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Active learning is a decision-making process. In both abstract and physical settings, active learning demands both analysis and action. This is a review of active learning in robotics, focusing on methods amenable to the demands of embodied…

Obstacle avoidance is an important task in the field of robotics, since the goal of autonomous robot is to reach the destination without collision. Several algorithms have been proposed for obstacle avoidance, having drawbacks and benefits.…

We present how we formalize the waiting tables task in a restaurant as a robot planning problem. This formalization was used to test our recently developed algorithms that allow for optimal planning for achieving multiple independent tasks…

Robots are increasingly present in human spaces, such as for conducting deliveries in hospitals, interacting with visitors at museums, and stocking items in warehouses. To ensure the seamless integration of robots into these spaces, a new…

We consider the problem of completing a set of $n$ tasks with a human-robot team using minimum effort. In many domains, teaching a robot to be fully autonomous can be counterproductive if there are finitely many tasks to be done. Rather,…

Multi-robot systems in automated warehouses must manage continuous streams of pickup-and-delivery tasks while ensuring efficiency and safety. Prior work on Multi-Agent Pickup-and-Delivery (MAPD) has largely focused on the one-to-one…

Consider a storage area where arriving items are stored temporarily in bounded capacity stacks until their departure. We look into the problem of deciding where to put an arriving item with the objective of minimizing the maximum number of…

Artificial intelligence algorithms have been used to enhance a wide variety of products and services, including assisting human decision making in high-stakes contexts. However, these algorithms are complex and have trade-offs, notably…

Data scarcity presents a key bottleneck for imitation learning in robotic manipulation. In this paper, we focus on random exploration data-actions and video sequences produced autonomously via motions to randomly sampled positions in the…

In e-commerce, ranking the search results based on users' preference is the most important task. Commercial e-commerce platforms, such as, Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, Walmart, etc. perform extensive and relentless research to perfect their…

To effectively assist human workers in assembly tasks a robot must proactively offer support by inferring their preferences in sequencing the task actions. Previous work has focused on learning the dominant preferences of human workers for…

At modern warehouses, mobile robots transport packages and drop them into collection bins/chutes based on shipping destinations grouped by, e.g., the ZIP code. System throughput, measured as the number of packages sorted per unit of time,…

The algorithm selection problem is to choose the most suitable algorithm for solving a given problem instance. It leverages the complementarity between different approaches that is present in many areas of AI. We report on the state of the…

To better optimise the global food supply chain, robotic solutions are needed to automate tasks currently completed by humans. Namely, phenotyping, quality analysis and harvesting are all open problems in the field of agricultural robotics.…

The applicability of the swarm robots to perform foraging tasks is inspired by their compact size and cost. A considerable amount of energy is required to perform such tasks, especially if the tasks are continuous and/or repetitive.…

Challenges in strawberry picking made selective harvesting robotic technology demanding. However, selective harvesting of strawberries is complicated forming a few scientific research questions. Most available solutions only deal with a…

We consider a robotic vehicle tasked with gathering information by visiting a set of spatially-distributed data sources, the locations of which are not known a priori, but are discovered on the fly. We assume a first-order robot dynamics…

Conversational agents are exploding in popularity. However, much work remains in the area of social conversation as well as free-form conversation over a broad range of domains and topics. To advance the state of the art in conversational…

Conversational agents are exploding in popularity. However, much work remains in the area of non goal-oriented conversations, despite significant growth in research interest over recent years. To advance the state of the art in…

Due to labor shortage and rising labor cost for the apple industry, there is an urgent need for the development of robotic systems to efficiently and autonomously harvest apples. In this paper, we present a system overview and algorithm…