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arXiv · 2503.14389

Manual, Semi or Fully Autonomous Flipper Control? A Framework for Fair Comparison

Valentýn Číhala·Martin Pecka·Tomáš Svoboda·Karel Zimmermann
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Abstract

We investigated the performance of existing semi- and fully autonomous methods for controlling flipper-based skid-steer robots. Our study involves reimplementation of these methods for fair comparison and it introduces a novel semi-autonomous control policy that provides a compelling trade-off among current state-of-the-art approaches. We also propose new metrics for assessing cognitive load and traversal quality and offer a benchmarking interface for generating Quality-Load graphs from recorded data. Our results, presented in a 2D Quality-Load space, demonstrate that the new control policy effectively bridges the gap between autonomous and manual control methods. Additionally, we reveal a surprising fact that fully manual, continuous control of all six degrees of freedom remains highly effective when performed by an experienced operator on a well-designed analog controller from third person view.

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Valentýn Číhala, Martin Pecka, Tomáš Svoboda, Karel Zimmermann. 2025-03-18. Manual, Semi or Fully Autonomous Flipper Control? A Framework for Fair Comparison. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.14389

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