Related papers: ContactNets: Learning Discontinuous Contact Dynami…
Physics simulation is ubiquitous in robotics. Whether in model-based approaches (e.g., trajectory optimization), or model-free algorithms (e.g., reinforcement learning), physics simulators are a central component of modern control pipelines…
From just a glance, humans can make rich predictions about the future state of a wide range of physical systems. On the other hand, modern approaches from engineering, robotics, and graphics are often restricted to narrow domains and…
This paper comprehensively surveys research trends in imitation learning for contact-rich robotic tasks. Contact-rich tasks, which require complex physical interactions with the environment, represent a central challenge in robotics due to…
Learning complex network dynamics is fundamental for understanding, modeling, and controlling real-world complex systems. Though great efforts have been made to predict the future states of nodes on networks, the capability of capturing…
We study the problem of rapidly identifying contact dynamics of unknown objects in partially known environments. The key innovation of our method is a novel formulation of the contact dynamics estimation problem as the joint estimation of…
Humans leverage multiple sensor modalities when interacting with objects and discovering their intrinsic properties. Using the visual modality alone is insufficient for deriving intuition behind object properties (e.g., which of two boxes…
It is well-known that inverse dynamics models can improve tracking performance in robot control. These models need to precisely capture the robot dynamics, which consist of well-understood components, e.g., rigid body dynamics, and effects…
Trajectory optimization with contact-rich behaviors has recently gained attention for generating diverse locomotion behaviors without pre-specified ground contact sequences. However, these approaches rely on precise models of robot dynamics…
Skin dynamics contributes to the enriched realism of human body models in rendered scenes. Traditional methods rely on physics-based simulations to accurately reproduce the dynamic behavior of soft tissues. Due to the model complexity and…
Robots can rapidly acquire new skills from demonstrations. However, during generalisation of skills or transitioning across fundamentally different skills, it is unclear whether the robot has the necessary knowledge to perform the task.…
Rigid body interactions are fundamental to numerous scientific disciplines, but remain challenging to simulate due to their abrupt nonlinear nature and sensitivity to complex, often unknown environmental factors. These challenges call for…
At the heart of many robotics problems is the challenge of learning correspondences across domains. For instance, imitation learning requires obtaining correspondence between humans and robots; sim-to-real requires correspondence between…
Accurate inertial parameter identification is crucial for the simulation and control of robots encountering intermittent contact with the environment. Classically, robots' inertial parameters are obtained from CAD models that are not…
Inverse dynamics is used extensively in robotics and biomechanics applications. In manipulator and legged robots, it can form the basis of an effective nonlinear control strategy by providing a robot with both accurate positional tracking…
This paper presents a novel approach for representing proprioceptive time-series data from quadruped robots as structured two-dimensional images, enabling the use of convolutional neural networks for learning locomotion-related tasks. The…
Real-world robots must operate under evolving dynamics caused by changing operating conditions, external disturbances, and unmodeled effects. These may appear as gradual drifts, transient fluctuations, or abrupt shifts, demanding real-time…
Dexterous manipulation requires careful reasoning over extrinsic contacts. The prevalence of deforming tools in human environments, the use of deformable sensors, and the increasing number of soft robots yields a need for approaches that…
Modeling contact between deformable solids is a fundamental problem in computer animation, mechanical design, and robotics. Existing methods based on $C^0$-discretizations -- piece-wise linear or polynomial surfaces -- suffer from…
Robotic manipulation in unstructured environments requires planners to reason jointly about free-space motion and sustained, frictional contact with the environment. Existing (local) planning and simulation frameworks typically separate…
Humanoid robots dynamically navigate an environment by interacting with it via contact wrenches exerted at intermittent contact poses. Therefore, it is important to consider dynamics when planning a contact sequence. Traditional contact…