Reliable Robotic Task Execution in the Face of Anomalies

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Santhanam, Bharath, Mitrevski, Alex, Thoduka, Santosh, Houben, Sebastian, Hassan, Teena
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Santhanam, Bharath
Mitrevski, Alex
Thoduka, Santosh
Houben, Sebastian
Hassan, Teena
author_facet Santhanam, Bharath
Mitrevski, Alex
Thoduka, Santosh
Houben, Sebastian
Hassan, Teena
contents Learned robot policies have consistently been shown to be versatile, but they typically have no built-in mechanism for handling the complexity of open environments, making them prone to execution failures; this implies that deploying policies without the ability to recognise and react to failures may lead to unreliable and unsafe robot behaviour. In this paper, we present a framework that couples a learned policy with a method to detect visual anomalies during policy deployment and to perform recovery behaviours when necessary, thereby aiming to prevent failures. Specifically, we train an anomaly detection model using data collected during nominal executions of a trained policy. This model is then integrated into the online policy execution process, so that deviations from the nominal execution can trigger a three-level sequential recovery process that consists of (i) pausing the execution temporarily, (ii) performing a local perturbation of the robot's state, and (iii) resetting the robot to a safe state by sampling from a learned execution success model. We verify our proposed method in two different scenarios: (i) a door handle reaching task with a Kinova Gen3 arm using a policy trained in simulation and transferred to the real robot, and (ii) an object placing task with a UFactory xArm 6 using a general-purpose policy model. Our results show that integrating policy execution with anomaly detection and recovery increases the execution success rate in environments with various anomalies, such as trajectory deviations and adversarial human interventions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_23121
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Reliable Robotic Task Execution in the Face of Anomalies
Santhanam, Bharath
Mitrevski, Alex
Thoduka, Santosh
Houben, Sebastian
Hassan, Teena
Robotics
Learned robot policies have consistently been shown to be versatile, but they typically have no built-in mechanism for handling the complexity of open environments, making them prone to execution failures; this implies that deploying policies without the ability to recognise and react to failures may lead to unreliable and unsafe robot behaviour. In this paper, we present a framework that couples a learned policy with a method to detect visual anomalies during policy deployment and to perform recovery behaviours when necessary, thereby aiming to prevent failures. Specifically, we train an anomaly detection model using data collected during nominal executions of a trained policy. This model is then integrated into the online policy execution process, so that deviations from the nominal execution can trigger a three-level sequential recovery process that consists of (i) pausing the execution temporarily, (ii) performing a local perturbation of the robot's state, and (iii) resetting the robot to a safe state by sampling from a learned execution success model. We verify our proposed method in two different scenarios: (i) a door handle reaching task with a Kinova Gen3 arm using a policy trained in simulation and transferred to the real robot, and (ii) an object placing task with a UFactory xArm 6 using a general-purpose policy model. Our results show that integrating policy execution with anomaly detection and recovery increases the execution success rate in environments with various anomalies, such as trajectory deviations and adversarial human interventions.
title Reliable Robotic Task Execution in the Face of Anomalies
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.23121