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The emergence of robot-based body augmentation promises exciting innovations that will inform robotics, human-machine interaction, and wearable electronics. Even though augmentative devices like extra robotic arms and fingers in many ways…
Human manipulation skills represent a pinnacle of their voluntary motor functions, requiring the coordination of many degrees of freedom and processing of high-dimensional sensor input to achieve remarkable dexterity. Thus, we set out to…
Human hands are able to grasp a wide range of object sizes, shapes, and weights, achieved via reshaping and altering their apparent grasping stiffness between compliant power and rigid precision. Achieving similar versatility in robotic…
Intrinsically elastic robots surpass their rigid counterparts in a range of different characteristics. By temporarily storing potential energy and subsequently converting it to kinetic energy, elastic robots are capable of highly dynamic…
Robot-assisted feeding has the potential to improve the quality of life for individuals with mobility limitations who are unable to feed themselves independently. However, there exists a large gap between the homogeneous, curated plates…
Grasping compliant objects is difficult for robots - applying too little force may cause the grasp to fail, while too much force may lead to object damage. A robot needs to apply the right amount of force to quickly and confidently grasp…
Wrist-driven orthotics have been designed to assist people with C6-7 spinal cord injury, however, the kinematic constraint imposed by such a control strategy can impede mobility and lead to abnormal body motion. This study characterizes…
Grasping an object is a matter of first moving a prehensile organ at some position in the world, and then managing the contact relationship between the prehensile organ and the object. Once the contact relationship has been established and…
Contact-based motion planning for manipulation, object exploration or balancing often requires finding sequences of fixed and sliding contacts and planning the transition from one contact in the environment to another. However, most…
Although robots with flexible bodies are superior in terms of the contact and adaptability, it is difficult to control them precisely. On the other hand, human beings make use of the surrounding environments to stabilize their bodies and…
This thesis is concerned with deriving planning algorithms for robot manipulators. Manipulation has two effects, the robot has a physical effect on the object, and it also acquires information about the object. This thesis presents…
This paper addresses two intertwined needs for collaborative robots operating in shop-floor environments. The first is the ability to perform complex manipulation operations, such as those on articulated or even flexible objects, in a way…
A robotic hand design suitable for dexterity should be examined using functional tests. To achieve this, we designed a mechanical glove, which is a rigid wearable glove that enables us to develop the corresponding isomorphic robotic hand…
Non-prehensile manipulation methods usually use a simple end effector, e.g., a single rod, to manipulate the object. Compared to the grasping method, such an end effector is compact and flexible, and hence it can perform tasks in a…
Cross-embodiment learning seeks to build generalist robots that operate across diverse morphologies, but differences in action spaces and kinematics hinder data sharing and policy transfer. This raises a central question: Is there any…
Robotic grasping is an essential capability, playing a critical role in enabling robots to physically interact with their surroundings. Despite extensive research, challenges remain due to the diverse shapes and properties of target…
Dynamic motions are a key feature of robotic arms, enabling them to perform tasks quickly and efficiently. Soft continuum manipulators do not currently consider dynamic parameters when operating in task space. This shortcoming makes…
Robotic manipulation research has investigated contact-rich problems and strategies that require robots to intentionally collide with their environment, to accomplish tasks that cannot be handled by traditional collision-free solutions. By…
Cross-embodiment dexterous grasp synthesis refers to adaptively generating and optimizing grasps for various robotic hands with different morphologies. This capability is crucial for achieving versatile robotic manipulation in diverse…
Robotic navigation in dense, cluttered environments such as agricultural canopies presents significant challenges due to physical and visual occlusion caused by leaves and branches. Traditional vision-based or model-dependent approaches…