Related papers: Comparing Direct and Indirect Representations for …
Action representation is an important yet often overlooked aspect in end-to-end robot learning with deep networks. Choosing one action space over another (e.g. target joint positions, or Cartesian end-effector poses) can result in…
Reinforcement learning (RL) has demonstrated impressive performance in legged locomotion over various challenging environments. However, due to the sim-to-real gap and lack of explainability, unconstrained RL policies deployed in the real…
Robots operating in the real world will experience a range of different environments and tasks. It is essential for the robot to have the ability to adapt to its surroundings to work efficiently in changing conditions. Evolutionary robotics…
While the animals' Fin-to-Limb evolution has been well-researched in biology, such morphological transformation remains under-adopted in the modern design of advanced robotic limbs. This paper investigates a novel class of overconstrained…
Legged robots have the potential to become vital in maintenance, home support, and exploration scenarios. In order to interact with and manipulate their environments, most legged robots are equipped with a dedicated robot arm, which means…
Scaling dexterous robot learning is constrained by the difficulty of collecting high-quality demonstrations across diverse operators. Existing wearable interfaces often trade comfort and cross-user adaptability for kinematic fidelity, while…
The co-adaptation of robots has been a long-standing research endeavour with the goal of adapting both body and behaviour of a system for a given task, inspired by the natural evolution of animals. Co-adaptation has the potential to…
Internal computational models of physical bodies are fundamental to the ability of robots and animals alike to plan and control their actions. These "self-models" allow robots to consider outcomes of multiple possible future actions,…
The field of visual representation learning has seen explosive growth in the past years, but its benefits in robotics have been surprisingly limited so far. Prior work uses generic visual representations as a basis to learn (task-specific)…
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).…
In robotics, structural design and behavior optimization have long been considered separate processes, resulting in the development of systems with limited capabilities. Recently, co-design methods have gained popularity, where bi-level…
Trajectory optimization is an essential tool for generating efficient, dynamically consistent gaits in legged locomotion. This paper explores the indirect method of trajectory optimization, emphasizing its application in creating optimal…
Thanks to recent advancements in accelerating non-linear model predictive control (NMPC), it is now feasible to deploy whole-body NMPC at real-time rates for humanoid robots. However, enforcing inequality constraints in real time for such…
Prototyping robotic systems is a time consuming process. Computer aided design, however, might speed up the process significantly. Quality-diversity evolutionary approaches optimise for novelty as well as performance, and can be used to…
Contact modeling plays a central role in motion planning, simulation, and control of legged robots, as legged locomotion is realized through contact. The two prevailing approaches to model the contact consider rigid and compliant premise at…
Adaptive morphogenetic robots adapt their morphology and control policies to meet changing tasks and environmental conditions. Many such systems leverage soft components, which enable shape morphing but also introduce simulation and control…
A human 3D avatar is one of the important elements in the metaverse, and the modeling effect directly affects people's visual experience. However, the human body has a complex topology and diverse details, so it is often expensive,…
Clay sculpting is a nuanced, artistic task involving dexterous manipulation with long-horizon planning to achieve high-level goals. As a robotics problem, we formulate clay sculpting as a shape-to-shape matching challenge. Prior deformable…
Automatically generating agile whole-body motions for legged and humanoid robots remains a fundamental challenge in robotics. While numerous trajectory optimization approaches have been proposed, there is no clear guideline on how the…
Legged robots traversing in confined environments could find their only path is blocked by obstacles. In circumstances where the obstacles are movable, a multilegged robot can manipulate the obstacles using its legs to allow it to continue…