aiqbench analysis
OCULAR introduces a novel conformal prediction method that leverages visual perception to calibrate uncertainty in robotic dynamics models across unseen environments without requiring environment-specific data. By distinguishing between regions of high and low model mismatch, the algorithm provides provable safety guarantees for probabilistic planning under both aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties. This advancement directly addresses critical challenges in deploying robust AI-driven robotics systems where reliable state prediction is essential.
Local Conformal Calibration of Dynamics Uncertainty from Semantic Images
arXiv:2605.13028v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We introduce Observation-aware Conformal Uncertainty Local-Calibration (OCULAR), a conformal prediction-based algorithm that uses perception information to provide uncertainty quantification guarantees for unseen test-time environments. While previous conformal approaches lack the ability to discriminate between state-action space regions leading to higher or lower model mismatch, and require environment-specific data, our method uses data collected from visually similar environments to provably calibrate a linear Gaussian dynamics model of arbitrary fidelity. The prediction regions generated from OCULAR are guaranteed to contain the future system states with, at least, a user-set likelihood, despite both aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty -- i.e., uncertainty arising from both stochastic disturbances and lack of data. Our guarantees are non-asymptotic and distribution-free, not requiring strong assumptions about the unknown real system dynamics. Our calibration procedure enables distinguishing between observation-velocity-action inputs leading to higher and lower next-state-uncertainty, which is helpful for probabilistically-safe planning. We numerically validate our algorithm on a double-integrator system subject to random perturbations and significant model mismatch, using both a simplified sensor and a more realistic simulated camera. Our approach calibrates approximate uncertainty estimates both when in-distribution and out-of-distribution, producing volume-efficient prediction regions without requiring environment-specific data.
Abstract:We introduce Observation-aware Conformal Uncertainty Local-Calibration (OCULAR), a conformal prediction-based algorithm that uses perception information to provide uncertainty quantification guarantees for unseen test-time environments. While previous conformal approaches lack the ability to discriminate between state-action space regions leading to higher or lower model mismatch, and require environment-specific data, our method uses data collected from visually similar environments to provably calibrate a linear Gaussian dynamics model of arbitrary fidelity. The prediction regions generated from OCULAR are guaranteed to contain the future system states with, at least, a user-set likelihood, despite both aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty -- i.e., uncertainty arising from both stochastic disturbances and lack of data. Our guarantees are non-asymptotic and distribution-free, not requiring strong assumptions about the unknown real system dynamics. Our calibration procedure enables distinguishing between observation-velocity-action inputs leading to higher and lower next-state-uncertainty, which is helpful for probabilistically-safe planning. We numerically validate our algorithm on a double-integrator system subject to random perturbations and significant model mismatch, using both a simplified sensor and a more realistic simulated camera. Our approach calibrates approximate uncertainty estimates both when in-distribution and out-of-distribution, producing volume-efficient prediction regions without requiring environment-specific data.
26 pages, 8 figures, 7 tables. Accepted to the 17th World Symposium on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR 2026). Project page: this https URL
Robotics (cs.RO); Systems and Control (eess.SY)
arXiv:2605.13028 [cs.RO]
(or arXiv:2605.13028v3 [cs.RO] for this version)
Full text under the publisher's open licence · 228 words
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