depth estimation from monocular sequences relies on the joint learning of a depth and a pose network. Despite abundant research done to improve the depth network, efforts on the pose remain limited. In this context, even when depth is estimated up to scale, we highlight the importance of the alignment between the scene scales estimated by the pose and depth nets. Then, we introduce SA4Depth, an approach to improve this alignment and boost the depth predictions while keeping the inference time unchanged. Our proposed method uses the depth estimated during training to reproject learnable visual features across consecutive frames and refine the pose estimates by reducing feature alignment residuals. With our method, the estimated scene scales by the separate depth and pose networks are aligned, and the prediction scale consistency is improved across different sequences. Our differentiable refinement integrates seamlessly into existing self-supervised pipelines and substantially improves their depth estimates. We demonstrate this with extensive experiments both outdoors and indoors on KITTI, Cityscapes, and NYUv2. Additionally, results on KITTI Odometry confirm the effectiveness of our pose refinement.","PeriodicalId":13241,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters","volume":"11 7","pages":"8968-8975"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11543261","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148443064","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Locally Minimized Jerk Energy Based RRT*: A Fast Algorithm for Generating Paths With $G^{2}$ Continuity and Low Curvature Variation","authors":"Rahul;S. K. Saha;S. M. Ishtiaque;Dipayan Das","doi":"10.1109/LRA.2026.3701128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2026.3701128","url":null,"abstract":"This work proposes an algorithm based on RRT* that generates <inline-formula><tex-math>$G^{2}$</tex-math></inline-formula>-continuous path from a start position to a goal position. Additionally, the generated paths satisfy initial heading constraints, bounded absolute curvature, and reduced variation of curvature. The proposed algorithm employs cubic Bézier curves for tree extension and quintic Bézier curves for rewiring, with their control points computed under the minimum jerk energy criterion. The cubic curves admit closed form solutions enabling fast tree growth, while quintic curves enable rewiring which preserves curvature continuity across the path. Results show that the proposed planner produces paths with lower curvature variation than comparable planners at competitive planning times. Additionally, the curvature and curvature rate profiles confirm that the proposed planner remains well below the allowable bound with fewer abrupt transitions. The resulting paths turn gradually around obstacles, producing natural motion suited for passenger vehicles, wheelchairs, and transport of delicate materials.","PeriodicalId":13241,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters","volume":"11 7","pages":"8992-8999"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148443085","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Giovanni Soleti;Paolo Roberto Massenio;Gianluca Rizzello
{"title":"Closed-Loop Sensorless Position Control of Dielectric Elastomer Soft Robots via Actuator-Level Self-Sensing","authors":"Giovanni Soleti;Paolo Roberto Massenio;Gianluca Rizzello","doi":"10.1109/LRA.2026.3701524","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2026.3701524","url":null,"abstract":"One of the main challenges encountered when controlling soft robots in closed loop is the integration of real-time sensory architectures. Position feedback in soft robotics commonly relies on external cameras, that require bulky setups and are sensitive to occlusions and lighting, or proprioceptive sensors such as IMUs and stretchable elements, which demand nontrivial integration and can suffer from drift/bias and hysteresis/noise. To overcome these issues, and enable integrated soft robots able to autonomously perform tasks in unstructured environments, we present a new sensorless position control architecture for multi-degree-of-freedom dielectric elastomer (DE) soft robots. A robust control law is first proposed, which allows the robot to track multi-step reference signals by explicitly accounting for system nonlinearities and underactuation. A sensorless proprioception algorithm enables real-time estimation of the robot configuration during high-voltage actuation, solely via electrical measurements performed at the actuators' level (i.e., DE voltage and current). The estimated configuration is then used to close the motion control loop in a sensorless fashion, without external electro-mechanical or optical sensors. The sensorless control architecture is validated experimentally and compared with a camera-based implementation of the feedback law. The conducted tests demonstrate the effectiveness of sensorless control for DE soft robots.","PeriodicalId":13241,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters","volume":"11 7","pages":"8984-8991"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11554387","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148443110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Energy-Efficient Multi-Robot Coverage Path Planning of Non-Convex Regions of Interests","authors":"Sourav Raxit;Jose Fuentes;Paulo Padrao;Abdullah Al Redwan Newaz;Md Tamjidul Hoque;Mark Kulp;Leonardo Bobadilla","doi":"10.1109/LRA.2026.3692093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2026.3692093","url":null,"abstract":"This letter presents an energy-efficient multi-robot coverage path planning (MRCPP) framework for large, nonconvex Regions of Interest (ROI) containing obstacles and no-fly zones (NFZ). Existing minimum-energy coverage planning algorithms utilize meta-heuristic boustrophedon workspace decomposition. Therefore, even with minimum energy objectives and energy consumption constraints, they cannot achieve optimal energy efficiency. Moreover, most existing frameworks support only a single type of robotic platform. MRCPP overcomes these limitations by: generating globally-informed swath generation, creating parallel sweeping paths with minimal turns, calculating safety buffers to ensure safe turning clearance, using an efficient mTSP solver to balance workloads and minimize mission time, and connecting disjoint segments via a modified visibility graph that tracks heading angles while maintaining transitions within safe regions. The efficacy of the proposed MRCPP framework is demonstrated through real-world experiments involving autonomous aerial vehicles (AAVs) and autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs). Evaluations demonstrate that the proposed MRCPP consistently outperforms state-of-the-art planners, reducing average total energy consumption by 3% to 40% for a team of 3 robots and computation time by an order of magnitude, while maintaining balanced workload distribution and strong scalability across increasing fleet sizes.","PeriodicalId":13241,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters","volume":"11 7","pages":"7892-7899"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148508006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Weighted Online Koopman Learning for Model Predictive Control of Thrust-Vectored Underwater Vehicles","authors":"Yizong Chen;Zhiqiang Miao;Jun Wei;Yaonan Wang","doi":"10.1109/LRA.2026.3693547","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2026.3693547","url":null,"abstract":"Underwater vehicles face control challenges including hydrodynamic parameter uncertainties and environmental disturbances. While Koopman-based model predictive control (Koopman-MPC) offers computational efficiency through linear lifted representations, existing methods rely on offline-collected datasets and thus struggle to adapt to the aforementioned challenges. This letter proposes a weighted online Koopman-MPC framework that achieves trajectory tracking through online learning. First, we construct physical information basis functions, explicitly embedding the Coriolis, damping, and restoring force terms into the Koopman lifted space. Second, a weighted incremental Extended Dynamic Mode Decomposition (EDMD) scheme fuses offline data with real-time measurements via a tunable parameter. Finally, an incremental MPC scheme is designed to optimize the control increments to satisfy the actuator rate constraints. Experimental validation on a thrust-vectored underwater vehicle demonstrates that the proposed framework effectively adapts to changing dynamics during operation, improving trajectory tracking accuracy over both the offline model and uniform online updates.","PeriodicalId":13241,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters","volume":"11 7","pages":"8220-8227"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148508798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"NeuroMesh: A Unified Neural Inference Framework for Decentralized Multi-Robot Collaboration","authors":"Yang Zhou;Yash Shetye;Long Quang;Devon Super;Jesse Milzman;Manohari Goarin;Aditya Azad;Devang Sunil Dhake;Jeffrey Mao;Carlos Nieto-Granda;Giuseppe Loianno","doi":"10.1109/LRA.2026.3692327","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2026.3692327","url":null,"abstract":"Deploying learned multi-robot models on heterogeneous robots remains challenging due to hardware heterogeneity, communication constraints, and the lack of a unified execution stack. This paper presents NeuroMesh, a multi-domain, cross-platform, and modular decentralized neural inference framework that standardizes observation encoding, message passing, aggregation, and task decoding in a unified pipeline. NeuroMesh combines a dual-aggregation paradigm for reduction- and broadcast-based information fusion with a parallelized architecture that decouples cycle time from end-to-end latency. Our high-performance C++ implementation leverages Zenoh for inter-robot communication and supports hybrid GPU/CPU inference. We validate NeuroMesh on a heterogeneous team of aerial and ground robots across collaborative perception, decentralized control, and task assignment, demonstrating robust operation across diverse task structures and payload sizes. We plan to release NeuroMesh as an open-source framework to the community.","PeriodicalId":13241,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters","volume":"11 7","pages":"8076-8083"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148509050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"FruitTouch: A Perceptive Gripper for Gentle and Scalable Fruit Harvesting","authors":"Ruohan Zhang;Mohammad Amin Mirzaee;Wenzhen Yuan","doi":"10.1109/LRA.2026.3692042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2026.3692042","url":null,"abstract":"The automation of fruit harvesting has gained increasing significance in response to rising labor shortages. A sensorized gripper is a key component of this process, which must be compact enough for confined spaces, able to stably grasp diverse fruits, and provide reliable feedback on fruit conditions for efficient harvesting. To address this need, we propose FruitTouch, a compact gripper that integrates high-resolution, vision-based tactile sensing through an optimized optical design. This configuration accommodates a wide range of fruit sizes while maintaining low cost and mechanical simplicity. Tactile images captured by an embedded camera provide rich information for real-time force estimation, slip detection, and softness prediction. We validate the gripper in real-world fruit harvesting experiments, demonstrating robust grasp stability and effective damage prevention.","PeriodicalId":13241,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters","volume":"11 7","pages":"8276-8283"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148504461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}