Related papers: Active Constraints using Vector Field Inequalities…

This paper addresses the problem of task-space robust regulation of robot manipulators subject to external disturbances. A velocity-free control law is proposed by combining the internal model principle and the passivity-based…

Over the past few years, deep learning techniques have achieved tremendous success in many visual understanding tasks such as object detection, image segmentation, and caption generation. Despite this thriving in computer vision and natural…

In robotic surgery, pattern cutting through a deformable material is a challenging research field. The cutting procedure requires a robot to concurrently manipulate a scissor and a gripper to cut through a predefined contour trajectory on…

Teleoperation platforms often require the user to be situated at a fixed location to both visualize and control the movement of the robot and thus do not provide the operator with much mobility. One example is in existing robotic surgery…

In recent decades, the tremendous benefits surgical robots have brought to surgeons and patients have been witnessed. With the dexterous operation and the great precision, surgical robots can offer patients less recovery time and less…

Robotics enables a variety of unconventional actuation strategies to be used for endoscopes, resulting in reduced trauma to the GI tract. For transmission of force to distally mounted endoscopic instruments, robotically actuated tendon…

Robots that physically interact with their surroundings, in order to accomplish some tasks or assist humans in their activities, require to exploit contact forces in a safe and proficient manner. Impedance control is considered as a…

Unsupervised video-based surgical instrument segmentation has the potential to accelerate the adoption of robot-assisted procedures by reducing the reliance on manual annotations. However, the generally low quality of optical flow in…

The problem of coordination without a priori information about the environment is important in robotics. Applications vary from formation control to search and rescue. This paper considers the problem of search by a group of solitary…

Robotic surgery and novel surgical instrumentation present great potentials towards safer, more accurate and consistent minimally invasive surgery. However, their adoption is dependent to the access to training facilities and extensive…

Robot manipulation policies, while central to the promise of physical AI, are highly vulnerable in the presence of external variations in the real world. Diagnosing these vulnerabilities is hindered by two key challenges: (i) the relevant…

Deep reinforcement learning algorithms typically act on the same set of actions. However, this is not sufficient for a wide range of real-world applications where different subsets are available at each step. In this thesis, we consider the…

Robotic assistance has significantly improved the outcomes of open microsurgery and rigid endoscopic surgery, however is yet to make an impact in flexible endoscopic neurosurgery. Some of the most common intracranial procedures for…

Highly constrained manipulation tasks continue to be challenging for autonomous robots as they require high levels of precision, typically less than 1mm, which is often incompatible with what can be achieved by traditional perception…

During surgery, scrub nurses are required to frequently deliver surgical instruments to surgeons, which can lead to physical fatigue and decreased focus. Robotic scrub nurses provide a promising solution that can replace repetitive tasks…

This paper develops an autonomous tethered aerial visual assistant for robot operations in unstructured or confined environments. Robotic tele-operation in remote environments is difficult due to lack of sufficient situational awareness,…

Online generation of collision free trajectories is of prime importance for autonomous navigation. Dynamic environments, robot motion and sensing uncertainties adds further challenges to collision avoidance systems. This paper presents an…

One of the main concerns in design and process planning for multi-axis additive and subtractive manufacturing is collision avoidance between moving objects (e.g., tool assemblies) and stationary objects (e.g., a part unified with fixtures).…

This paper proposes a novel approach to performing in-grasp manipulation: the problem of moving an object with reference to the palm from an initial pose to a goal pose without breaking or making contacts. Our method to perform in-grasp…

While deep learning techniques have become extremely popular for solving a broad range of optimization problems, methods to enforce hard constraints during optimization, particularly on deep neural networks, remain underdeveloped. Inspired…