Robots Use Active Perception for Embodied Task Disambiguation

Yiwei Liu, Luwei Yang· August 17, 2026 View original

Key takeaways

  • Robots can resolve task ambiguity by actively changing their observation.
  • The framework combines physical information acquisition with user clarification.
  • Vision-language models guide decisions on observation, clarification, or selection.
  • Active perception reduces reliance on constant human input for ambiguous tasks.

Who benefits

RoboticsManufacturingLogisticsHealthcareDefense

Summary

This research proposes an active-perception framework for robots to resolve target ambiguity in physical environments by actively changing their observation, rather than solely relying on user clarification. It combines physical information acquisition with user interaction to improve task completion.

Robots often struggle with ambiguous instructions in real-world settings, especially when crucial visual information is missing due to occlusions or limited viewpoints. Current methods primarily address this by asking users for more information. This new framework introduces "active perception," enabling robots to autonomously adjust their viewpoint or interact with the environment to gather necessary visual evidence. This approach integrates a vision-language model to decide whether to continue observing, seek user clarification, or proceed with target selection based on accumulated visual and interactive data. By actively seeking out missing information like object names or attributes, the robot can either resolve the ambiguity directly or provide better context for subsequent user queries.

Why it matters

Professionals developing or deploying robotic systems can leverage this framework to create more robust and autonomous robots capable of handling real-world ambiguities more effectively, reducing the need for constant human intervention.

How to implement this in your domain

  1. 1Integrate active perception modules into existing robotic platforms to enable autonomous data gathering.
  2. 2Develop vision-language models capable of interpreting visual evidence and interaction cues for decision-making.
  3. 3Design robot behaviors that allow for dynamic viewpoint changes and physical interaction to resolve ambiguities.
  4. 4Test the framework in diverse, real-world environments to validate its effectiveness in various scenarios.

Original post by Yiwei Liu, Luwei Yang

"arXiv:2608.13605v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Natural language provides robots with a flexible task interface, but target ambiguity in embodied environments arises not only from user intent; it can also result from missing taskrelevant physical evidence in the current observati…"

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