Related papers: Experimental Validation of Contact Dynamics for In…

This paper studies the problem of passive grasp stability under an external disturbance, that is, the ability of a grasp to resist a disturbance through passive responses at the contacts. To obtain physically consistent results, such a…

We propose a method that simultaneously estimates and controls extrinsic contact with tactile feedback. The method enables challenging manipulation tasks that require controlling light forces and accurate motions in contact, such as…

Rapid, targeted hand movements exhibit a regular movement pattern described by Fitts law. We develop a model of these movements in which this movement pattern results from an optimal control model describing rapid hand movements and a…

Contact-rich manipulation tasks with stiff frictional elements like connector insertion are difficult to model with rigid-body simulators. In this work, we propose a new approach for modeling these environments by learning a quasi-static…

Force modulation of robotic manipulators has been extensively studied for several decades but is not yet commonly used in safety-critical applications due to a lack of accurate interaction contact modeling and weak performance guarantees -…

Biomimetic and compliant robotic hands offer the potential for human-like dexterity, but controlling them is challenging due to high dimensionality, complex contact interactions, and uncertainties in state estimation. Sampling-based model…

Verifying the correct behavior of robots in contact tasks is challenging due to model uncertainties associated with contacts. Standard methods for testing often fall short since all (uncountable many) solutions cannot be obtained. Instead,…

Handheld grippers are increasingly used to collect human demonstrations due to their ease of deployment and versatility. However, most existing designs lack tactile sensing, despite the critical role of tactile feedback in precise…

The empirical success of Reinforcement Learning (RL) in the setting of contact-rich manipulation leaves much to be understood from a model-based perspective, where the key difficulties are often attributed to (i) the explosion of contact…

Robotic hands with soft surfaces can perform stable grasping, but the high friction of the soft surfaces makes it difficult to release objects, or to perform operations that require sliding. To solve this issue, we previously developed a…

Grasp force estimation can help prevent robots from damaging delicate objects during manipulation and improve learning-based robotic control. Integrating force sensing into deformable grippers negotiates trade-offs in cost, complexity,…

Dexterous multi-fingered hands can provide robots with the ability to flexibly perform a wide range of manipulation skills. However, many of the more complex behaviors are also notoriously difficult to control: Performing in-hand object…

In real-world cooperative manipulation of objects, multiple mobile manipulator systems may suffer from disturbances and asynchrony, leading to excessive interaction wrenches and potentially causing object damage or emergency stops. Existing…

We present a learnable physics-based predictive model that provides accurate motion and force-torque prediction of the robot end effector in contact-rich manipulation. The proposed model extends the state-of-the-art GNN-based simulator…

Robotic grasping requires safe force interaction to prevent a grasped object from being damaged or slipping out of the hand. In this vein, this paper proposes an integrated framework for grasping with formal safety guarantees based on…

Grasping objects under uncertainty remains an open problem in robotics research. This uncertainty is often due to noisy or partial observations of the object pose or shape. To enable a robot to react appropriately to unforeseen effects, it…

In this paper, we consider the problem of non-prehensile manipulation using grasped objects. This problem is a superset of many common manipulation skills including instances of tool-use (e.g., grasped spatula flipping a burger) and…

The prevailing models for advancing dynamic contact angle are under intensive debates, and the fitting performances are far from satisfying in practice. The present study proposes a model based on the recent understanding of the multi-scale…

In this survey, we present the current status on robots performing manipulation tasks that require varying contact with the environment, such that the robot must either implicitly or explicitly control the contact force with the environment…

In this project, we focus on human-robot interaction in caregiving scenarios like bathing, where physical contact is inevitable and necessary for proper task execution because force must be applied to the skin. Using finite element…