Related papers: Robotic Assembly across Multiple Contact Stiffness…
Learning from real-world robot demonstrations holds promise for interacting with complex real-world environments. However, the complexity and variability of interaction dynamics often cause purely positional controllers to struggle with…
We present FORGE, a method for sim-to-real transfer of force-aware manipulation policies in the presence of significant pose uncertainty. During simulation-based policy learning, FORGE combines a force threshold mechanism with a dynamics…
Learning to manipulate objects efficiently, particularly those involving sustained contact (e.g., pushing, sliding) and articulated parts (e.g., drawers, doors), presents significant challenges. Traditional methods, such as robot-centric…
The concept and synthesis approach for planar Compliant Fluidic Control Structures (CFCSs), monolithic flexible continua with embedded functional pores, is presented in this manuscript. Such structures are envisioned to find application in…
Object insertion tasks are prone to failure under pose uncertainty and environmental variation, often requiring manual fine-tuning or controller retraining. We present a novel approach for robust and resilient object insertion using a…
The compliant structure of soft robotic systems enables a variety of novel capabilities in comparison to traditional rigid-bodied robots. A subclass of soft fluid-driven actuators known as fiber reinforced elastomeric enclosures (FREEs) is…
We introduce a novel approach for safe control design based on the density function. A control density function (CDF) is introduced to synthesize a safe controller for a nonlinear dynamic system. The CDF can be viewed as a dual to the…
The need for contact-rich tasks is rapidly growing in modern manufacturing settings. However, few traditional robotic assembly skills consider environmental constraints during task execution, and most of them use these constraints as…
Compliance plays a crucial role in manipulation, as it balances between the concurrent control of position and force under uncertainties. Yet compliance is often overlooked by today's visuomotor policies that solely focus on position…
A resolved acceleration control (RAC) and proportional-integral active force control (PIAFC) is proposed as an approach for the robust motion control of a mobile manipulator (MM) comprising a differentially driven wheeled mobile platform…
This paper proposes a safety-critical control design approach for nonlinear control affine systems in the presence of matched and unmatched uncertainties. Our constructive framework couples control barrier function (CBF) theory with a new…
Manipulation tasks can often be decomposed into multiple subtasks performed in parallel, e.g., sliding an object to a goal pose while maintaining contact with a table. Individual subtasks can be achieved by task-axis controllers defined…
What is considered safe for a robot operator during physical human-robot collaboration (HRC) is specified in corresponding HRC standards (e.g., ISO/TS 15066). The regime that allows collisions between the moving robot and the operator,…
Loading of shipping containers for dairy products often includes a press-fit task, which involves manually stacking milk cartons in a container without using pallets or packaging. Automating this task with a mobile manipulator can reduce…
Incremental Potential Contact (IPC) is a widely used, robust, and accurate method for simulating complex frictional contact behaviors. However, achieving high efficiency remains a major challenge, particularly as material stiffness…
This paper presents the design, control, and applications of a multi-segment soft robotic arm. In order to design a soft arm with large load capacity, several design principles are proposed by analyzing two kinds of buckling issues, under…
Properly handling delicate produce with robotic manipulators is a major part of the future role of automation in agricultural harvesting and processing. Grasping with the correct amount of force is crucial in not only ensuring proper grip…
We propose a unified framework to fast generate a safe optimal control action for a new task from existing controllers on Multi-Agent Systems (MASs). The control action composition is achieved by taking a weighted mixture of the existing…
In this article, the control problem of one section pneumatically actuated soft robotic arm is investigated in detail. To date, extensive prior work has been done in soft robotics kinematics and dynamics modeling. Proper controller designs…
Continuum robots offer high flexibility and multiple degrees of freedom, making them ideal for navigating narrow lumens. However, accurately modeling their behavior under large deformations and frequent environmental contacts remains…