Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jain, Atharv, Shaw, Seiji, Roy, Nicholas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17924
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866916817695408128
author Jain, Atharv
Shaw, Seiji
Roy, Nicholas
author_facet Jain, Atharv
Shaw, Seiji
Roy, Nicholas
contents Our goal is to enable robots to plan sequences of tabletop actions to push a block with unknown physical properties to a desired goal pose. We approach this problem by learning the constituent models of a Partially-Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP), where the robot can observe the outcome of a push, but the physical properties of the block that govern the dynamics remain unknown. A common solution approach is to train an observation model in a supervised fashion, and do inference with a general inference technique such as particle filters. However, supervised training requires knowledge of the relevant physical properties that determine the problem dynamics, which we do not assume to be known. Planning also requires simulating many belief updates, which becomes expensive when using particle filters to represent the belief. We propose to learn an Attentive Neural Process that computes the belief over a learned latent representation of the relevant physical properties given a history of actions. To address the pushing planning problem, we integrate a trained Neural Process with a double-progressive widening sampling strategy. Simulation results indicate that Neural Process Tree with Double Progressive Widening (NPT-DPW) generates better-performing plans faster than traditional particle-filter methods that use a supervised-trained observation model, even in complex pushing scenarios.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_17924
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning Attentive Neural Processes for Planning with Pushing Actions
Jain, Atharv
Shaw, Seiji
Roy, Nicholas
Robotics
Our goal is to enable robots to plan sequences of tabletop actions to push a block with unknown physical properties to a desired goal pose. We approach this problem by learning the constituent models of a Partially-Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP), where the robot can observe the outcome of a push, but the physical properties of the block that govern the dynamics remain unknown. A common solution approach is to train an observation model in a supervised fashion, and do inference with a general inference technique such as particle filters. However, supervised training requires knowledge of the relevant physical properties that determine the problem dynamics, which we do not assume to be known. Planning also requires simulating many belief updates, which becomes expensive when using particle filters to represent the belief. We propose to learn an Attentive Neural Process that computes the belief over a learned latent representation of the relevant physical properties given a history of actions. To address the pushing planning problem, we integrate a trained Neural Process with a double-progressive widening sampling strategy. Simulation results indicate that Neural Process Tree with Double Progressive Widening (NPT-DPW) generates better-performing plans faster than traditional particle-filter methods that use a supervised-trained observation model, even in complex pushing scenarios.
title Learning Attentive Neural Processes for Planning with Pushing Actions
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17924