{"ID":2865753,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20739","arxiv_id":"2509.20739","title":"Decision-Driven Semantic Object Exploration for Legged Robots via Confidence-Calibrated Perception and Topological Subgoal Selection","abstract":"Conventional navigation pipelines for legged robots remain largely geometry-centric, relying on dense SLAM representations that are fragile under rapid motion and offer limited support for semantic decision making in open-world exploration. In this work, we focus on decision-driven semantic object exploration, where the primary challenge is not map consistency but how noisy and heterogeneous semantic observations can be transformed into stable and executable exploration decisions. We propose a vision-based approach that explicitly addresses this problem through confidence-calibrated semantic evidence arbitration, a controlled-growth semantic topological memory, and a semantic utility-driven subgoal selection mechanism. These components enable the robot to accumulate task-relevant semantic knowledge over time and select exploration targets that balance semantic relevance, reliability, and reachability, without requiring dense geometric reconstruction. Extensive experiments in both simulation and real-world environments demonstrate that the proposed mechanisms consistently improve the quality of semantic decision inputs, subgoal selection accuracy, and overall exploration performance on legged robots.","short_abstract":"Conventional navigation pipelines for legged robots remain largely geometry-centric, relying on dense SLAM representations that are fragile under rapid motion and offer limited support for semantic decision making in open-world exploration. In this work, we focus on decision-driven semantic object exploration, where th...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20739","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.20739v2","authors":"[\"Guoyang Zhao\",\"Yudong Li\",\"Weiqing Qi\",\"Kai Zhang\",\"Bonan Liu\",\"Kai Chen\",\"Haoang Li\",\"Jun Ma\"]","published":"2025-09-25T04:38:45Z","proceeding":"cs.RO","tasks":"[\"cs.RO\",\"cs.CV\"]","methods":"[\"LoRA\"]","has_code":false}