Related papers: Making High-Performance Robots Safe and Easy to Us…
Robotics is becoming more and more ubiquitous, but the pressure to bring systems to market occasionally goes at the cost of neglecting security mechanisms during the development, deployment or while in production. As a result, contemporary…
Our ongoing development and deployment of an online robotics education platform highlighted a gap in providing an interactive, feedback-rich learning environment essential for mastering programming concepts in robotics, which they were not…
We present a system that enables an autonomous small-scale RC car to drive aggressively from visual observations using reinforcement learning (RL). Our system, FastRLAP (faster lap), trains autonomously in the real world, without human…
Soft robotic systems present a variety of new opportunities for solving complex problems. The use of soft robotic grippers, for example, can simplify the complexity in tasks such as the of grasping irregular and delicate objects. Adoption…
During the 2017-18 academic year we carried out a series of coding activities, lasting about 3 months, in a third of the Giulia Falletti primary school in Barolo in Turin (Gena et a., 2020). These activities aimed to teach students not only…
Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a promising approach for autonomously acquiring complex behaviors from low level sensor observations. Although a large portion of deep RL research has focused on applications in video games…
In recent years, Artificial Intelligence techniques have emerged as useful tools for solving various engineering problems that were not possible or convenient to handle by traditional methods. AI has directly influenced many areas of…
The use of mobile robots has inevitably increased in recent years. The increase in the companies that produce products in this field, the popularity of the studies in the robotic field and the technological competence to serve many…
We present pyCub, an open-source physics-based simulation of the humanoid robot iCub, along with exercises to teach students the basics of humanoid robotics. Compared to existing iCub simulators (iCub SIM, iCub Gazebo), which require C++…
While teaching introductory programming courses for over a decade in reputed institutions we have experienced that several factors play significant role in developing problem solving skills and program development skills in students. There…
Applying machine learning methods to physical systems that are supposed to act in the real world requires providing safety guarantees. However, methods that include such guarantees often come at a high computational cost, making them…
End-user development allows everyday users to tailor service robots or applications to their needs. One user-friendly approach is natural language programming. However, it encounters challenges such as an expansive user expression space and…
Large Language Models (LLMs) are transforming the robotics domain by enabling robots to comprehend and execute natural language instructions. The cornerstone benefits of LLM include processing textual data from technical manuals,…
In this paper, we present a robot model and code base for affordable education in the field of humanoid robotics. We give an overview of the software and hardware of a robot that won several competitions with the team RoboKit in 2019-2021,…
Reinforcement learning is a powerful technique for developing new robot behaviors. However, typical lack of safety guarantees constitutes a hurdle for its practical application on real robots. To address this issue, safe reinforcement…
Soft robots offer more flexibility, compliance, and adaptability than traditional rigid robots. They are also typically lighter and cheaper to manufacture. However, their use in real-world applications is limited due to modeling challenges…
We aim to design robotic educational support systems that can promote socially and intellectually meaningful learning experiences for students while they complete school work outside of class. To pursue this goal, we conducted participatory…
The integration of high-level assistance algorithms in surgical robotics training curricula may be beneficial in establishing a more comprehensive and robust skillset for aspiring surgeons, improving their clinical performance as a…
ROBEL is an open-source platform of cost-effective robots designed for reinforcement learning in the real world. ROBEL introduces two robots, each aimed to accelerate reinforcement learning research in different task domains: D'Claw is a…
Although innovation and the support of new technologies are much needed to ease the burden on the education system, social robots in schools to help teachers with educational tasks are rare. Child-Robot Interaction (CRI) could support…