Diffusion models have revolutionized imitation learning, allowing robots to replicate complex behaviours. However, diffusion often relies on cameras and other exteroceptive sensors to observe the environment and lacks long-term memory. In space, military, and underwater applications, robots must be highly robust to failures in exteroceptive sensors, operating using only proprioceptive information. In this paper, we propose ProDapt, a method of incorporating long-term memory of previous contacts between the robot and the environment in the diffusion process, allowing it to complete tasks using only proprioceptive data. This is achieved by identifying “keypoints”, essential past observations maintained as inputs to the policy. We test our approach using a UR10e robotic arm in both simulation and real experiments and demonstrate the necessity of this long-term memory for task completion.

The discovery of ocean worlds such as Enceladus, Titan, and Europa motivates the development of versatile autonomous mobility systems to enable the next era of space exploration where there is large uncertainty in terrain specifications due to a lack of prior surface reconnaissance missions. To explore these environments, we propose Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS): the first large-scale (4 lm long with 400 Nm peak torque) snake robot. The large scale is achieved by using a screw-based active skin mechanism to decouple motion and shape control. Autonomous mobility for such a system remains an open problem due to its many Degrees of Freedom (DoFs), complex terrain interactions, and intermittent localization failures in GPS-denied perceptually degraded environments due to the presence of fog, dust, featureless terrains, etc. We propose NEO, an autonomy architecture that scales to large DoFs to generate a versatile set of gaits to achieve mobility in unknown extreme environments. We also discuss the resilience capabilities of NEO that achieves closed-loop tracking performance by leveraging exteroception when available but can also operate with proprioception only, leading to resiliency against localization failures via graceful degradation in performance rather than unsafe behaviors. A quantitative hardware evaluation of exteroceptive leader-follower gait is performed indoors on synthetic ice along with qualitative results of field deployment of the proprioceptive leader-follower and sidewinding gaits in extreme environments of icy and sandy terrains with mobility-stressing elements such as trenches, undulations, and steep slopes (up to 35 degrees). We present a set of lessons learned from field deployments with a summary of challenges and open research problems. Video: www.rohanthakker.in/eels-neo-autonomy.html