concerto-multirobot 0.8.0

Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Ad-Hoc Teamwork — benchmark + safety stack.

Contact-rich coordination with opaque, heterogeneous teammates.
CONCERTO is the method. CHAMBER is the benchmark. We evaluate CONCERTO on CHAMBER.

What this is

CHAMBER is a simulation benchmark for physically-coupled ad-hoc cooperation: two robot arms jointly manipulate one object (carry a rigid bar; hand a part over and place it) while the evaluated robot — the ego — works with a black-box partner, meaning a teammate whose policy, parameters, and training history it cannot see and that it was never trained with. CONCERTO is the companion method: a safety-filter stack and a training loop for exactly this setting. This repository ships both, plus everything needed to reproduce and verify every number below.

The claim this benchmark supports. A leaderboard row supports one kind of claim: this method, controlling one arm, achieves the stated joint-success rate with previously-unseen black-box partners on this physically-coupled task, with the stated confidence interval. Every row is recomputed at render time from a committed result bundle that anyone can verify with one command. Nothing broader is claimed — no cross-task ranking, no scalar composite, and no heterogeneity-robustness aggregate in v1.0.

Under what assumptions. Both scored tasks passed a preregistered admission protocol showing that a reference pair solves them, one robot alone cannot, and destroying the physical coupling destroys performance (ADR-027). Partners are frozen during evaluation and drawn from a versioned partner zoo with a public/private split, so a method cannot overfit the full evaluation set. CPU evaluation is byte-identical under the pinned uv.lock and a root seed, which is what makes committed bundles recomputable.

With what limitations. Everything is simulation; no real-robot results exist. Teams are exactly two agents on the listed embodiments, and the v1.0 partner zoo contains no vision-based partners. Measured heterogeneity effects on co-carry are null so far, so v1.0 measures ad-hoc-teamwork competence, not heterogeneity robustness — see Limitations.

Install

uv is the package manager; versions are pinned by the committed uv.lock. Do not invoke pip directly.

git clone https://github.com/fsafaei/concerto.git
cd concerto
pip install uv && uv sync --group dev

Python 3.11 or 3.12. The training stack (the HARL fork, published as the harl-aht distribution) resolves automatically as a runtime dependency; no extra install step is needed.

Five-minute quickstart

Run one evaluation and verify one shipped result. The commands below are executed verbatim by CI on every push (jobs smoke-eval and readme-quickstart in .github/workflows/ci.yml), so they are guaranteed to work on a clean checkout.

1. Run a real evaluation on the CPU diagnostic task (~1 minute). This produces a result bundle: a directory containing every episode record, the exact command, the git state, and SHA-256 checksums of all files.

uv run chamber-eval run --task mpe_cooperative_push --policy random \
  --partner scripted_heuristic --seeds 2 --episodes 5 --out out/quickstart-bundle
uv run chamber-eval verify out/quickstart-bundle

Expected: the run reports 10 episodes; success IQM 0.667 [0.000, 1.000] (byte-identical on CPU under the pinned lockfile), and verify prints a check table ending in verify: PASS. On a locally-modified checkout add --allow-dirty to both commands; such bundles are marked dirty and are ineligible for the leaderboard.

2. Verify a shipped leaderboard row (~10 seconds). This re-checks every file hash in the committed bundle, recomputes the headline statistics from the raw per-episode records, and re-derives the preregistration tag:

uv run chamber-eval verify spikes/results/benchmark/cocarry-v1/ref-script-2026-07-05

Every cell of the leaderboard below can be checked the same way, and docs/how-to/reproduce-results.md gives the full re-run command for every row.

The benchmark

The suite is pinned by the chamber.tasks registry (ADR-027 §Decision): every task carries exactly one tier and an admission status backed by committed evidence. ADMITTED is earned, never asserted — chamber-eval admission executes the A1/A2/A3 protocol under a tag-locked preregistration and writes the immutable report the status cites (see spikes/results/admission/). The table is generated; CI fails if it drifts.

Task	Tier	Status	Axis validity	Task card
mpe_cooperative_push@v1 — MPE cooperative push (CPU diagnostic)	0 (rig diagnostics)	DIAGNOSTIC	all untested	mpe_cooperative_push
stage0_smoke@v1 — Stage-0 tri-embodiment smoke rig	0 (rig diagnostics)	DIAGNOSTIC	all untested	stage0_smoke
stage1_pickplace_as@v1 — Stage-1 pick-and-place — action-space (AS) control	1 (controls)	CONTROL	AS invalid	stage1_pickplace_as
stage1_pickplace_om@v1 — Stage-1 pick-and-place — observation-modality (OM) control	1 (controls)	CONTROL	all untested	stage1_pickplace_om
cocarry@v1 — Co-carry — rigid dual-arm bar transport	2 (admitted cooperation tasks)	ADMITTED	AS null	cocarry
handover_place@v1 — Handover-and-place under takt pressure	2 (admitted cooperation tasks)	ADMITTED	all untested	handover_place
amr_handover_dynamic@v0 — AMR dynamic handover (spec-only candidate)	3 (documented candidates and closures)	CANDIDATE	all untested	amr_handover_dynamic
co_hold_secure@v0 — Co-hold-and-secure (spec-only candidate)	3 (documented candidates and closures)	CANDIDATE	all untested	co_hold_secure
coinsert@v1 — Co-insert — hold-and-insert (closed; open challenge)	3 (documented candidates and closures)	CLOSED	all untested	coinsert

Leaderboard — CHAMBER-Bench v1.0

Per-task tables only; no scalar composite (ADR-027 §Decision, reporting rules). Every row is recomputed from committed result bundles that pass the full chamber-eval verify check table at render time — an unverifiable entry refuses the whole render — under the tag-locked campaign preregistration. Two rows carry honest labels and are not competitors: REF-SCRIPT is the oracle reference (a scripted controller with privileged access, shown as the solvability ceiling), and B-JOINT is the non-AHT upper anchor (a jointly-trained pair evaluated with its own training partner, which breaks the unseen-partner condition by construction). The block is generated by scripts/render_leaderboard_table.py; CI fails if it drifts.

cocarry-v1

Row	Label	Success IQM [95% CI]	Success mean	Stress p90 (N)	Per-partner range	Seeds	Bundles
REF-SCRIPT	oracle reference	1.000 [1.000, 1.000]	1.000	102.0	1.00 (imp_stiff_low) … 1.00 (imp_stiff_low)	0, 1, 2, 3, 4	spikes/results/benchmark/cocarry-v1/ref-script-2026-07-05
B-RND		0.000 [0.000, 0.000]	0.001	277.8	0.00 (imp_stiff_low) … 0.00 (imp_blend_b)	0, 1, 2, 3, 4	spikes/results/benchmark/cocarry-v1/b-rnd-2026-07-05
B-STAT		0.492 [0.396, 0.591]	0.496	101.4	0.16 (imp_lag_bounded) … 0.66 (imp_blend_b)	0, 1, 2, 3, 4	spikes/results/benchmark/cocarry-v1/b-stat-2026-07-05
B-BLIND		1.000 [1.000, 1.000]	0.967	107.6	0.86 (imp_lag_bounded) … 1.00 (imp_stiff_low)	0, 1, 2, 3, 4	spikes/results/benchmark/cocarry-v1/b-blind-2026-07-06
B-AHT		1.000 [1.000, 1.000]	0.961	108.4	0.88 (imp_lag_bounded) … 1.00 (imp_stiff_low)	0, 1, 2, 3, 4	spikes/results/benchmark/cocarry-v1/b-aht-2026-07-06
B-JOINT	non-AHT upper anchor	1.000 [1.000, 1.000]	0.944	41.2	0.94 (frozen_cocarry_joint) … 0.94 (frozen_cocarry_joint)	0, 1, 2, 3, 4	spikes/results/benchmark/cocarry-v1/b-joint-seed0-2026-07-06 spikes/results/benchmark/cocarry-v1/b-joint-seed1-2026-07-06 spikes/results/benchmark/cocarry-v1/b-joint-seed2-2026-07-06 spikes/results/benchmark/cocarry-v1/b-joint-seed3-2026-07-06 spikes/results/benchmark/cocarry-v1/b-joint-seed4-2026-07-06

Solvability anchor: matched scripted reference 1.000 (admission A1, spikes/results/admission/cocarry-2026-07-05/). Success IQM is the preregistered iqm_success_rate: the interquartile mean over per-episode success indicators; it is intentionally conservative away from saturation (e.g., handover REF-SCRIPT mean 0.338 vs IQM 0.176) and trims minority cells at saturation (e.g., B-AHT mean 0.961 vs IQM 1.000 — see the per-partner range).

handover-v1

Row	Label	Success IQM [95% CI]	Success mean	Stress p90 (N)	Per-partner range	Seeds	Bundles
REF-SCRIPT	oracle reference	0.176 [0.072, 0.284]	0.338	211.5	0.13 (presenter_mismatch_45) … 0.55 (presenter_mismatch_30)	0, 1, 2, 3, 4	spikes/results/benchmark/handover-v1/ref-script-2026-07-06
B-RND		0.000 [0.000, 0.000]	0.000	3858.1	0.00 (presenter_mismatch_30) … 0.00 (presenter_mismatch_30)	0, 1, 2, 3, 4	spikes/results/benchmark/handover-v1/b-rnd-2026-07-06
B-STAT		0.048 [0.000, 0.140]	0.274	225.6	0.05 (presenter_mismatch_45) … 0.50 (presenter_mismatch_30)	0, 1, 2, 3, 4	spikes/results/benchmark/handover-v1/b-stat-2026-07-06

Solvability anchor: matched presenter 1.000 (Gate-0 Limb 1, spikes/results/handover-place-gate0-2026-06-26/). Leaderboard cells are the measured coupling-valid (mismatch) region by design — the low oracle number is the mismatch penalty, not unsolvability. Success IQM is the preregistered iqm_success_rate: the interquartile mean over per-episode success indicators; it is intentionally conservative away from saturation (e.g., handover REF-SCRIPT mean 0.338 vs IQM 0.176) and trims minority cells at saturation (e.g., B-AHT mean 0.961 vs IQM 1.000 — see the per-partner range).

Row ids follow the preregistered baseline set: B-RND (random actions), B-STAT (static, hold-position), B-BLIND (learned ego with partner observations masked), B-AHT (learned ad-hoc-teamwork ego). Reproduction command for every row: docs/how-to/reproduce-results.md.

Validity

A score on this benchmark means something only if the task actually forces cooperation, so every claim rests on the coupling-validity criterion of ADR-026. Tier-1 control tasks are kept precisely because they are solvable by one robot alone: they separate plain manipulation skill from cooperation, and a method that gains on a control is measuring something other than teamwork. Admission (ADR-027) is what a task must earn before its scores count, by three preregistered checks: a reference pair solves it (A1), the best single robot cannot (A2), and a scripted ego stripped of exactly its coupling channel collapses (A3). Co-carry and handover-and-place passed all three; pick-and-place passed A1 but failed A2 and A3 and is retained as a Tier-1 control — the protocol demonstrably rejects tasks. The heterogeneity-robustness score (HRS, ADR-008), the project's original scalar aggregate, is suspended in v1.0 because no task×axis cell has a validated heterogeneity effect yet, and averaging nulls into a headline number would manufacture a ranking out of nothing. Until a validated cell exists, per-task success tables with confidence intervals are the only reported currency. The full protocol, with the co-carry admission as a worked example, is at docs/explanation/evaluation-protocol.md.

Submitting a leaderboard entry

Fork, run the preregistered cells against the public partner set, open a PR containing your result bundle; CI re-runs chamber-eval verify on it, and the maintainer may spot-check your method against the private partner split before merge. Full protocol: docs/how-to/submit-leaderboard.md.

Limitations

• Simulation only. All results are ManiSkill v3 / SAPIEN (plus one CPU diagnostic task); no real-robot results exist.
• Two agents. Every task is one ego and one partner; larger teams are out of scope for v1.0.
• Listed embodiments only. Results cover the embodiments named in the task cards (Panda-class arms on the scored rows); an xArm6 variant was studied and is documented in ADR-026's revision log, but no leaderboard row uses it.
• Heterogeneity effects are null on co-carry so far. Partner-style and embodiment heterogeneity were measured and found null under fair matching (ADR-026 §Open questions); v1.0 therefore measures ad-hoc-teamwork competence with black-box partners, not heterogeneity robustness, and the HRS aggregate stays suspended.
• No vision-based partners. The v1.0 partner zoo is scripted impedance controllers, scripted presenters, and frozen learned policies; vision-language-action partners are deferred stubs.

Documentation

Full documentation: fsafaei.github.io/concerto

• Evaluation protocol — run classes, admission, reporting rules, versioning.
• Reproduce the results — one command block per leaderboard row.
• Submit a leaderboard entry.
• Datasheet — the released data artifacts, described.
• Architecture — the two packages, the safety stack, repository layout.
• Positioning — why this exists, prior work, the six heterogeneity axes, roadmap.
• FAQ · Glossary · ADR index
• MAINTENANCE.md — who maintains this, versioning and deprecation discipline, contact.

Contributing

Open from the first commit; PRs welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md for the development flow, commit-signing and DCO requirements, and the contributor license agreement (ADR-012). Every PR cites the ADR section it touches; protocol changes require a new ADR, never an edit to an accepted one. Code of conduct: CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md. Security policy: SECURITY.md.

Citation

If you use CONCERTO or CHAMBER in your research, please cite the archived software release:

@software{safaei2026concerto,
  author       = {Safaei, Farhad},
  title        = {{CONCERTO} and {CHAMBER}: Contact-rich Coordination
                  with Opaque, Heterogeneous Teammates},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.20128469},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20128469},
  note         = {arXiv preprint forthcoming},
}

Citation metadata is also in CITATION.cff, so GitHub renders a "Cite this repository" button.

License

Apache 2.0. See LICENSE and NOTICE. The safety stack composes Wang et al. 2017 (decentralised exponential control barrier functions), Huriot & Sibai 2025 (conformal control barrier functions), and Morton & Pavone 2025 (operational-space control barrier functions). CHAMBER is a wrapper layer over ManiSkill v3 and depends on a fork of HARL for the training stack.