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Many real-world sequential decision-making problems can be formulated as optimal control with high-dimensional observations and unknown dynamics. A promising approach is to embed the high-dimensional observations into a lower-dimensional…
The small size, high dexterity, and intrinsic compliance of continuum robots (CRs) make them well suited for constrained environments. Solving the inverse kinematics (IK), that is finding robot joint configurations that satisfy desired…
Model Predictive Control (MPC) is a popular strategy for controlling robots but is difficult for systems with contact due to the complex nature of hybrid dynamics. To implement MPC for systems with contact, dynamic models are often…
Locomotion robots with active or passive compliance can show robustness to uncertain scenarios, which can be promising for agricultural, research and environmental industries. However, state estimation for these robots is challenging due to…
Action-conditioned robot world models generate future video frames of the manipulated scene given a robot action sequence, offering a promising alternative for simulating tasks that are difficult to model with traditional physics engines.…
Deployed machine learning models should be updated to take advantage of a larger sample size to improve performance, as more data is gathered over time. Unfortunately, even when model updates improve aggregate metrics such as accuracy, they…
Continuum robots exhibit high-dimensional, nonlinear dynamics which are often coupled with their actuation mechanism. Spectral submanifold (SSM) reduction has emerged as a leading method for reducing high-dimensional nonlinear dynamical…
Ensuring safety and motion consistency for robot navigation in occluded, obstacle-dense environments is a critical challenge. In this context, this study presents an occlusion-aware Consistent Model Predictive Control (CMPC) strategy. To…
Concentric Tube Robots (CTRs) have been proposed to operate within the unstructured environment for minimally invasive surgeries. In this letter, we consider the operation scenario where the tubes travel inside the channels with a large…
A novel kinematically redundant (6+3)-DoF parallel robot is presented in this paper. Three identical 3-DoF RU/2-RUS legs are attached to a configurable platform through spherical joints. With the selected leg mechanism, the motors are…
Conventional robots possess a limited understanding of their kinematics and are confined to preprogrammed tasks, hindering their ability to leverage tools efficiently. Driven by the essential components of tool usage - grasping the desired…
This article introduces the Clarke transform and Clarke coordinates, which present a solution to the disengagement of an arbitrary number of coupled displacement actuation of continuum and soft robots. The Clarke transform utilizes the…
Crawling is a common locomotion mechanism in soft robots and nonskeletal animals. In this work we propose modeling soft-robotic legged locomotion by approximating it with an equivalent articulated robot with elastic joints. For concreteness…
We present a new optimization-based method for atomistic-to-continuum (AtC) coupling. The main idea is to cast the coupling of the atomistic and continuum models as a constrained optimization problem with virtual Dirichlet controls on the…
Robots can provide assistance to a human by moving objects to locations around the person's body. With a well chosen initial configuration, a robot can better reach locations important to an assistive task despite model error, pose…
Legged robots can traverse challenging terrain, use perception to plan their safe foothold positions, and navigate the environment. Such unique mobility capabilities make these platforms a perfect candidate for scenarios such as search and…
Continuum robots with variable compliance have gained significant attention due to their adaptability in unstructured environments. Among various stiffness modulation techniques, layer jamming (LJ) provides a simple yet effective approach…
In this paper, previous works on the Model Predictive Control (MPC) and the Divergent Component of Motion (DCM) for bipedal walking control are extended. To this end, we employ a single MPC which uses a combination of Center of Pressure…
In the context of legged robots, adaptive behavior involves adaptive balancing and adaptive swing foot reflection. While adaptive balancing counteracts perturbations to the robot, adaptive swing foot reflection helps the robot to navigate…
Convex optimization is crucial in controlling legged robots, where stability and optimal control are vital. Many control problems can be formulated as convex optimization problems, with a convex cost function and constraints capturing…