Related papers: Learning to Slide Unknown Objects with Differentia…
The ability to accurately predict the surrounding environment is a foundational principle of intelligence in biological and artificial agents. In recent years, a variety of approaches have been proposed for learning to predict the physical…
We present the design of a low-cost wheeled mobile robot, and an analytical model for predicting its motion under the influence of motor torques and friction forces. Using our proposed model, we show how to analytically compute the gradient…
Shape servoing, a robotic task dedicated to controlling objects to desired goal shapes, is a promising approach to deformable object manipulation. An issue arises, however, with the reliance on the specification of a goal shape. This goal…
Constrained objects, such as doors and drawers are often complex and share a similar structure in the human environment. A robot needs to interact accurately with constrained objects to safely and successfully complete a task. Learning from…
Robotic grasping is facing a variety of real-world uncertainties caused by non-static object states, unknown object properties, and cluttered object arrangements. The difficulty of grasping increases with the presence of more uncertainties,…
Grasping objects whose physical properties are unknown is still a great challenge in robotics. Most solutions rely entirely on visual data to plan the best grasping strategy. However, to match human abilities and be able to reliably pick…
We study the problem of placing a grasped object on an empty flat surface in an upright orientation, such as placing a cup on its bottom rather than on its side. We aim to find the required object rotation such that when the gripper is…
Reliable manipulation of previously unseen objects remains a fundamental challenge for autonomous robotic systems operating in unstructured environments. In particular, robust pick-and-place planning directly from noisy and only partial…
Grasping deformable objects is not well researched due to the complexity in modelling and simulating the dynamic behavior of such objects. However, with the rapid development of physics-based simulators that support soft bodies, the…
In machine learning, accurately predicting the probability that a specific input is correct is crucial for risk management. This process, known as uncertainty (or confidence) estimation, is particularly important in mission-critical…
We propose a novel method for learning representations of poses for 3D deformable objects, which specializes in 1) disentangling pose information from the object's identity, 2) facilitating the learning of pose variations, and 3)…
This paper presents a novel yet intuitive approach to unsupervised feature learning. Inspired by the human visual system, we explore whether low-level motion-based grouping cues can be used to learn an effective visual representation.…
Accurately modeling local surface properties of objects is crucial to many robotic applications, from grasping to material recognition. Surface properties like friction are however difficult to estimate, as visual observation of the object…
General physical scene understanding requires more than simply localizing and recognizing objects -- it requires knowledge that objects can have different latent properties (e.g., mass or elasticity), and that those properties affect the…
Many functional elements of human homes and workplaces consist of rigid components which are connected through one or more sliding or rotating linkages. Examples include doors and drawers of cabinets and appliances; laptops; and swivel…
General-purpose object placement is a fundamental capability of an intelligent generalist robot: being capable of rearranging objects following precise human instructions even in novel environments. This work is dedicated to achieving…
The aim of this paper is to present a novel physics-based framework for the identification of dynamical systems, in which the physical and structural insights are reflected directly into a backpropagation-based learning algorithm. The main…
Manipulation of large objects over long horizons (such as carts in a warehouse) is an essential skill for deployable robotic systems. Large objects require mobile manipulation which involves simultaneous manipulation, navigation, and…
We propose a technique for learning single-view 3D object pose estimation models by utilizing a new source of data -- in-the-wild videos where objects turn. Such videos are prevalent in practice (e.g., cars in roundabouts, airplanes near…
This paper presents a new method for parallel-jaw grasping of isolated objects from depth images, under large gripper pose uncertainty. Whilst most approaches aim to predict the single best grasp pose from an image, our method first…