Related papers: Exploiting Friction in Torque Controlled Humanoid …

Friction is the essential mediator of terrestrial locomotion, yet in robotic systems it is almost always treated as a passive property fixed by surface materials and conditions. Here, we introduce ultrasonic lubrication as a method to…

Robust dynamic interactions are required to move robots in daily environments alongside humans. Optimisation and learning methods have been used to mimic and reproduce human movements. However, they are often not robust and their…

We present an integrated approach to locomotion and balancing of humanoid robots based on direct centroidal control. Our method uses a five-mass description of a humanoid. It generates whole-body motions from desired foot trajectories and…

This paper presents a new technique to control highly redundant mechanical systems, such as humanoid robots. We take inspiration from two approaches. Prioritized control is a widespread multi-task technique in robotics and animation: tasks…

Traditional robots have rigid links and structures that limit their ability to interact with the dynamics of their immediate environment. For example, conventional robot manipulators with rigid links can only manipulate objects using…

Enforcing balance of multi-limbed robots in multiple non-coplanar unilateral contact settings is challenging when a subset of such contacts are also induced in motion tasks. The first contribution of this paper is in enhancing the…

Legged robots are typically in rigid contact with the environment at multiple locations, which add a degree of complexity to their control. We present a method to control the motion and a subset of the contact forces of a floating-base…

Balancing and reacting to strong and unexpected pushes is a critical requirement for humanoid robots. We recently designed a capture point based approach which interfaces with a momentum-based torque controller and we implemented and…

Truss robots, or robots that consist of extensible links connected at universal joints, are often designed with modular physical components but require centralized control techniques. This paper presents a distributed control technique for…

Isoperimetric robotic trusses can adapt to different tasks and environments because they have a high strength-to-weight ratio, can change their own shape dramatically, and can be reconfigured into a variety of different shapes. However,…

We present a planning and control framework for physics-based manipulation under uncertainty. The key idea is to interleave robust open-loop execution with closed-loop control. We derive robustness metrics through contraction theory. We use…

Underactuated robots are characterized by a larger number of degrees of freedom than actuators and if they are designed with a specific mass distribution, they can be controlled by means of differential flatness theory. This structural…

This paper proposes a novel sensor fusion based on Unscented Kalman Filtering for the online estimation of joint-torques of humanoid robots without joint-torque sensors. At the feature level, the proposed approach considers multimodal…

This paper presents an approach for learning online generation of collision-free and torque-limited robot trajectories. In order to generate future motions, a neural network is periodically invoked. Based on the current kinematic state of…

Soft robots are robotic systems made of deformable materials and exhibit unique flexibility that can be exploited for complex environments and tasks. However, their control problem has been considered a challenging subject because they are…

In this paper, we present algorithms to estimate external contact forces and joint torques using only skin, i.e. distributed tactile sensors. To deal with gaps between the tactile sensors (taxels), we use interpolation techniques. The…

In our everyday lives we are accustomed to partake in complex, personalized, adaptive interactions with our peers. For a social robot to be able to recreate this same kind of rich, human-like interaction, it should be aware of our needs and…

We present a new open-source torque-controlled legged robot system, with a low-cost and low-complexity actuator module at its core. It consists of a high-torque brushless DC motor and a low-gear-ratio transmission suitable for impedance and…

Collaboration is central to human behavior, enabling tasks beyond individual capability. This ability arises from coordinating actions through internal representations of others, a concept known as shared intelligence. Additionally, humans…

Humanoids are versatile robotic platforms owing to their limbs with multiple degrees of freedom. Although humanoids can walk like humans, they are relatively slow, and cannot run over large barriers. To address these limitations, we aim to…