Related papers: Robotics CTF (RCTF), a playground for robot hackin…
Robots operating in close proximity to humans rely heavily on human trust to successfully complete their tasks. But what are the real outcomes when this trust is violated? Self-defense law provides a framework for analyzing tangible failure…
While much research explores improving robot capabilities, there is a deficit in researching how robots are expected to perform tasks safely, especially in high-risk problem domains. Robots must earn the trust of human operators in order to…
Teleoperated quadruped robots are increasingly deployed in safety-critical missions -- industrial inspection, military reconnaissance, and emergency response -- yet the security of their communication and control infrastructure remains…
Indoor Delivery Robots (IDRs) play a vital role in the upcoming fourth industrial revolution, autonomously navigating and transporting items within indoor environments. In this work, we thus aim to conduct the first security analysis of the…
This paper explores the legal implications of violating "robots.txt", a technical standard widely used by webmasters to communicate restrictions on automated access to website content. Although historically regarded as a voluntary…
Robots operating in real world settings must navigate and maintain safety while interacting with many heterogeneous agents and obstacles. Multi-Agent Control Barrier Functions (CBF) have emerged as a computationally efficient tool to…
Robots are experiencing a revolution as they permeate many aspects of our daily lives, from performing house maintenance to infrastructure inspection, from efficiently warehousing goods to autonomous vehicles, and more. This technical…
Robots that support humans by performing useful tasks (a.k.a., service robots) are booming worldwide. In contrast to industrial robots, the development of service robots comes with severe software engineering challenges, since they require…
Implementing obstacle avoidance in dynamic environments is a challenging problem for robots. Model predictive control (MPC) is a popular strategy for dealing with this type of problem, and recent work mainly uses control barrier function…
Collaborative robots (cobots) increasingly operate alongside humans, demanding robust real-time safeguarding. Current safety standards (e.g., ISO 10218, ANSI/RIA 15.06, ISO/TS 15066) require risk assessments but offer limited guidance for…
Safe navigation of autonomous robots remains one of the core challenges in the field, especially in dynamic and uncertain environments. One of the prevalent approaches is safety filtering based on control barrier functions (CBFs), which are…
Robot foundation models hold the potential for deployment across diverse environments, from industrial applications to household tasks. While current research focuses primarily on the policies' generalization capabilities across a variety…
Robotic systems are multi-dimensional entities, combining both hardware and software, that are heavily dependent on, and influenced by, interactions with the real world. They can be variously categorised as embedded, cyberphysical,…
Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has shown promising results in robot motion planning with first attempts in human-robot collaboration (HRC). However, a fair comparison of RL approaches in HRC under the constraint of guaranteed safety is…
Robot systems are increasingly integrating into numerous avenues of modern life. From cleaning houses to providing guidance and emotional support, robots now work directly with humans. Due to their far-reaching applications and…
The success of the human-robot co-worker team in a flexible manufacturing environment where robots learn from demonstration heavily relies on the correct and safe operation of the robot. How this can be achieved is a challenge that requires…
Recent Foundation Model-enabled robotics (FMRs) display greatly improved general-purpose skills, enabling more adaptable automation than conventional robotics. Their ability to handle diverse tasks thus creates new opportunities to replace…
Open access to publication, software and hardware is central to robotics: it lowers barriers to entry, supports reproducible science and accelerates reliable system development. However, openness also exacerbates the inherent dual-use risks…
Capture-the-Flag (CTF) competitions are increasingly becoming a testbed for evaluating AI capabilities at solving security tasks, due to the controlled environments and objective success criteria. Existing evaluations have focused on how…
Existing household robots have made significant progress in performing routine tasks, such as cleaning floors or delivering objects. However, a key limitation of these robots is their inability to recognize potential problems or dangers in…