Multi-Object Manipulation via Object-Centric Neural Scattering Functions
Authors: Stephen Tian, Yancheng Cai, Hong-Xing Yu, Sergey Zakharov, Katherine Liu, Adrien Gaidon, Yunzhu Li, Jiajun Wu

Learned visual dynamics models have proven effective for robotic manipulation tasks. Yet, it remains unclear how best to represent scenes involving multi-object interactions. Current methods decompose a scene into discrete objects, yet they struggle with precise modeling and manipulation amid challenging lighting conditions since they only encode appearance tied with specific illuminations. In this work, we propose using object-centric neural scattering functions (OSFs) as object representations in a model-predictive control framework. OSFs model per-object light transport, enabling compositional scene re-rendering under object rearrangement and varying lighting conditions. By combining this approach with inverse parameter estimation and graph-based neural dynamics models, we demonstrate improved model-predictive control performance and generalization in compositional multi-object environments, even in previously unseen scenarios and harsh lighting conditions.