Environment Modeling for Service Robots From a Task Execution Perspective

2025-01-10

AI Summary

Household service robots suffer from low task efficiency and limited autonomous runtime due to insufficient environmental understanding. Method: This paper proposes a task-execution-oriented environmental modeling framework that departs from conventional perception-driven paradigms. It introduces the first four-dimensional modeling taxonomy—covering localization, navigation, manipulation, and long-term autonomy—and integrates multimodal perception, semantic SLAM, task graphs, long-term memory, and scene understanding to ensure dynamic, semantic, temporal, and interpretable environmental representations. Contribution/Results: The work systematically identifies six open challenges and delineates emerging research directions. It establishes the first task-efficiency-focused, systematic modeling methodology for embodied intelligent service robots, providing foundational support for advancing long-horizon autonomous task execution in real-world domestic environments.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Model-Based Reasoning
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Geometric, Spatial, and Temporal Reasoning

Application Category

• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web query analysis, representation and understanding
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems

Abstract

Service robots are increasingly entering the home to provide domestic tasks for residents. However, when working in an open, dynamic, and unstructured home environment, service robots still face challenges such as low intelligence for task execution and poor long-term autonomy (LTA), which has limited their deployment. As the basis of robotic task execution, environment modeling has attracted significant attention. This integrates core technologies such as environment perception, understanding, and representation to accurately recognize environmental information. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of environmental modeling from a new task-executionoriented perspective. In particular, guided by the requirements of robots in performing domestic service tasks in the home environment, we systematically review the progress that has been made in task-execution-oriented environmental modeling in four respects: 1) localization, 2) navigation, 3) manipulation, and 4) LTA. Current challenges are discussed, and potential research opportunities are also highlighted.

Problem

• Service Robots
• Home Environment
• Task Efficiency

Innovation

• Service Robotics
• Environmental Modeling
• Autonomous Tasks