Open-World Object Motion Anticipation via Meta-Learned Semantic Adaptation

Manipulating previously unseen objects remains challenging, as their dynamics depend on latent physical properties, such as friction and mass distribution, that cannot be inferred from perception alone. Prior experience across objects can provide an initial estimate of unseen object dynamics, but this estimate remains uncertain and can degrade further during sim-to-real transfer. Adapting the dynamics through interaction can progressively refine the estimation, however, updating the model may invalidate the planned trajectory. Successful and efficient manipulation therefore requires both rapid dynamics adaptation and a planning strategy that can incorporate this evolution. In this work, we introduce MetaPusher, a meta-learning and adaptive planning framework for nonprehensile manipulation of unseen objects without prior object-specific interactions. A meta-learned dynamics model rapidly adapts from interactions during task execution, while an adaptive kinodynamic planner updates long-horizon plans by reusing and refining its existing search tree. This coupling enables manipulation and adaptation without a separate data collection phase. We evaluate MetaPusher on unseen objects in simulation and in sim-to-real scenarios, comparing against fine-tuning and active learning methods, MPPI-based control, and a reinforcement learning policy. It achieves lower prediction error and improves task success rate by up to 20%.

We present a general declarative framework for anticipatory reasoning about interactive motion in complex dynamic environments. Our focus is on (explainable) anticipatory space-time mental model formation at a semantic level to heuristically guide low-level motion computation. Our method is hybrid, modular and elaboration tolerant integrating: 1) An ASP model characterising the dynamics of interactive motion trajectories; 2) Semantically-guided prediction for deriving `branching trajectory futures'; and 3) An energy-based {optimisation} model to evaluate, rank and filter anticipations. We evaluate with the Argoverse 2 benchmark, where each anticipated trajectory carries an explicit, inspectable event-level hypothesis, unlike end-to-end stochastic prediction.

Moving obstacles can block a previously clear route while a quadruped robot executes a motion command. We investigate whether predicting changing clearance improves navigation when motion selection accounts for the robot footprint and the time needed to react and brake. We present FutureRay, which predicts ranges across viewing directions and future times, together with encounter risk, from depth-derived range history and observable robot motion. Training emphasizes near-term clearance and penalizes errors that overstate available space. A local planner queries the same forecast for candidate headings and combines it with current observations to check clearance around the robot footprint. Model-based reaction--braking limits guide speed selection, and the resulting velocity commands are passed to a fixed locomotion policy. In paired evaluations on 60 static and dynamic simulation scenes, FutureRay achieves 93.3% completion, compared with 75.0% for current-range persistence and 80.0% for Cartesian Kalman rollout, with perception, planning, and locomotion held fixed. FutureRay also records fewer collisions than both baselines. Qualitative trials on a physical quadruped show avoidance initiated while an obstacle is approaching the route, followed by renewed goal progress. These results show that joint range and encounter-risk prediction can improve obstacle avoidance without retraining the locomotion policy.