Bridging Intelligence and Instinct: A New Control Paradigm for Autonomous Robots

As the advent of artificial general intelligence (AGI) progresses at a breathtaking pace, the application of large language models (LLMs) as AI Agents in robotics remains in its nascent stage. A significant concern that hampers the seamless integration of these AI Agents into robotics is the unpredictability of the content they generate, a phenomena known as ``hallucination''. Drawing inspiration from biological neural systems, we propose a novel, layered architecture for autonomous robotics, bridging AI agent intelligence and robot instinct. In this context, we define Robot Instinct as the innate or learned set of responses and priorities in an autonomous robotic system that ensures survival-essential tasks, such as safety assurance and obstacle avoidance, are carried out in a timely and effective manner. This paradigm harmoniously combines the intelligence of LLMs with the instinct of robotic behaviors, contributing to a more safe and versatile autonomous robotic system. As a case study, we illustrate this paradigm within the context of a mobile robot, demonstrating its potential to significantly enhance autonomous robotics and enabling a future where robots can operate independently and safely across diverse environments.

Novel 3D Scene Understanding Applications From Recurrence in a Single Image

We demonstrate the utility of recurring pattern discovery from a single image for spatial understanding of a 3D scene in terms of (1) vanishing point detection, (2) hypothesizing 3D translation symmetry and (3) counting the number of RP instances in the image. Furthermore, we illustrate the feasibility of leveraging RP discovery output to form a more precise, quantitative text description of the scene. Our quantitative evaluations on a new 1K+ Recurring Pattern (RP) benchmark with diverse variations show that visual perception of recurrence from one single view leads to scene understanding outcomes that are as good as or better than existing supervised methods and/or unsupervised methods that use millions of images.