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Collocated tactile sensing is a fundamental enabling technology for dexterous manipulation. However, deformable sensors introduce complex dynamics between the robot, grasped object, and environment that must be considered for fine…
The long-standing, dominant approach to robotic obstacle negotiation relies on mapping environmental geometry to avoid obstacles. However, this approach does not allow for traversal of cluttered obstacles, hindering applications such as…
In this paper, we present a novel control architecture for the online adaptation of bipedal locomotion on inclined obstacles. In particular, we introduce a novel, cost-effective, and versatile foot sensor to detect the proximity of the…
In this paper, we introduce a novel method for safe navigation in agricultural robotics. As global environmental challenges intensify, robotics offers a powerful solution to reduce chemical usage while meeting the increasing demands for…
We develop an algorithm to explore an environment to generate a measurement model for use in future localization tasks. Ergodic exploration with respect to the likelihood of a particular class of measurement (e.g., a contact detection…
Mapping and localization are two essential tasks for mobile robots in real-world applications. However, largescale and dynamic scenes challenge the accuracy and robustness of most current mature solutions. This situation becomes even worse…
Legged robots are able to navigate complex terrains by continuously interacting with the environment through careful selection of contact sequences and timings. However, the combinatorial nature behind contact planning hinders the…
Identifying the physical properties of the surrounding environment is essential for robotic locomotion and navigation to deal with non-geometric hazards, such as slippery and deformable terrains. It would be of great benefit for robots to…
Autonomous robots that interact with their environment require a detailed semantic scene model. For this, volumetric semantic maps are frequently used. The scene understanding can further be improved by including object-level information in…
Although wheeled robots have been predominant for planetary exploration, their geometry limits their capabilities when traveling over steep slopes, through rocky terrains, and in microgravity. Legged robots equipped with grippers are a…
Locomotion for legged robots poses considerable challenges when confronted by obstacles and adverse environments. Footstep planners are typically only designed for one mode of locomotion, but traversing unfavorable environments may require…
Point discretization of curved surfaces is required in many applications ranging from object rendering to the solution of surface partial differential equations (PDEs). These applications often impose that surfaces are sampled with local…
Quadrupedal robots resemble the physical ability of legged animals to walk through unstructured terrains. However, designing a controller for quadrupedal robots poses a significant challenge due to their functional complexity and requires…
The popularity of mobile robots has been steadily growing, with these robots being increasingly utilized to execute tasks previously completed by human workers. For bipedal robots to see this same success, robust autonomous navigation…
Being able to explore an environment and understand the location and type of all objects therein is important for indoor robotic platforms that must interact closely with humans. However, it is difficult to evaluate progress in this area…
For full-size humanoid robots, even with recent advances in reinforcement learning-based control, achieving reliable locomotion on complex terrains, such as long staircases, remains challenging. In such settings, limited perception,…
When we move on snow, sand, or mud, the ground deforms under our feet, immediately affecting our gait. We propose a physically based model for computing such interactions in real time, from only the kinematic motion of a virtual character.…
The watershed is a powerful tool for segmenting objects whose contours appear as crest lines on a gradient image. The watershed transform associates to a topographic surface a partition into catchment basins, defined as attraction zones of…
Inspired by human behavior when traveling over unknown terrain, this study proposes the use of probing strategies and integrates them into a traversability analysis framework to address safe navigation on unknown rough terrain. Our…
The ability to recognize objects is an essential skill for a robotic system acting in human-populated environments. Despite decades of effort from the robotic and vision research communities, robots are still missing good visual perceptual…