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arXiv · 2601.16985

Breaking Task Impasses Quickly: Adaptive Neuro-Symbolic Learning for Open-World Robotics

Pierrick Lorang
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Abstract

Adapting to unforeseen novelties in open-world environments remains a major challenge for autonomous systems. While hybrid planning and reinforcement learning (RL) approaches show promise, they often suffer from sample inefficiency, slow adaptation, and catastrophic forgetting. We present a neuro-symbolic framework integrating hierarchical abstractions, task and motion planning (TAMP), and reinforcement learning to enable rapid adaptation in robotics. Our architecture combines symbolic goal-oriented learning and world model-based exploration to facilitate rapid adaptation to environmental changes. Validated in robotic manipulation and autonomous driving, our approach achieves faster convergence, improved sample efficiency, and superior robustness over state-of-the-art hybrid methods, demonstrating its potential for real-world deployment.

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Pierrick Lorang. 2026-01-01. Breaking Task Impasses Quickly: Adaptive Neuro-Symbolic Learning for Open-World Robotics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.16985

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