From Legible to Inscrutable Trajectories: (Il)legible Motion Planning Accounting for Multiple Observers

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Yammanuru, Ananya, Lusardi, Maria, Amato, Nancy M., Driggs-Campbell, Katherine
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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_version_ 1866917262939652096
author Yammanuru, Ananya
Lusardi, Maria
Amato, Nancy M.
Driggs-Campbell, Katherine
author_facet Yammanuru, Ananya
Lusardi, Maria
Amato, Nancy M.
Driggs-Campbell, Katherine
contents In cooperative environments, such as in factories or assistive scenarios, it is important for a robot to communicate its intentions to observers, who could be either other humans or robots. A legible trajectory allows an observer to quickly and accurately predict an agent's intention. In adversarial environments, such as in military operations or games, it is important for a robot to not communicate its intentions to observers. An illegible trajectory leads an observer to incorrectly predict the agent's intention or delays when an observer is able to make a correct prediction about the agent's intention. However, in some environments there are multiple observers, each of whom may be able to see only part of the environment, and each of whom may have different motives. In this work, we introduce the Mixed-Motive Limited-Observability Legible Motion Planning (MMLO-LMP) problem, which requires a motion planner to generate a trajectory that is legible to observers with positive motives and illegible to observers with negative motives while also considering the visibility limitations of each observer. We highlight multiple strategies an agent can take while still achieving the problem objective. We also present DUBIOUS, a trajectory optimizer that solves MMLO-LMP. Our results show that DUBIOUS can generate trajectories that balance legibility with the motives and limited visibility regions of the observers. Future work includes many variations of MMLO-LMP, including moving observers and observer teaming.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_09227
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle From Legible to Inscrutable Trajectories: (Il)legible Motion Planning Accounting for Multiple Observers
Yammanuru, Ananya
Lusardi, Maria
Amato, Nancy M.
Driggs-Campbell, Katherine
Robotics
In cooperative environments, such as in factories or assistive scenarios, it is important for a robot to communicate its intentions to observers, who could be either other humans or robots. A legible trajectory allows an observer to quickly and accurately predict an agent's intention. In adversarial environments, such as in military operations or games, it is important for a robot to not communicate its intentions to observers. An illegible trajectory leads an observer to incorrectly predict the agent's intention or delays when an observer is able to make a correct prediction about the agent's intention. However, in some environments there are multiple observers, each of whom may be able to see only part of the environment, and each of whom may have different motives. In this work, we introduce the Mixed-Motive Limited-Observability Legible Motion Planning (MMLO-LMP) problem, which requires a motion planner to generate a trajectory that is legible to observers with positive motives and illegible to observers with negative motives while also considering the visibility limitations of each observer. We highlight multiple strategies an agent can take while still achieving the problem objective. We also present DUBIOUS, a trajectory optimizer that solves MMLO-LMP. Our results show that DUBIOUS can generate trajectories that balance legibility with the motives and limited visibility regions of the observers. Future work includes many variations of MMLO-LMP, including moving observers and observer teaming.
title From Legible to Inscrutable Trajectories: (Il)legible Motion Planning Accounting for Multiple Observers
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.09227