Related papers: The Robot Household Marathon Experiment
For mobile robots, navigating cluttered or dynamic environments often necessitates non-prehensile manipulation, particularly when faced with objects that are too large, irregular, or fragile to grasp. The unpredictable behavior and varying…
Mobile manipulation robots are continuously advancing, with their grasping capabilities rapidly progressing. However, there are still significant gaps preventing state-of-the-art mobile manipulators from widespread real-world deployments,…
Scientific competitions are crucial in the field of service robotics. They foster knowledge exchange and benchmarking, allowing teams to test their research in unstandardized scenarios. In this paper, we summarize the trending solutions and…
Recent advances in robot learning have accelerated progress toward generalist robots that can perform everyday tasks in human environments. Yet it remains difficult to gauge how close we are to this vision. The field lacks a reproducible,…
Mobile robots are increasingly being used to assist with active pursuit and law enforcement. One major limitation for such missions is the resource (battery) allocated to the robot. Factors like nature and agility of evader, terrain over…
Autonomous exploration allows mobile robots to navigate in initially unknown territories in order to build complete representations of the environments. In many real-life applications, environments often contain dynamic obstacles which can…
We explore task tolerances, i.e., allowable position or rotation inaccuracy, as an important resource to facilitate smooth and effective telemanipulation. Task tolerances provide a robot flexibility to generate smooth and feasible motions;…
This paper presents a feasibility study, including simulations and prototype tests, on the autonomous operation of a multi-limbed intra-vehicular robot (mobile manipulator), shortly MLIVR, designed to assist astronauts with logistical tasks…
Automating complex tasks using robotic systems requires skills for planning, control and execution. This paper proposes a complete robotic system for maintenance automation, which can automate disassembly and assembly operations under…
Operating in environments too harsh or inaccessible for humans is one of the critical roles expected of robots. However, such environments often pose risks to electronic components as well. To overcome this, various approaches have been…
In this paper we propose an approach for efficient grasp selection for manipulation tasks of unknown objects. Even for simple tasks such as pick-and-place, a unique solution is rare to occur. Rather, multiple candidate grasps must be…
Shared autonomy integrates user input with robot autonomy in order to control a robot and help the user to complete a task. Our work aims to improve the performance of such a human-robot team: the robot tries to guide the human towards an…
To solve multi-step manipulation tasks in the real world, an autonomous robot must take actions to observe its environment and react to unexpected observations. This may require opening a drawer to observe its contents or moving an object…
Our goal is to enable robots to \emph{time} their motion in a way that is purposefully expressive of their internal states, making them more transparent to people. We start by investigating what types of states motion timing is capable of…
Current robotic manipulation requires reliable methods to predict whether a certain grasp on an object will be successful or not prior to its execution. Different methods and metrics have been developed for this purpose but there is still…
This paper addresses the problem of mobile grasping in dynamic, unknown environments where a robot must operate under a limited field-of-view. The fundamental challenge is the inherent trade-off between ``seeing'' around to reduce…
The increasing presence of robots alongside humans, such as in human-robot teams in manufacturing, gives rise to research questions about the kind of behaviors people prefer in their robot counterparts. We term actions that support…
Robotic manipulation and grasping in cluttered and unstructured environments is a current challenge for robotics. Enabling robots to operate in these challenging environments have direct applications from automating warehouses to harvesting…
Many order fulfillment applications in logistics, such as packing, involve picking objects from unstructured piles before tightly arranging them in bins or shipping containers. Desirable robotic solutions in this space need to be low-cost,…
Manipulating objects with robotic hands is a complicated task. Not only the fingers of the hand, but also the pose of the robot's end effector need to be coordinated. Using human demonstrations of movements is an intuitive and…