Related papers: Scratchy: A Lightweight Modular Autonomous Robot f…
Most of the quadrupeds developed are highly actuated, and their control is hence quite cumbersome. They need advanced electronics equipment to solve convoluted inverse kinematic equations continuously. In addition, they demand special and…
We designed a modular robotic control stack that provides a customizable and accessible interface to the Franka Emika Panda Research robot. This framework abstracts high-level robot control commands as skills, which are decomposed into…
For mobile robots to operate autonomously in general environments, perception is required in the form of a dense metric map. For this purpose, we present the stochastic triangular mesh (STM) mapping technique: a 2.5-D representation of the…
Robots are increasingly operating in indoor environments designed for and shared with people. However, robots working safely and autonomously in uneven and unstructured environments still face great challenges. Many modern indoor…
To date, self-driving experimental wheelchair technologies have been either inexpensive or robust, but not both. Yet, in order to achieve real-world acceptance, both qualities are fundamentally essential. We present a unique approach to…
We present a motion planning algorithm with probabilistic guarantees for limbed robots with stochastic gripping forces. Planners based on deterministic models with a worst-case uncertainty can be conservative and inflexible to consider the…
This work presents a perception system applied to robotic manipulation, that is able to assist in navigation, household waste classification and collection in outdoor environments. This system is made up of optical tactile sensors, RGBD…
This paper introduces a compound vision system that enables robots to localize people up to 15m away using a cheap camera. And, it proposes a robust navigation stack that combines Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) and a probabilistic…
This paper presents a soft earthworm robot that is capable of both efficient locomotion and obstacle avoidance. The robot is designed to replicate the unique locomotion mechanisms of earthworms, which enable them to move through narrow and…
We present CloudGripper, an open source cloud robotics testbed, consisting of a scalable, space and cost-efficient design constructed as a rack of 32 small robot arm work cells. Each robot work cell is fully enclosed and features individual…
A robotic platform for mobile manipulation needs to satisfy two contradicting requirements for many real-world applications: A compact base is required to navigate through cluttered indoor environments, while the support needs to be large…
Robot motion can have many goals. Depending on the task, we might optimize for pose error, speed, collision, or similarity to a human demonstration. Motivated by this, we present PyRoki: a modular, extensible, and cross-platform toolkit for…
Natural systems integrate the work of many sub-units (cells) toward a large-scale unified goal (morphological and behavioral), which can counteract the effects of unexpected experiences, damage, or simply changes in tasks demands. In this…
This research concentrates on enhancing the navigational capabilities of Northeastern Universitys Husky, a multi-modal quadrupedal robot, that can integrate posture manipulation and thrust vectoring, to traverse through narrow pathways such…
Many robots are not equipped with a manipulator and many objects are not suitable for prehensile manipulation (such as large boxes and cylinders). In these cases, pushing is a simple yet effective non-prehensile skill for robots to interact…
Flippers are essential components of tracked robot locomotion systems for unstructured terrain, especially within a rescue scenario. Achieving full and semi-autonomy for such rescue robots is the goal of many research efforts. In this work,…
This report describes our approach to design and evaluate a software stack for a race car capable of achieving competitive driving performance in the different disciplines of the Formula Student Driverless. By using a 360{\deg} LiDAR and…
This paper addresses the scarcity of low-cost but high-dexterity platforms for collecting real-world multi-fingered robot manipulation data towards generalist robot autonomy. To achieve it, we propose the RAPID Hand, a co-optimized hardware…
Traditional rigid underwater vehicles pose risks to delicate marine ecosystems due to high-speed propellers and rigid hulls. This paper presents BactoBot, a low-cost, soft underwater robot designed for safe and gentle marine exploration.…
Experiments using large numbers of miniature swarm robots are desirable to teach, study, and test multi-robot and swarm intelligence algorithms and their applications. To realize the full potential of a swarm robot, it should be capable of…