Personal intelligence is becoming a central frontier for user-facing AI agents. To be helpful in everyday life, agents must understand users across the digital contexts where their preferences, intents, habits, social relationships, and needs unfold over time. Today's systems can personalize within individual apps or tasks, but personal intelligence as a whole remains under-measured: how agents build cross-context user understanding, support steerable recommendation systems, act proactively across platforms, and avoid over-personalization. We introduce PersonaMem-v3, a real-world-grounded benchmark and evaluation harness for omni-platform personal intelligence. PersonaMem-v3 is seeded from more than one million anonymized real-world engagement histories, most of which are implicit signals, and uses them to construct time-indexed user digital worlds across social media, chatbot, calendar, and AI-companion with preference evolvement over time. The benchmark brings personalization, LLM-powered recommendation, proactiveness, agentic tool use, and geo-temporal reasoning into one framework, anchored in psychology, social-linguistics, and user-behavior theories. It evaluates whether AI agents can infer holistic user understanding from cross-platform evidence, personalize responses, rerank recommendations on social media, follow user steering through natural language, and hold back when personalization would be inappropriate, repetitive, outdated, or unnecessary. PersonaMem-v3 points toward LLM-powered personal intelligent agents that work with existing scalable recommendation infrastructure while making personalization more interactive, agentic, and aligned with how real users experience their digital lives.
Successful robot automation requires accurate global localization to support repeatability, task planning, goal specification, and safe operation. However, reliable localization in GNSS-denied environments remains an open problem. Overhead aerial imagery offers a promising solution, but existing approaches primarily target structured urban environments and have been rarely demonstrated in unstructured natural terrain. Limitations of the state-of-the-art include a reliance on models trained for specific environments, as well as difficulty handling repetitive geometries and featureless landscapes commonly found in natural outdoor areas. To overcome these challenges, we present Meridian, a method for matching high-level metric-semantic primitives across aerial images and ground robot RGB-D camera data that achieves accurate global localization and generalizes well across diverse environments, all without any training or algorithmic fine-tuning on area-specific data. We formulate novel consistency metrics to estimate a distribution over robot submap poses and to reject outlier hypotheses in a robust pose graph optimization step for accurate robot trajectory estimation. We demonstrate that our algorithm can localize a ground robot across a wide variety of environments, including an autonomous driving dataset, a park and campus area, and a wilderness camp, with an average optimized trajectory error of 2.4 m over 19 km of ground traversal.
As autonomous robotic systems become increasingly mature, users will want to specify missions at the level of intent rather than in low-level detail. Language is an expressive and intuitive medium for such mission specification. However, realizing language-guided robotic teams requires overcoming significant technical hurdles. Interpreting and realizing language-specified missions requires advanced semantic reasoning. Successful heterogeneous robots must effectively coordinate actions and share information across varying viewpoints. Additionally, communication between robots is typically intermittent, necessitating robust strategies that leverage communication opportunities to maintain coordination and achieve mission objectives. In this work, we present a first-of-its-kind system where an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) are able to collaboratively accomplish missions specified in natural language while reacting to changes in specification on the fly. We leverage a Large Language Model (LLM)-enabled planner to reason over semantic-metric maps that are built online and opportunistically shared between an aerial and a ground robot. We consider task-driven navigation in urban and rural areas. Our system must infer mission-relevant semantics and actively acquire information via semantic mapping. In both ground and air-ground teaming experiments, we demonstrate our system on seven different natural-language specifications at up to kilometer-scale navigation.
We demonstrate real-time overhead aerial metric-semantic mapping and exploration using a monocular camera paired with a global positioning system (GPS). Our system, named HALO, addresses two key challenges: (i) real-time dense 3D reconstruction using vision at large distances, and (ii) mapping and exploration of large-scale outdoor environments with accurate scene geometry and semantics. We demonstrate that HALO can plan informative paths that exploit this information to complete missions with multiple tasks specified in natural language. In simulation-based evaluation across large-scale environments of size up to 78,000 sq. m., HALO consistently completes tasks with less exploration time and achieves up to 68% higher competitive ratio in terms of the distance traveled compared to the state-of-the-art semantic exploration baseline. We use real-world experiments on a custom quadrotor platform to demonstrate that (i) all modules can run onboard the robot, and that (ii) in diverse environments HALO can support effective autonomous execution of missions covering up to 24,600 sq. m. area at an altitude of 40 m.
Autonomous aerial robots are increasingly being deployed in real-world scenarios, where transparent obstacles present significant challenges to reliable navigation and mapping. These materials pose a unique problem for traditional perception systems because they lack discernible features and can cause conventional depth sensors to fail, leading to inaccurate maps and potential collisions. To ensure safe navigation, robots must be able to accurately detect and map these transparent obstacles. Existing methods often rely on large, expensive sensors or algorithms that impose high computational burdens, making them unsuitable for low Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) robots. We present a resource-constrained sensing pipeline for detecting and mapping transparent planar obstacles onboard a sub-300g quadrotor. By exploiting Time-of-Flight (ToF) speckle morphology and sonar-gated fusion, our system identifies specular reflections and reprojects their depth into empty space regions in real-time, with safety margins analytically validated for indoor flight speeds. The entire pipeline operates onboard an embedded processor using approximately 20% of a single CPU core at 2 Hz. We validate our system through experiments in controlled and real-world environments, confirming its ability to accurately render transparent obstacles visible. To our knowledge, this is the first CPU-only, real-time demonstration of transparent plane reprojection on a sub-300g quadrotor.
Personalization is one of the next milestones in advancing AI capability and alignment. We introduce PersonaMem-v2, the state-of-the-art dataset for LLM personalization that simulates 1,000 realistic user-chatbot interactions on 300+ scenarios, 20,000+ user preferences, and 128k-token context windows, where most user preferences are implicitly revealed to reflect real-world interactions. Using this data, we investigate how reinforcement fine-tuning enables a model to improve its long-context reasoning capabilities for user understanding and personalization. We also develop a framework for training an agentic memory system, which maintains a single, human-readable memory that grows with each user over time. In our experiments, frontier LLMs still struggle with implicit personalization, achieving only 37-48
We present GeoGrid-Bench, a benchmark designed to evaluate the ability of foundation models to understand geo-spatial data in the grid structure. Geo-spatial datasets pose distinct challenges due to their dense numerical values, strong spatial and temporal dependencies, and unique multimodal representations including tabular data, heatmaps, and geographic visualizations. To assess how foundation models can support scientific research in this domain, GeoGrid-Bench features large-scale, real-world data covering 16 climate variables across 150 locations and extended time frames. The benchmark includes approximately 3,200 question-answer pairs, systematically generated from 8 domain expert-curated templates to reflect practical tasks encountered by human scientists. These range from basic queries at a single location and time to complex spatiotemporal comparisons across regions and periods. Our evaluation reveals that vision-language models perform best overall, and we provide a fine-grained analysis of the strengths and limitations of different foundation models in different geo-spatial tasks. This benchmark offers clearer insights into how foundation models can be effectively applied to geo-spatial data analysis and used to support scientific research.
The integration of foundation models (FMs) into robotics has enabled robots to understand natural language and reason about the semantics in their environments. However, existing FM-enabled robots primary operate in closed-world settings, where the robot is given a full prior map or has a full view of its workspace. This paper addresses the deployment of FM-enabled robots in the field, where missions often require a robot to operate in large-scale and unstructured environments. To effectively accomplish these missions, robots must actively explore their environments, navigate obstacle-cluttered terrain, handle unexpected sensor inputs, and operate with compute constraints. We discuss recent deployments of SPINE, our LLM-enabled autonomy framework, in field robotic settings. To the best of our knowledge, we present the first demonstration of large-scale LLM-enabled robot planning in unstructured environments with several kilometers of missions. SPINE is agnostic to a particular LLM, which allows us to distill small language models capable of running onboard size, weight and power (SWaP) limited platforms. Via preliminary model distillation work, we then present the first language-driven UAV planner using on-device language models. We conclude our paper by proposing several promising directions for future research.
We introduce Vysics, a vision-and-physics framework for a robot to build an expressive geometry and dynamics model of a single rigid body, using a seconds-long RGBD video and the robot's proprioception. While the computer vision community has built powerful visual 3D perception algorithms, cluttered environments with heavy occlusions can limit the visibility of objects of interest. However, observed motion of partially occluded objects can imply physical interactions took place, such as contact with a robot or the environment. These inferred contacts can supplement the visible geometry with "physible geometry," which best explains the observed object motion through physics. Vysics uses a vision-based tracking and reconstruction method, BundleSDF, to estimate the trajectory and the visible geometry from an RGBD video, and an odometry-based model learning method, Physics Learning Library (PLL), to infer the "physible" geometry from the trajectory through implicit contact dynamics optimization. The visible and "physible" geometries jointly factor into optimizing a signed distance function (SDF) to represent the object shape. Vysics does not require pretraining, nor tactile or force sensors. Compared with vision-only methods, Vysics yields object models with higher geometric accuracy and better dynamics prediction in experiments where the object interacts with the robot and the environment under heavy occlusion. Project page: https://vysics-vision-and-physics.github.io/
Mapping and navigation have gone hand-in-hand since long before robots existed. Maps are a key form of communication, allowing someone who has never been somewhere to nonetheless navigate that area successfully. In the context of multi-robot systems, the maps and information that flow between robots are necessary for effective collaboration, whether those robots are operating concurrently, sequentially, or completely asynchronously. In this paper, we argue that maps must go beyond encoding purely geometric or visual information to enable increasingly complex autonomy, particularly between robots. We propose a framework for multi-robot autonomy, focusing in particular on air and ground robots operating in outdoor 2.5D environments. We show that semantic maps can enable the specification, planning, and execution of complex collaborative missions, including localization in GPS-denied settings. A distinguishing characteristic of this work is that we strongly emphasize field experiments and testing, and by doing so demonstrate that these ideas can work at scale in the real world. We also perform extensive simulation experiments to validate our ideas at even larger scales. We believe these experiments and the experimental results constitute a significant step forward toward advancing the state-of-the-art of large-scale, collaborative multi-robot systems operating with real communication, navigation, and perception constraints.
Traditionally, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) rely on CMOS-based cameras to collect images about the world below. One of the most successful applications of UAVs is to generate orthomosaics or orthomaps, in which a series of images are integrated to develop a larger map. However, using CMOSbased cameras with global or rolling shutters means that orthomaps are vulnerable to challenging light conditions, motion blur, and high-speed motion of independently moving objects (IMOs) under the camera. Event cameras are less sensitive to these issues, as their pixels trigger asynchronously on brightness changes. This work introduces the first orthomosaic approach using event cameras. We focus on addressing high-dynamic range and low-light problems in orthomosaics. In contrast to existing methods relying only on CMOS cameras, our approach enables map generation even in challenging light conditions, including direct sunlight and after sunset. The source code for EvMAPPER, the high-altitude hardware, and the dataset collected in this paper are available open source(1).
Controller performance in quadrotor trajectory tracking depends heavily on parameter tuning, yet standard approaches often rely on fixed, manually tuned parameters that sacrifice task-specific performance. We present Trajectory-Aware Controller Optimization (TACO), a framework that adapts controller parameters online based on the upcoming reference trajectory and current quadrotor state. TACO employs a learned predictive model and a lightweight optimization scheme to optimize controller gains in real time with respect to a broad class of trajectories, and can also be used to adapt trajectories to improve dynamic feasibility while respecting smoothness constraints. To enable large-scale training, we also introduce a parallelized quadrotor simulator supporting fast data collection on diverse trajectories. Experiments on a variety of trajectory types show that TACO outperforms conventional, static parameter tuning while operating orders of magnitude faster than black-box optimization baselines, enabling practical real-time deployment on a physical quadrotor. Furthermore, we show that adapting trajectories using TACO significantly reduces the tracking error obtained by the quadrotor.
This work presents an enhanced approach to generating scene graphs by incorporating a relationship hierarchy and commonsense knowledge. Specifically, we propose a Bayesian classification head that exploits an informative hierarchical structure. It jointly predicts the super-category or type of relationship between the two objects, along with the detailed relationship under each super-category. We design a commonsense validation pipeline that uses a large language model to critique the results from the scene graph prediction system and then use that feedback to enhance the model performance. The system requires no external large language model assistance at test time, making it more convenient for practical applications. Experiments on the Visual Genome and the OpenImage V6 datasets demonstrate that harnessing hierarchical relationships enhances the model performance by a large margin. The proposed Bayesian head can also be incorporated as a portable module in existing scene graph generation algorithms to improve their results. In addition, the commonsense validation enables the model to generate an extensive set of reasonable predictions beyond dataset annotations.
Heterogeneous robot teams operating in realistic settings often must accomplish complex missions requiring collaboration and adaptation to information acquired online. Because robot teams frequently operate in unstructured environments -- uncertain, open-world settings without prior maps -- subtasks must be grounded in robot capabilities and the physical world. While heterogeneous teams have typically been designed for fixed specifications, generative intelligence opens the possibility of teams that can accomplish a wide range of missions described in natural language. However, current large language model (LLM)-enabled teaming methods typically assume well-structured and known environments, limiting deployment in unstructured environments. We present SPINE-HT, a framework that addresses these limitations by grounding the reasoning abilities of LLMs in the context of a heterogeneous robot team through a three-stage process. Given language specifications describing mission goals and team capabilities, an LLM generates grounded subtasks which are validated for feasibility. Subtasks are then assigned to robots based on capabilities such as traversability or perception and refined given feedback collected during online operation. In simulation experiments with closed-loop perception and control, our framework achieves nearly twice the success rate compared to prior LLM-enabled heterogeneous teaming approaches. In real-world experiments with a Clearpath Jackal, a Clearpath Husky, a Boston Dynamics Spot, and a high-altitude UAV, our method achieves an 87\% success rate in missions requiring reasoning about robot capabilities and refining subtasks with online feedback. More information is provided at https://zacravichandran.github.io/SPINE-HT.
This work discusses how to build more rational language and multimodal agents and what criteria define rationality in intelligent systems. Rationality is the quality of being guided by reason, characterized by decision-making that aligns with evidence and logical principles. It plays a crucial role in reliable problem-solving by ensuring well-grounded and consistent solutions. Despite their progress, large language models (LLMs) often fall short of rationality due to their bounded knowledge space and inconsistent outputs. In response, recent efforts have shifted toward developing multimodal and multi-agent systems, as well as integrating modules like external tools, programming codes, symbolic reasoners, utility function, and conformal risk controls rather than relying solely on a single LLM for decision-making. This paper surveys state-of-the-art advancements in language and multimodal agents, assesses their role in enhancing rationality, and outlines open challenges and future research directions. We maintain an open repository at https://github.com/bowenupenn/Agent_Rationality.
Event cameras are usually favored in high-dynamic scenes because of their high dynamic range compared to traditional CMOS-based cameras. Total solar eclipses are one of these high dynamic scenes. This paper presents the first recording of a total solar eclipse with a pair of high-resolution event cameras, with accompanying methodology. We propose a method to stabilize the recordings to counteract manual tripod adjustments required to track celestial bodies in-frame. We also generate a high-dynamic range image of the sun during the eclipse, showing how event cameras excel in this aspect compared to traditional CMOS-based cameras. We also share insights and lessons learned in this unique scenario. All raw data, stabilized data, and code are open-source. The project website can be found at https://eclipse-event-cam.fcladera.com including data, processed data, and code.
Multi-robot collaboration in large-scale environments with limited-sized teams and without external infrastructure is challenging, since the software framework required to support complex tasks must be robust to unreliable and intermittent communication links. In this work, we present MOCHA (Multi-robot Opportunistic Communication for Heterogeneous Collaboration), a framework for resilient multi-robot collaboration that enables large-scale exploration in the absence of continuous communications. MOCHA is based on a gossip communication protocol that allows robots to interact opportunistically whenever communication links are available, propagating information on a peer-to-peer basis. We demonstrate the performance of MOCHA through real-world experiments with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) communication hardware. We further explore the system's scalability in simulation, evaluating the performance of our approach as the number of robots increases and communication ranges vary. Finally, we demonstrate how MOCHA can be tightly integrated with the planning stack of autonomous robots. We show a communication-aware planning algorithm for a high-altitude aerial robot executing a collaborative task while maximizing the amount of information shared with ground robots. The source code for MOCHA and the high-altitude UAV planning system is available open source: http://github.com/KumarRobotics/MOCHA, http://github.com/KumarRobotics/air_router.
Control tuning and adaptation present a significant challenge to the usage of robots in diverse environments. It is often nontrivial to find a single set of control parameters by hand that work well across the broad array of environments and conditions that a robot might encounter. Automated adaptation approaches must utilize prior knowledge about the system while adapting to significant domain shifts to find new control parameters quickly. In this work, we present a general framework for online controller adaptation that deals with these challenges. We combine meta-learning with Bayesian recursive estimation to learn prior predictive models of system performance that quickly adapt to online data, even when there is significant domain shift. These predictive models can be used as cost functions within efficient sampling-based optimization routines to find new control parameters online that maximize system performance. Our framework is powerful and flexible enough to adapt controllers for four diverse systems: a simulated race car, a simulated quadrupedal robot, and a simulated and physical quadrotor. The video and code can be found at https://hersh500.github.io/occam.
This work explores the zero-shot capabilities of foundation models in Visual Question Answering (VQA) tasks. We propose an adaptive multi-agent system, named Multi-Agent VQA, to overcome the limitations of foundation models in object detection and counting by using specialized agents as tools. Unlike existing approaches, our study focuses on the system's performance without fine-tuning it on specific VQA datasets, making it more practical and robust in the open world. We present preliminary experimental results under zero-shot scenarios and highlight some failure cases, offering new directions for future research.
This study introduces a hypothesis-testing framework to assess whether large language models (LLMs) possess genuine reasoning abilities or primarily depend on token bias. We go beyond evaluating LLMs on accuracy; rather, we aim to investigate their token bias in solving logical reasoning tasks. Specifically, we develop carefully controlled synthetic datasets, featuring conjunction fallacy and syllogistic problems. Our framework outlines a list of hypotheses where token biases are readily identifiable, with all null hypotheses assuming genuine reasoning capabilities of LLMs. The findings in this study suggest, with statistical guarantee, that most LLMs still struggle with logical reasoning. While they may perform well on classic problems, their success largely depends on recognizing superficial patterns with strong token bias, thereby raising concerns about their actual reasoning and generalization abilities. Codes and data are open-sourced at https://github.com/bowen-upenn/llm_token_bias.
John R. Spletzer合作论文数Computer Science and Engineering Department at Lehigh University15