Related papers: Orientation to Pose: Continuum Robots Shape Sensin…
The configuration of most robotic systems lies in continuous transformation groups. However, in mobile robot trajectory tracking, many recent works still naively utilize optimization methods for elements in vector space without considering…
Systems involving human-robot collaboration necessarily require that steps be taken to ensure safety of the participating human. This is usually achievable if accurate, reliable estimates of the human's pose are available. In this paper, we…
Continuum robots have been widely adopted in robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (RMIS) because of their compact size and high flexibility. However, their proprioceptive capabilities remain limited, particularly in narrow lumens,…
Complex multibody legged robots can have complex rotational control challenges. In this paper, we propose a concise way to understand and formulate a \emph{whole-body orientation} that (i) depends on system configuration only and not a…
Shape change enables new capabilities for robots. One class of robots capable of dramatic shape change is soft growing "vine" robots. These robots usually feature global actuation methods for bending that limit them to simple,…
Recent advancements in constrained kinematic control make it an attractive strategy for controlling robots with arbitrary geometry in challenging tasks. Most current works assume that the robot kinematic model is precise enough for the task…
Shape completion, i.e., predicting the complete geometry of an object from a partial observation, is highly relevant for several downstream tasks, most notably robotic manipulation. When basing planning or prediction of real grasps on…
Recently, a new concept for continuum robots capable of producing macro-scale and micro-scale motion has been presented. These robots achieve their multi-scale motion capabilities by coupling direct-actuation of push-pull back-bones for…
Many robotic tasks involving some form of 3D visual perception greatly benefit from a complete knowledge of the working environment. However, robots often have to tackle unstructured environments and their onboard visual sensors can only…
Continuum and soft robots can transform diverse sectors, including healthcare, agriculture, marine, and space, thanks to their potential to adaptively interact with unstructured environments. These robots exhibit complex mechanics that pose…
Navigating in off-road environments for wheeled mobile robots is challenging due to dynamic and rugged terrain. Traditional physics-based stability metrics, such as Static Stability Margin (SSM) or Zero Moment Point (ZMP) require knowledge…
Continuum robots, known for their high flexibility and adaptability, offer immense potential for applications such as medical surgery, confined-space inspections, and wearable devices. However, their non-linear elastic nature and complex…
This paper presents a topology-inspired morphological descriptor for soft continuum robots by combining a pseudo-rigid-body (PRB) model with Morse theory to achieve a quantitative characterization of robot morphologies. By counting critical…
In order to make robots more useful in a variety of environments, they need to be highly portable so that they can be transported to wherever they are needed, and highly storable so that they can be stored when not in use. We propose…
State estimation is one of the fundamental problems in robotics. For soft continuum robots, this task is particularly challenging because their states (poses, strains, internal wrenches, and velocities) are inherently infinite-dimensional…
The pattern formation task is commonly seen in a multi-robot system. In this paper, we study the problem of forming complex shapes with functionally limited mobile robots, which have to rely on other robots to precisely locate themselves.…
This paper presents a novel method for modeling the shape of a continuum robot as a Neural Configuration Euclidean Distance Function (N-CEDF). By learning separate distance fields for each link and combining them through the kinematics…
Camera-to-robot calibration is crucial for vision-based robot control and requires effort to make it accurate. Recent advancements in markerless pose estimation methods have eliminated the need for time-consuming physical setups for…
Motion control is essential for all autonomous mobile robots, and even more so for spherical robots. Due to the uniqueness of the spherical robot, its motion control must not only ensure accurate tracking of the target commands, but also…
This paper proposes a method of estimating a target-object shape, the location of which is unknown, through the use of location-unknown mobile distance sensors. The direction of the sensor is fixed from the moving direction. Typically,…