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Papers

Research Papers

Peer-reviewed papers published by our lab at top venues including ICRA, RSS, IROS, NeurIPS, and more.

Change-Robust Online Topological Memory for Long-Term Relocalization and Semantic Navigation

Change-Robust Online Topological Memory for Long-Term Relocalization and Semantic Navigation

Jiaming Wang, Jizhuo Chen, Diwen Liu, Atharva Ghotavadekar, Jiaxuan Da, Linh Kästner, Harold Soh

NeurIPS 2026Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2026, Sydney, Australia
NavigationSemanticSpatial AI
PEDS: Closed-Loop Benchmarking of Social Navigation across Pedestrian Behavior Models

PEDS: Closed-Loop Benchmarking of Social Navigation across Pedestrian Behavior Models

Duc Tai Nguyen, Volodymyr Shcherbyna, Anh Do Duc, Zhengcheng Shen, Linh Kästner

RA-L + ICRA 2027IEEE RA-L + IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2027, Seoul, South Korea
BenchmarkingSocial NavigationCrowdsSimulation
D3D-GEN: Robot-Aware Domain-Grounded Interactive 3D World Generation for Social Robotics

D3D-GEN: Robot-Aware Domain-Grounded Interactive 3D World Generation for Social Robotics

Anh Duc Do, Volodymyr Shcherbyna, Tai Duc Nguyen, Spaarsh Thakkar, Zhengcheng Shen, Teham Buiyan, Archan Misra, Linh Kästner

IROS 2026IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2026, Pittsburgh, USA
AI GenerationSimulationSocial Navigation
GROVE: Grounded Pedestrian Simulation via Natural Language for Interactive Social Robot Navigation

GROVE: Grounded Pedestrian Simulation via Natural Language for Interactive Social Robot Navigation

Duc Tai Nguyen, Volodymyr Shcherbyna, Anh Do Duc, Zhengcheng Shen, Teham Buiyan, Linh Kästner

IROS 2026IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2026, Pittsburgh, USA
Social NavigationSimulationCrowds
TOPO-Bench: An Open-Source Topological Mapping Evaluation Framework with Quantifiable Perceptual Aliasing

TOPO-Bench: An Open-Source Topological Mapping Evaluation Framework with Quantifiable Perceptual Aliasing

Jiaming Wang, Jizhuo Chen, Diwen Liu, Jiaxuan Da, Jiamo Hu, Zhiwei Xue, Linh Kästner, Harold Soh

ICRA 2026IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2026, Vienna, Austria
BenchmarkingNavigationSpatial AI
Arena-Rosnav 5.0: A Photorealistic ROS2 Simulation Framework for Developing and Benchmarking Social Navigation

Arena-Rosnav 5.0: A Photorealistic ROS2 Simulation Framework for Developing and Benchmarking Social Navigation

Volodymyr Shcherbyna, Linh Kästner, Huajian Zeng, Giang Nguyen Huu Truong, Tim Lenz, Nam Truong Tran, Ahmed Martban, and Harold Soh

Robotics Science and Systems 2025, Los Angeles, USA
PhotorealisticROS2Simulation
Arena-Rosnav 4.0: A Comprehensive ROS2 Platform for Human-Centric Navigation and AI-Enhanced Environment Generation

Arena-Rosnav 4.0: A Comprehensive ROS2 Platform for Human-Centric Navigation and AI-Enhanced Environment Generation

Volodymyr Shcherbyna, Linh Kästner, Huajian Zeng, Giang Nguyen Huu Truong, Maximilian Ho-Kyoung Schreff, Tim Lenz, Nam Truong Tran, Diego Diaz, Ahmed Martban, Jonas Kreutz, and Harold Soh

ICRA 2025IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2025, Atlanta, USA
Human-CentricROS2AI Generation
Arena-Rosnav 3.0: Advancing Social Navigation in Collaborative and Highly Dynamic Environments

Arena-Rosnav 3.0: Advancing Social Navigation in Collaborative and Highly Dynamic Environments

Linh Kästner, Volodymyr Shcherbyna, Huajian Zeng, Tuan Anh Le, Maximilian Ho-Kyoung Schreff, Halid Osmaev, Nam Truong Tran, Diego Diaz, Jan Golebiowski, Harold Soh, Jens Lambrecht

Robotics Science and Systems 2024, Delft, Netherlands
Social NavigationCollaborationDynamics
Arena-Rosnav 2.0: A Development and Benchmarking Platform for Robot Navigation in Highly Dynamic Environments

Arena-Rosnav 2.0: A Development and Benchmarking Platform for Robot Navigation in Highly Dynamic Environments

Linh Kästner, Reyk Carstens, Huajian Zeng, Jacek Kmiecik, Tuan Anh Le, Teham Bhuiyan, Boris Meinardus, Jens Lambrecht

IROS 2023IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2023, Detroit, USA
PlatformBenchmarkingDynamic Environments
Arena-Web: A Web-based Development and Benchmarking Platform for Autonomous Navigation Approaches

Arena-Web: A Web-based Development and Benchmarking Platform for Autonomous Navigation Approaches

Linh Kästner, Reyk Carstens, Christopher Liebig, Volodymyr Shcherbyna, Lena Nahrworld, Subhin Lee, Jens Lambrecht

Robotics: Science and Systems 2023, Daegu, Korea
Web PlatformDevelopmentBenchmarking

Spotlight talk + one of six demos in main hall

Arena-Bench: A Benchmarking Suite for Obstacle Avoidance Approaches on Highly Dynamic Environments

Arena-Bench: A Benchmarking Suite for Obstacle Avoidance Approaches on Highly Dynamic Environments

Linh Kästner, Teham Buiyan, Tuan Anh Le, Reyk Carstens, Duc Pichel, Jacek Kmiecik, Elias Treis, Boris Meinardus, Bassel Fatloun, Niloufar Khorsadhi, Jens Lambrecht

RA-L + IROS 2022IEEE RA-L + IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2022, Kyoto, Japan
BenchmarkingObstacle AvoidanceDynamic
All-in-One: A DRL-based Control Switch Combining State-of-the-art Navigation Planners

All-in-One: A DRL-based Control Switch Combining State-of-the-art Navigation Planners

Linh Kästner, Johannes Cox, Teham Buiyan, Jens Lambrecht

ICRA 2022IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2022, Philadelphia, USA
Deep RLNavigationControl
Enhancing Navigational Safety in Crowded Environments using Semantic-Deep-Reinforcement-Learning-based Navigation

Enhancing Navigational Safety in Crowded Environments using Semantic-Deep-Reinforcement-Learning-based Navigation

Linh Kästner, Junhui Li, Bassel Fatloun, Daniel Gawrisch and Jens Lambrecht

ICRA 2022IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2022, Philadelphia, USA
SafetyCrowdsSemantic DRL
Spatial Imagination With Semantic Cognition for Mobile Robots

Spatial Imagination With Semantic Cognition for Mobile Robots

Zhengcheng Shen, Linh Kästner, Jens Lambrecht

IROS 2021IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2021, Prague, Czech Republic
SemanticCognitionSpatial AI

Nominated for Best Technical Paper Award

Connecting Deep-RL-based Obstacle Avoidance with Conventional Global Planners using Waypoint Generators

Connecting Deep-RL-based Obstacle Avoidance with Conventional Global Planners using Waypoint Generators

Linh Kästner, Teham Buiyan, Xinlin Zhao, Zhengcheng Shen, Jens Lambrecht

IROS 2021IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2021, Prague, Czech Republic
WaypointDeep RLPlanning
Arena-Rosnav: Towards Deployment of Deep-RL-Based Obstacle Avoidance into Conventional Autonomous Navigation Systems

Arena-Rosnav: Towards Deployment of Deep-RL-Based Obstacle Avoidance into Conventional Autonomous Navigation Systems

Linh Kästner, Teham Buiyan, Xinlin Zhao, Lei Jiao, Zhengcheng Shen, Tuan Anh Le and Jens Lambrecht

IROS 2021IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2021, Prague, Czech Republic
Deep RLDeploymentNavigation
Arena2D - Deep-RL-Based Navigation in Highly Dynamic Environments

Arena2D - Deep-RL-Based Navigation in Highly Dynamic Environments

Linh Kästner, Cornelius Marx, Jens Lambrecht

IROS 2020IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2020, Las Vegas, USA
2D SimulationDeep RLNavigation
A 3D-Deep-Learning-based Augmented Reality Calibration Method for Robotic Environments

A 3D-Deep-Learning-based Augmented Reality Calibration Method for Robotic Environments

Linh Kästner, Vlad Frasineanu, Jens Lambrecht

ICRA 2020IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2020, Paris, France
ARDeep LearningCalibration
A Marker-Less AR-Calibration Method for Robotic Environments using RGB-Data

A Marker-Less AR-Calibration Method for Robotic Environments using RGB-Data

Linh Kästner, Daniel Dimitrov, Jens Lambrecht

UR 2019IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR) 2019, Kyoto, Japan
ARMarkerlessRGB