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Main Authors: Luo, Licheng, Liang, Kaier, Vasile, Cristian-Ioan, Cai, Mingyu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.02643
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author Luo, Licheng
Liang, Kaier
Vasile, Cristian-Ioan
Cai, Mingyu
author_facet Luo, Licheng
Liang, Kaier
Vasile, Cristian-Ioan
Cai, Mingyu
contents Executing complex manipulation in cluttered environments requires satisfying coupled geometric and temporal constraints. Although Spatio-Temporal Logic (SpaTiaL) offers a principled specification framework, its use in gradient-based optimization is limited by non-differentiable geometric operations. Existing differentiable temporal logics focus on the robot's internal state and neglect interactive object-environment relations, while spatial logic approaches that capture such interactions rely on discrete geometry engines that break the computational graph and preclude exact gradient propagation. To overcome this limitation, we propose Differentiable SpaTiaL, a fully tensorized toolbox that constructs smooth, autograd-compatible geometric primitives directly over polygonal sets. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first end-to-end differentiable symbolic spatio-temporal logic toolbox. By analytically deriving differentiable relaxations of key spatial predicates--including signed distance, intersection, containment, and directional relations--we enable an end-to-end differentiable mapping from high-level semantic specifications to low-level geometric configurations, without invoking external discrete solvers. This fully differentiable formulation unlocks two core capabilities: (i) massively parallel trajectory optimization under rigorous spatio-temporal constraints, and (ii) direct learning of spatial logic parameters from demonstrations via backpropagation. Experimental results validate the effectiveness and scalability of the proposed framework.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_02643
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Differentiable SpaTiaL: Symbolic Learning and Reasoning with Geometric Temporal Logic for Manipulation Tasks
Luo, Licheng
Liang, Kaier
Vasile, Cristian-Ioan
Cai, Mingyu
Robotics
Executing complex manipulation in cluttered environments requires satisfying coupled geometric and temporal constraints. Although Spatio-Temporal Logic (SpaTiaL) offers a principled specification framework, its use in gradient-based optimization is limited by non-differentiable geometric operations. Existing differentiable temporal logics focus on the robot's internal state and neglect interactive object-environment relations, while spatial logic approaches that capture such interactions rely on discrete geometry engines that break the computational graph and preclude exact gradient propagation. To overcome this limitation, we propose Differentiable SpaTiaL, a fully tensorized toolbox that constructs smooth, autograd-compatible geometric primitives directly over polygonal sets. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first end-to-end differentiable symbolic spatio-temporal logic toolbox. By analytically deriving differentiable relaxations of key spatial predicates--including signed distance, intersection, containment, and directional relations--we enable an end-to-end differentiable mapping from high-level semantic specifications to low-level geometric configurations, without invoking external discrete solvers. This fully differentiable formulation unlocks two core capabilities: (i) massively parallel trajectory optimization under rigorous spatio-temporal constraints, and (ii) direct learning of spatial logic parameters from demonstrations via backpropagation. Experimental results validate the effectiveness and scalability of the proposed framework.
title Differentiable SpaTiaL: Symbolic Learning and Reasoning with Geometric Temporal Logic for Manipulation Tasks
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.02643