ActivePusher: Active Learning and Planning with Residual Physics for Nonprehensile Manipulation

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhong, Zhuoyun, Golestaneh, Seyedali, Chamzas, Constantinos
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866913124919017472
author Zhong, Zhuoyun
Golestaneh, Seyedali
Chamzas, Constantinos
author_facet Zhong, Zhuoyun
Golestaneh, Seyedali
Chamzas, Constantinos
contents Planning with learned dynamics models offers a promising approach toward versatile real-world manipulation, particularly in nonprehensile settings such as pushing or rolling, where accurate analytical models are difficult to obtain. However, collecting training data for learning-based methods can be costly and inefficient, as it often relies on randomly sampled interactions that are not necessarily the most informative. Furthermore, learned models tend to exhibit high uncertainty in underexplored regions of the skill space, undermining the reliability of long-horizon planning. To address these challenges, we propose ActivePusher, a novel framework that combines residual-physics modeling with uncertainty-based active learning, to focus data acquisition on the most informative skill parameters. Additionally, ActivePusher seamlessly integrates with model-based kinodynamic planners, leveraging uncertainty estimates to bias control sampling toward more reliable actions. We evaluate our approach in both simulation and real-world environments, and demonstrate that it consistently improves data efficiency and achieves higher planning success rates in comparison to baseline methods. The source code is available at https://github.com/elpis-lab/ActivePusher.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_04646
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ActivePusher: Active Learning and Planning with Residual Physics for Nonprehensile Manipulation
Zhong, Zhuoyun
Golestaneh, Seyedali
Chamzas, Constantinos
Robotics
Machine Learning
Planning with learned dynamics models offers a promising approach toward versatile real-world manipulation, particularly in nonprehensile settings such as pushing or rolling, where accurate analytical models are difficult to obtain. However, collecting training data for learning-based methods can be costly and inefficient, as it often relies on randomly sampled interactions that are not necessarily the most informative. Furthermore, learned models tend to exhibit high uncertainty in underexplored regions of the skill space, undermining the reliability of long-horizon planning. To address these challenges, we propose ActivePusher, a novel framework that combines residual-physics modeling with uncertainty-based active learning, to focus data acquisition on the most informative skill parameters. Additionally, ActivePusher seamlessly integrates with model-based kinodynamic planners, leveraging uncertainty estimates to bias control sampling toward more reliable actions. We evaluate our approach in both simulation and real-world environments, and demonstrate that it consistently improves data efficiency and achieves higher planning success rates in comparison to baseline methods. The source code is available at https://github.com/elpis-lab/ActivePusher.
title ActivePusher: Active Learning and Planning with Residual Physics for Nonprehensile Manipulation
topic Robotics
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.04646