# SEBVS: Synthetic Event-based Visual Servoing for Robot Navigation and Manipulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17643 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17643/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Aug 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15818/) (2023)
- [OpenVLA: An Open-Source Vision-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09246/) (2024)
- [RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06817/) (2022)
- [Event-based Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08405/) (2019)
- [Recurrent Vision Transformers for Object Detection with Event Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05598/) (2022)
- [Deep Learning for Event-based Vision: A Comprehensive Survey and Benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08890/) (2023)
- [Recent Event Camera Innovations: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.13627/) (2024)
- [Event-driven Vision and Control for UAVs on a Neuromorphic Chip](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.03694/) (2021)
- [eTraM: Event-based Traffic Monitoring Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19976/) (2024)
- [Representation Learning for Event-based Visuomotor Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00806/) (2021)
- [SEVD: Synthetic Event-based Vision Dataset for Ego and Fixed Traffic Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.10540/) (2024)
- [Event Camera Based Real-Time Detection and Tracking of Indoor Ground Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.11916/) (2021)
- [Real-Time Grasping Strategies Using Event Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07200/) (2021)
- [Event Quality Score (EQS): Assessing the Realism of Simulated Event Camera Streams via Distances in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12515/) (2025)
- [How Real is CARLAs Dynamic Vision Sensor? A Study on the Sim-to-Real Gap in Traffic Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13722/) (2025)
- [An Event-Based Perception Pipeline for a Table Tennis Robot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.00749/) (2025)
- [Human-Robot Navigation using Event-based Cameras and Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.10790/) (2025)
- [SEPose: A Synthetic Event-based Human Pose Estimation Dataset for Pedestrian Monitoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.11910/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Event-VLA: Action-Conditioned Event Fusion for Robust Vision-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.29384/) (2026)
- [eSkiTB: A Synthetic Event-based Dataset for Tracking Skiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.06647/) (2026)
- [Bio-Inspired Event-Based Visual Servoing for Ground Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.23672/) (2026)
- [Simplified Cross-Modal Calibration for Heterogeneous Event-RGB Stereo Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.22965/) (2026)
- [ECHO: Event-Augmented Context with Hindsight and Outlook for Wrist-Only Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34893/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Event cameras offer microsecond latency, high dynamic range, and low power consumption, making them ideal for real-time robotic perception under challenging conditions such as motion blur, occlusion, and illumination changes. However, despite their advantages, synthetic event-based vision remains largely unexplored in mainstream robotics simulators. This lack of simulation setup hinders the evaluation of event-driven approaches for robotic manipulation and navigation tasks. This work presents an open-source, user-friendly v2e robotics operating system (ROS) package for Gazebo simulation that enables seamless event stream generation from RGB camera feeds. The package is used to investigate event-based robotic policies (ERP) for real-time navigation and manipulation. Two representative scenarios are evaluated: (1) object following with a mobile robot and (2) object detection and grasping with a robotic manipulator. Transformer-based ERPs are trained by behavior cloning and compared to RGB-based counterparts under various operating conditions. Experimental results show that event-guided policies consistently deliver competitive advantages. The results highlight the potential of event-driven perception to improve real-time robotic navigation and manipulation, providing a foundation for broader integration of event cameras into robotic policy learning. The GitHub repo for the dataset and code: https://eventbasedvision.github.io/SEBVS/