Closing the Motion Execution Gap: From Semantic Motion Task Constraints to Kinematic Control

Stelter, Simon; Hassouna, Vanessa; Huerkamp, Malte; Beetz, Michael

doi:10.24963/ijcai.2026/845

Closing the Motion Execution Gap: From Semantic Motion Task Constraints to Kinematic Control

Simon Stelter, Vanessa Hassouna, Malte Huerkamp, Michael Beetz

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Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. AI and Robotics. Pages 7601-7609.

https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2026/845

Keywords

Structured, semantic, and explicit world models, digital twins, and action representations: Explicit action representations such as task schemas, scripts, and parameterized skills
Robot control, planning, and execution with guarantees: Online monitoring, explanation, and adaptation
Structured, semantic, and explicit world models, digital twins, and action representations: Structured world models and semantic digital twins
Robot control, planning, and execution with guarantees: Architectures connecting high-level intent and constraints to low-level trajectories

Abstract

This paper addresses the Motion Execution Gap, the disconnect between high-level symbolic task descriptions using semantic constraints and executable robot motions.

\textbf{Motion Statecharts} are introduced as an executable symbolic representation for complex motions.

They allow the arbitrary arrangement of motion constraints, monitors or nested statecharts in parallel and sequence.

World-centric motion specification and generalization across embodiments are enabled through the use of a unified differentiable kinematic world model of both, robots and environments.

Motion execution is realized through a \ac{lmpc}-based implementation of the task-function approach, in which smooth transitions during task switches are ensured using jerk bounds.

Cross-platform transferability was demonstrated by deploying the method on eight robot platforms, operating in diverse environments.

The proposed framework is called Giskard and is available open source (https://github.com/cram2/cognitive_robot_abstract_machine).

Simon Stelter, Vanessa Hassouna, Malte Huerkamp, and Michael Beetz. 2026. Closing the Motion Execution Gap: From Semantic Motion Task Constraints to Kinematic Control. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-26. IJCAI, 7601–7609. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2026/845

@inproceedings{ijcai2026p845,
  title     = {Closing the Motion Execution Gap: From Semantic Motion Task Constraints to Kinematic Control},
  author    = {Stelter, Simon and Hassouna, Vanessa and Huerkamp, Malte and Beetz, Michael},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth International Joint Conference on
               Artificial Intelligence, {IJCAI-26}},
  publisher = {International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization},
  editor    = {Diego Calvanese},
  pages     = {7601--7609},
  year      = {2026},
  month     = {8},
  note      = {AI and Robotics},
  doi       = {10.24963/ijcai.2026/845},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2026/845},
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Closing the Motion Execution Gap: From Semantic Motion Task Constraints to Kinematic Control
AU  - Stelter, Simon
AU  - Hassouna, Vanessa
AU  - Huerkamp, Malte
AU  - Beetz, Michael
T2  - Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-26
PB  - International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization
PY  - 2026
SP  - 7601
EP  - 7609
DO  - 10.24963/ijcai.2026/845
UR  - https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2026/845
ER  -