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An important factor in developing control models for human-robot collaboration is how acceptable they are to their human partners. One such method for creating acceptable control models is to attempt to mimic human-like behaviour in robots…
The drive for efficiency and safety in construction has boosted the role of robotics and automation. However, complex tasks like welding and pipe insertion pose challenges due to their need for precise adaptive force control, which…
Grasping objects under uncertainty remains an open problem in robotics research. This uncertainty is often due to noisy or partial observations of the object pose or shape. To enable a robot to react appropriately to unforeseen effects, it…
Robots operating in an open world will encounter novel objects with unknown physical properties, such as mass, friction, or size. These robots will need to sense these properties through interaction prior to performing downstream tasks with…
The ability of a soft robot to perform specific tasks is determined by its contact configuration, and transitioning between configurations is often necessary to reach a desired position or manipulate an object. Based on this observation, we…
Letting robots emulate human behavior has always posed a challenge, particularly in scenarios involving multiple robots. In this paper, we presented a framework aimed at achieving multi-agent reinforcement learning for robot control in…
Manufacturing requires consistent production rate and task success for sustainable operation. Some manufacturing tasks require a semi-autonomous approach, exploiting the combination of human adaptability and machine precision and speed, to…
Assistive robot arms try to help their users perform everyday tasks. One way robots can provide this assistance is shared autonomy. Within shared autonomy, both the human and robot maintain control over the robot's motion: as the robot…
How are robots becoming smarter at interacting with their surroundings? Recent advances have reshaped how robots use tactile sensing to perceive and engage with the world. Tactile sensing is a game-changer, allowing robots to embed…
Significant progress in robotics reveals new opportunities to advance manufacturing. Next-generation industrial automation will require both integration of distinct robotic technologies and their application to challenging industrial…
Shared-autonomy imitation learning lets a human correct a robot in real time, mitigating covariate-shift errors. Yet existing approaches ignore two critical factors: (i) the operator's cognitive load and (ii) the risk created by delayed or…
Task-aware robotic grasping is a challenging problem that requires the integration of semantic understanding and geometric reasoning. This paper proposes a novel framework that leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) and Quality Diversity…
The advantage of modular self-reconfigurable robot systems is their flexibility, but this advantage can only be realized if appropriate configurations (shapes) and behaviors (controlling programs) can be selected for a given task. In this…
It is desirable to enable robots capable of automatic assembly. Structural understanding of object parts plays a crucial role in this task yet remains relatively unexplored. In this paper, we focus on the setting of furniture assembly from…
Recent progress in robot autonomy and safety has significantly improved human-robot interactions, enabling robots to work alongside humans on various tasks. However, complex assembly tasks still present significant challenges due to…
When faced with an execution failure, an intelligent robot should be able to identify the likely reasons for the failure and adapt its execution policy accordingly. This paper addresses the question of how to utilise knowledge about the…
Furniture assembly is a crucial yet challenging task for robots, requiring precise dual-arm coordination where one arm manipulates parts while the other provides collaborative support and stabilization. To accomplish this task more…
An active approach to fault tolerance is essential for robot swarms to achieve long-term autonomy. Previous efforts have focused on responding to spontaneous electro-mechanical faults and failures. However, many faults occur gradually over…
Robust task-oriented grasp planning is vital for autonomous robotic precision assembly tasks. Knowledge of the objects' geometry and preconditions of the target task should be incorporated when determining the proper grasp to execute.…
While many robotic tasks, like manipulation and locomotion, are fundamentally based in making and breaking contact with the environment, state-of-the-art control policies struggle to deal with the hybrid nature of multi-contact motion. Such…