Related papers: Robot Co-design: Beyond the Monotone Case
Zero-order optimization has recently received significant attention for designing optimal trajectories and policies for robotic systems. However, most existing methods (e.g., MPPI, CEM, and CMA-ES) are local in nature, as they rely on…
This paper presents the design of a small aerial robot for inhabited microgravity environments, such as orbiting space stations (e.g., ISS). In particular, we target a fleet of robots, called Space CoBots, for collaborative tasks with…
The limited onboard energy of autonomous mobile robots poses a tremendous challenge for practical deployment. Hence, efficient computing solutions are imperative. A crucial shortcoming of state-of-the-art computing solutions is that they…
Collaborative robots, or cobots, are increasingly integrated into various industrial and service settings to work efficiently and safely alongside humans. However, for effective human-robot collaboration, robots must reason based on human…
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…
The design of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and their docking stations has been a popular research topic for several decades. Although many AUV and dock designs have been proposed, materialized, and commercialized, most of these…
The collaboration between humans and robots re-quires a paradigm shift not only in robot perception, reasoning, and action, but also in the design of the robotic cell. This paper proposes an optimization framework for designing…
The increasing deployment of robots in co-working scenarios with humans has revealed complex safety and efficiency challenges in the computation robot behavior. Movement among humans is one of the most fundamental -- and yet critical --…
Soft-growing robots are innovative devices that feature plant-inspired growth to navigate environments. Thanks to their embodied intelligence of adapting to their surroundings and the latest innovation in actuation and manufacturing, it is…
We present a computational design system that assists users to model, optimize, and fabricate quad-robots with soft skins.Our system addresses the challenging task of predicting their physical behavior by fully integrating the multibody…
Pareto optimization via evolutionary multi-objective algorithms has been shown to efficiently solve constrained monotone submodular functions. Traditionally when solving multiple problems, the algorithm is run for each problem separately.…
Designing robot morphologies and kinematics has traditionally relied on human intuition, with little systematic foundation. Motion-design co-optimization offers a promising path toward automation, but two major challenges remain: (i) the…
This work provides a complete framework for the simulation, co-optimization, and sim-to-real transfer of the design and control of soft legged robots. The compliance of soft robots provides a form of "mechanical intelligence" -- the ability…
We introduce CODS (Computational Optimization in Design Space), a theoretical model that frames computational design as a constrained optimization problem over a structured, multi-dimensional design space. Unlike existing methods that rely…
When the human-robot interactions become ubiquitous, the environment surrounding these interactions will have significant impact on the safety and comfort of the human and the effectiveness and efficiency of the robot. Although most robots…
Task allocation plays a vital role in multi-robot autonomous cleaning systems, where multiple robots work together to clean a large area. However, most current studies mainly focus on deterministic, single-task allocation for cleaning…
Robotic systems are routinely used in the logistics industry to enhance operational efficiency, but the design of robot workspaces remains a complex and manual task, which limits the system's flexibility to changing demands. This paper aims…
We consider the optimal experimental design problem of allocating subjects to treatment or control when subjects participate in multiple, separate controlled experiments within a short time-frame and subject covariate information is…
Real-world robotic tasks require complex reward functions. When we define the problem the robot needs to solve, we pretend that a designer specifies this complex reward exactly, and it is set in stone from then on. In practice, however,…
Multidisciplinary engineering system design typically employs a sequential process, progressing from system dynamics to design variables and control. However, this process is inefficient and may lead to a suboptimal design. We propose…