Related papers: Autonomous Social Distancing in Urban Environments…
We study decentralized cooperative transport using teams of N-quadruped robots with arm that must pinch, lift, and move ungraspable objects through physical contact alone. Unlike prior work that relies on rigid mechanical coupling between…
Assistive robots enable people with disabilities to conduct everyday tasks on their own. However, these tasks can be complex, containing both coarse reaching motions and fine-grained manipulation. For example, when eating, not only does one…
Learning strategic robot behavior -- like that required in pursuit-evasion interactions -- under real-world constraints is extremely challenging. It requires exploiting the dynamics of the interaction, and planning through both physical…
Service robots that work alongside humans in a shared environment need a navigation system that takes into account not only physical safety but also social norms for mutual cooperation. In this paper, we introduce a motion planning system…
In this letter, we present a distributed algorithm for flocking in complex environments that operates at constant altitude, without explicit communication, no a priori information about the environment, and by using only on-board sensing…
Social navigation is the capability of an autonomous agent, such as a robot, to navigate in a 'socially compliant' manner in the presence of other intelligent agents such as humans. With the emergence of autonomously navigating mobile…
Navigation strategies that intentionally incorporate contact with humans (i.e. "contact-based" social navigation) in crowded environments are largely unexplored even though collision-free social navigation is a well studied problem.…
Legged robots traversing in confined environments could find their only path is blocked by obstacles. In circumstances where the obstacles are movable, a multilegged robot can manipulate the obstacles using its legs to allow it to continue…
Sociability is essential for modern robots to increase their acceptability in human environments. Traditional techniques use manually engineered utility functions inspired by observing pedestrian behaviors to achieve social navigation.…
As robot autonomy improves, robots are increasingly being considered in the role of autonomous observation systems -- free-flying cameras capable of actively tracking human activity within some predefined area of interest. In this work, we…
With robots leaving factories and entering less controlled domains, possibly sharing the space with humans, safety is paramount and multimodal awareness of the body surface and the surrounding environment is fundamental. Taking inspiration…
COVID-19 has changed our world and has filled people with fear and anxiety. Everyone has a fear of coming in contact with people having the Coronavirus. In Spite of releasing full lockdowns, there is still a pressing need to maintain social…
Synthesizing a stable gait that enables a quadruped robot to climb stairs is the focus of this paper. To this end, first a stable transition from initial to desired configuration is made based on the minimum number of steps and maximum use…
We present a real-time algorithm for emotion-aware navigation of a robot among pedestrians. Our approach estimates time-varying emotional behaviors of pedestrians from their faces and trajectories using a combination of Bayesian-inference,…
Human-robot collaboration has been studied primarily in dyadic or sequential settings. However, real homes require multiadic collaboration, where multiple humans and robots share a workspace, acting concurrently on interleaved subtasks with…
This paper presents a study on the development of an obstacle-avoidance navigation system for autonomous navigation in home environments. The system utilizes vision-based techniques and advanced path-planning algorithms to enable the robot…
The deployment of social robots in real-world scenarios is increasing, supporting humans in various contexts. However, they still struggle to grasp social dynamics, especially in public spaces, sometimes resulting in violations of social…
Quadruped robots have emerged as an evolving technology that currently leverages simulators to develop a robust controller capable of functioning in the real-world without the need for further training. However, since it is impossible to…
Recently, many humanoid robots have been increasingly deployed in various facilities, including hospitals and assisted living environments, where they are often remotely controlled by human operators. Their kinematic redundancy enhances…
Quadruped robots are designed to achieve agile and robust locomotion by drawing inspiration from legged animals. However, most existing control methods for quadruped robots lack a key capacity observed in animals: the ability to exhibit…