mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

On the Importance of Environments in Human-Robot Coordination

arXiv 2106.10853 ↗First posted 21 Jun 2021cs.RO cs.AIcited by 37

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Abstract (arXiv)

When studying robots collaborating with humans, much of the focus has been on robot policies that coordinate fluently with human teammates in collaborative tasks. However, less emphasis has been placed on the effect of the environment on coordination behaviors. To thoroughly explore environments that result in diverse behaviors, we propose a framework for procedural generation of environments that are (1) stylistically similar to human-authored environments, (2) guaranteed to be solvable by the human-robot team, and (3) diverse with respect to coordination measures. We analyze the procedurally generated environments in the Overcooked benchmark domain via simulation and an online user study. Results show that the environments result in qualitatively different emerging behaviors and statistically significant differences in collaborative fluency metrics, even when the robot runs the same planning algorithm.

Key facts. Cited by 37 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 22 of its 45 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 21 Jun 2021.

Builds on

22 of 45 references.

References · 22

  1. 2015Illuminating search spaces by mapping elitescited by 406
  2. 2016The CMA Evolution Strategy: A Tutorialcited by 364
  3. 2019On the Utility of Learning about Humans for Human-AI Coordinationcited by 345
  4. 2014Robots that can adapt like animalscited by 203
  5. 2017Procedural Content Generation via Machine Learning (PCGML)cited by 136
  6. 2019Covariance Matrix Adaptation for the Rapid Illumination of Behavior Spacecited by 78
  7. 2018Evolving Mario Levels in the Latent Space of a Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networkcited by 76
  8. 2021Differentiable Quality Diversitycited by 71
  9. 2020Quality-Diversity Optimization: a novel branch of stochastic optimizationcited by 59
  10. 2020Illuminating Mario Scenes in the Latent Space of a Generative Adversarial Networkcited by 51
  11. 2015Shared Autonomy via Hindsight Optimizationcited by 46
  12. 2016Super Mario as a String: Platformer Level Generation Via LSTMscited by 40
10 more
  1. 2018Discovering the Elite Hypervolume by Leveraging Interspecies Correlationcited by 40
  2. 2014Efficient Model Learning for Human-Robot Collaborative Taskscited by 35
  3. 2019Bootstrapping Conditional GANs for Video Game Level Generationcited by 35
  4. 2018Trust-Aware Decision Making for Human-Robot Collaboration: Model Learning and Planningcited by 32
  5. 2020A Quality Diversity Approach to Automatically Generating Human-Robot Interaction Scenarios in Shared Autonomycited by 20
  6. 2020CPPN2GAN: Combining Compositional Pattern Producing Networks and GANs for Large-scale Pattern Generationcited by 19
  7. 2020Video Game Level Repair via Mixed Integer Linear Programmingcited by 18
  8. 2018DOOM Level Generation using Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 15
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  10. 2019Operation and Imitation under Safety-Aware Shared Controlcited by 2

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2021: 1; 2022: 10; 2023: 10; 2024: 7; 2025: 6; 2026: 3.

37 papers.

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  1. 2024Rainbow Teaming: Open-Ended Generation of Diverse Adversarial Promptscited by 189
  2. 2022Evolving Curricula with Regret-Based Environment Designcited by 166
  3. 2021Collaborating with Humans without Human Datacited by 139
  4. 2023Human-Timescale Adaptation in an Open-Ended Task Spacecited by 136
  5. 2022Deep Surrogate Assisted Generation of Environmentscited by 40
  6. 2022Approximating Gradients for Differentiable Quality Diversity in Reinforcement Learningcited by 37
  7. 2023pyribs: A Bare-Bones Python Library for Quality Diversity Optimizationcited by 29
  8. 2022Covariance Matrix Adaptation MAP-Annealingcited by 24
  9. 2023Proximal Policy Gradient Arborescence for Quality Diversity Reinforcement Learningcited by 20
  10. 2023Multi-Robot Coordination and Layout Design for Automated Warehousingcited by 17
  11. 2025Cross-environment Cooperation Enables Zero-shot Multi-agent Coordinationcited by 14
  12. 2024The Overcooked Generalisation Challenge: Evaluating Cooperation with Novel Partners in Unknown Environments Using Unsupervised Environment Designcited by 11
25 more
  1. 2022Training Diverse High-Dimensional Controllers by Scaling Covariance Matrix Adaptation MAP-Annealingcited by 10
  2. 2023Arbitrarily Scalable Environment Generators via Neural Cellular Automatacited by 9
  3. 2022Optimal Behavior Prior: Data-Efficient Human Models for Improved Human-AI Collaborationcited by 8
  4. 2023Surrogate Assisted Generation of Human-Robot Interaction Scenarioscited by 8
  5. 2023RaidEnv: Exploring New Challenges in Automated Content Balancing for Boss Raid Gamescited by 7
  6. 2023Who Needs to Know? Minimal Knowledge for Optimal Coordinationcited by 5
  7. 2025Predicting Multi-Agent Specialization via Task Parallelizabilitycited by 5
  8. 2022Dynamic Collaborative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Communication for Autonomous Drone Reforestationcited by 4
  9. 2022Collaborative Auto-Curricula Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Graph Neural Network Communication Layer for Open-ended Wildfire-Management Resource Distributioncited by 3
  10. 2022Active Task Randomization: Learning Robust Skills via Unsupervised Generation of Diverse and Feasible Taskscited by 3
  11. 2024Enabling Adaptive Agent Training in Open-Ended Simulators by Targeting Diversitycited by 3
  12. 2025Destination-to-Chutes Task Mapping Optimization for Multi-Robot Coordination in Robotic Sorting Systemscited by 3
  13. 2023Quantifying Agent Interaction in Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning for Cost-efficient Generalizationcited by 2
  14. 2023Density Descent for Diversity Optimizationcited by 2
  15. 2025Who is Helping Whom? Analyzing Inter-dependencies to Evaluate Cooperation in Human-AI Teamingcited by 2
  16. 2024Algorithmic Scenario Generation as Quality Diversity Optimizationcited by 1
  17. 2024QD-MAPPER: A Quality Diversity Framework to Automatically Evaluate Multi-Agent Path Finding Algorithms in Diverse Mapscited by 1
  18. 2025Algorithmic Prompt Generation for Diverse Human-like Teaming and Communication with Large Language Modelscited by 1
  19. 2026Discount Model Search for Quality Diversity Optimization in High-Dimensional Measure Spacescited by 1
  20. 2022Generating Diverse Indoor Furniture Arrangementscited by 0
  21. 2024Boltzmann State-Dependent Rationalitycited by 0
  22. 2024Towards Real-time Adaptation of Embodied Agent in Human-Robot Collaborationcited by 0
  23. 2025Text-to-Level Diffusion Models With Various Text Encoders for Super Mario Broscited by 0
  24. 2026Beyond Partner Diversity: An Influence-Based Team Steering Framework for Zero-Shot Human-Machine Teamingcited by 0
  25. 2026Representing and Generating Levels Over Time through Playtrace Reconstructive Partitioningcited by 0