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This paper presents a new technique for the design of approximate reasoning based controllers for dynamic physical systems with interacting goals. In this approach, goals are achieved based on a hierarchy defined by a control knowledge base…
Humanoid soccer poses a representative challenge for embodied intelligence, requiring robots to operate within a tightly coupled perception-action loop. However, existing systems typically rely on decoupled modules, resulting in delayed…
Assistive and Wearable Robotics have the potential to support humans with different types of motor impairments to become independent and fulfil their activities of daily living successfully. The success of these robot systems, however,…
The incredible feats of athleticism demonstrated by humans are made possible in part by a vast repertoire of general-purpose motor skills, acquired through years of practice and experience. These skills not only enable humans to perform…
Synthesizing 3D human avatars interacting realistically with a scene is an important problem with applications in AR/VR, video games and robotics. Towards this goal, we address the task of generating a virtual human -- hands and full body…
Previous humanoid robot research works treat the robot as a bipedal mobile manipulation platform, where only the feet and hands contact the environment. However, we humans use all body parts to interact with the world, e.g., we sit in…
In this paper, we devise methods for the multi- objective control of humanoid robots, a.k.a. prioritized whole- body controllers, that achieve efficiency and robustness in the algorithmic computations. We use a form of whole-body…
Human-robot cooperation is essential in environments such as warehouses and retail stores, where workers frequently handle deformable objects like paper, bags, and fabrics. Coordinating robotic actions with human assistance remains…
In this paper, we propose a system-level approach for verifying the safety of neural network controlled systems, combining a continuous-time physical system with a discrete-time neural network based controller. We assume a generic model for…
"Looking for things" is a mundane but critical task we repeatedly carry on in our daily life. We introduce a method to develop a human character capable of searching for a randomly located target object in a detailed 3D scene using its…
To perform manipulation tasks in the real world, robots need to operate on objects with various shapes, sizes and without access to geometric models. It is often unfeasible to train monolithic neural network policies across such large…
Creating realistic virtual assets is a time-consuming process: it usually involves an artist designing the object, then spending a lot of effort on tweaking its appearance. Intricate details and certain effects, such as subsurface…
Some of the most challenging environments on our planet are accessible to quadrupedal animals but remain out of reach for autonomous machines. Legged locomotion can dramatically expand the operational domains of robotics. However,…
Programming a robot to deal with open-ended tasks remains a challenge, in particular if the robot has to manipulate objects. Launching, grasping, pushing or any other object interaction can be simulated but the corresponding models are not…
Dexterous manipulation of objects through fine control of physical contacts is essential for many important tasks of daily living. A fundamental ability underlying fine contact control is compliant control, \textit{i.e.}, controlling the…
In this paper we address the problem of visual reaction: the task of interacting with dynamic environments where the changes in the environment are not necessarily caused by the agent itself. Visual reaction entails predicting the future…
We present controllers that enable mobile robots to persistently monitor or sweep a changing environment. The changing environment is modeled as a field which grows in locations that are not within range of a robot, and decreases in…
Transferring human motion to a mobile robotic manipulator and ensuring safe physical human-robot interaction are crucial steps towards automating complex manipulation tasks in human-shared environments. In this work, we present a novel…
The human hand is the main medium through which we interact with our surroundings, making its digitization an important problem. While there are several works modeling the geometry of hands, little attention has been paid to capturing…
Designing robotic assistance devices for manipulation tasks is challenging. This work is concerned with improving accuracy and usability of semi-autonomous robots, such as human operated manipulators or exoskeletons. The key insight is to…