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Feedback motion planning over cell decompositions provides a robust method for generating collision-free robot motion with formal guarantees. However, existing algorithms often produce paths with unnecessary bending, leading to slower…

Robotic tasks which involve uncertainty--due to variation in goal, environment configuration, or confidence in task model--may require human input to instruct or adapt the robot. In tasks with physical contact, several existing methods for…

Ankle push-off largely contributes to limb energy generation in human walking, leading to smoother and more efficient locomotion. Providing this net positive work to an amputee requires an active prosthesis, but has the potential to enable…

We are concerned with a novel sensor-based gesture input/instruction technology which enables human beings to interact with computers conveniently. The human being wears an emitter on the finger or holds a digital pen that generates a time…

Model Predictive Path Integral (MPPI) is a popular sampling-based Model Predictive Control (MPC) algorithm for nonlinear systems. It optimizes trajectories by sampling control sequences and averaging them. However, a key issue with MPPI is…

We synthesize shared control protocols subject to probabilistic temporal logic specifications. More specifically, we develop a framework in which a human and an autonomy protocol can issue commands to carry out a certain task. We blend…

Model predictive control (MPC) has established itself as the primary methodology for constrained control, enabling general-purpose robot autonomy in diverse real-world scenarios. However, for most problems of interest, MPC relies on the…

Simplified models of the dynamics such as the linear inverted pendulum model (LIPM) have proven to perform well for biped walking on flat ground. However, for more complex tasks the assumptions of these models can become limiting. For…

Placing robots outside controlled conditions requires versatile movement representations that allow robots to learn new tasks and adapt them to environmental changes. The introduction of obstacles or the placement of additional robots in…

We extend the behaviour of generic sample-based motion planners to support obstacle avoidance during long-range path following by introducing a new edge-cost metric paired with a curvilinear planning space. The resulting planner generates…

This work puts forward a novel numerical approach for solving the stochastic optimal control problem (SOCP) and the mean field control (MFC) problem using projection algorithm inspired by the stochastic maximum principle (SMP) which is also…

Dexterous in-hand manipulation is a peculiar and useful human skill. This ability requires the coordination of many senses and hand motion to adhere to many constraints. These constraints vary and can be influenced by the object…

The ability of robots to recognize human gestures facilitates a natural and accessible human-robot collaboration. However, most work in gesture recognition remains rooted in reference frame-dependent representations. This poses a challenge…

Predictive planning is a key capability for robots to efficiently and safely navigate populated environments. Particularly in densely crowded scenes, with uncertain human motion predictions, predictive path planning, and control can become…

Humanoid control often leverages motion priors from human demonstrations to encourage natural behaviors. However, such demonstrations are frequently suboptimal or misaligned with robotic tasks due to embodiment differences, retargeting…

Many robotics tasks, such as path planning or trajectory optimization, are formulated as optimal control problems (OCPs). The key to obtaining high performance lies in the design of the OCP's objective function. In practice, the objective…

Inverse optimal control can be used to characterize behavior in sequential decision-making tasks. Most existing work, however, is limited to fully observable or linear systems, or requires the action signals to be known. Here, we introduce…

Generating time-optimal, collision-free trajectories for autonomous mobile robots involves a fundamental trade-off between guaranteeing safety and managing computational complexity. State-of-the-art approaches formulate spline-based motion…

Robots must make and break contact with the environment to perform useful tasks, but planning and control through contact remains a formidable challenge. In this work, we achieve real-time contact-implicit model predictive control with a…

This paper proposes a task-oriented model predictive control (ToMPC) framework for safe and efficient robotic manipulation in open workspaces. The framework unifies collision-free motion and robot-environment interaction to address diverse…