Related papers: Sim2real gap is non-monotonic with robot complexit…
Over the past three decades, countless embodied yet virtual agents have freely evolved inside computer simulations, but vanishingly few were realized as physical robots. This is because evolution was conducted at a level of abstraction that…
Although robotic manipulators are used in an ever-growing range of applications, robot manufacturers typically follow a ``one-fits-all'' philosophy, employing identical manipulators in various settings. This often leads to suboptimal…
We present a comprehensive study on discrete morphological symmetries of dynamical systems, which are commonly observed in biological and artificial locomoting systems, such as legged, swimming, and flying animals/robots/virtual characters.…
Recently, researchers have explored control methods that embrace nonlinear dynamic coupling instead of suppressing it. Such designs leverage dynamical coupling for communication between different parts of the robot. Morphological…
We present a self-contained, soft robotic hand composed of soft pneumatic actuator modules that are equipped with strain and pressure sensing. We show how this data can be used to discern whether a grasp was successful. Co-locating sensing…
Accurately manipulating articulated objects is a challenging yet important task for real robot applications. In this paper, we present a novel framework called Sim2Real$^2$ to enable the robot to manipulate an unseen articulated object to…
This paper introduces a methodology for task-specific design optimization of multirotor Micro Aerial Vehicles. By leveraging reinforcement learning, Bayesian optimization, and covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy, we optimize…
Imagine a swarm of terrestrial robots that can explore an environment, and, upon completion of this task, reconfigure into a spherical ball and roll out. This dimensional change alters the dynamics of locomotion and can assist them to…
Folding is emerging as a promising manufacturing process to transform flat materials into functional structures, offering efficiency by reducing the need for welding, gluing, and molding, while minimizing waste and enabling automation.…
Symmetry is a central organizing principle in natural systems, yet its use as a unifying design strategy in robotics has largely remained limited to geometric form. We show that symmetry can instead be leveraged at the level of dynamic…
In the field of fixed wing aircraft, many morphing technologies have been applied to the wing, such as adaptive airfoil, variable span aircraft, variable swept angle aircraft, etc., but few are aimed at the tail. The traditional fixed wing…
Autonomous navigation consists in an agent being able to navigate without human intervention or supervision, it affects both high level planning and low level control. Navigation is at the crossroad of multiple disciplines, it combines…
Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are few dynamic simulation tools available to accurately predict the motion or performance of untethered microrobots as they…
Sim2real, that is, the transfer of learned control policies from simulation to real world, is an area of growing interest in robotics due to its potential to efficiently handle complex tasks. The sim2real approach faces challenges due to…
This work presents an actuation framework for a bioinspired flapping drone called Aerobat. This drone, capable of producing dynamically versatile wing conformations, possesses 14 body joints and is tail-less. Therefore, in our robot, unlike…
We automate soft robotic hand design iteration by co-optimizing design and control policy for dexterous manipulation skills in simulation. Our design iteration pipeline combines genetic algorithms and policy transfer to learn control…
We propose to synthesize feasible caging grasps for a target object through computing Caging Loops, a closed curve defined in the shape embedding space of the object. Different from the traditional methods, our approach decouples caging…
Natural beings undergo a morphological development process of their bodies while they are learning and adapting to the environments they face from infancy to adulthood. In fact, this is the period where the most important learning…
Learning instead of designing robot controllers can greatly reduce engineering effort required, while also emphasizing robustness. Despite considerable progress in simulation, applying learning directly in hardware is still challenging, in…
The research field of Embodied AI has witnessed substantial progress in visual navigation and exploration thanks to powerful simulating platforms and the availability of 3D data of indoor and photorealistic environments. These two factors…