Localized Graph-Based Neural Dynamics Models for Terrain Manipulation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liu, Chaoqi, Li, Yunzhu, Hauser, Kris
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Liu, Chaoqi
Li, Yunzhu
Hauser, Kris
author_facet Liu, Chaoqi
Li, Yunzhu
Hauser, Kris
contents Predictive models can be particularly helpful for robots to effectively manipulate terrains in construction sites and extraterrestrial surfaces. However, terrain state representations become extremely high-dimensional especially to capture fine-resolution details and when depth is unknown or unbounded. This paper introduces a learning-based approach for terrain dynamics modeling and manipulation, leveraging the Graph-based Neural Dynamics (GBND) framework to represent terrain deformation as motion of a graph of particles. Based on the principle that the moving portion of a terrain is usually localized, our approach builds a large terrain graph (potentially millions of particles) but only identifies a very small active subgraph (hundreds of particles) for predicting the outcomes of robot-terrain interaction. To minimize the size of the active subgraph we introduce a learning-based approach that identifies a small region of interest (RoI) based on the robot's control inputs and the current scene. We also introduce a novel domain boundary feature encoding that allows GBNDs to perform accurate dynamics prediction in the RoI interior while avoiding particle penetration through RoI boundaries. Our proposed method is both orders of magnitude faster than naive GBND and it achieves better overall prediction accuracy. We further evaluated our framework on excavation and shaping tasks on terrain with different granularity.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_23270
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Localized Graph-Based Neural Dynamics Models for Terrain Manipulation
Liu, Chaoqi
Li, Yunzhu
Hauser, Kris
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Predictive models can be particularly helpful for robots to effectively manipulate terrains in construction sites and extraterrestrial surfaces. However, terrain state representations become extremely high-dimensional especially to capture fine-resolution details and when depth is unknown or unbounded. This paper introduces a learning-based approach for terrain dynamics modeling and manipulation, leveraging the Graph-based Neural Dynamics (GBND) framework to represent terrain deformation as motion of a graph of particles. Based on the principle that the moving portion of a terrain is usually localized, our approach builds a large terrain graph (potentially millions of particles) but only identifies a very small active subgraph (hundreds of particles) for predicting the outcomes of robot-terrain interaction. To minimize the size of the active subgraph we introduce a learning-based approach that identifies a small region of interest (RoI) based on the robot's control inputs and the current scene. We also introduce a novel domain boundary feature encoding that allows GBNDs to perform accurate dynamics prediction in the RoI interior while avoiding particle penetration through RoI boundaries. Our proposed method is both orders of magnitude faster than naive GBND and it achieves better overall prediction accuracy. We further evaluated our framework on excavation and shaping tasks on terrain with different granularity.
title Localized Graph-Based Neural Dynamics Models for Terrain Manipulation
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23270