SPARROW: Survival-POMCP for Adaptive Robot Routing, Observation, and Waiting

Abstract

Temporary obstacles that may block a robot's planned route create a sequential navigation problem: a robot must decide whether to wait for a blockage to clear, reroute, or acquire more information about the obstacle before acting. We formulate graph navigation among temporary obstacles as a partially observable semi-Markov decision process and introduce SPARROW, a belief-space planner built on Partially Observable Monte Carlo Planning (POMCP). SPARROW searches over traversal, observation, and finite-duration waiting actions while maintaining a particle belief over latent obstacle classes and clearance times. Class-conditioned survival models are learned online from both clearance observations and right-censored encounters where the robot reroutes before clearance is observed. A generative model simulates obstacle arrivals and clearances as each action unfolds, so the planner can account for blockages that may occur along alternative routes. We further introduce a value-of-learning criterion that trades the immediate cost of collecting labelled survival data against its expected reduction in future navigation regret. Across two simulation graphs and multiple obstacle-class settings, SPARROW reduces mean time-to-goal by 12-26% relative to OSCAR, a recent survival-based method for the same problem. On a physical mobile robot, SPARROW reduces mean time-to-goal by 20.5% relative to OSCAR while selectively observing, waiting, and rerouting as environment conditions change.