Related papers: Assistive Gym: A Physics Simulation Framework for …
Robots can provide assistance to a human by moving objects to locations around the person's body. With a well chosen initial configuration, a robot can better reach locations important to an assistive task despite model error, pose…
The global increase in the elderly population necessitates innovative long-term care solutions to improve the quality of life for vulnerable individuals while reducing caregiver burdens. Assistive robots, leveraging advancements in Machine…
Particle robots are novel biologically-inspired robotic systems where locomotion can be achieved collectively and robustly, but not independently. While its control is currently limited to a hand-crafted policy for basic locomotion tasks,…
Eating is an essential activity of daily living (ADL) for staying healthy and living at home independently. Although numerous assistive devices have been introduced, many people with disabilities are still restricted from independent eating…
We present and evaluate a prototype social robot to encourage daily exercise among older adults in a home setting. Our prototype system, designed to lead users through exercise sessions with motivational feedback, was assessed through a…
Humans have internal models of robots (like their physical capabilities), the world (like what will happen next), and their tasks (like a preferred goal). However, human internal models are not always perfect: for example, it is easy to…
We investigate robotic assistants for dressing that can anticipate the motion of the person who is being helped. To this end, we use reinforcement learning to create models of human behavior during assistance with dressing. To explore this…
In this work, we aim to teach robots to manipulate various thin-shell materials. Prior works studying thin-shell object manipulation mostly rely on heuristic policies or learn policies from real-world video demonstrations, and only focus on…
While there are many examples in which robots provide social assistance, a lack of theory on how the robots should decide how to assist impedes progress in realizing these technologies. To address this deficiency, we propose a pair of…
Effective visual representation learning is crucial for reinforcement learning (RL) agents to extract task-relevant information from raw sensory inputs and generalize across diverse environments. However, existing RL benchmarks lack the…
This paper proposes a neural network-based user simulator that can provide a multimodal interactive environment for training Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents in collaborative tasks involving multiple modes of communication. The simulator…
The diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children is commonly accompanied by a diagnosis of sensory processing disorders as well. Abnormalities are usually reported in multiple sensory processing domains, showing a higher…
Robotic surgery and novel surgical instrumentation present great potentials towards safer, more accurate and consistent minimally invasive surgery. However, their adoption is dependent to the access to training facilities and extensive…
Despite the fact that robotic platforms can provide both consistent practice and objective assessments of users over the course of their training, there are relatively few instances where physical human robot interaction has been…
We present Orbit, a unified and modular framework for robot learning powered by NVIDIA Isaac Sim. It offers a modular design to easily and efficiently create robotic environments with photo-realistic scenes and high-fidelity rigid and…
The transformation towards intelligence in various industries is creating more demand for intelligent and flexible products. In the field of robotics, learning-based methods are increasingly being applied, with the purpose of training…
Simulation parameter settings such as contact models and object geometry approximations are critical to training robust robotic policies capable of transferring from simulation to real-world deployment. Previous approaches typically…
Assistive robotic systems have shown growing potential to improve the quality of life of those with disabilities. As researchers explore the automation of various caregiving tasks, considerations for how the technology can still preserve…
The use of wearable robots has been widely adopted in rehabilitation training for patients with hand motor impairments. However, the uniqueness of patients' muscle loss is often overlooked. Leveraging reinforcement learning and a…
Robot caregiving should be personalized to meet the diverse needs of care recipients -- assisting with tasks as needed, while taking user agency in action into account. In physical tasks such as handover, bathing, dressing, and…