Related papers: A Classification of Configuration Spaces of Planar…
The configuration space of the mechanism of a planar robot is studied. We consider a robot which has $n$ arms such that each arm is of length 1+1 and has a rotational joint in the middle, and that the endpoint of the $k$-th arm is fixed to…
In order for a bimanual robot to manipulate an object that is held by both hands, it must construct motion plans such that the transformation between its end effectors remains fixed. This amounts to complicated nonlinear equality…
We study the path planning problem for continuum-arm robots, in which we are given a starting and an end point, and we need to compute a path for the tip of the continuum arm between the two points. We consider both cases where obstacles…
In this paper, we develop the theory of constrained motion spaces of robotic arms. We compute their homology groups in two cases: when the constraint is a horizontal line and when it is a smooth curve whose motion space is a smooth…
Continuum arms, such as trunk and tentacle robots, lie between the two extremities of rigid and soft robots and promise to capture the best of both worlds in terms of manipulability, dexterity, and compliance. This paper proposes a new…
We study the motion of a robotic arm inside a rectangular tunnel. We prove that the configuration space of all possible positions of the robot is a CAT(0) cubical complex. This allows us to use techniques from geometric group theory to find…
With the recent advances in machine learning, problems that traditionally would require accurate modeling to be solved analytically can now be successfully approached with data-driven strategies. Among these, computing the inverse…
The 'infinite' passive degrees of freedom of soft robotic arms render their control especially challenging. In this paper, we leverage a previously developed model, which drawing equivalence of the soft arm to a series of universal joints,…
Robots exhibit a rich variety of symmetries arising from their mechanical structure and the properties of their tasks. Although many robotics problems exhibit several symmetries simultaneously, existing approaches typically treat them in…
The inverse kinematics (IK) problem of continuum robots has been investigated in depth in the past decades. Under the constant-curvature bending assumption, closed-form IK solution has been obtained for continuum robots with variable…
Coordinating the motion of multiple agents in constrained environments is a fundamental challenge in robotics, motion planning, and scheduling. A motivating example involves $n$ robotic arms, each represented as a line segment. The…
Cognitive map learners (CML) have been shown to enable hierarchical, compositional machine learning. That is, interpedently trained CML modules can be arbitrarily composed together to solve more complex problems without task-specific…
Described here is a simple, reliable, and quite general method for rapid computation of robot arm inverse kinematic solutions and motion path plans in the presence of complex obstructions. The method derived from the MSC (map-seeking…
Motion planning is a difficult problem in robot control. The complexity of the problem is directly related to the dimension of the robot's configuration space. While in many theoretical calculations and practical applications the…
Intelligent robots must be able to perform safe and efficient motion planning in their environments. Central to modern motion planning is the configuration space. Configuration spaces define the set of configurations of a robot that result…
We study the problem of determining coordinated motions, of minimum total length, for two arbitrary convex centrally-symmetric (CCS) robots in an otherwise obstacle-free plane. Using the total path length traced by the two robot centres as…
Controlling soft continuum robotic arms is challenging due to their hyper-redundancy and dexterity. In this paper we demonstrate, for the first time, closed-loop control of the configuration space variables of a soft robotic arm, composed…
Planning dual-arm assembly of more than three objects is a challenging Task and Motion Planning (TAMP) problem. The assembly planner shall consider not only the pose constraints of objects and robots, but also the gravitational constraints…
We introduce and analyze a model for self-reconfigurable robots made up of unit-cube modules. Compared to past models, our model aims to newly capture two important practical aspects of real-world robots. First, modules often do not occupy…
Despite the attention that the problem of path planning for tethered robots has garnered in the past few decades, the approaches proposed to solve it typically rely on a discrete representation of the configuration space and do not exploit…