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One important vision of robotics is to provide physical assistance by manipulating different everyday objects, e.g., hand tools, kitchen utensils. However, many objects designed for dexterous hand-control are not easily manipulable by a…
This project introduces a Feeding Assistive Robot tailored to individuals with physical disabilities, including those with limited arm function or hand control. The core component is a precise 6-degree freedom robotic arm, operated…
Robot arms that assist humans should be able to pick up, move, and release everyday objects. Today's assistive robot arms use rigid grippers to pinch items between fingers; while these rigid grippers are well suited for large and heavy…
The term robot generally refers to a machine that looks and works in a way similar to a human. The modern industry is rapidly shifting from manual control of systems to automation, in order to increase productivity and to deliver quality…
Furniture assembly is a crucial yet challenging task for robots, requiring precise dual-arm coordination where one arm manipulates parts while the other provides collaborative support and stabilization. To accomplish this task more…
Wearable robotics bring the opportunity to augment human capability and performance, be it through prosthetics, exoskeletons, or supernumerary robotic limbs. The latter concept allows enhancing human performance and assisting them in daily…
Robotic manipulation of deformable objects gains great attention due to its wide applications including medical surgery, home assistance, and automatic food preparation. The ability to deform soft objects remains a great challenge for…
This paper proposes a novel robotic hand design for assembly tasks. The idea is to combine two simple grippers -- an inner gripper which is used for precise alignment, and an outer gripper which is used for stable holding. Conventional…
As robots increasingly become part of shared human spaces, their movements must transcend basic functionality by incorporating expressive qualities to enhance engagement and communication. This paper introduces a movement-centered design…
Future service robots working in human environments, such as kitchens, will face situations where they need to improvise. The usual tool for a given task might not be available and the robot will have to use some substitute tool. The robot…
Humans are capable of continuously manipulating a wide variety of deformable objects into complex shapes. This is made possible by our intuitive understanding of material properties and mechanics of the object, for reasoning about object…
This work proposes a novel generative design tool for passive grippers -- robot end effectors that have no additional actuation and instead leverage the existing degrees of freedom in a robotic arm to perform grasping tasks. Passive…
Learning-based 3D object reconstruction enables single- or few-shot estimation of 3D object models. For robotics, this holds the potential to allow model-based methods to rapidly adapt to novel objects and scenes. Existing 3D reconstruction…
We consider the problem of reorienting a rigid object with arbitrary known shape on a table using a two-finger pinch gripper. Reorienting problem is challenging because of its non-smoothness and high dimensionality. In this work, we focus…
Due to high-mix-low-volume production, sheet-metal workshops today are challenged by small series and varying orders. As standard automation solutions tend to fall short, SMEs resort to repetitive manual labour impacting production costs…
In this letter, a paradigm for the classification and manipulation of previously unseen objects is established and demonstrated through a real example of chairs. We present a novel robot manipulation method, guided by the understanding of…
Through the implementation of reconfigurability to achieve flexibility and adaptation to tasks by morphology changes rather than by increasing the number of joints, malleable robots present advantages over traditional serial robot arms in…
Despite recent efforts to collect multi-task, multi-embodiment datasets, to design recipes for training Vision-Language-Action models (VLAs), and to showcase these models on different robot platforms, generalist cross-embodiment robot…
Deformable object manipulation (DOM) is an emerging research problem in robotics. The ability to manipulate deformable objects endows robots with higher autonomy and promises new applications in the industrial, services, and healthcare…
Accurate deformable object manipulation (DOM) is essential for achieving autonomy in robotic surgery, where soft tissues are being displaced, stretched, and dissected. Many DOM methods can be powered by simulation, which ensures realistic…