Asymmetric Scout-Worker Reconnaissance for Route Validation in Unknown Environments

2026-09-28

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenge in unknown environments where exploration paths generated by agile reconnaissance robots are often impassable for larger task robots due to dimensional discrepancies. To overcome the conventional single-traversability-model assumption, this work proposes a symbiotic reconnaissance framework incorporating an asymmetric exploration mechanism. Specifically, highly maneuverable scouts perform targeted exploration of critical regions, while model-based reasoning, adaptive planning, and multi-robot coordination strategies are leveraged to infer task-level traversability from scout observations and autonomously remediate obstructed segments. Both simulation and real-world experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly reduces reconnaissance travel distance, successfully validates feasible routes through narrow passages, and generates effective detour plans.

Abstract

This paper studies asymmetric scout-worker reconnaissance in unknown environments, where a small, agile autonomous scout explores routes for a larger worker robot that must visit an ordered sequence of goal locations. Because the scout has a smaller footprint and greater mobility, a scout-traversable route may be infeasible for the worker; worker feasibility must therefore be inferred from scout observations. This setting is not explicitly addressed by existing exploration and replanning methods, which typically assume a single traversability model and seek optimal paths for the same robot performing the exploration. We introduce a symbiotic scout-based framework that exploits the scout's superior mobility to explore only the portions of the unknown environment needed to identify worker-feasible path segments connecting the ordered goals. Evaluations in simulated and real-world settings demonstrate that the proposed approach validates feasible routes, repairs blocked segments with validated worker-feasible detours, and substantially reduces scout travel compared to baseline exploration and planning methods. A real-world indoor deployment further demonstrates the scout navigating narrow corridors to identify a worker-feasible route.

Problem

• Scout-Worker Reconnaissance
• Route Validation
• Unknown Environments
• Asymmetric Traversability
• Multi-Robot Exploration

Innovation

• asymmetric reconnaissance
• scout-worker framework
• route validation
• unknown environments
• traversability inference