Aug 26, 2025J/K move · Enter open · S save
Shreya Gummadi, Mateus V. Gasparino, Gianluca Capezzuto, Marcelo Becker+1
Field Robotics Engineering and Science Hub (FRESH), Illinois Autonomous Farm, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), IL. · Mobile Robotics Group, University of S˜ao Paulo, S˜ao Carlos, SP, Brazil.
Advances in robotics and autonomous navigation systems hinge on the ability to predict terrain traversability accurately. Traditional methods for generating datasets to train these prediction models often involve putting robots into potentially hazardous environments, posing risks to equipment and safety. To solve this problem, we present ZeST, a novel approach that treats repeated VLM outputs as stochastic measurements and fuses them into an uncertainty-aware posterior. Our approach not only performs zero-shot traversability and mitigates the risks associated with real-world data collection but also accelerates the development of advanced navigation systems, offering a cost-effective and scalable solution. To support our findings, we present navigation results, in both controlled indoor and unstructured outdoor environments. As shown in the experiments, ZeST provides safer navigation with a 90-100% success rate while no baseline exceeds 60%, and keeps complete success under query latencies up to 3.6s.