Belief-Space Planning

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Overview

Belief-space planning studies how to act when an agent cannot directly observe the true state, as in robot navigation, manipulation, search, and autonomous driving. Methods maintain beliefs with Bayesian filters or learned latent, symbolic, and spatial world models, then plan using tools such as Monte Carlo tree search, model-predictive control, and trajectory trees. Many approaches choose actions not only for immediate progress but also for the information they reveal, while risk-sensitive and safety-certified planners constrain possible failures. A central challenge is making these beliefs accurate and decision-relevant without making online planning too costly; learned models can scale to complex settings, but reliable calibration and formal guarantees remain difficult.

Latest papers

CardsList

65 papers13 papers in the last four weeks, up 18% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Failure Recovery via Belief Updates and World Modeling for Long-Horizon Agents

    Oct 13, 2026Xiyang Wu, Zhichao Liu, Shengxin zhang +4Long-Horizon LLM AgentsLong-Horizon Reasoning

    University of Maryland · Google · MBZUAI

  2. Belief Space Planning for Risk Signal Temporal Logic via Mixed-Integer Convex Programming

    Oct 12, 2026Shaohang Han, Joris Verhagen, Kaier Liang +1Belief-Space PlanningSTL Planning

    Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden · Digital Futures

  3. Have You Seen It Clearly? Uncertainty-Guided Belief Refinement for Zero-Shot Object Navigation

    Oct 11, 2026Jingzhi Huang, Junkai Huang, Yuhang Peng +6Robot NavigationObject-Goal Navigation

    Hong Kong Polytechnic University · Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences · DeepRobotics +2

  4. Belief Embedding Tree Search

    Oct 10, 2026Christopher Solinas, Radovan Haluška, Martin Schmid +3Partially Observable RLBelief-Space Planning

    University of Alberta · Charles University, Prague · EquiLibre Technologies, Inc. +1

  5. Belief-Overlap Partial Inversion: Object-Centric Flow Replanning for Humanoid Loco-Manipulation

    Oct 9, 2026Chen Yu, Sudarshan S Harithas, Juan Borbon +2Robotic Object PushingHumanoid Loco-Manipulation

    Northwestern University, USA · Multiply Labs, USA

  6. Belief-Space Planning with Planner-Conditioned Estimator Error under Intermittent Observations

    Oct 6, 2026Peter M. Donley, Joseph L. MooreBelief-Space PlanningRobot State Estimation

    Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering

  7. Belief-Informed Hybrid Control with Almost-Sure Target-Set Convergence

    Oct 6, 2026Clinton Enwerem, Saleh Kemal, John S. Baras +1Belief-Space PlanningAdaptive Control

    Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

  8. Entropy-Gated Belief Coordination for Decentralized Multi-Agent Search Under Intermittent Communication

    Oct 5, 2026Mohamed Abdelnaby, Kevin LeahyBelief-Space PlanningMulti-Agent Coordination

    Department of Robotics Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

  9. Ego2World: Compiling Egocentric Cooking Videos into Executable Worlds for Belief-State Planning

    Oct 2, 2026Qinchuan Cheng, Zhantao Gong, Pengzhan Sun +2AI Agent BenchmarksBelief-Space Planning

    Xi’an Jiaotong University (xjtu.edu.cn) · Nankai University (nankai.edu.cn) · National University of Singapore (nus.edu) +1

  10. BLT*: Informed Belief Localization Trees for Uncertainty-Aware Planning on Digital Twins

    Oct 1, 2026Elliot Preston-Krebs, Abhishek Goudar, Timothy D. BarfootBelief-Space PlanningDigital Twins

    University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS), 4925 Dufferin St, Ontario, Canada.

  11. Belief-Aware Multi-Agent Path Finding under Map Uncertainty

    Sep 30, 2026Viraj Parimi, Shao-Hung Chan, Han Zhang +2Belief-Space PlanningGaussian Belief Propagation

    Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 01239. · Symbotic Inc., Wilmington, MA 01887, USA

  12. Belief-Based Maximum Occupancy Principle and Active Inference

    Sep 30, 2026Manolis Mylonas, Rubén Moreno BoteBelief-Space PlanningIntrinsic Reward Methods

    Center for Brain and Cognition & Department of Engineering Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona, Spain

  13. Beyond the Remembered World: Predictive 4D Belief for Persistent Navigation in Evolving Worlds

    Sep 30, 2026Mingjian Gao, Zhaocheng Li, Haoyang Huang +7Belief-Space PlanningEmbodied Navigation

    Deeprobotics · Zhejiang University · University of California, San Diego +1

  14. Risk-Averse Online POMDP Planning via CVaR of the Immediate Cost with Performance Guarantees

    Sep 26, 2026Yaacov Pariente, Vadim IndelmanRisk-Sensitive PlanningPartially Observable Markov Decision Processes

    Faculty of Mathematics Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Haifa, Israel · Stephen B. Klein Faculty of Aerospace Engineering; Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Haifa, Israel

  15. AquaMend: Minimal Re-probing and Conditional Rollback for Latent-Belief Failures in Embodied Agents

    Sep 24, 2026Yufan Liu, Shang Luo, Yang Liu +9Belief-Space PlanningAI Agent Reliability

    University College London · Peking University · School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University +4

  16. Spatial-Semantic Uncertainty in VLM-Based Target Search: Balancing Exploration and Identification

    Sep 17, 2026Alkesh K. Srivastava, Jonathan Diller, Vijay Kumar +1Belief-Space PlanningVision-Language Models

    Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, 19122 USA · University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 19104 USA

  17. Imagine-TAMP: Imagination-Guided Task and Motion Planning in Partial Observability

    Sep 17, 2026Antareep Singha, Shivaram Kumar, Yoonwoo Kim +1Belief-Space PlanningActive Perception

    Nanyang Technological University · The University of Texas at Austin

  18. GAVEL: Graph World Models for Verified and Efficient Long-Horizon LLM Task Planning

    Sep 16, 2026Ruiyang Wang, Hao-Lun Hsu, Swarajh Mehta +3Belief-Space PlanningLarge Language Model-Based Robot Planning

  19. Bridging Learned Visual Perception and Symbolic Belief-Space Planning

    Sep 15, 2026Guy Azran, Michael Navat, Sarah KerenBelief-Space PlanningSymbolic Planning

    Taub Faculty of Computer Science, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology · Faculty of Mathematics, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

  20. Chance-Constrained Belief-Space Maneuver Planning for Autonomous Collision Avoidance Under Uncertainty

    Sep 11, 2026Grace Ra Kim, Duncan Eddy, Mykel J. KochenderferCollision AvoidanceBelief-Space Planning

    Stanford University

  21. Belief-State Engine: Augmenting LLMs for Principled Planning Under Partial Observability

    Sep 9, 2026Arnab Chattopadhayay, Debdipta HalderBelief-Space PlanningLLM Agents

    Independent Researcher (UCL Alumni), Bangalore, India · Independent Researcher (IIT-Kharagpur Alumni), Bangalore, India

  22. Map the Possibilities: Spatial Belief Fields for Language-Goal Aerial Navigation

    Sep 5, 2026Haotian Xu, Yue Hu, Zhengqiu Zhu +3Aerial VLNVisual Navigation

    College of Systems Engineering, National University of Defense Technology · State Key Laboratory of Digital Intelligent Modeling and Simulation · Zhejiang University

  23. Scalable Rao-Blackwellized Online Planning for High-Dimensional POMDPs

    Sep 1, 2026Jiho Lee, Nisar Ahmed, Kyle Hollins Wray +1Belief-Space PlanningPartially Observable Markov Decision Processes

    Ann And H.J. Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA · Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA

  24. Towards a Belief-Based World Model for LLM Agents

    Aug 31, 2026Shubham Kumar, Harshit Kumar, Narendra Ahuja +1Belief-Space PlanningPartially Observable RL

    UIUC · IBM

  25. Capability-Gated Planning: Cost-to-Goal Discovery and the Limits of Myopic Experiment Selection

    Aug 5, 2026Ahmed Hassoon, Mark DredzeBelief-Space PlanningCost-Aware Inference

    Johns Hopkins University

  26. POMDPs for Autonomous Science Exploration

    Aug 4, 2026Daniel Guirguis, Nathan Wallace, Hanna Kurniawati +1Belief-Space PlanningAI for Science

  27. NeSyFS: A Neuro-symbolic Fast-Slow Thinking Framework for LLM Agent under Partial Observability

    Jul 31, 2026Duo Xu, Faramarz FekriBelief-Space PlanningLLM Agents

    Georgia Institute of Technology 225 North Ave NW, Atlanta, GA 30332

  28. Merging Reaction to Cognition: A Hybrid Cognitive Strategy for Odour Source Localisation in Natural Environments

    Jul 15, 2026Hugo Magalhães, Rui Baptista, Lino MarquesBelief-Space PlanningRobot Navigation

    Institute of Systems and Robotics · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering · University of Coimbra, 3030-290, Coimbra, Portugal

  29. Interleaved POMDP Planning for Multi-Object Search in Unknown Multi-Room Household Environments

    Jul 11, 2026Ruochu Yang, Ziyi Xia, Huibo Zhang +6Belief-Space PlanningPartially Observable Markov Decision Processes

    Georgia Institute of Technology, USA · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China · Ising AI, China +2

  30. QANTIS: Hardware-Calibrated Sequential POMDP Belief Updates on IBM Heron

    Jul 7, 2026Bayram Yuksel Eker, Suayb S. Arslan, Ozgur Nazli +2Belief-Space PlanningBayesian Filtering

    Neura Parse Ltd. London, United Kingdom · Dept. of Computer Engineering Boğaziçi University Istanbul, Turkey · Dept. of Physics Izmir University of Economics Izmir, Turkey +2