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Panagiotis Tsiotras

Publications and source records attributed to Panagiotis Tsiotras.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Online, Reachability-Aware, Sampling-Based Motion Planning

Sampling-Based Model-Predictive Control (MPC) algorithms are a flexible class of controllers used for navigation on a wide range of robotic systems. Historically, such approaches have lacked hard safety guarantees, a shortcoming which we remedy in this work by computing guaranteed reachable-set overapproximations online with a fast, interval-based pipeline. We show that our method achieves similar performance to a state-of-the-art reachability-based planner without the need for the expensive pre-computation step, and can be scaled to systems that are infeasible using existing approaches. Finally, we demonstrate that our technique reduces safety violations by over 99% in a racing simulation and successfully controls a model racecar on real hardware experiments without crashes.

cs.RO↗
arXiv2026

Continuous-Time Covariance Steering with Common Free-Final Time: Finite-Horizon Solutions and Infinite-Horizon Limits

This article studies the optimal common free-final time problem for steering the state covariance of a continuous-time stochastic linear system between prescribed initial and terminal covariance matrices. We first establish a deterministic reformulation of the SDE-constrained free-final time stochastic optimal control problem (SOCP). For the ensuing SOCP, we provide necessary conditions for optimality and establish sufficient conditions for the optimal common final time to be finite. Subsequently, we characterize the asymptotic behavior of the finite-horizon optimal solutions as the final time tends to infinity, the invariant sets and trajectories associated with this limiting regime, and derive the sensitivity of the Hamiltonian with respect to the common final time. Finally, leveraging these sensitivities, we develop a trust-region line-search algorithm together with an infinite-horizon case detection method, and demonstrate its performance on three different problems: (a) an illustrative covariance-steering example, (b) a demonstration of spacecraft maneuver using covariance control, and (c) Gaussian mixture to Gaussian mixture steering.

math.OC↗
arXiv2026

Offline Nash Solvers Meet Online Tree Search in Multi-Agent Games on Graphs

Computing Nash equilibrium policies in multi-agent Pursuit-Evasion games (PEG) is challenging due to the exponential growth of the joint state and action spaces with the number of agents. Existing approaches either rely on offline equilibrium approximations, which may lack adaptability during execution, or online planning methods, which suffer from large branching factors. In this work, we propose Primitive-Guided Tree Search (PGTS), a hybrid framework that integrates offline exact Nash equilibrium computation with online tree search: PGTS first solves a collection of smaller, tractable sub-games offline; at deployment, PGTS performs online tree search at each time step, using the optimal sub-game policies and value functions to guide tree expansion and estimate leaf-node values. Extensive experiments on varied graph topologies, including real-world networks, demonstrate that PGTS significantly outperforms state-of-the-art learning and heuristic baselines, while maintaining robust performance against adversaries.

cs.GT↗
arXiv2026

Conflict-Based Lazy Search for Fast Multi-Manipulator Planning

Employing multiple manipulators can boost efficiency and accomplish tasks that a single manipulator cannot do. However, real-time planning for multiple manipulators in a cluttered workspace still poses significant challenges for planning algorithms. This article proposes a new planning algorithm called Conflict-Based Lazy Search (CBLS) for multimanipulator planning. CBLS is built on Conflict-Based Search (CBS), an efficient multiagent pathfinding (MAPF) algorithm that has shown an order of magnitude speedup over previous approaches [1], [2]. CBS addresses MAPF by solving many single-agent pathfinding (SAPF) problems. Thus, its planning time directly depends on the efficiency of the SAPF algorithm adopted. Our CBLS algorithm enhances CBS with precomputation and lazy search. First, a lazily evaluated graph with controlled sparsity is precomputed for a single manipulator. Second, we propose the Lazy Edged-based A* (LEA*) for efficient SAPF. Since edge evaluation is the computational bottleneck of manipulator planning, LEA* uses lazy search and an edge queue to reduce the number of edge evaluations. We show that LEA* is optimally vertex efficient and has improved edge efficiency compared to A*. We apply the proposed CBLS to multi-manipulator planning problems and show its superior performance by comparing it with CBS and a sampling-based algorithm, namely, RRT-Connect.

cs.RO↗
arXiv2026

Multi-Contact Force Estimation for Continuum Robots via Gaussian-Parameterized Factor Graphs

Continuum robots offer key advantages in navigating unstructured environments, but their safe operation requires accurate estimation of the external contact forces acting anywhere along the robot body. Estimating these forces at unknown locations is an ill-conditioned problem, particularly for multiple contacts. We propose a unified shape and force estimation framework formulated on a factor graph. By incorporating a Gaussian mixture force parameterization into a discretized probabilistic Cosserat rod model, we reduce the dimensionality of the unknown external forces and mitigate the ill-conditioning of node-wise force estimation. The framework fuses strain, tendon tension, and pose measurements to simultaneously estimate the robot's shape and external forces while accounting for modeling and sensor uncertainties. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms existing methods in terms of force location and magnitude estimation for both single and multi-contact scenarios. We further present a progressive variant that introduces basis functions on demand to estimate contact forces sequentially during a simulated confined-navigation task.

cs.RO↗
arXiv2026

Performance-Driven Environment Abstraction with Multi-Timescale Learning

We study performance-driven environment abstraction for decision-making in large Markov decision processes. Rather than preserving geometric or topological structure, we seek abstractions that directly optimize decision quality. We model abstraction as a controlled approximation obtained by aggregating the state space and enforcing a shared action distribution within each aggregated state. For a fixed partition, we establish a performance guarantee that separates value-function approximation error from the loss introduced by action sharing. Guided by this analysis, we develop a multi-timescale reinforcement learning framework that jointly adapts the policy and a tree-structured environment abstraction. The resulting algorithm refines and coarsens regions of the state space based on Q-value discrepancies, balancing performance against abstraction size and complexity. Empirical results demonstrate substantial state compression, improved sample efficiency, and faster replanning compared to actor-critic baselines.

cs.LG↗
arXiv2026

GABI: Geometry-Aware Boundary Integration for Spacecraft Segmentation

Accurate segmentation is crucial for autonomous spacecraft, as it directly affects downstream tasks related to 3D situational awareness. The harsh illumination conditions of space, however, produce images with high variability in appearance, hindering the generalization of segmentation approaches across different spacecraft and environments. In this work, we propose GABI, a lightweight boundary-aware multi-task segmentation architecture that augments a convolutional backbone with an auxiliary distance-field prediction head. The distance field provides dense geometric supervision around object boundaries, encouraging the network to learn spatially consistent representations of spacecraft structures while maintaining low model complexity suitable for onboard perception systems. We evaluated GABI against both an established convolutional baseline and a heavier transformer-based architecture. On the SPARK benchmark, distance-field supervision improves the baseline by up to $5\%$ in Average Precision while achieving performance comparable to the transformer models. In generalization experiments, GABI improves Average Precision by more than $50\%$ over the baseline. In cross-domain evaluation, the lightweight GABI variant performs within $5\%$ in IoU and F1-score of the heavier transformer model while being approximately ten times smaller. At the same time, the heavier GABI variant surpasses the transformer architectures while remaining nearly three times lighter.

cs.CV↗
arXiv2026

Uncertainty-driven 3D Gaussian Splatting Active Mapping via Anisotropic Visibility Field

We present Gaussian Splatting Anisotropic Visibility Field (GAVIS), a novel framework for uncertainty quantification and active mapping in 3DGS. Our key insight is that regions unseen from the training views yield unreliable predictions from the 3DGS. To address this, we introduce a principled and efficient method for quantifying the visibility field in 3DGS, defined as the anisotropic visibility of each particle with respect to the training views, and represented using spherical harmonics. The resulting visibility field is integrated into a Bayesian Network-based uncertainty-aware 3DGS rasterizer, enabling real-time (200 FPS) uncertainty quantification for synthesized views. Active mapping is further performed within a maximum information gain framework building on this formulation. Extensive experiments across diverse environments demonstrate that GAVIS consistently and significantly outperforms prior approaches in both accuracy and efficiency. Moreover, beyond standalone use, our method can be applied post-hoc to improve the performance of existing approaches.

cs.CV↗
arXiv2026

Collaborative Navigation and Exploration with $\beta$-Sparse Gaussian Processes

Collaborative navigation of heterogeneous robots in unknown environments poses significant challenges due to sensing, communication, and computational limitations. In this work, a lead robot navigates toward a target while a mobile sensor robot (e.g., a drone) assists by transmitting information about its locally observed map under bandwidth constraints. We propose a framework that enables the sensor to jointly select its transmitted map points and navigation actions online, while also predicting unexplored regions of the environment. To this end, we present $\beta$-Sparse Gaussian Processes, a robust variational sparse Gaussian Process model for task-aware inducing point selection under cardinality constraints. Furthermore, we develop an action-selection strategy that balances task relevance with exploration. Simulations on Mars and Earth maps show that the framework can reduce path cost by 18% relative to no communication and decrease transmitted information by 76% compared to raw-data transmission baselines.

cs.RO↗
arXiv2026

Lifted Schr\"odinger Bridges for Gaussian Mixture Endpoints: Projection Gaps and Path-Space Obstructions

We study stochastic density control between Gaussian-mixture endpoint distributions under Brownian prior dynamics. Since the direct Schr\"odinger bridge between Gaussian mixtures is generally not available in closed form, we introduce a lifted path-space construction in which each trajectory is augmented with a source--target component label. Consequently, the problem decomposes into Gaussian component-to-component Schr\"odinger bridges with explicit marginal, drift, and cost formulas, while the mixture-level assignment reduces to a finite-dimensional entropic coupling problem with a Sinkhorn scaling form. We then analyze the projection obtained by discarding or forgetting the label. By construction, the projected law satisfies the original Gaussian-mixture endpoint constraints, but its relative entropy generally differs from the lifted relative entropy by a nonnegative conditional label-information gap. This gap reveals a path-space obstruction: the lifted optimizer cannot, in general, be identified with the direct unlabeled Schr\"odinger bridge after projection. We also derive the posterior-averaged Markov drift associated with the projected marginal flow, prove a kinetic-energy upper bound, and identify a common path-potential condition under which the projection gap vanishes. Several numerical illustrations showing density and shape control are recorded for a self-contained exposition.

math.OC↗
arXiv2026

Stochastic Transition-Map Distillation for Fast Probabilistic Inference

Diffusion models achieve strong generation quality, diversity, and distribution coverage, but their performance often comes with expensive inference. In this work, we propose Stochastic Transition-Map Distillation (STMD), a teacher-free framework for accelerating diffusion model inference while preserving probabilistic sample generation. In contrast to score-based diffusion models, whose denoising parametrization models the mean of the posterior distribution, STMD distills the full transition map associated with the sampling stochastic differential equation (SDE). We parameterize these SDE transitions with a conditional Mean Flow model, yielding a one- or few-step stochastic sampler that retains the transition structure of the underlying diffusion process. This perspective is especially useful for downstream tasks that require stochastic inference, such as diffusion posterior sampling, inverse problems, and energy-based fine-tuning. Compared to recent distillation methods, STMD requires no pretrained teacher, bi-level optimization, or trajectory simulation and caching, enabling efficient and scalable training. We derive convergence bounds for our method in the Wasserstein distance, providing a strong theoretical foundation for our approach, and validate STMD on various image generation examples on the MNIST, CIFAR-10, and CelebA datasets.

cs.LG↗
arXiv2026

Reachability Analysis of the State Transition and State Covariance Matrices for an LTV System

In this paper, we study the reachability of two closely related matrices appearing in the analysis of linear time-varying (LTV) systems over a finite time interval, namely, its closed-loop state transition matrix via a state feedback control and its state covariance matrix starting from some given initial state covariance matrix. Under a mild assumption, we first characterize the set of closed-loop terminal state transition matrices reachable from the identity matrix using controls of the state feedback form. Then, we provide the set of terminal state covariance matrices reachable from any given positive definite initial state covariance matrix when the LTV system is not necessarily controllable. Both results are based on the solutions of corresponding matrix Riccati differential equations (RDE).

eess.SY↗
arXiv2026

Asymmetric-Information Resource Allocation Games: An LP Approach to Purposeful Deception

In this work, we introduce the Deceptive Resource Allocation Game (DRAG), which studies purposeful deception within a Bayesian game framework. In DRAG, a Defender allocates resources across the true asset and several decoys to influence an Attacker's beliefs and actions, with the goal of diverting the Attacker away from the true asset. We seek to characterize purposeful deception, whereby the Defender deceives only when doing so improves its performance. To this end, we solve for the Perfect Bayesian Nash Equilibrium (PBNE) of the corresponding game. We show that, despite the coupled belief-policy interdependence, the problem admits an efficient, non-iterative linear programming formulation. Numerical results demonstrate that the resulting policies naturally balance effective allocation and belief manipulation, giving rise to purposeful and emergent deceptive behaviors.

cs.GT↗
arXiv2026

Covariance Steering of Discrete-Time Markov Jump Linear Systems with Multiplicative Noise

We study a finite-horizon covariance steering problem for discrete-time Markov jump linear systems (MJLS) with both state- and control-dependent multiplicative noise. The objective is to minimize a quadratic running cost while steering the system from given mode-conditioned initial means and covariances to a prescribed terminal mean and covariance. We first show that, without loss of generality, feasible controls may be represented by mode-dependent linear feedback together with feedforward and independent random components, and we highlight that, in contrast to the case without multiplicative noise, a purely affine state-feedback law does not in general suffice. To this end, we introduce a lifted-state formulation that embeds the mean and covariance information into a unified second-moment description, and we prove that the resulting lifted problem is equivalent to the original covariance steering problem formulation. This leads to a lossless relaxation in moment variables and an SDP reformulation for the unconstrained case. We further study chance-constrained covariance steering with ball and half-space constraints on the state and control, derive tractable sufficient convex surrogates, and establish an iterative reference-update scheme to reduce conservatism. Numerical experiments on a finance application illustrate our results.

math.OC↗
arXiv2026

Factor Graph-Based Shape Estimation for Continuum Robots via Magnus Expansion

Reconstructing the shape of continuum manipulators from sparse, noisy sensor data is a challenging task, owing to the infinite-dimensional nature of such systems. Existing approaches broadly trade off between parametric methods that yield compact state representations but lack probabilistic structure, and Cosserat rod inference on factor graphs, which provides principled uncertainty quantification at the cost of a state dimension that grows with the spatial discretization. This letter combines the strength of both paradigms by estimating the coefficients of a low-dimensional Geometric Variable Strain (GVS) parameterization within a factor graph framework. A novel kinematic factor, derived from the Magnus expansion of the strain field, encodes the closed-form rod geometry as a prior constraint linking the GVS strain coefficients to the backbone pose variables. The resulting formulation yields a compact state vector directly amenable to model-based control, while retaining the modularity, probabilistic treatment and computational efficiency of factor graph inference. The proposed method is evaluated in simulation on a 0.4 m long tendon-driven continuum robot under three measurement configurations, achieving mean position errors below 2 mm for all three scenarios and demonstrating a sixfold reduction in orientation error compared to a Gaussian process regression baseline when only position measurements are available.

cs.RO↗
arXiv2026

Nonlinear Stochastic Density Steering via Gaussian Mixture Schrodinger Bridges and Multiple Linearizations

The paper studies the optimal density steering problem for nonlinear continuous-time stochastic systems. To accurately capture nonlinear dynamics in high-uncertainty regions that deviate significantly from a nominal linearization point, we introduce the concept of Multiple Distribution-to-Distribution Linearization. The proposed approach first approximates the boundary distributions using Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs), and decomposes the original nonlinear problem into a collection of Gaussian-to-Gaussian Optimal Covariance Steering (OCS) subproblems between pairs of mixture components. Each elementary OCS problem is solved via local linearization around the mean trajectory connecting the corresponding initial and terminal Gaussian components. The resulting elementary policies are then combined according to their associated conditional densities. We prove that the proposed multi-linearization approach yields tighter approximation error bounds than single-linearization for a broad class of problems. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated through numerical experiments on an Earth-to-Mars orbit transfer scenario.

eess.SY↗
arXiv2026

Nonlinear Stochastic Optimal Control and Optimal Stopping using the Fokker-Planck Transformation

In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework for nonlinear stochastic optimal control problems with optimal stopping by establishing a density-based deterministic representation of the underlying diffusion. For state-independent diffusion, we rewrite the controlled Fokker-Planck equation as a continuity equation driven by a score-corrected velocity field, yielding a deterministic characteristic dynamics that reproduces the marginal law of the stochastic system. Leveraging Stein-type identities, we show that the associated distributional dynamic programming equation admits the same second-order differential operator as the distributional stochastic Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman formulation. Building on this representation, we formulate an optimal control problem with state-dependent terminal-time assignment and terminal distributional constraints and derive the first-order necessary conditions using variational analysis. We present the conditions both for a common terminal time and for the general case of state-dependent stopping.

math.OC↗
arXiv2026

Data-Driven Covariance Steering with Output Feedback

This paper addresses the problem of output-feedback covariance steering for stochastic, discrete-time, linear, time-invariant systems without knowledge of the system model. We employ a controllable, non-minimal state representation constructed from past inputs and outputs and convert the problem to one in state-feedback form. In this representation, the induced disturbance becomes temporally correlated, which requires explicit propagation of the cross-covariance between the state and disturbance processes. To handle the lack of a system model, we leverage persistently exciting data collected offline and formulate the mean and covariance steering problems using an indirect and a direct approach, respectively. The indirect formulation requires an estimate of the mean dynamics model, while the direct formulation relies on an estimate of the noise realization in the collected data. To this end, we present an estimation method suitable to handle temporally correlated noise, enabling consistent identification of both components. Using a convex relaxation, we convert the covariance steering problem to a semidefinite program that can be solved efficiently. We conduct numerical simulations to evaluate the performance of the developed framework.

eess.SY↗