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TIRAS Transactions on Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Systems An open access journal of Kaggleyes Academy
TIRAS > Vol. 1, No. 4 (October 2026) > KAGG:2610.00003
Vol. 1, No. 4 (October 2026) — Article KAGG:2610.00003

A Cross-Embodiment Navigation Stack for Heterogeneous Robot Teams: Planner, Interface Calibration, and Future-Range Perception

Authors: Zhaoyu Li, Jingyao Sun, Yichen Wang, Bowen Huang, Tianyu Zhou

Legged Locomotion Group, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

[Received 2026-09-21; accepted 2026-10-02; published online 2026-10-05]

Abstract:

Running one navigation stack on a heterogeneous robot team requires more than a planner that accepts different footprints: each robot's velocity interface drifts with payload and battery state, and range perception must be queried along the motions that the robot can actually execute. This paper presents a cross-embodiment navigation stack with three coupled layers that share a single data contract keyed on a versioned configuration descriptor. A configuration-driven local planner built on AgniNav plans over abstract robot configurations; an active interface calibration layer built on GAUGE keeps each robot's command-to-motion model current through planner-conditioned probes triggered by residual drift; and a control-aligned future-range layer built on FutureRay supplies free-range predictions along the directions each embodiment can execute under its calibrated interface. The stack was deployed on a mixed team of a Go2-class quadruped, a B2-class quadruped, and a wheeled robot on a three-floor indoor-adjacent course with doorways, a 12 cm step, and a light-degraded stairwell, during a 14 h campaign and short ablation runs. The full stack reached 88.2 percent end-to-end task success with a 28 ms p95 replanning latency. Removing any single layer lowered success by 3.0 to 10.6 percentage points, although the two recorded ablation summaries disagree on which layer matters most. A simulated humanoid embodiment was onboarded in 2.1 h and succeeded in 94 percent of 10 runs. The paper also characterizes the failure envelope of the stack.

Journal: Transactions on Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Systems (TIRAS)
Volume / Issue: Vol. 1, No. 4 (October 2026)
Article ID: KAGG:2610.00003
DOI: 10.5803/kagg.2610.00003
Received: 2026-09-21
Accepted: 2026-10-02
Published online: 2026-10-05
License: CC BY 4.0

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Cite this article Zhaoyu Li, Jingyao Sun, Yichen Wang, Bowen Huang, Tianyu Zhou, "A Cross-Embodiment Navigation Stack for Heterogeneous Robot Teams: Planner, Interface Calibration, and Future-Range Perception," Transactions on Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2026, vol. 1, no. 4, KAGG:2610.00003. DOI: 10.5803/kagg.2610.00003.