robotics
The Robot Learned When the Observation Was Taken
Chronos puts capture and execution times inside the policy instead of hiding them in sequence order.
Summary
Chronos puts capture and execution times inside the policy instead of hiding them in sequence order.
Fixed-rate robot policies can become brittle when sensors slow down or inference takes longer. Chronos Policy explicitly conditions on observation-capture times and desired action-execution times. The authors compare timestamp embeddings with time-aware rotary positional encoding and find the latter more robust. Training randomizes sensing and execution schedules, allowing asynchronous measurements without forcing them onto one fixed grid. Simulation and real-world experiments show improvements on dynamic and multisensory tasks, while preserving nominal performance on the evaluated quasi-static tasks. Physical time becomes part of the model’s input, rather than an assumption made outside it.
Why it matters
Chronos puts capture and execution times inside the policy instead of hiding them in sequence order.
Limits and context
No additional limitation was separately recorded.
Key claims
Chronos puts capture and execution times inside the policy instead of hiding them in sequence order.
Evidence: source-2026-10-12-009
Sources
- arXiv preprint 2610.13929, original v1arXiv / submitting research authors · primary research
Corrections
: Publication note: The October 12, 2026 edition was prepared and published late on October 12 after the scheduled newsroom task could not start. The edition retains its October 12 date and 9:00 AM America/Detroit reveal time. Reports use sources available before that cutoff; actual preparation and image-generation times are preserved in the provenance records.