Related papers: Optimization of Robot Grasping Forces and Worst Ca…

Caging is a promising tool which allows a robot to manipulate an object without directly reasoning about the contact dynamics involved. Furthermore, caging also provides useful guarantees in terms of robustness to uncertainty, and often…

We analyze worst-case convergence guarantees of first-order optimization methods over a function class extending that of smooth and convex functions. This class contains convex functions that admit a simple quadratic upper bound. Its study…

Shells, i.e., objects made of a thin layer of material following a surface, are among the most common structures in use. They are highly efficient, in terms of material required to maintain strength, but also prone to deformation and…

Recent progress in robotic manipulation has dealt with the case of previously unknown objects in the context of relatively simple tasks, such as bin-picking. Existing methods for more constrained problems, however, such as deliberate…

Safe yet stable grasping requires a robotic hand to apply sufficient force on the object to immobilize it while keeping it from getting damaged. Soft robotic hands have been proposed for safe grasping due to their passive compliance, but…

This paper introduces a novel six-axis force/torque sensor tailored for compact and lightweight legged robots. Unlike traditional strain gauge-based sensors, the proposed non-contact design employs photocouplers, enhancing resistance to…

Manipulation of objects by exploiting their contact with the environment can enhance both the dexterity and payload capability of robotic manipulators. A common way to manipulate heavy objects beyond the payload capability of a robot is to…

Finding tight bounds on the optimal solution is a critical element of practical solution methods for discrete optimization problems. In the last decade, decision diagrams (DDs) have brought a new perspective on obtaining upper and lower…

A common task in robotics is unloading identical goods from a tray with rectangular grid structure. This naturally leads to the idea of programming the process at one grid position only and translating the motion to the other grid points,…

Robotic manipulation in unstructured environments requires reliable execution under diverse conditions, yet many state-of-the-art systems still struggle with high-dimensional action spaces, sparse rewards, and slow generalization beyond…

Robotic manipulation of deformable objects remains a challenging task. One such task is folding a garment autonomously. Given start and end folding positions, what is an optimal trajectory to move the robotic arm to fold a garment? Certain…

We present a self-contained, soft robotic hand composed of soft pneumatic actuator modules that are equipped with strain and pressure sensing. We show how this data can be used to discern whether a grasp was successful. Co-locating sensing…

Efficient probabilistic inference by variable elimination in graphical models requires an optimal elimination order. However, finding an optimal order is a challenging combinatorial optimisation problem for models with a large number of…

We consider relative or subjective optimization problems where the goal function and feasible set are dependent of the current state of the system under consideration. In general, they are formulated as quasi-equilibrium problems, hence…

We address the problem of minimal actuator placement in linear systems so that the volume of the set of states reachable with one unit or less of input energy is lower bounded by a desired value. First, following the recent work of…

Robotic arms are highly common in various automation processes such as manufacturing lines. However, these highly capable robots are usually degraded to simple repetitive tasks such as pick-and-place. On the other hand, designing an optimal…

Given $n$ weighted points (positive or negative) in $d$ dimensions, what is the axis-aligned box which maximizes the total weight of the points it contains? The best known algorithm for this problem is based on a reduction to a related…

Placement Optimization is an important problem in systems and chip design, which consists of mapping the nodes of a graph onto a limited set of resources to optimize for an objective, subject to constraints. In this paper, we start by…

Training agents to autonomously learn how to use anthropomorphic robotic hands has the potential to lead to systems capable of performing a multitude of complex manipulation tasks in unstructured and uncertain environments. In this work, we…

A common problem in the optimization of structures is the handling of uncertainties in the parameters. If the parameters appear in the constraints, the uncertainties can lead to an infinite number of constraints. Usually the constraints…