Spatial Perception and Embodied Autonomy Research

Project Information

SPEAR

Grant agreement ID: 101119774

DOI

10.3030/101119774

EC signature date 27 June 2023

Start date 1 November 2023

End date 31 October 2027

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 6 746 086,25

EU contribution

€ 6 746 086,25

Coordinated by

NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU
Norway

CORDIS provides links to public deliverables and publications of HORIZON projects.

Links to deliverables and publications from FP7 projects, as well as links to some specific result types such as dataset and software, are dynamically retrieved from OpenAIRE .

Deliverables

Data Management Plan (1)

Data Management Plan

The DMP contains detailed procedures for all data types producing during SPEAR. The DMP will be a living document (see also planned updates).

Documents, reports (1)

Dissemination, exploitation and communication plan

Dissemination, exploitation and communication plan report (iteratively updated).

Publications

Conference proceedings (15)

Reinforcement Learning for Active Perception in Autonomous Navigation

Author(s): Grzegorz Malczyk, Mihir Kulkarni, Kostas Alexis
Published in: Accepted at IEEE ICRA 2026, 2026
Publisher: IEEE
DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.2602.01266

Curriculum-based Sample Efficient Reinforcement Learning for Robust Stabilization of a Quadrotor

Author(s): Fausto Mauricio Lagos Suarez; Akshit Saradagi; Vidya Sumathy; Shruti Kotpalliwar; George Nikolakopoulos
Published in: CoRR, 2025
Publisher: IEEE
DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.2501.18490

Tightly-Coupled Radar-Visual-Inertial Odometry

Author(s): Morten Nissov, Mohit Singh, Kostas Alexis
Published in: Accepted to IEEE ECC 2026, 2026
Publisher: IEEE
DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.2603.23052

A Graph-Based Reinforcement Learning Approach with Frontier Potential Based Reward for Safe Cluttered Environment Exploration

Author(s): Gabriele Calzolari, Vidya Sumathy, Christoforos Kanellakis, George Nikolakopoulos
Published in: 24th European Control Conference, 2026
Publisher: IEEE

Belief Scene Graphs: Expanding Partial Scenes with Objects through Computation of Expectation

Author(s): Mario A.V. Saucedo, Akash Patel, Akshit Saradagi, Christoforos Kanellakis, George Nikolakopoulos
Published in: 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2024
Publisher: IEEE
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2402.03840

Platform-Agnostic Reinforcement Learning Framework for Safe Exploration of Cluttered Environments with Graph Attention

Author(s): Gabriele Calzolari, Vidya Sumathy, Christoforos Kanellakis, George Nikolakopoulos
Published in: The 2026 IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA)
Publisher: IEEE

Decentralized Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Exploration with Inter-Agent Communication-Based Action Space

Author(s): Gabriele Calzolari, Vidya Sumathy, Christoforos Kanellakis, George Nikolakopoulos
Published in: 2024 24th International Conference on Control, Automation and Systems (ICCAS), 2024, ISSN 2642-3901
Publisher: IEEE
DOI: 10.23919/ICCAS63016.2024.10773383

D-MARL: A Dynamic Communication-Based Action Space Enhancement for Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning Exploration of Large Scale Unknown Environments

Author(s): Gabriele Calzolari, Vidya Sumathy, Christoforos Kanellakis, George Nikolakopoulos
Published in: 2024 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2024

A Heuristic Approach for Performance Tuning in RL-based Quadrotor Control via Reward Design and Termination Conditions

Author(s): Fausto Mauricio Lagos Suarez, Akshit Saradagi, Vidya Sumathy, George Nikolakopoulos
Published in: 34th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED26), 2026
Publisher: IEEE

Learning UAV Navigation with Collision-Aware Predicted-Motion Embedding

Author(s): Mohammad Javad Zallaghi, Bryan Convens, Kelly Merckaert, Adrian Munteanu, Bram Vanderborght
Published in: 2026
Publisher: Benelux Meeting on Systems and Control 2026

Fuzzy Logic Theory-based Adaptive Reward Shaping for Robust Reinforcement Learning (FARS)

Author(s): Hürkan Şahin, Van Huyen Dang, Erdi Sayar, Alper Yegenoglu, Erdal Kayacan
Published in: IEEE WCCI 2026, 2026
Publisher: IEEE
DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.2604.15772

Thermal Image Refinement with Depth Estimation using Recurrent Networks for Monocular ORB-SLAM3

Author(s): Hürkan Şahin, Huy Xuan Pham, Van Huyen Dang, Alper Yegenoglu, Erdal Kayacan
Published in: IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation, 2026
Publisher: IEEE

Vine Robots that Evert through Bending

Author(s): Rui Wu, Stefano Mintchev
Published in: 2024 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2024
Publisher: IEEE
DOI: 10.3929/ethz-b-000705656

UniPilot: Enabling GPS-Denied Autonomy Across Embodiments

Author(s): Mihir Kulkarni, Mihir Dharmadhikari, Nikhil Khedekar, Morten Nissov, Mohit Singh, Philipp Weiss, Kostas Alexis
Published in: 2025 IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR), 2026
Publisher: IEEE
DOI: 10.1109/ICAR65334.2025.11338632

Leveraging Computation of Expectation Models for Commonsense Affordance Estimation on 3D Scene Graphs

Author(s): Mario A.V. Saucedo, Nikolaos Stathoulopoulos, Akash Patel, Christoforos Kanellakis, George Nikolakopoulos
Published in: 2024 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2024
Publisher: IEEE
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2409.05392

Peer reviewed articles (12)

Efficient Knowledge Transfer for Jump-Starting Control Policy Learning of Multirotors Through Physics-Aware Neural Architectures

Author(s): Welf Rehberg, Mihir Kulkarni, Philipp Weiss, Kostas Alexis
Published in: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Issue 11, 2026, ISSN 2377-3766
Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2026.3668585

VDS-Nav: Volumetric Depth-Based Safe Navigation for Aerial Robots–Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap

Author(s): Van Huyen Dang; Adrian Redder; Huy Xuan Pham; Andriy Sarabakha; Erdal Kayacan
Published in: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2025, ISSN 2377-3766
Publisher: IEEE
DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2025.3606806

Morphy: A Compliant and Morphologically Aware Flying Robot

Author(s): Paolo De Petris; Morten Nissov; Kostas Alexis
Published in: Advanced Intelligent Systems, 2024, ISSN 2640-4567
Publisher: Wiley
DOI: 10.1002/aisy.202400493

Aerial Gym Simulator: A Framework for Highly Parallelized Simulation of Aerial Robots

Author(s): Mihir Kulkarni; Welf Rehberg; Kostas Alexis
Published in: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2025, ISSN 2377-3766
Publisher: IEEE
DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.2503.01471

MAVRL: Learn to Fly in Cluttered Environments With Varying Speed

Author(s): Hang Yu, ChristopheDe Wagter, Guido C. H. E de Croon
Published in: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Issue 10, 2025, ISSN 2377-3766
Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2024.3522778

Collaborative Exploration With a Marsupial Ground-Aerial Robot Team Through Task-Driven Map Compression

Author(s): Angelos Zacharia, Mihir Dharmadhikari, Kostas Alexis
Published in: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Issue 10, 2025, ISSN 2377-3766
Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2025.3609040

Neural NMPC through signed distance field encoding for collision avoidance

Author(s): Martin Jacquet, Marvin Harms, Kostas Alexis
Published in: The International Journal of Robotics Research, 2026, ISSN 0278-3649
Publisher: SAGE Publications
DOI: 10.1177/02783649251401223

Depth Transfer: Learning to See Like a Simulator for Real-World Drone Navigation

Author(s): Hang Yu, Christophe De Wagter, Guido C. H. E de Croon
Published in: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Issue 10, 2025, ISSN 2377-3766
Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2025.3617729

Encoding mechanical intelligence using ultraprogrammable joints

Author(s): Rui Wu, Luca Girardi, Stefano Mintchev
Published in: Science Advances, Issue 11, 2025, ISSN 2375-2548
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
DOI: 10.1126/SCIADV.ADV2052

Semantically-Driven Deep Reinforcement Learning for Inspection Path Planning

Author(s): Grzegorz Malczyk; Mihir Kulkarni; Kostas Alexis
Published in: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2025, ISSN 2377-3766
Publisher: IEEE
DOI: 10.48550/ARXIV.2505.14443

On the Characterization and Limits of 4D Radar for Aided Inertial Navigation

Author(s): Morten Nissov, Kostas Alexis
Published in: IEEE Transactions on Field Robotics, 2026, ISSN 2997-1101
Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
DOI: 10.1109/TFR.2026.3690584

A Terminal State Feasibility Governor for Real-Time Nonlinear Model Predictive Control Over Arbitrary Horizons

Author(s): Bryan Convens; Dominic Liao-McPherson; Kelly Merckaert; Bram Vanderborght; Marco M. Nicotra
Published in: IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 2024, ISSN 1558-0865
Publisher: IEEE
DOI: 10.1109/tcst.2024.3365996

Book chapters (1)

Unconventional Hexacopters via Evolution and Learning: Performance Gains and New Insights

Author(s): Jed R. Muff, Keiichi Ito, Elijah H. W. Ang, Karine Miras, A. E. Eiben
Published in: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Applications of Evolutionary Computation, 2026
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-23604-3_5

Other (1)

MAC: Morphology-Aware Control Design with Deep Reinforcement Learning for Navigation of Squeezable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Author(s): Van Huyen Dang, Adrian Redder, Erdal Kayacan
Published in: Workshop on Morphology-Aware Policy and Design Learning (MAPoDeL) at CoRL 2024., 2024
Publisher: OpenReview