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A key challenge towards the goal of multi-part assembly tasks is finding robust sensorimotor control methods in the presence of uncertainty. In contrast to previous works that rely on a priori knowledge on whether two parts match, we aim to…
This work studies rearrangement problems involving the sorting of robots or objects in stack-like containers, which can be accessed only from one side. Two scenarios are considered: one where every robot or object needs to reach a…
Reliably planning fingertip grasps for multi-fingered hands lies as a key challenge for many tasks including tool use, insertion, and dexterous in-hand manipulation. This task becomes even more difficult when the robot lacks an accurate…
This work is inspired by the problem of planning sequences of operations, as welding, in car manufacturing stations where multiple industrial robots cooperate. The goal is to minimize the station cycle time, \emph{i.e.} the time it takes…
We focus on the task of object manipulation to an arbitrary goal pose, in which a robot is supposed to pick an assigned object to place at the goal position with a specific orientation. However, limited by the execution space of the…
This thesis is concerned with deriving planning algorithms for robot manipulators. Manipulation has two effects, the robot has a physical effect on the object, and it also acquires information about the object. This thesis presents…
This research considers the task of evolving the physical structure of a robot to enhance its performance in various environments, which is a significant problem in the field of Evolutionary Robotics. Inspired by the fields of evolutionary…
Tactile sensing is a key enabling technology to develop complex behaviours for robots interacting with humans or the environment. This paper discusses computational aspects playing a significant role when extracting information about…
Existing robotic systems have a clear tension between generality and precision. Deployed solutions for robotic manipulation tend to fall into the paradigm of one robot solving a single task, lacking precise generalization, i.e., the ability…
The increasing deployment of robots has significantly enhanced the automation levels across a wide and diverse range of industries. This paper investigates the automation challenges of laser-based dermatology procedures in the beauty…
Human environments contain numerous objects configured in a variety of arrangements. Our goal is to enable robots to repose previously unseen objects according to learned semantic relationships in novel environments. We break this problem…
A robotic platform for mobile manipulation needs to satisfy two contradicting requirements for many real-world applications: A compact base is required to navigate through cluttered indoor environments, while the support needs to be large…
Tactile and textile skin technologies have become increasingly important for enhancing human-robot interaction and allowing robots to adapt to different environments. Despite notable advancements, there are ongoing challenges in skin signal…
We present a unified approach for constraint displacement problems in which a robot finds a feasible path by displacing constraints or obstacles. To this end, we propose a two stage process that returns locally optimal obstacle…
Global mobile robot localization is the problem of determining a robot's pose in an environment, using sensor data, when the starting position is unknown. A family of probabilistic algorithms known as Monte Carlo Localization (MCL) is…
An appearance-based robot self-localization problem is considered in the machine learning framework. The appearance space is composed of all possible images, which can be captured by a robot's visual system under all robot localizations.…
In a robotic mobile fulfillment system, robots bring shelves, called pods, with storage items from the storage area to pick stations. At every pick station there is a person -- the picker -- who takes parts from the pod and packs them into…
In this paper, we introduce a method to deal with the problem of robot local path planning among pushable objects -- an open problem in robotics. In particular, we achieve that by training multiple agents simultaneously in a physics-based…
We posit that embodied artificial intelligence is not only a computational, but also a materials problem. While the importance of material and structural properties in the control loop are well understood, materials can take an active role…
As robots become increasingly prominent in diverse industrial settings, the desire for an accessible and reliable system has correspondingly increased. Yet, the task of meaningfully assessing the feasibility of introducing a new robotic…