On Surprising Effects of Risk-Aware Domain Randomization for Contact-Rich Sampling-based Predictive Control

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Esteban, Sergio A., Li, Junheng, Kurtz, Vince, Ames, Aaron D.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Esteban, Sergio A.
Li, Junheng
Kurtz, Vince
Ames, Aaron D.
author_facet Esteban, Sergio A.
Li, Junheng
Kurtz, Vince
Ames, Aaron D.
contents Domain randomization (DR) is widely used in policy learning to improve robustness to modeling error, but remains underexplored in contact-rich sampling-based predictive control (SPC), where rollout quality is highly sensitive to uncertainty. In this work, we take the first step by studying risk-aware DR in predictive sampling on a simple yet representative Push-T task, comparing average, optimistic, and pessimistic rollout aggregations under randomized model instances. Our initial results suggest that DR affects not only robustness to model error, but also the effective cost landscape seen by the sampling-based optimizer, by reshaping the basin of attraction around contact-producing actions. This opens up potential for exploring better grounded risk-aware contact-rich SPC under model uncertainty. Video: https://youtu.be/f1F0ALXxhSM
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_03290
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On Surprising Effects of Risk-Aware Domain Randomization for Contact-Rich Sampling-based Predictive Control
Esteban, Sergio A.
Li, Junheng
Kurtz, Vince
Ames, Aaron D.
Robotics
Systems and Control
Domain randomization (DR) is widely used in policy learning to improve robustness to modeling error, but remains underexplored in contact-rich sampling-based predictive control (SPC), where rollout quality is highly sensitive to uncertainty. In this work, we take the first step by studying risk-aware DR in predictive sampling on a simple yet representative Push-T task, comparing average, optimistic, and pessimistic rollout aggregations under randomized model instances. Our initial results suggest that DR affects not only robustness to model error, but also the effective cost landscape seen by the sampling-based optimizer, by reshaping the basin of attraction around contact-producing actions. This opens up potential for exploring better grounded risk-aware contact-rich SPC under model uncertainty. Video: https://youtu.be/f1F0ALXxhSM
title On Surprising Effects of Risk-Aware Domain Randomization for Contact-Rich Sampling-based Predictive Control
topic Robotics
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.03290