Related papers: Dynamic Active Constraints for Surgical Robots usi…
Vitreoretinal surgery pertains to the treatment of delicate tissues on the fundus of the eye using thin instruments. Surgeons frequently rotate the eye during surgery, which is called orbital manipulation, to observe regions around the…
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…
Tendon-driven snake-like arms have been used to create highly dexterous continuum robots so that they can bend around anatomical obstacles to access clinical targets. In this paper, we propose a design algorithm for developing…
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…
Purpose Surgical simulations play an increasingly important role in surgeon education and developing algorithms that enable robots to perform surgical subtasks. To model anatomy, Finite Element Method (FEM) simulations have been held as the…
Accurately following a geometric desired path in a two-dimensional space is a fundamental task for many engineering systems, in particular mobile robots. When the desired path is occluded by obstacles, it is necessary and crucial to…
Aerial robots are a well-established solution for exploration, monitoring, and inspection, thanks to their superior maneuverability and agility. However, in many environments, they risk crashing and sustaining damage after collisions.…
Inverse kinematics is a fundamental technique for motion and positioning control in robotics, typically applied to end-effectors. In this paper, we extend the concept of inverse kinematics to guiding vector fields for path following in…
Robots that navigate among pedestrians use collision avoidance algorithms to enable safe and efficient operation. Recent works present deep reinforcement learning as a framework to model the complex interactions and cooperation. However,…
Interactive perception enables robots to manipulate the environment and objects to bring them into states that benefit the perception process. Deformable objects pose challenges to this due to significant manipulation difficulty and…
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…
Agile maneuvers are essential for robot-enabled complex tasks such as surgical procedures. Prior explorations on surgery autonomy are limited to feasibility study of completing a single task without systematically addressing generic…
Multibody dynamics simulators are an important tool in many fields, including learning and control for robotics. However, many existing dynamics simulators suffer from inaccuracies when dealing with constrained mechanical systems due to…
Manipulation planning is the problem of finding a sequence of robot configurations that involves interactions with objects in the scene, e.g., grasping and placing an object, or more general tool-use. To achieve such interactions,…
It is challenging for humans -- particularly those living with physical disabilities -- to control high-dimensional, dexterous robots. Prior work explores learning embedding functions that map a human's low-dimensional inputs (e.g., via a…
Accurate deformable object manipulation (DOM) is essential for achieving autonomy in robotic surgery, where soft tissues are being displaced, stretched, and dissected. Many DOM methods can be powered by simulation, which ensures realistic…
This paper presents a dynamic constraint formulation to provide protective virtual fixtures of 3D anatomical structures from polygon mesh representations. The proposed approach can anisotropically limit the tool motion of surgical robots…
Designing an efficient and resilient human-robot collaboration strategy that not only upholds the safety and ergonomics of shared workspace but also enhances the performance and agility of collaborative setup presents significant challenges…
We propose coordinating guiding vector fields to achieve two tasks simultaneously with a team of robots: first, the guidance and navigation of multiple robots to possibly different paths or surfaces typically embedded in 2D or 3D; second,…
Robotic manipulation of deformable objects remains a challenging task. One such task is folding a garment autonomously. Given start and end folding positions, what is an optimal trajectory to move the robotic arm to fold a garment? Certain…