Related papers: Measuring information transfer in a soft robotic a…

Quantum many-body dynamics generically results in increasing entanglement that eventually leads to thermalization of local observables. This makes the exact description of the dynamics complex despite the apparent simplicity of…

Soft robotics has advanced rapidly, yet its control methods remain fragmented: different morphologies and actuation schemes still require task-specific controllers, hindering theoretical integration and large-scale deployment. A generic…

Biological agents possess bodies that are mostly of soft tissues. Researchers have resorted to soft bodies to investigate Artificial Life (ALife)-related questions; similarly, a new era of soft-bodied robots has just begun. Nevertheless,…

With the goal of enabling the exploitation of impacts in robotic manipulation, a new framework is presented for control of robotic manipulators that are tasked to execute nominally simultaneous impacts. In this framework, we employ tracking…

This paper describes a 2D and 3D simulation engine that quantitatively models the statics, dynamics, and non-linear deformation of heterogeneous soft bodies in a computationally efficient manner. There is a large body of work simulating…

We explore the problem of estimating the mass distribution of an articulated object by an interactive robotic agent. Our method predicts the mass distribution of an object by using the limited sensing and actuating capabilities of a robotic…

In this work, we present a method to estimate the mass distribution of a rigid object through robotic interactions and tactile feedback. This is a challenging problem because of the complexity of physical dynamics modeling and the action…

Measures of information transfer have become a popular approach to analyze interactions in complex systems such as the Earth or the human brain from measured time series. Recent work has focused on causal definitions of information transfer…

Soft robots manufactured with flexible materials can be highly compliant and adaptive to their surroundings, which facilitates their application in areas such as dexterous manipulation and environmental exploration. This paper aims at…

Swarm perception refers to the ability of a robot swarm to utilize the perception capabilities of each individual robot, forming a collective understanding of the environment. Their distributed nature enables robot swarms to continuously…

Fish-inspired aquatic robots are gaining increasing attention in marine robot communities due to their high swimming speeds and efficient propulsion enabled by flexible bodies that generate undulatory motions. To support the design…

Contrary to the stunning feats observed in birds of prey, aerial manipulation and grasping with flying robots still lack versatility and agility. Conventional approaches using rigid manipulators require precise positioning and are subject…

With the explosive growth of rigid-body simulators, policy learning in simulation has become the de facto standard for most rigid morphologies. In contrast, soft robotic simulation frameworks remain scarce and are seldom adopted by the soft…

The morphology of a slender soft-robot can be modified by sensing its shape via sensors and exerting moments via actuators embedded along its body. The actuating moments required to morph these soft-robots to a desired shape are often…

This paper presents a data-efficient approach to learning transferable forward models for robotic push manipulation. Our approach extends our previous work on contact-based predictors by leveraging information on the pushed object's local…

In this paper, we use the optimal control methodology to control a flexible, elastic Cosserat rod. An inspiration comes from stereotypical movement patterns in octopus arms, which are observed in a variety of manipulation tasks, such as…

The presence of a delay between sensing and reacting to a signal can determine the long-term behavior of autonomous agents whose motion is intrinsically noisy. In a previous work [M. Mijalkov, A. McDaniel, J. Wehr, and G. Volpe, Phys. Rev.…

Haptic sensation is an important modality for interacting with the real world. This paper proposes a general framework of inferring haptic forces on the surface of a 3D structure from internal deformations using a small number of physical…

Cooperative transport, the simultaneous movement of an object by multiple agents, has been widely observed in biological systems such as ant colonies, which improve efficiency and adaptability in dynamic environments. Inspired by these…

Automated animal behavior analysis relies on long-term, interpretable individual trajectories; however, multi-animal tracking in space science experimental videos remains highly challenging due to weak appearance cues, low-quality imaging,…