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Non-prehensile pushing to move and reorient objects to a goal is a versatile loco-manipulation skill. In the real world, the object's physical properties and friction with the floor contain significant uncertainties, which makes the task…
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…
We present an online model-based reinforcement learning algorithm suitable for controlling complex robotic systems directly in the real world. Unlike prevailing sim-to-real pipelines that rely on extensive offline simulation and model-free…
This work is devoted to the problem of distributed target tracking when a team of robots detect the target through a variable perception-latency mechanism. A reference for the robots to track is constructed in terms of a desired formation…
This work presents a new sufficient condition for synthesizing nonlinear controllers that yield bounded closed-loop tracking error transients despite the presence of unmatched uncertainties that are concurrently being learned online. The…
The compliance of soft robotic arms renders the development of accurate kinematic & dynamical models especially challenging. The most widely used model in soft robotic kinematics assumes Piecewise Constant Curvature (PCC). However, PCC…
Accurate dynamics models are critical for the design of predictive controller for autonomous mobile robots. Physics-based models are often too simple to capture relevant real-world effects, while data-driven models are data-intensive and…
In this paper, we use the optimal control methodology to control a flexible, elastic Cosserat rod. An inspiration comes from stereotypical movement patterns in octopus arms, which are observed in a variety of manipulation tasks, such as…
High-performance closed-loop control of truly soft continuum manipulators has remained elusive. Experimental demonstrations have largely relied on sufficiently stiff, piecewise architectures in which each actuated segment behaves as a…
Tool-based scooping is vital in robot-assisted tasks, enabling interaction with objects of varying sizes, shapes, and material states. Recent studies have shown that flexible, reconfigurable soft robotic end-effectors can adapt their shape…
The precise control of soft and continuum robots requires knowledge of their shape, which has, in contrast to classical rigid robots, infinite degrees of freedom. To partially reconstruct the shape, proprioceptive techniques use built-in…
Precision is a crucial performance indicator for robot arms, as high precision manipulation allows for a wider range of applications. Traditional methods for improving robot arm precision rely on error compensation. However, these methods…
Fluidically actuated soft robots have promising capabilities such as inherent compliance and user safety. The control of soft robots needs to properly handle nonlinear actuation dynamics, motion constraints, workspace limitations, and…
Many robotic tasks, such as human-robot interactions or the handling of fragile objects, require tight control and limitation of appearing forces and moments alongside sensible motion control to achieve safe yet high-performance operation.…
The model-free control approach is an advanced control law that requires few information about the process to control. Since its introduction in 2008, numerous applications have been successfully considered, highlighting attractive…
Obtaining dynamic models of continuum soft robots is central to the analysis and control of soft robots, and researchers have devoted much attention to the challenge of proposing both data-driven and first-principle solutions. Both avenues…
Flexible robots may overcome some of the industry's major challenges, such as enabling intrinsically safe human-robot collaboration and achieving a higher payload-to-mass ratio. However, controlling flexible robots is complicated due to…
This paper studies real-time motion planning and control for ball bumping motion with quadruped robots. To enable the quadruped to bump the flying ball with different initializations, we develop a nonlinear trajectory optimization-based…
Soft robots offer more flexibility, compliance, and adaptability than traditional rigid robots. They are also typically lighter and cheaper to manufacture. However, their use in real-world applications is limited due to modeling challenges…
Many soft-body organisms found in nature flourish underwater. Similarly, soft robots are potentially well-suited for underwater environments partly because the problematic effects of gravity, friction, and harmonic oscillations are less…