Related papers: Modeling and Analysis of Non-unique Behaviors in M…

Robotic manipulation and locomotion often entail nearly-simultaneous collisions -- such as heel and toe strikes during a foot step -- with outcomes that are extremely sensitive to the order in which impacts occur. Robotic simulators…

Robotic manipulation can greatly benefit from the data efficiency, robustness, and predictability of model-based methods if robots can quickly generate models of novel objects they encounter. This is especially difficult when effects like…

We present a differentiable dynamics solver that is able to handle frictional contact for rigid and deformable objects within a unified framework. Through a principled mollification of normal and tangential contact forces, our method…

In recent years, soft robotics simulators have evolved to offer various functionalities, including the simulation of different material types (e.g., elastic, hyper-elastic) and actuation methods (e.g., pneumatic, cable-driven, servomotor).…

In this context, a major focus of this thesis is on unintentional collisions, where a straight goal is to eliminate injury from users and passerby's via realtime sensing and control systems. A less obvious focus is to combine collision…

Accurate frictional contact is critical in simulating the assembly of rod-like structures in the practical world, such as knots, hairs, flagella, and more. Due to their high geometric nonlinearity and elasticity, rod-on-rod contact remains…

Generating intelligent robot behavior in contact-rich settings is a research problem where zeroth-order methods currently prevail. A major contributor to the success of such methods is their robustness in the face of non-smooth and…

This work establishes a solution to the problem of assessing the capacity of multi-object assemblies to withstand external forces without becoming unstable. Our physically-grounded approach handles arbitrary structures made from rigid…

Collisions and impacts are the principal reasons for impulsive motions, which we frequently see in dynamic responses of systems. Precise modelling of impacts is a challenging problem due to the lack of the accurate and commonly accepted…

With the goal of increasing the speed and efficiency in robotic manipulation, a control approach is presented that aims to utilize intentional simultaneous impacts to its advantage. This approach exploits the concept of the time-invariant…

The physical interaction of aerial robots with their environment has countless potential applications and is an emerging area with many open challenges. Fully-actuated multirotors have been introduced to tackle some of these challenges.…

We present a convex formulation of compliant frictional contact and a robust, performant method to solve it in practice. By analytically eliminating contact constraints, we obtain an unconstrained convex problem. Our solver has proven…

Robotic manipulation research has investigated contact-rich problems and strategies that require robots to intentionally collide with their environment, to accomplish tasks that cannot be handled by traditional collision-free solutions. By…

With the aim of further enabling the exploitation of impacts in robotic manipulation, a control framework is presented that directly tackles the challenges posed by tracking control of robotic manipulators that are tasked to perform…

This paper presents existence and uniqueness results for a propagative model of simultaneous impacts that is guaranteed to conserve energy and momentum in the case of elastic impacts with extensions to perfectly plastic and inelastic…

To perform complex tasks, robots must be able to interact with and manipulate their surroundings. One of the key challenges in accomplishing this is robust state estimation during physical interactions, where the state involves not only the…

Rigid bodies, plastic impact, persistent contact, Coulomb friction, and massless limbs are ubiquitous simplifications introduced to reduce the complexity of mechanics models despite the obvious physical inaccuracies that each incurs…

Simulation of contact and friction dynamics is an important basis for control- and learning-based algorithms. However, the numerical difficulties of contact interactions pose a challenge for robust and efficient simulators. A…

There are many physical processes that have inherent discontinuities in their mathematical formulations. This paper is motivated by the specific case of collisions between two rigid or deformable bodies and the intrinsic nature of that…

Accurate post-impact velocity predictions are essential in developing impact-aware manipulation strategies for robots, where contacts are intentionally established at non-zero speed mimicking human manipulation abilities in dynamic grasping…