On-Demand Human Assistance for Task Continuation under Physical Action Failures in LLM-based Planning

Abstract:While robot action planning based on large language models (LLMs) has advanced remarkably, continuing a task after a physical action failure during execution remains a key challenge. For example, after failing to grasp an object, the robot may not notice that it has fallen off the table and keep trying to detect and pick it up, stalling the task. Existing approaches either rely on closed-loop autonomous re-planning, which fails when errors exceed the robot's capabilities, or on human intervention without updating the LLM's plan, hindering subsequent planning. We present a system for LLM-based robot action planning that integrates remote human intervention with feedback-based replanning. When the LLM detects an action failure, the robot requests remote assistance; an operator resolves the failure through teleoperation and reports the outcome in natural language, which is fed back to the LLM to update its plan so that the task can continue. We evaluated the proposed system on a real-world trash-collection task, comparing it with a fully autonomous method and a teleoperation-only baseline. The proposed system improves task progress over the autonomous method in this case study. For easy-to-retrieve trash, the gap from the teleoperation reference was small, while a larger gap remained for harder-to-retrieve trash. These results suggest that, in this case study, combining remote human intervention with feedback-based replanning was associated with continued task execution even in the face of otherwise unrecoverable failures. The project website is this https URL.

Under review. Project page is this https URL

Robotics (cs.RO)

arXiv:2603.28156 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2603.28156v2 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.28156 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.