Blind-Wayfarer: A Minimalist, Probing-Driven Framework for Resilient Navigation in Perception-Degraded Environments
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866929751645487104 |
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| author | Xu, Yanran Zauner, Klaus-Peter Tarapore, Danesh |
| author_facet | Xu, Yanran Zauner, Klaus-Peter Tarapore, Danesh |
| contents | Navigating autonomous robots through dense forests and rugged terrains is especially daunting when exteroceptive sensors -- such as cameras and LiDAR sensors -- fail under occlusions, low-light conditions, or sensor noise. We present Blind-Wayfarer, a probing-driven navigation framework inspired by maze-solving algorithms that relies primarily on a compass to robustly traverse complex, unstructured environments. In 1,000 simulated forest experiments, Blind-Wayfarer achieved a 99.7% success rate. In real-world tests in two distinct scenarios -- with rover platforms of different sizes -- our approach successfully escaped forest entrapments in all 20 trials. Remarkably, our framework also enabled a robot to escape a dense woodland, traveling from 45 m inside the forest to a paved pathway at its edge. These findings highlight the potential of probing-based methods for reliable navigation in challenging perception-degraded field conditions. Videos and code are available on our website https://sites.google.com/view/blind-wayfarer |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_07492 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Blind-Wayfarer: A Minimalist, Probing-Driven Framework for Resilient Navigation in Perception-Degraded Environments Xu, Yanran Zauner, Klaus-Peter Tarapore, Danesh Robotics Navigating autonomous robots through dense forests and rugged terrains is especially daunting when exteroceptive sensors -- such as cameras and LiDAR sensors -- fail under occlusions, low-light conditions, or sensor noise. We present Blind-Wayfarer, a probing-driven navigation framework inspired by maze-solving algorithms that relies primarily on a compass to robustly traverse complex, unstructured environments. In 1,000 simulated forest experiments, Blind-Wayfarer achieved a 99.7% success rate. In real-world tests in two distinct scenarios -- with rover platforms of different sizes -- our approach successfully escaped forest entrapments in all 20 trials. Remarkably, our framework also enabled a robot to escape a dense woodland, traveling from 45 m inside the forest to a paved pathway at its edge. These findings highlight the potential of probing-based methods for reliable navigation in challenging perception-degraded field conditions. Videos and code are available on our website https://sites.google.com/view/blind-wayfarer |
| title | Blind-Wayfarer: A Minimalist, Probing-Driven Framework for Resilient Navigation in Perception-Degraded Environments |
| topic | Robotics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.07492 |